Last night, President Obama unveiled his much anticipated American Jobs Act. The package, thankfully, puts the needs of Main Street ahead of the needs of Wall Street.

The President made it very clear that America’s students shouldn’t bear the brunt of our country’s economic crisis. Our children deserve manageable class-sizes and modernized and energy-efficient school buildings. School buildings should be conducive to learning—fixing and modernizing schools helps our children learn and puts Americans back to work. When we save jobs in our nation’s public schools, students are the winners: they receive more individual attention, more help from counselors, more afterschool help and more opportunities to succeed.

The package will:

• Invest $30 billion in local jobs assistance—much of this assistance will help put teachers and other school employees back into our schools and classrooms
• Help prevent 280,000 layoffs
• Provide $30 billion for public school and community college modernization—with almost half being funneled into the schools that need it the most
• Extend unemployment benefits to school employees that that lost their jobs due to local budget cuts
• Create subsidies and incentives to help the 8 million Americans who are under water on their mortgages stay in their homes.

Watch the speech here:

Share your story: how have budget cuts affected your classroom?