After the School Committee meeting on Tuesday, I was approached by several parents who asked me to justify my position on overrides for school spending. They felt that extra curricular activities were very important and worthy of funding. I agreed that these programs are indeed worthy and that they are good for the kids. However I still oppose funding them ahead of teachers and textbooks.
Let me use my own experience to illustrate a point on school spending. I love my children and wanted them to have the very best education. But I did not send them to Friends Academy, Tabor Academy and on to an Ivy League college. I didn't do so because I simply could not afford the cost. I'm still paying off loans to fund their education at a state college. So my children got the very best education that I could afford.
Funding the public schools is the same thing. Dartmouth can not provide the best education, (e.g. small class sizes of Friends or the facilities at Tabor) we can only provide the best education that we can afford.
Since available funds are limited, I want to prioritize spending on those things which provide the greatest educational benefit to every child; teachers (to reduce class sizes) and instructional materials for every student. I am sure that many of our citizens agree with my position. See this op-ed letter in the S-T from today. At the present time, I think the voters believe that the schools have their priorities wrong and so they are reluctant to provide more funding.
If the school department responds by focusing on providing the best classroom education that we can afford and shows a willingness to cut costs on other non-instructional activities, then the voters can be persuaded to provide the needed funds for extra-curricular activities. I have seen the Town Meeting vote to fund many programs in the town which benefit our kids and I expect that they would do so in the future. What is the down side of a focus on classroom instruction? Some children will not be able to pursue their non academic interests in the schools, but every child will benefit from smaller class sizes and better materials. I don't think that would be so bad. Let me know what you think, leave your comments below.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Kids and budgets
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
I agree with you 100% . we have the responsibility as a town to give our children a good fundemental education. If we can afford after school activities, that is a bonus, if not, and the parents want their children to enjoy them, the parents should pay for them.
Thanks, Rick. I appreciate your willingness to join in discussions here.
Bill,
I appreciated your comments at last Tuesday night's school committee meeting. I am Greg's wife, and by way of recognition, the crazed little woman who jumped up at the same time you did to speak. I've got a couple of thoughts about the numbers presented that night. I think the $4 mil number presented is real. If Dartmouth won the lottery at Cumbie's, I think we could spend that money easily, and still not have a school system to rival that of, say, Westborough. That being said, I think it is a tactical error for Dr. Russell to associate this "ideal" number with a proposed override number, which should be significantly lower to have a snowball's chance in ... to get passed in this town. The plan to open all schools and re-format the system is a great, economical, step forward. This idea, as a critical initiative, should be rolled into the school system's primary override number, bringing it up to 1.3 million or so. Keep textbooks as a seperate override question, but lower the number as a concession to voters. Remove all override request money related to physical conditions of schools (1.5 mil or so). Keep, and raise if necessary, after school activity fees. Move forward from there. I would hope that if the school dept. could make these compromises on the override numbers, the people in Dartmouth just might be willing to see the worth of supporting a strong and decent school system, and once again take pride in the idea that they are doing the right thing for the kids in this town.
Maureen Jones
Maureen, I don't have any fundamental problem with reopening any buildings. I just think that we need to do this carefully or we will be wasting our money on plans that don't work.
As far as override menus go, here are my thoughts in response to Mr. Lenz in the "Business as usual" comments
One last comment, the plan to have separate questions for school priorities, textbooks, fee elimination, opening Cushman and opening Gidley is doomed to failure on all items in my opinion. First nearly half will vote against all of them anyway, then the remaining votes will be divided up voting for this one or that but not all, and some like yourself will vote for all but perhaps one. But the end result is none will prevail.
So I believe you are correct that all the priority items should be in one override question.
Maureen,
Your points are well taken, the number for this override needs to be reduced significantly for it to have a chance of passing. What also needs to happen is for people to see that some changes in the way we do business are occurring. One good example is the computer situation being discussed elsewhere on this blog. If in fact we are using $2k apple computers instead of $400 dells, then there needs to be a real convincing reason why or a plan to switch over. Also, with so many new positions being proposed, some progress with union negotiations has to be seen. School committee members acting like they are proud of overpaying people does not help the cause for additional school spending. After the CFRG presented its report to them the correspondance with school committee member Shawn MacDonald was beyond dissappointing, and was in fact, downright juvenile. Arrogance emanating from town boards and committees only makes people want to say NO NO NO.
Post a Comment