Fall River: Governor Walker's budget cut general school aids by $750 million over two years. For 2012, schools lost $390 million just in general state aid.

Walker orginally said schools would save $488 million a year by requiring employees to contribute 5% towards their pension and 12% towards their healthcare.

But that projection was flawed, as many schools already had their employees contributing to both pensions and healthcare.

Now, according to Governor Walker's own website touting his reforms, the real number for school savings is $389 million this year.

Compared to the $390 million schools lost this looks like a wash, but not every school was hit the same.

For example, the Fall River School District saved $122,000 in employee costs after the Governor's budget went into effect, but that barely made up half of the $235,000 they lost in state aid.

In the end, Fall River had to cut its budget and still raised taxes 4.4%.

Every school in the state has felt the impacts of these changes, but do tighter budgets for schools and smaller paychecks for teachers have an impact on morale, and do the kids ultimately suffer in the classroom?

Kim Biehl is trying to get her 10th grade english class to read through a story problem and find the main point. "What is the big idea, what do we think?"

They're learning that even when presented with an overwhelming amount of information, you can boil it all down to a common theme. "Coming together, bridging the gap, community leaders trying to organize."

Kim and other educators are using the same process to see if all of Governor Walker's changes to education have an impact in the classroom. "It is definitely more difficult this year."

The most immediate impact for teachers is in their paycheck. "The cuts have really been on the backs of the teachers more directly," says Fall River Superintendent Jeff Tortomasi. "Everybody that's leaving this building is leaving with a smaller paycheck than they did the year before."

Tortomasi says the money saved by making teachers contribute more towards their pension and health care costs did not equal the cut in state aid.

On top of that, there were five retirements. "You develop a culture in a school and when you have a lot of loss of staff, like some districts have, that culture changes and it doesn't necessarily change for the better," says Tortomasi.

"I really thought I'd teach 2 or 3 more years for sure," says Mike Kratochwill, who was one of the teachers that decided to retire last spring, out of fears the state may go after his pension. "I really wasn't ready to retire, mentally, emotionally it was not something I wanted to do. But I thought I had to do something to safeguard my retirement."

Over the summer, the district asked him to come back, at a lower salary and with no benefits. "I lost my years of experience so I'm now a first year teacher."

Kim Biehl knows other teachers could go early next spring. "I know there are a couple of my colleagues kind of going back and forth trying to decide what the next step for them."

Beyond the pay cuts and the pension fears, Kim says the biggest concern is the lack of respect towards her profession. "I'm not going to say it doesn't hurt when you've got kinda the negative comments coming through the kids that they're hearing at home, calling me a union thug."

Kim is quick to point out this isn't a Fall River thing. "We get a lot of support from the community, a lot of overall support from our school board."

But that goodwill was earned. Last February, when teachers from around the state descended on the Capitol, Fall River teachers marched around their school and then went inside and taught.

The school board rewarded them with an extension on their contract. Tortomasi says those gestures can't be overlooked. "Part of that is the difference in the way the whole thing was approached. It wasn't done to them, it was done with them. As opposed to the feeling in the state, to a great extent, nobody had a lot of say in what was going on, it just came down, it came down fast and it came down hard."

"My husband is in education as well," says Biehl. "His school is struggling with a lot of the same feelings that we are here."

Kim says part of her responsibility is to make sure those feelings don't come out in class.

Both Tortomasi and Biehl say the biggest long term danger is if teachers are not respected by the government or the public, they fear more students may decide not to enter the profession.