Thank you Donna for a reminder to look behind the hea.dlines

As a young reporter, one of my first "beats" for a weekly newspaper was the monthly meeting for a public school board. One of the first meetings I covered was discussion of the county school board's budget which had to be approved by the county board of supervisors. What an education. Thank God I had a publisher who was tried and tested in real journalism, but new to being a publisher. While I was all awash in the Freedom of Information Act and behind doors meetings, he was an expert at budgets and money. He was a stand-up guy in the real days of journalism.

He prompted me with questions to ask about the budget. Simply things like asking for a line item budget, to look for increases or reductions in expenditures, general fund revenues and expenditures and most importantly discretionary spending. Before I was able to get wet behind the ears from the experience, I was introduced to the Virginia Education Association.

Although numbers was never my forte, I learned all to well, not just with the school board's budget, but with other budgets including state and federal, the importance at not taking everything on face value.