Bad Health and Education?

There is a disturbing trend that developed in the 90's that is still alive and well here in 2008. The trend I speak of is the trend of public schools looking to companies like Coke and Pepsi to make up for budget shortfalls within school districts. How did we get to the point in this nation where Coke and Pepsi are keeping portions of the public education system going? It makes me sick to my stomach when I think about Coke and Pepsi officials telling a school district that to recieve their help, the school district must meet a quota in regards to the total number of vending machines present in schools and the amount of soda they sell. Does this make any sense to anybody? We are saying as a country, "we won't pay more taxes to support schools, we'd rather let soft drink and candy companies ruin the future health of our children because they are contributing enough money to barely keep schools running!" To me this is not only sad, it's ridiculous, schools shouldn't have to sacrifice the health of their students to keep from shutting down. I'm not blaming Coke or Pepsi either, they are offering some help. But their products don't help anyone health wise, they only do damage.

My high school, Glencoe, which is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, surfs in and out of debt each year. They start each school year in debt, get out of debt during the school year thanks to Coke, but are back in debt by the summer due to the lack of funding that is present across the U.S. This is not the way things should be or have to be, we as a nation are choosing for things to be this way. How can anyone believe that our country doesn't have the funds to make a public education system not only work, but have an excess of funds? I know that we have the time, energy, money, intelligence, etc... as a country to find a solution to fix the declining state of education. But the only way that this is going to happen is if the American public makes it happen. We need to insist that the current presidential candidates make a clear concise statement as to how they plan to help public education. We must contact senators and any other local officials that can help make this issue a national one. Basically, those of us who want to see changes made within our public education system have to make our voices heard as often as possible. Use blogs, letters, e-mails, and any other ways that you can think of to make it clear that our nation's public is not satisfied with the current public education system. Please let your voices be heard, because if we don't start soon, who knows how bad things are going to get.