Dallas students stage protest outside Gov. Rick Perry appearance in Richardson

by Teresa Gubbins

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Summoning their '60s mojo to protest cuts to education.

Students from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and Woodrow Wilson High School made like the '60s and staged a protest on Tuesday outside a hotel where Governor Rick Perry was making a speech.

Perry was in town to speak to the Richardson Chamber of Commerce at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, where he announced that a company called Virtual Computing Environment Co. was receiving a state grant to set up shop in Richardson.

The protest came after a bigger one on Monday, when 11,000 protesters gathered at the Texas Capitol in Austin to protest education cuts; Perry no-showed. State senators have been trying to devise ways to deal with the shortfall, including teacher furloughs and longer work-weeks. Texas' split system in which control is split between state and local authorities makes it hard to figure out a solution.

The latest silver bullet is the so-called Rainy Day Fund, a reserve fund collected from gas taxes. On Tuesday, Perry and the Texas House capitulated and agreed to use one third of the fund, or $3.2 billion, to make up the deficit in the current fiscal year. The measure will have to get a three-fifths majority vote in the Texas House.

More creative solutions include the one by ProtecttheClassroom.com suggesting that the state fire administrators and bureaucrats, not teachers while DFWian points out that this doesn't affect adults anyway, and third graders need to start being more pro-active about their situation and stop coasting through life.