Many people are going to jump all over me on this one, but think about the following.

Reading, writing and arithmetic used to be the base of all education everywhere and has not really changed in hundreds of years. About 70 percent of all the companies were either started or run by people who went to a school that didn’t have basketball or football teams, tennis courts or swimming pools. They used a paper, pencil, ruler and walked to school. These same people wrote some of the best poetry, music and books ever written. Others went on to invent things; many were legal immigrants, and all of this made a great country. Some even became president.

It has to be hard for the younger people to even think about doing all this without a calculator, computer, TV, recorders or a modern school with all the glitter and fun things. The end result of all the extras — graduates can’t hand write a coherent sentence, find Poland on a map or make change, and the registers have to do it automatically for them. Progress?

I used to rent my books and sometimes got my sister or brother’s book that was a good five years ahead of me.

So why do the schools and colleges change books so often? Greed? Money? Someone is making money off them, and it’s a million-dollar business. I used to go to the used book store when I was in college, and you could get a book for $10 dollars or less, except if the professor wrote a new, improved version with maybe one paragraph changed, and he demanded you had to have it for your course and the cost only $95. Many college students have run into this problem and, in general, causes the cost of college to increase.

I have been going to meetings and looking on the www.lcsc web page for Logansport schools. They give you a lot of info if anyone is interested. We have 38 buses, eight spares and 53 percent of the students ride these buses. Each bus cost about $75,000. A lot of money. But it seems all these students get to the ball games without the buses.

I waited for two weeks for the Pharos-Tribune to have the new Logansport school budget, but so far I haven’t seen it. Maybe it’s because, once again, they have increased it. The Logansport school system budget has increased again by approximately $675,000. Each year, they want just a little 1 or 2 percent increase. They are like kids in a candy store whose parents never said no to them and the budget has increased 11 percent since 2004.

We have a football coach and 10 assistants that cost us about $200,000 or more a year. Even if we had the best coach in the world and won the championship, would that bring in any factories or jobs? No!

Some years ago when we had one coach and one part-time coach who coached both basketball and football, we had some great teams, and we didn’t get any new factories then.

It is time for the board members and city council members both to realize that this period of time is like no other in history, and this is the first time people are losing their homes and have no more to lose. Many of these people are very upset and will blame you for their problems. You should take their request and questions seriously. Rather than shrugging if off as if saying, “Tough luck, who cares” and go on raising the budget.

They said they have cut back and gotten rid of some positions. Yes, they did. They got rid of an assistant and hired an associate for more money. Seems like playing a musical name tag game to fool us.

This kind of budget and school belongs in Carmel where they have the money to pay and not here. Regardless of whether the county or the state pays the cost of education, it is still too much, and if this education monster grows by 1 percent or 2 percent every year? Where will it be in 20 years? More than the entire state budget? Let’s get some real or normal people on the school boards who know what constraint means.

Let’s be very careful in our selection of various board and council members in the future. Know what they stand for and vote accordingly.

Jerry Anderson is a resident of Logansport.