Dear Future President, 

Education is important and we need to make sure there is funding for it. By this I do not mean cutting programs like the gifted programs in schools, art, or any music programs. There are benefits to those programs that do help students. The gifted program is an example. This is a program that helps to challenge kids that are exceptional at creative thinking. I myself, am in G.A.T.E. (Gifted And Talented Education). We go to this program once every two weeks to learn things that are challenging for us, let us think creatively, and that go in depth with things that could be or are issues. For the past school year and this year, we have been learning about what we would do if a zombie apocalypse happened. This might sound arbitrary to you, but this gives us a fun and non scary way to learn about being prepared for a natural disaster and to know about what starts a disease. We also learn about the brain, and some of the chemicals that make us do things, so we can compare them to those of say zombies. Recently, we have learn how to build/sustain a community with the things in the area. These are just a few of the things we have learned about. We have also learned about staying alive in the wilderness if a disaster happened, and many more topics. 

This has made a major impact on my learning experience by letting me learn things that are interesting, fun, help me think creatively, challenge me, and gives me the opportunity to learn things that I wouldn't get to learn in my everyday life at school. However, this program, like others, for example art, band or strings is being cut. However, as you can see, these programs are important. In Missouri money for the state's schools that was once solely for only gifted students is now able to be spent broadly, not just on this program. The effect of this is that this program has started to be cut. 

I am also concerned by the fact that only 36% of jobs require only a high school diploma. The problem is that in 2011-2012, 20% of kids didn't graduate from high school. This might sound like a small amount of people, but there is already not enough jobs for people in the U.S.. It would be beneficial to those people to know that finishing high school at least, will help you get better job opportunities. Also, in addition to that it also helps you to have pride in yourself, to get a higher wage, and to be able to go to college if that is what you decide to do. 

Education is very important, so we should make sure that kids are educated in knowing that it is very important. It will help students in long run, to know that the programs that have been created are there for a reason. They help people and we should have funding for them. However, we need help with these issues of funding, making sure that funding goes to the right place, and educating kids on the fact that getting their high school diploma will help them. 

                                                                                                                                                         Sincerely,

                                                                                                                                                            Hannah Hayes

Sources for Reasuarch:

http://www.socialstudieshelp.com/topics/high_school_diploma.html 

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/education/gifted-student-great-but-don-t-expect-as-much-support/article_2b0b6d2e-758f-5f6c-9607-31c9dcbb82b2.html 

https://cew.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Recovery2020.ES_.Web_.pdf

http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-high-school-graduation-rates-by-race-ethnicity.html