IT DIDN'T TAKE LONG. State Sen. Tony Strickland, (R-Moorpark) who listed himself as a "renewable energy businessman" on the ballot in the Senate District 19 race last fall, predictably failed to vote on renewable energy legislation on Tuesday.

The bill, SB 14, would require investor-owned utilities to receive one-third of their power from renewable energy sources by 2020. These utilities are now required to purchase 20 percent of the energy they sell from renewable sources by next year. The current legislation, authored by Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) would revise the requirement to match one ordered by the governor in November.

The 21-16 vote was mostly along party lines. While in the Assembly, Strickland did vote against SB 1078 in 2002, which set the current 20 percent renewable energy requirement for utilities. He also opposed most other environmentally friendly legislation.

The senator, who justified his ballot designation by his partnership in a wave energy company formed around the same time he decided to run in a green-leaning district, apparently received little or no income from GreenWave Energy Solutions last year, according to a Form 700 document filed with the state. The form listed his chief source of income as his wife Audra Strickland's Assembly salary. He also received income from the sale of real estate.

Now, to be fair, Strickland told Ventura County Star reporter Timm Herdt last year that he voted against the 2002 bill because he opposes government mandates. But this year he decided just not to vote at all. Dodging tricky votes and uncomfortable situations seems to run in the family.

Tuesday's walk only serves to underscore the very disingenuous campaign he ran last fall. Voters would expect someone who claims such green credentials to support public policy which promotes renewable energy practices, especially when it has been mandated by our Republican governor.

At least nobody can accuse him of helping out his own "business."

I'VE WRITTEN A LOT HERE about the economic value of the arts but little about their community-building effects. Ventura's arts community is close-knit and eclectic -- a group of people who choose to live here because their work is appreciated and valued. "Arts events actually encourage a camaraderie," internationally known arts advocate Jerry Yoshitomi told me.

Artists sure know how to pack a City Council meeting, too. From poets to painters to sculptors to actors to the Ventura Music Festival's Nuvi Mehta and his violin, creative types showed up Monday night to protest budget cutbacks to Ventura's cultural arts programs.

Somebody even brought a dog.

The artists and arts organizations in Ventura are one of the reasons I choose to live here. As a member of the city's Cultural Affairs Commission, the proposed cutbacks in the city's cultural programming and staff have been distressing to me. Our cultural grants program, which helps support the budgets of regional entertainment luminaries like the Rubicon Theatre and the Ventura Music Festival, was up for a nearly 50 percent reduction.

Despite the impassioned pleas of 32 public speakers, the City Council voted for most of the cuts proposed by the Budgeting for Outcomes teams. Gone will be ArtWalk (unless it is resurrected privately), the Holiday Street Fair, a film series, all operating hours of the Albinger Museum, technical assistance for artists, and Plaza Park events, along with some staff.

TO RESCUE A FEW THINGS, staff and council got, well, creative. With the potential for two federal stimulus grants in the offing, the council voted to provide "bridge" funding to save one staff position which will work with the new non-profit foundation to raise funds to support cultural programs, which will hopefully include our city's now county-run libraries.

The cuts to our community services grants programs may only get a 25 percent reduction if revenues from our fee-based programs come in over projections. They could also be rescued with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A lot depends on the $100,000 in NEA money the city is applying for, a gamble city staff is hoping will pay off. Volunteers will be needed now more than ever and our commission will be expected to step up its efforts.

"We will make it happen," Mayor Christy Weir said. "We won't let these programs die off."

The Cultural Affairs Commission meets the fourth Thursday of every month at 5:30 p.m. in City Hall.

VENTURA CITIZENS WILL HAVE one more thing to vote on this fall if the advice of the Citizen Blue Ribbon Budget Committee is taken by the Ventura City Council, as it surely will be.

On an 11-4 vote, the 15-member group decided to recommend a 1/2-cent sales tax measure be placed on the November ballot. Since it will not dedicate funds for a specific purpose, it will only require a simple majority vote. However, the group voted to ask that priority be given to public safety, infrastructure, libraries, and economic revitalization, in addition to shoring up the city's reserves. The measure would sunset in four years.

Watching the committee push this tax measure out was sort of like watching natural childbirth when you already knew it was going to be a boy. It was a bit difficult to watch at times and of course there was the requisite huffing and puffing.

