When public funding is in jeopardy, defenders often threaten the demise of popular and very visible activities. A park will close, or a library will have its hours sharply curtailed. That tactic is sometimes known as the “Washington Monument ploy,” an exaggeration used to attract attention and plenty of sympathy.

The possibility of the end of a portion of the elementary school breakfast program in Colorado is no such exaggeration. Colorado’s revenue woes have thrown into question the $125,000 or so that will be spent between now and the end of March to extend the federal breakfast meal program to children in households with slightly higher family income.

The program costs 30 cents a day per student, an amount so small as to be insignificant in the marketplace. Yet in the aggregate, it is a sizable amount of money.

Statistics show a significant percentage of schoolchildren are using the breakfast program. Without it, educators claim children would begin the day less able to focus and to learn. For anyone even slightly familiar with young, growing and energetic bodies, that is easy to believe.

It is frustrating – even in good times – to observe the big ticket items whose costs seem so out of step with immediate needs while something such as the continuance of a school breakfast program is in question. But that is the nature of so much of public funding: There are numerous accounts, each with its own revenue source and mission statement. Western Slope residents have recently wrapped themselves in the flag in opposing an attempt to shift funds destined for the abatement of energy development impacts to other state needs.

The state’s Joint Budget Committee refused in a tie vote along party lines to recommend to the full Senate that the breakfast funding be continued. In the meantime, there has been a legislative request to determine whether the needed money, or some of it, has already been set aside for the program and is thus in place.

Even so, that is for just the few months ahead. The state’s expected billion-dollar shortfall beginning July 1 looms.

As much as everyone might like to, in the very near future the extended school breakfast program may not be able to be funded by the state. Other pools of money, plus school district grant writing in concert with additional PTA-type fundraising may have to be part or all of the solution.

Sluggish national and state economies have brought us to this point. With pressure at the national level to reduce the size and scope of the federal government that is generating a projected $1.5 trillion deficit this fiscal year, we can expect similar programs that are close to our hearts to be reduced or eliminated.

The next few years will not be easy ones.