ShareThisDear Barack: Can I call you that? I figured, since seeing you fill out your NCAA hoops bracket on ESPN and become the first sitting U.S. president to appear on "The Tonight Show," it was OK to dispense with the formalities.
Anyway, I'm writing because we, the people of St. Lucie County here in Florida, need your help.
For our school kids.
The ones who play sports.
Legislators have whacked $30 million in state funds that were supposed to go to our school budget in 2009-10. Schools are being closed, teachers are being laid off, positions are being eliminated and salaries are being slashed.
And if that's not bad enough, it looks like athletics is going to take a $1 million hit.
That might not sound like a lot to you, given all this talk in Washington of trillion-dollar deficits, but it's nearly 60 percent of our total sports budget.
We're going to feel it.
Coaches will be cut. Travel will be reduced. Athletes could be required to pay to play, as much as $100 per season.
That's just the varsity sports.
Unless we get some outside help -- or find other ways to fund them, which won't be easy in the current economic climate -- all junior varsity programs and middle school sports will be shut down.
You know what that means? About 4,000 of our kids, who normally would participate in sports on the middle school and JV levels, won't get the chance.
They won't get the physical exercise they so desperately need, particularly at a time when the childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes rates are soaring. They won't get the opportunity to try different sports and groom their skills for the varsity teams. They won't get to experience the thrill of competition, the joys of teamwork, the character-building heartbreak of defeat.
They won't get to learn the valuable life lessons that can be taught only on the athletic field.
Worse, if some of these kids don't play sports, nobody knows where they'll end up. You're probably not too familiar with our county, but, while this is a mostly law-abiding, suburban-type community, there are a few rough neighborhoods in Fort Pierce and Port St. Lucie.
And I can assure you: If the kids in those areas aren't playing on school teams, local gang leaders will be recruiting them for theirs.
We've got enough thugs.
What we do need, however, is one of those bailouts. Not a big one. Nothing like the billions you're doling out under the guise of a "stimulus package."
All we need is a measly million dollars, just enough to keep the kids playing. You spend more on Nancy Pelosi's jet fuel.
Sure, we'll manage without it, if we must. We'll do car washes, bake sales and any other fundraisers we can come up with. We'll find volunteer coaches. We'll do the best we can to make it work.
And if kids have to pay $100 to play football? Well, that's only about $25 per month, just $6.25 per week, less than a dollar a day.
Most of them can afford it.
Or they'll find a way.
We all will.
But unless we get some help, there will be cuts. School sports won't be what they should be. And the kids will get cheated.
That's a shame.
Maybe our kids aren't as important as the bankers and carmakers and those AIG execs, but they don't need nearly as much money. And what we get won't be wasted.
It will be appreciated.
So, parent-to-parent, sports fan to sports fan, I ask you: What's another million dollars, especially when it can do so much good? Besides, nobody's ever going to pay back all this money.
Thanks for your help.
Hoping things change,
Ray.
P.S. I like NorthCarolina, too.
(Ray McNulty is sports columnist for Scripps Treasure Coast (Fla.) Newspapers, The Stuart News, Fort Pierce Tribune and Vero Beach Press Journal. Contact him at ray.mcnulty@scripps.com or on the Web at www.tcpalm.com.)
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