The idea that you can approach schools aiming for level funding is totally inadequate: costs continue to rise, children are coming to schools with more and more needs and challenges, making them more expensive to educate, and a level funding approach (doing what we did last year) means that each year the district falls farther behind, which means that it can’t serve the students as well they’d like. As a result, more families choice their students to other districts where they can get more of the services and options they prefer, and the cycle continues.
Our most vulnerable students are the ones more deeply affected by budget cuts, and there is no way that those left in the building can respond to the real, legally required needs of those who have lost the people they trust, the people who know them, and who they depend on every minute of the day. That work can’t be simply passed on to someone else; there are deep relationships formed and now potentially lost, with devastating impact on the children.
It means class sizes will go up, and with more and more children coming to school with increased learning and emotional needs. It means that teachers will be increasingly overwhelmed with the challenge of those larger and needier numbers, no matter how much skill and heart they bring. This has several bad consequences. The children don’t get what they need, the teachers feel as if they are failures, though the failures are not theirs’ but belong to the society that has not supported them, and the school climate suffers as no one is getting what they need and deserve.
The emotional impact on those who are laid off and threatened with being laid off on a yearly basis is devastating. I’ve talked with many teachers and others in buildings this year, many in tears, saying they would love to continue to commit to the children and families of the district but can’t keep going through this. And those who stay, who watch their trusted colleagues and friends cut loose, their loyalty remains with the kids, but not with the district and town that treats them this way.
Schools are at the center of the community for most families, and it is a major reason why young families choose to move to a town or choose to stay. If we continue to starve our schools, families will decide to move elsewhere, and that has an economic and social impact. At a time when we want encourage families to move in, why would we undermine our best selling point by crippling the schools that might attract them?
When we strip the schools of that which enables them to respond to our most needy students, those students either drop out or wait out their K-12 experience, gaining little of value in terms of content, confidence, or connections. What happens then? Will they be able to contribute to our community, building on the skills and experiences and relationships they formed in their K-12 schooling, or will they remain in our community unskilled, defeated, and potentially a drain on our community resources? A significant percentage of those who are in prison and/or in need of public services can’t read, largely a result of schools systems and social systems that were overburdened and under resourced. Children who drop out earn less, contribute less, and live shorter and less healthy lives. As the old commercial says, you can pay me now or you can pay me later, and paying later, through prisons, addiction services and the rest which are way more expensive than actually investing in our schools.
There are two major functions facing every society and every generation: to prepare our young to follow us, and to provide them with a healthy environment in which to live their lives so that our society continues and flourishes. We are, sadly not doing well at either at the moment, but we do have the ability to change that and I hope it starts tonight.
Fully fund the schools, to the benefit of all of us. I do not have children in the district, but I live in a community filled with children and it serves me to serve the, and our failure to do so will be more expensive to us, in every possible way.
Doug Selwyn is a resident of Greenfield.