Students learn hard lesson in school budgets

Funding shortfalls squeeze educators: ‘There’s just no hope right now’

By Alex Johnson
Reporter
MSNBC
updated 11:18 a.m. ET, Tues., Aug. 12, 2008

Around Valentine’s Day, parents in Cheatham County, Tenn., near Nashville, could face a problem: how to get their children to school.

There’s enough money in the 2008-09 school budget to pay for bus fuel only until February. The Cheatham County Board of Education doesn’t know what it will do after that.

“In the area where we live, those children are 12 miles from school,â€