In a speech that would do Grover "Let's drown government in a bathub" Norquist proud, one committee member wished wrack and ruin on the entire city. It goes without saying he was one of the four voting no.

As always, these citizen committees are good theater. I just wish more folks would show up to add their thoughts. I counted 12 in the audience tonight, if you subtracted the three city employees, and the Star blogger and reporter. Last week there were about six speakers. At the recent special budget presentation at City Hall, 41 showed up, but I recognized many of those as city employees and volunteers.

I think  "American Idol" has started up again on Wednesday nights. That must be it.

I DO COMMEND THESE 15 folks for doing their homework and polling their acquaintances on their thoughts. And while I didn't agree with some of the speakers, especially those who were particularly hostile and got their facts mixed up, they cared enough to participate. Good for them.

Committee member Bob Berry wondered out loud why they were even there: "I think the City Council is looking for cover."

I was especially impressed with the comments made by Committee Vice Chair Michael Case, while speaking to trust issues. Case once ran for Congress against Elton Gallegly. "Government is very transparent as compared to business," Case pointed out. "The government is merely an extension of us. Even though I've had differences with city officials, I realize they're trying to do their best."

And it was nice to see former Ventura City Manager Ed McCombs again. "This is a much more vital and exciting city -- one that offers a whole lot more to its citizens than when I moved here in 1970," McCombs said. "But when budgets are cut and cut, you lose a lot of things quickly."

The timing of this sales tax measure is terrible, coming after May's multitude of tax-related state ballot measures. It will share ballot space with the view initiative and the anti-big box ordinance, not to mention City Council and Board of Education races.

Given Ventura's propensity for dotting every square inch of public space with campaign signs, these extra measures will surely add to the visual pollution.

If only our citizens had such enthusiam for public meetings to discuss their future.

I've written about this art program's complicated and misunderstood funding system so many times since I started this blog that I almost find myself reciting it over and over in my head as I go to sleep at night:

"It is an actual ordinance, passed in 1992, allocating 2 percent of eligible Capital Improvement Project (CIP) costs for the commissioning of artist services which tie into a project. Not very many projects are selected for this program. Most of the money comes from specific CIP funds which cannot legally be used to pay for police and fire personnel or libraries. ... blah, blah, blah."

Why, I found myself reciting it once again to long-time Star columnist Chuck Thomas just last week as I explained the difference between funding for the Public Art Program, which comes from the CIP fund, and other cultural activities which come from the General Fund. Chuck and I have been locked in a public battle over the merits of government funding of cultural programs for several years now. Sound economic strategy, I say. Waste of tax dollars, Chucks says.

But we had a very amiable phone conversation last week. He understands the Public Art Program funding process better now and while we still don't agree on government funding of cultural activities in general we did agree that it is easier to be a print columnist than a blogger.

IN THESE DAYS of budget cutting in cities around the country, cultural arts programs seem to be the mushrooms growing at the bottom of the totem pole. We're now cutting essential services like police officers and street paving and sidewalk repair.

Former Star writer Charles Levin wrote a great opinion piece Sunday on our city's public and private investment in revenue-generating cultural activities such as ArtWalk. I've written a few pieces like this myself. But his trumped all of mine.

Congress recently passed legislation which would pump more money into the nation's arts organizations; perhaps some of it will trickle down to our community through a grant. Nationwide, arts organizations are facing huge budget deficits. The nonprofit Americans for the Arts estimates 10,000 arts organizations could disappear in 2009.

Tonight the City Council will take another look at the list of cuts the Budgeting for Outcomes teams proposed, as well as the cuts to Public Art, and may vote on finalizing them. Several of our city volunteers, including myself, are looking into forming a non-profit to prevent some of our cultural programs, like ArtWalk, from disappearing from the local landscape. Our efforts may extend to helping out our county-run libraries.

If you're interested in helping, email me.

Yet another 2/3-vote stalemate in Sacramento

WHAT IF SOMEONE asked you to vote to extend the unemployment benefits of nearly 300,000 jobless Californians in a way that wouldn't cost state taxpayers a dime?

Would you do it?

