board of education and commissioners, my name is betty harris and i am the united educator's chair of early education committee. i'm here again speaking in support of all educators and para professionals. and i am speaking especially for all educators because that is where my heart is of course. the research is very clear, we don't have to rehash that again. in this invest in young children now or pay later. when the staff is reduced or eliminated, the results of that reduction or elimination is evidence 5 to 10 years later. we see it in our special ed classrooms, and we see it in the classrooms and we see it in the drop out grades and the multiple gaps that appear for our students, the achievement gap and the opportunity gap and the resource gaps and all of the other gaps that we can attribute it to, but we especially see it in the lower graduation rates. those african americans student that we see there on the last wednesday and many of us were there and helped participate in it were there and they preservered in spite of all of the gaps. i am sure that in the lives of all of these