Homage to a school system

The current struggle in Westmoreland County, Virginia to find school funding is poetic--and not in a good way.
In 1969, English poet Philip Larkin wrote "Homage to a Government" in response to his government's bringing home the troops.
Here's how the poem opens: "Next year we are to bring the soldiers home/For lack of money, and it is all right."
Not much imagination is needed to see the parallels to the county's current problems.
In case your school system cut your funding and you didn't have any help exercising your imagination, let me help.
Next year we are to fire a bunch of teachers and cut a bunch of programs and increase the class sizes because we don't have enough money.
My apologies for not coming up with a good poem, but I couldn't find anything to rhyme with "really, awfully, idiotic idea."

The first stanza of the Larkin poem ends: "We want the money for ourselves at home/ Instead of working. And this is all right."
Well, the school system--which isn't even accredited--is missing out on money for some pretty odd reasons. And this is not right at all.
If you ask some of the local politicians, they'll say that those darn knuckleheads in Richmond miscounted.
That's odd because those people in Richmond probably went to accredited schools and learned how to count. (Sorry if that sounded like a cheap shot. We can't afford more expensive jokes here because we don't want to increase our real estate rates.)

Others will say that the county doesn't want to raise the real estate tax rate just before running a reassessment of land values. From a certain perspective, this makes sense.
Bumping the real estate tax rate a dime this year and then having the land value increase 25 or 30 percent next year could really hurt the landowners in the county.
The whole idea begins to sound like one of those word problems we all had in math class. I doubt they plan to cut out math classes next year, so maybe one of the students could help me figure out how much that really is.
If a train loaded with young families and bright teenagers leaves Montross at 3 p.m. headed for better jobs and schools in the city and another train leaves northern Virginia at 4 p.m. carrying hard-working retirees headed for cheap waterfront land, at what time will Westmoreland County fall apart?

In the Larkin poem about bringing the soldiers home for lack of money, he writes that the "statues will be standing in the same/ Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same."
Can you see it now? No one passing through Montross will be able to tell that we spend more time on zoning appeals than we do on long division. No one sitting behind $1,000 windows, looking out across the creek will care that the middle school cut out its drama club. No one thumbing though the newspaper to hire a building contractor will care that the county is firing teachers to save money.
As Larkin wrote better than I could: "Our children will not know it's a different country./ All we can hope to leave them now is money."