Even with state unemployment figures now running at 10.1 percent, local Assemblywoman Audra Strickland (R-Moorpark) couldn't bring herself to vote for AB 23 3X, which would help unemployed workers for an additional 20 weeks, all with federal stimulus money.

It seems like a no-brainer, but Strickland sat on the sidelines along with 17 of her GOP colleagues, including Cameron Smyth, (R-Santa Clarita) and intentionally failed to vote. Another nine had the nerve to just vote against it.

Just one more vote Monday night and this bill to help our struggling families would have passed. Is it always a fait accompli that we must grovel for one Republican vote every time a 2/3 vote is required?

A GROUP OF UNEMPLOYED local tradesmen who had heard about Monday night's incomprehensible outcome decided to voice their opinions about it today at a press conference outside the Oxnard Employment Development Department.

"This bill's not going to cost California taxpayers one penny," Steve Weiner of the Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties Building Trades Council told a group of around 50 unemployed workers. "We're telling them they need to approve this bill. It's time for them to do their job."

Marilyn and Leo Valenzuela told me they were up in Sacramento when the vote occurred and were very angry about it, especially when they attempted to lobby Audra Strickland to get it passed and the meeting didn't go well. They were perplexed that Strickland Chief of Staff Joel Angeles did not seem to know much about it. "He didn't even know how she voted," Marilyn said.

Marilyn, executive secretary-treasurer of the Tri-County Central Labor Council, had been honored on Monday by Assemblyman Pedro Nava as the 35th District's "Woman of the Year." She and her husband decided the Oxnard press conference was too important to miss.

"We got up at 5 a.m. and drove from Sacramento and pulled into the parking lot at 12:30 today," she said.

NEARLY 1.8 MILLION CALIFORNIANS are currently unemployed; about 1 million are receiving unemployment benefits. For 70,000 of those people, benefits will run out in a month. Sacramento Democrats sought to get AB 23 3X passed in time to help these folks. The measure is expected to bring in an estimated $2.5 billion to $3 billion in federal stimulus money for 20 weeks of additional emergency unemployment benefits during 2009.

Later today I talked to 35th District Assembly candidate Susan Jordan, who was also up in Sacramento on Monday. "I was at a dinner listening to Hilda Solis -- probably the most inspiring Labor Secretary we've ever had -- and she was telling us how this administration is helping working families," Jordan said.

"At the same time, two blocks away, the Republicans were refusing to extend unemployment benefits. It was outrageous. I don't know how any of them can justify this."

UPDATE Monday 3/23/09: The Assembly passed the bill today on a 76-0 vote. For more, go here.

FURTHER UPDATE Thursday 3/26/09: The Senate passed the bill today on a 38-0 vote, along with its companion measure which updates unemployment benefits. For more, go here.

And the Stricklands continue to evade meeting with educators

TEACHERS WERE WEARING PINK. Administrators and school board members were wearing pink. So were parents, teen-agers, little kids, babies and dogs. There were pink ribbons and banners and capes and hats and scarves today out on Victoria Avenue in Ventura.

But most of us were really just seeing red.

More than 26,000 teachers across the state received layoff notices or "pink slips" today, according to the Pink Friday web site. Today's protest was part of many rallies called across the state, but Ventura's was surely the largest in our county. Hundreds of folks, many layers deep, held banners and signs in a ribbon of humanity stretching from Telephone Road to the 126 Freeway.

The probable teacher layoffs, part of a recent $8.4 billion cut to K-12 education, impact not only their families and the local economy but also the education of a generation of California children who will be faced with such things as larger class sizes, crumbling facilities, aging textbooks, fewer counselors and librarians, and less instruction in P.E., arts and music.

"Without a decent education, our children and our future are nothing," said Rosa Granado, a fourth-grade teacher at Sunkist Elementary in Port Hueneme.

Parent Bill Walthall, also of Port Hueneme, worried that the teachers receiving pink slips today would not be rehired when the economy turns around. The younger teachers with less seniority are always the first to be laid off, he said, yet they are some of the most energetic and dynamic educators we have. "We're going to lose them forever," he added.

If this isn't bad enough, State Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor announced today that the precarious package of cuts, revenue increases, borrowing and legislative trickery we just passed as a budget at the end of February has missed the mark by a mile. Yes, there's already an $8 billion hole, Taylor said.

