Draft budget numbers released last week by a state House subcommittee could prove disastrous for public education in North Carolina.

The Associated Press reports the spending plan could result in the elimination of more than 12,000 education employees, most of them teacher assistants for levels above first grade.

The budget would retain jobs for teacher assistants in kindergarten and first grade.

The budget would also slash money for Smart Start, community colleges and the University of North Carolina system.

This draft budget is just that ą a draft, not a final document.

We hope the House leadership will reconsider these numbers and work more closely with professionals in education, aid them in doing just about the most important work we know of: teaching our children.

After all, there is room for compromise here.

As House Minority Leader Joe Hackney, D-Orange, pointed out in an AP article, keeping in place one penny of a soon-to-expire sales tax could head off a lot of these cuts.

And holding the line on that sales tax wouldn’t amount to a tax increase at all. In fact, it would be worth paying that 1 cent if it meant reducing negative effects on education.

To the partisans in the state House and Senate we say forget all that loose talk about cutting taxes at any cost or a war on public employees. Focus for a moment on the people on the ground who will be affected by what you’re doing.

Behind these abstract numbers you’re dealing with are real people ą people who perform actual services every day.

What classroom activities will have to be swept away if this subcommittee’s spending ideas are approved?

How much less attention will children from the second grade on get from classroom personnel?

And how much of a setback in learning will be realized by the loss of hundreds of teacher assistants?

We don’t know the answers to these questions, but we know this debate isn’t only academic, so to speak, and school officials tell us the harm would be huge.

If there’s one arena we as a society can’t afford to skimp on it’s education.

The kids who would be hurt by this House budget are going to face a hard adult world someday, and they need to be fully prepared for all the challenges that world will bring.

So if we have to keep on paying that 1 cent, let’s do it, at least until tax collections improve enough to warrant scrapping it.

“This budget positions North Carolina schools to operate in only the most limited fashion,” state Superintendent June Atkinson said in a news release.

If that’s true, this budget isn’t good for North Carolina’s children, the very people we ought to protect at any cost.