When children all over the world climb aboard the future train and head off for tomorrow, will Florida's children be left at the station? Florida's leaders appear bent on making sure that happens. Consider their enthusiasm for a constitutional amendment to abolish property taxes for schools. Then consider their slashing hundreds of millions of dollars from the school budget. Their actions and words speak loudly of their intentions. Their actions imply a willful and deliberate effort to bankrupt Florida's public education system. Their words speak of economic necessity during hard times. We can't raise taxes, they say, so we must cut spending. If economics are the root cause of their actions, then Florida's leaders are proposing the economic equivalent of eating the seed corn. We must wait for better times, they say, before we can spend more on education. Meanwhile, we must cut the budget and try to get by. Children don't have the luxury of waiting. Their time is short and their window of opportunity brief. Each child's ticket for the future train expires quickly. When has a community ever been so set on giving its children less than its elders received as children? Floridians seem determined to do just that. Florida's voters solidly back their leaders on reducing property taxes. Just recently, they overwhelmingly endorsed property tax reductions for local governments. There is little doubt they will do the same for school property taxes. A lot of Floridians don't live in a community. They live in a condo or a subdivision or a trailer. Florida is just a place where they ended up and they have no attachment to nor concern for its past or future. For its children however, Florida is where they start and its future is their immediate concern. If they are to avoid just ending up somewhere, they must catch the future train before it leaves. Florida is a Republican state with a Republican governor and legislature. They are true believers in reducing taxes and cutting government down to size. Whether those tactics will work in the present crisis is an open question. Republicans are facing a real challenge to their anti-tax, anti-government philosophy. With the economy tanking, they need these tax cuts to succeed spectacularly. If the cuts don't work, they may lose several generations of voters like they did in 1932. Florida's children can't vote and, all too often, their parents don't vote. Whether Florida's voters will follow their leaders over this tax cut cliff next November remains to be seen. Meanwhile, the future train is leaving the station and when it leaves it never returns. None who miss it ever see it again. And none who miss it ever catch up with those who don't. If our children get left at the station, the rest of us will be there with them. Their future and ours are inseparable. If they miss the future train, so will we all. | 
