The new year had started and along with the regular excitement of summer and graduation, because it was spring semester, there was also the excitement of our second chance to make a PBS News Package. Last semester was like a practice run and this semester we knew what we were doing and how to do it, all that was left was making the best package possible. The entire class switched groups and we were ready to brainstorm. My group consisted of Hannah Young, Eli Smith, and I, Sam King. 

If you read my last blog you might remember that my group strived to uncover some deep conspiracy about the government but the premise of what ever story we could come up with was all biased, which breaks almost every ethic code in journalism. So we made a 180 degree turn and wrote about charity. Well this semester we really got a chance to take a bite out of scandal as all the public schools in Texas were having budget cuts. I watched different news programs, all which gave possible plans we as Texans could do to climb out of this deficit. The one thing I couldn't find was, what happened to all that money! I started to wonder how did we lose it, and why did we not only as Texans but as Americans, let this happen, and how long had we been losing this money before we really started to notice? With the help of our mentors Lynn and Erica we got straight to business investigating budgets for the school board the last few months, writing senators and representatives, and calling other journalists who had done similar stories. As expected there were some set backs. Senators never got back to us, the state comptroller's assistant wouldn't let us even talk to the comptroller, Susan Combs, and everyones schedules were conflicting. It seemed as if everyone we contacted either had the answers but wouldn't tell us or didn't know but were glad to sit down with us for an interview. We had to act quick before the trail went cold. One day, our group was approached by Lynn who came to ask how she could help and we told her our problems. She said she knew a very intelligent man who could help by the name of Ross Ramsey, and that he would be a great start for finding sources and coming up with ideas. We bit, and called Ross. He ended up being very knowledgeable on the subject and we were left with an interview almost entirely dictated by Ross, every journalists dream. Ramsey left us with some more connections to look into, some of which Lynn already knew and with that we were back in the chase for the truth.

Meanwhile the human interest aspect of the story was getting closer to home then I was planning. The Varsity K-AHS team was in the process of writing a script for a movie. The script called for a trip to Marfa Texas. I was in a van with chaperone Carmen Williams, the school librarian. It was at least a seven hour drive to Marfa and through lengthy personal discussion she quickly was less of a chaperone and more of a friend. Through all the laughs and fun times I had forgotten my story at hand. One third of all school Librarians in the AISD district were getting cut. It was easy to write a story about a tragedy when it had no effect on me. But now I was starting to understand exactly why this budget cut story was so big in our media. Mrs. Williams literally had done nothing wrong, she has worked at the school for over a decade and has a family with children. In short, she is awesome. None of that mattered, not even her contract mattered. Because of our decisions in this state, reckless mistakes and ignorance, people who had done nothing wrong were getting fired and the sad thing is people continue to not care because it doesn't effect them personally. A bad habit that will only make problems like this budget deficit more common. I now had a more personal reason to complete this story rather than just for a letter grade.