We may demand better

management of our tax dollars in the future. And still

the children will arrive at the schoolhouse door.

We may wish the board had

chosen a property tax approach instead of a sales tax

approach. And still the children will come.

We may want a lot of things

different, but what we are asked to approve next Tuesday

is a one-cent sales tax to pay for 289 new classrooms to

seat those 5,202 children who will show up next year, and

the next and the next and the next and the next,

expecting to be educated.

We will be paying for a new

high school, middle school, two elementary schools and a

host of additions. And we will be buying land to

accommodate the next (sixth) high school, middle school

and elementary school after that.

Included in the $90 million

package will be athletic facilities' additions and

expansions. Some of us like that and some of us don't.

But it's part of the package.

There are now 97

"portable classrooms" outside existing schools.

Some of those will go away with the approval of the

special local option sales tax (SPLOST).

What happens if the " No s"

win the day?

A whole lot more

"portable classrooms," paid for out of the

school system's existing operating budget. A little math

will inform even the most diehard SPLOST opponent: More

money will go to facilities, less money will go to pay

for teachers teaching kids.

Also probable: Split

sessions, with half the kids in the county going in the

morning session and half in the afternoon.

Anybody who has ever worked

while being a parent will understand without need for

explanation the nightmare that double sessions pose for

family schedules. The social strains and resulting social

costs will be extremely high, maybe even destructively

high.

Almost certainly, classes

at all levels will balloon in size, and the pupil-teacher

ratio will increase as school operating funds go to pay

for trailers instead of teachers.

We appreciate the opposing

views expressed in our editorial pages today and in weeks

past. In fact, we agree with many of their criticisms of

the spending package and the board's choices.

But we also see the

children, those thousands of children in just the next

five years at the schoolhouse door, who will be looking

to us to provide a quality education for them.

We can continue to meet

their needs by voting "YES" next Tuesday.

Voting "No" just

postpones the day of reckoning, when the bill will be

much higher, and the losses - in student potential

and social costs to family life - may approach an

universally unacceptable level.