MEANWHILE, elusive legislative duo Tony and Audra Strickland are still playing hide-and-seek with county superintendents asking for a local meeting, according to a very reliable education source. Both skipped a long-scheduled gathering in January with our education leaders. Tony opted instead to attend a card-table event in the rain which was only noticed to the public the day before.

The Stricklands, along with fellow Republican George Runner, who was also a no-show at the  meeting with educators, were given a chance to reschedule at a time convenient to them. Tony's staff has ignored a succession of emails, my source tells me, and Audra recently responded that she was busy for at least the next two months but would meet, one-on-one only, with individual superintendents in her Sacramento office.

I guess Audra thinks it is a better bargain for taxpayers to fly all 19 of our county superintendents individually to Sacramento to meet with her. Or perhaps she expects them to pay for the trips themselves and leave the mayhem going on in their districts behind.

Local parents looking to the Stricklands for leadership in Sacramento in the public education arena should just throw in the towel at this point.

Better yet, let's gather up a few pink slips to throw.

I'M GOING TO NEED TO EAT a little crow here. I poked fun at City Manager Rick Cole's "reinventing government" euphemism awhile back. "Evisceration" was what I called it instead. Whacking nearly $12 million from a two-year city budget always means chopping jobs and services. It's never a pretty proposition. There are real people with real families holding all those positions.

To be sure, there's a lot of whacking in the final 2009-10 Budgeting for Outcomes report -- 46 positions are going to be lost -- but there was also some solid thought put into ways to make city government work more efficiently. The No. 1 great idea? Consolidating the Planning Commission, Design and Review Committee and Historic Preservation Commission into one. Streamlining this layer cake of advisory boards will make it easier for citizens to provide input on planned projects.

Along those lines, the transferring of expensive outside architectural consultant and outside attorney time to staff will save taxpayer dollars. People in all departments will be wearing many hats and learning new tasks.

Economic development of high-wage jobs will be given priority. Two transferred staffers will work on bringing these employers to Ventura along with fast-tracking high-priority projects such as the Auto Center and the North Avenue Redevelopment Project Area.

Volunteers will play an even greater role, especially in public safety and cultural affairs. The Volunteers in Policing program will take on more calls for service, plus code enforcement, records and report-writing duties.

The Cultural Affairs Department, which is taking a big hit, will see the startup of a new non-profit foundation to raise money to support programs lost through the cutbacks. I plan to help with this effort. Many of our cultural programs have been economic and tourism generators for our city and I hate to see them go away.

AND NOW FOR THE PART THAT STINKS: Our roving medic engine will be going away and so will significant hours for the special patrol team that handles Downtown issues. (However, a COPS Grant from the federal stimulus package could prevent layoffs in our police staff.) Public areas will be dirtier and the grass mowed less often. Some playground areas could close. Streets won't be repaved as often, sidewalks won't be fixed except in extreme cases and tree-trimming will be cut back.

My friends in Pierpont will be looking at even more sand-clogged drains.

We're losing ArtWalk unless somebody in the private sector rescues it. The Albinger Museum will close and we will be down to one Street Fair a year. Cultural grants will be severely reduced, senior center services will be cut and the coordinator who works with our homeless population could be eliminated unless a grant is found to rescue this job. There's much more.

Fees will be increased. Deal with it.

Voluntary staff pay cuts should save about $2 million a year and I commend our public employee unions and management for these givebacks. They saved jobs in the process.

The plan will be studied and dissected over the next few weeks. A public airing will be held on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall. For the detailed Redesign Plan, go here.

I ALWAYS ENJOY being a fly on the wall at these citizen meetings spun off by the city. The interaction between the various factions represented at these gatherings is always fun to watch. Put some of our most opinionated citizens in one room and you can see the sparks fly. The View Protection Task Force was interesting, but this new Citizen Blue Ribbon Budget Committee is much better theater.

People arguing about taxes is great sport on this blog; it gets pretty heated. That's why you would think more of our citizens would be jumping at the chance to give public testimony to this 15-member citizen's panel charged with deciding whether or not to put a sales tax measure on the ballot in Ventura to help plug part of a $11.4 million hole in our city's two-year budget. It's been well publicized.

