Budget cuts; how do they affect the teacher?

As we all know, educational cuts are spreading like a disease in this country. We know that it drastically affects the student, but more importantly, how does it affect the teacher? Personally, I have seen first hand what a massive budget cut can do to a teacher. My mom worked at Williamburgh Community School District(a really small town in the middle of nowhere) for eight years. She was a math teacher and taught grades 7-12 and one day out of nowhere, they decided to furlough(like being laid off but she finished out the school year and is being paid for a year) he and now she's left with no job and littles chances of finding one in our area(altoona, another small town..ever heard of Sheetz? Yeah, their birth place). Anyways, I read this article about how devasting it can be for a teacher to experience a budget cut and here ladies and gentlemen are just a few of them.
1. Cuts on materials- we all know that teacher's barely get enough money for any additional supplies that they may need for the classroom, but when this is taken away from them, it is up to the teacher to either replace/buy the item, or cancell the lesson that the item was needed for. I walked through Walmart with my mom and watched her buy twenty-one calculators because the school didn't have enough money to buy new ones.
2. Less Electives-Common sense would tell you that electives like athletics, student government, music, and art programs keep kids in school, involved, and most importantly, off the streets. Unfortunately, one of the first things to go when a budget is too high is the extra curricular activites, but usually the music department goes first(unless of course your football team has been 0-17 for the past ten years). With this, student's are left to find other "activities" to do and in some cases the parent's are left to pick up the tab for a club and its supplies. Further increasing the gap between the rich and poor and the have and have-nots.
3.Larger Class sizes- We all know what it's like to walk into a Psychology class and see a hundred other student's fighting over the last chair. Overwhelming, right? So, why would we do this to our youth? When a budget cut occurs, it leads to larger class sizes. Larger class sizes means more work for the teacher..in other words.
Large class + one teache = lack of attention towards the student's and potentially a VERY frustrated teacher.

It's very sad to see how much our education system is dwindling, but what can we do? I certainly do not have millions of dollars to bail schools out and help our teacher's and student's and I'm certainly not qualified to run for a government position. So, do we sit here and do nothing? Heck no. Call someone, contact someone, email, text, facebook, IM, skype, ANYTHING to get the word out that something needs to be done. If we don't do it, who will?