Six-year-old enters state budget fray

An elementary school student wrote a letter to Gov. Beverly Perdue this week, begging her to "stop those Republicans who are trying to make our schools bad."

The letter, written in typical 6-year-old scrawl, came from a student named Amelia at Mary Scroggs Elementary School in Chapel Hill.

Perdue has criticized the budget, which will cut $1.2 billion more in education spending than she wanted. About 11,000 teaching assistants and thousands of teachers and other school employees could lose their jobs under the proposal.

"Our teachers are very kind and work very hard! Please stop the Republicans from making there (sic) jobs much harder!" Amelia wrote, noting that larger classes make it harder to learn.

Pearson wrote, "Needless to say, Gov. Perdue agrees with Amelia."