I am writing in response to an editorial you published on Jan. 4 in which you advocated a 5 percent cut to education funding across Maryland schools ("Easy choices and hard ones for Md.'s budget gap"). As a teacher in and resident of Baltimore City, I was deeply disappointed that The Sun would take such a stance.

It is common knowledge that the school districts of Maryland are not all equal; some have a tax base that allows their schools to have state-of-the-art facilities and small class sizes, whereas others, like Baltimore City, struggle to provide even an adequate learning environment for students. With Thornton funding, we have finally managed to make progress in terms of student achievement and decreasing the dropout rate, only to now have our funding attacked?

Legislators have worked hard to make sure that education is a priority for Maryland because they know that education means a prosperous economic outlook for our future. I can only hope that they have not lost sight of this and that they will find other ways to work through this budget deficit. It will not be easy, but I'd much rather see some reasonable measures put in place for raising revenues than see our children backpedal because we are not willing to invest in them.

Kimberly Mooney, Baltimore

The writer is a Spanish teacher at Roland Park Elementary/Middle School.