The first day of school was a little stressful, for my wife and I sending our youngest child to pre-K. This was a new experience and we had concerns about how our son would transition and adapt to the school environment. Our son was treated with a great deal of love and respect on the first day of school, and this has continued throughout this year. We were blessed to have a wonderful teacher, Ms. Spencer, and teacher assistant, Ms. Spear, to work with him on a personal level by getting to know him and identifying his learning style.

I write today concerning recent actions by the Franklin County Board of Supervisors and its refusal to raise real estate taxes 2 cents per $100 of assessed value. While I understand voting for any tax increase is no easy task, it pains me to see the apparent alternatives to raising these funds. It appears some alternatives include eliminating middle school sports and cutting the high school athletics department budget. Cuts to the gifted and talented programs also seem to be on the table, but it's the elimination of funding for all tuition slots to the Roanoke Valley Governor's School that seems particularly troublesome.

There are very few things you take with you from any K-12 education -- the ability to think and learn, reading, arithmetic and basic history. After those few skills, the biggest life lessons learned in school are sports for kids who participate. In every work environment I have been exposed to, there is one thing you can ALWAYS recognize in co-workers. Without fail, you can pick out workers who played team sports. What can never be learned in a classroom is how to succeed and fail as a group. You can't teach the dependence on teammates to work together towards a common goal. You can't teach how to keep going when you think you can't so as not to let your teammates down.

Franklin County's decision to not fully fund our education system will have long lasting consequences. As a general rule, the better educated one is, the more successful they become. Therefore, they pay more taxes.

Cuts in our education system will eventually translate to less tax revenue.