Yet tonight I watched the usual suspects up there saying their usual things. Most of these folks stand before our City Council nearly every Monday and they were back in action again at tonight's meeting. There were a grand total of five speakers and that included the one who stalked off because he was asked to fill out a speaker card first.

So I guess the task is left to the group assembled by the City Council and their alternates. It's a diverse crowd and represents the city and its opinions fairly well. But again, the outspoken few seemed to dominate the conversation.

THE FIRST FEW MEETINGS have been filled with a crash course on city finances. I am always amazed at how well our city's Chief Financial Officer Jay Panzica can explain these things. He recounts facts and figures in a simple, easy tone devoid of "cityspeak." I hope they keep him around. He's smart and we need him.

There was talk tonight of putting up a website for citizen comment, since they aren't attending the meetings. I would highly encourage this.

If you were to ask me -- and nobody did -- I'd say just put it on the ballot in November and let the citizens decide whether or not they want to pay extra for the city services they will soon be missing. If not, well that's democracy -- by the many.

The remainder of the Citizen Blue Ribbon Budget Committee meetings are March 18 and 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ventura Unified School District - Christa McAuliffe Room, 255 W. Stanley Avenue. For more information, go here.

SCHOOL EMPLOYEES statewide will be taking to the streets on Friday, March 13 to protest the estimated 20,000-25,000 layoff notices going out to teachers across California. Here in Ventura, the Pink Friday protest begins at 4 p.m. at the corner of Victoria Avenue and Telephone Road.

"It's a show of support for the teachers who are getting pink slips," said Ventura Unified Educators Association President Steve Blum. Other demonstrations are expected across Ventura County, Blum said.

With education taking up about half of the state's budget, the reduction of $8.4 billion to our schools was part of an agreement passed by legislators on Feb. 19 to plug a deficit projected at $41.6 billion over the next two years.

In the Ventura Unified School District, 17 Reduction in Force (RIF) notices will be sent out to teachers in addition to letters notifying an additional 86 temporary instructors that they may not have a job next year. Temporary teachers, Blum said, are those who have been hired to fill in for those on leave or to fill "categorical" positions like music, art or P.E. State law requires permanent teachers to be notified by March 13 if they will have jobs next year or not.

Ventura Unified will need to trim $10 million from its budget in the next two years. An unknown number of "classified" positions such as janitors, secretaries, etc. will also be lost, Blum said.

THE NEWS IS FAR MORE GRIM in other parts of the county. The Conejo Valley Unified School District is sending notices to 160 employees. Fellow Star blogger Brian Dennert reports an astounding 231 employees in the Simi Valley Unified School District will be notified their jobs are in jeopardy.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Board of Education will vote today (March 10) on whether to issue layoff notices to about 9,000 employees.

"It's ugly out there," Blum said.

Without the revenue package passed by legislators with the budget, even more of our educators would be out on the streets next year, a fact conveniently ignored by radio shock jocks John and Ken of KFI-AM 640 last weekend at a "Tax Revolt Day" in Fullerton. Ventura County Supervisor Peter Foy joined the event with the giant inflatable ATM he hauls around with him. (I've always wondered if in Foy's case that stood for Avoiding Taxing Millionaires.)

While these radio goofballs partied last weekend, more than 20,000 teachers were likely wondering if they could feed their families next year. And up in Sacramento, Sen. Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield was giving an interview to the Sacramento Bee: "Ashburn, who is termed out of his Senate seat next year, said that 'more than a few' Republican legislators acknowledged privately that the budget deficit could not be patched without tax hikes." But they just didn't want to be the ones to vote for them, apparently.

Let's hope they're not laying off math instructors. Math skills are urgently needed in Sacramento.

OK, I ADMIT IT. There's a few things that Democrats have historically just plain stunk at. Brian Leshon thinks so, too. The chair of the Ventura County Democratic Party's Communications Committee says Republicans have been running circles around their progressive counterparts in talk radio for years.

Rush Limbaugh has his own little on-air fiefdom of loyalists who hang on his every word. He gets plenty of ink in the papers, too. Wishing out loud for Barack Obama's agenda to fail only makes him more popular with his fans.

With the exception of the acerbic Randi Rhodes, who even fights with her own network, liberal talkers are a bit more low-key. It's taken awhile for them to find a following. The progressive Air America Radio filed for bankruptcy and then came back up for air. But there are success stories. Rachel Maddow, my favorite, is smart, funny and now has her own show on MSNBC. Air America's Al Franken ran for Congress and sort of won. So we're getting better at this.

