The news from Governor David Paterson's office this week was bleak indeed. In an effort to fill a $7.4 billion budget deficit, the governor has put fiscal austerity front and center. Around the state, headlines are screaming, as everything from prisons in Plattsburg to student Metrocards in the city could fall under the governor's axe.

School districts are one of the areas likely to be hit the hardest. A cursory glance at the situation reveals that every school district in our area will now be facing huge, potentially crippling cuts in state aid. Rondout Valley will lose $1.2 million; Wallkill $2.2 million; Ellenville $1.1 million; and, hardest hit of all, Pine Bush, will lose $5.1 million in state aid, a whopping 10.6 percent of the district's state appropriation for 2010.

To say that these figures could spell disaster for these districts is an understatement. Follow the numbers down the line and it's easy to see that there will be some very hard choices to be made by school administrators and school boards.

So, what are the options? Districts can certainly raise school taxes. But this is a highly problematic solution even in the best of times. That we are in one of the worst recessions in the nation's history would seem to preclude this option. Another option is to cut programs such as music and art (what's left of them, anyway), or to — God forbid — trim athletics. The third option is to lay off teachers. Lots of them.

In Pine Bush, for example, Superintendent Phil Steinberg is contending with a $4 million increase in contractual spending. If you add this to the budget cuts the governor is proposing, Pine Bush schools will face a more than $9 million deficit. Without new revenues or savings elsewhere, layoffs in Pine Bush could number over 100.

Ellenville, too, will have to make tough choices, especially with the terms of the new teachers' contract currently being negotiated. Acknowledging the new, harsh economic reality should inform all the discussions, and business as usual — generous pay, liberal benefits, costly work rules — should all be re-considered.

But, this situation has been a long time coming. Beginning with the Reagan Revolution, the federal government has continued to feed the military industrial complex at the expense of our towns, cities and states. Education, in particular, had been hard hit over the past three decades. We seem to keep sending money to Washington, but we get little in return. In the meantime, military contractors laugh all the way to the bailed-out bank.

This year will see a total military expenditure of approximately one trillion — that's trillion — dollars when factoring in the wars we are currently fighting. This is more than 20 times what we will spend on the Department of Education in 2010. According to President Obama, each soldier we send to Afghanistan will cost approximately $1 million per year. One less soldier in Afghanistan completely solves Ellenville's budget nightmare. Imagine how much pain at home could be spared if we bring back thousands more.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the twentieth century's most successful Republican presidents, warned us that unfettered military spending would someday be a threat to our fiscal stability — and even our democratic way of life.

More prophetic words have rarely been spoken.