How many??

Dear Mayor Nutter and Governor Corbett,
How many students do you have in your class?
How many tissue boxes do you buy for your class?
How many bottles of hand sanitizer do you buy for your class?
How many snack bars or pots of oatmeal do you cook for your hungry students?
How many shirts did you hurry to get from the corner store because of the red juice your student spilled on him?
How many pairs of socks do you buy for your little kindergarteners whose feet NEED socks with the sneakers they have on?
How many reams of paper do you buy to do your job?
How many class sets of books do your bid on via ebay so that your class can have a class set?
How many of your students' trips do you pay for at the last minute for a wide variety of reasons?
How many of your students come to you because they just need to cry and let it all out?
How many of your students come back years later to just say "thank you"?
How many pizzas have you purchased for your class because they all came to school that entire week or month?
How many pens, pencils, boxes of crayons, boxes of markers, and packages of lined paper have you purchased for your students?
How many times have you given your students $2.00....oh wait, it's gone UP....$2.25 to get home because they lost their money?
How many subscriptions to kid's educational magazines have you purchased so that your students can read real, authentic literary nonfiction?
How many subscriptions to internet educational software games/companies have you purchased to make learning come alive for your students?
How many computers have you spent money on to refurbish so that your classroom can at least have ONE in the class?
How much money have you spent to paint your classroom because it hadn't seen a coat of paint for at least a decade?
How many bookshelves and magazine racks have your purchased for your classroom so that reading can be inviting?
How many hats, gloves, and scarves have you bought for your 2nd graders?
How many gift cards have you purchased for your seniors in high school who are headed off to college?
How many fans have you bought so that your classroom can have SOME air flow?
Huh? How many? Answer me that!!

Wait, I have one more...

How many more "how many"s do you think I can come up with?
Don't wrack your brain, let me answer that for you!
A WHOLE LOT MORE!!!

You speak of shared pain? You berate us for not "sharing in sacrifice"? You want us to take a 13% pay cut? You say that we need to "step up"? You want us to pay to come to work? You want us to buy $45 million at a price tag of $133 million?

You, sirs, are clearly out of touch with the reality of our profession!

Sincerely
~Stephen R. Flemming and all the rest of us!!!