CLOSER TO HOME, Brian Leshon and David Atkins, both Ventura residents, have landed a regular spot on KVTA-Radio's "Locals Only" show with host Kelli McKay. I did a spot on McKay's show recently to plug the Ventura Education Partnership and I really appreciated the airtime. She's a very congenial host and a sucker for any good kid cause. Thanks, Kelli!

Leshon and Atkins have ambitious plans for the show, which they call "Reality Check." Their first guest is Assembly member Pedro Nava (D-35th) and they'll discuss the recent budget uproar as well as the initiative process.

"It's really important for Democrats, progressives and independents to get their voice out and this is the way to do it," Leshon said. "We can't allow the conversation to be controlled by the right. They don't represent where the county is going."

Leshon points to the fact that Democratic registration in the county has overtaken that of Republicans. With a large contingent of Obama volunteers in the area, he's hoping for a built-in audience.

Both men are radio veterans. Atkins, a researcher, is co-producer of BlogTalkRadio's progressive hub "Heading Left," and co-host of multiple shows on ePluribusRadio. He is a contributing editor at the blogs MyLeftWing and Booman Tribune and writes regularly for the DailyKos on policy framing and other issues. Leshon's media and communications career spans 30 years in television, radio, music, publishing, national lecture series and the Internet.

I plan on tuning in to this new show every week. It will air on KVTA, 1520 AM, every Friday at 11 a.m. It starts tomorrow (March 6). McKay's "Locals Only" is aired daily from 11 a.m. to noon and features a wide variety of guests.

UPDATE: Listen to the podcast of this show here.

I've been hunkered down for the past few days looking over documents and trying to make some sense of the budget package the governor just signed and how it will affect the bottom line of our schools. It's a precarious hodgepodge of $8.4 billion in cuts offset by reforms and accounting tricks. And all of this hinges on a package of ballot measures up in May, some designed to reshuffle prior ballot measures.

This labyrinthine budget reduces Prop. 98 guaranteed school funding from now through 2010 and then adds in another ballot measure to help to help restore the lost funds in 2011. Yet another tinkers with Prop. 98 formulas because the state now needs to borrow from future lottery earnings that would've gone to our schools.

Several of the seven ballot measures coming up on May 19 are so complicated that one could safely predict most voters probably won't do anything but vote no in protest, if they bother to cast a ballot at all.

AND THERE'S MORE: Categorical funding for many important programs is being slashed 20 percent between now and 2010. Included in this are programs for gifted students, college preparation, middle and high school counseling, deferred maintenance, technology, English language acquisition, summer school, ROP programs, and, of course, arts and music. In return, school districts are being given the "flexibility" to move these pots of funding around, but it's sort of like figuring out which child doesn't get dinner that night.

Upcoming federal money, which would help reduce state taxes, would have no effect on K-12 classroom funding this budget year, according to the California Department of Education. In the longer term, "these resources will have a minimal impact on reducing the size and magnitude of the state reductions in education funding," according to the California Association of School Business Officials.

AS YOU CAN SURMISE, budgeting for the next school year is like playing pin the tail on the weasel. It's a moving target which the dedicated folks who can actually figure this stuff out HAVE to wrestle with because the deadline for letting teachers know whether or not they will have jobs next year is March 13. Yet, they won't have any answers until June. Maybe.

Here in Ventura, school officials are looking at a mighty big gap. "... It will not look like business as usual here," said Superintendent Trudy Arriaga. "We should not be celebrating a state budget that is cutting $10 million out of a little budget like the Ventura Unified School District has.

"We should be outraged."

Most people just pay attention to all this by how it affects them personally. If you have a child in the public schools in California, expect bigger class sizes, no new textbooks, fewer supplies and technology, less remedial help, reduced maintenance and less emphasis on programs such as arts, music and physical education. Some familiar faces in teaching, staff and administration will be gone.

"About the only thing schools won't have less of is testing," said Ventura Unified Educators Association President Steve Blum. "The more-and-more testing crowd made sure state testing will be untouched.

"All this together is not good. This generation's shortsighted approach to preparing the next generation for the future is sad."