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STRONG – The MSAD 58 school board met with the kindergarten-8th grade teachers in Strong, Friday afternoon, to discuss the pros and cons of reorganizing the district’s schools.
Declining enrollment and a reduction of subsidies are forcing the western Maine district to explore every possible solution. The meeting provided an opportunity for district educators to ask questions of the board, discuss options and to brainstorm possibilities. Both teachers and board members expressed their appreciation for the open and productive discussion at the end of the meeting, which closed with an uncharacteristic round of applause.
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Can’t we ever leave well enough alone? Everything the school board does, you say is to save money, but it ALWAYS costs the taxpayers more. It cost a lot less when each town had a high school before the days of a centralized high school. Centralized grade schools???? For Heaven’s sake use your brains for once. Get back to basics. Leave it alone! Communism is on the prowl.
I live in a small town with my kids for a reason. I don’t like the idea of a bigger school with lots of kids and limited staff per child. Inner city schools end up with more problems in greater amounts than we already have. Drugs, pregnancy, & guns all figure in to the bigger school systems. I love that our school is like it’s own little community. Each one of us is like a parent to all the kids, one big family, if I can’t see my kids every minute at school I don’t have to worry because some parent I know would be there if they needed someone or they thought I needed to come to them and they would find me and let me know my kids needed me. I would do the same for them. Please don’t turn our school into chaos. I love the fact that we are small and family.
I also live in a small town with my kids for a reason. Actually, it’s many reasons. One of those many reasons is the low property taxes. Everybody wants reasonable taxes, everybody wants their kids to get a good education. Nobody wants people to lose their jobs. But here’s the thing- SOMETHING HAS GOT TO GIVE! I don’t want my taxes to increase by 50 or even 100 percent over the next two or three years. I don’t want elderly people on fixed incomes in my community to have to give up their independence and their homes because we are not willing to adjust our teacher to student ratio to accomodate a shrinking student population. This whole issue can be boiled down to the teacher to student ratio. If you have less students, you need less teachers. The only option that should not be on the table is to change nothing. It’s time for a change. It is totally ridiculous and completely unacceptable that 80% of my property taxes go to fund education.
To Taxpaying parent,
If one of the reasons you speak of for living in a small town is truly low taxes, as you stated, I’m completely confused. What’s your issue. You state that one of those reasons is “the low property taxes”. My suggestion would be to put some “real numbers” with the list of possiable solutions that’s floating around and see where the real savings are. You wouldn’t go out a buy a new pick up truck without knowing what the real price is, would you? well, finding a solution for education should be no differant. Run the numbers and cut to the real heart of the problem before going off halk cocked and looking back two years from now, wishing you’ed done something differant. If Homework is key in the School System, it should pertain to all involved, including the Administration
I agree with Bill. The one thing that seems to be missing in all of these plans is any real numbers.I would hope that before any decision is taken a true economic cost benefit analysis will be available for the stakeholders to view. With the budget being presented this Thursday I hope to see some thoughtful analysis. It is possible that some decisions may be more costly than doing nothing.
To Bill-
Any plan that means less personnel expense means less taxes, if all other things remain equal. And any circumstance that includes less students NEEDS to mean less teachers. You’re right, I wouldn’t buy a pickup truck without knowing the true cost. I also wouldn’t buy it at all if the payment was 80% of my salary. That would make it fiscally impossible to fund the rest of my budget.
You will probably disagree, but we have developed a society today where the Sky is the limit for what we “Think” we need. It is no differant in Local, County, State, Or Federal Government. We all want more for less, and we’ve spent ourselves into total discrace. “If”, we were willing to get serious about our needs, I would guarantee you that you could remove 20% out of any State, Federal, Municipal (or School Budget), and still provide a sound and reasonable service to society, but to date, we’ve been unwilling to tackle the issues. For every Bleeding Heart, for every Paid Lobbiest in Augusta, and certianlly for every corrupt corporation in this country that armtwists our Federal representives into voting on bills that only benefit certian classes of the Amercian people, we have allowed this to happen. Just look at the Billions of dollars we’ve thrown at this economic stimulis package and for what. Economic stimulis money is like slipping $10.00 out of your wifes purse every morning and feeling like you got away with something. You just stole your own money. I still believe you need to put some real numbers with your proposals to see where the numbers fall. When you study those results, you can make an educated decision as to what’s best for your whole district and move on. You also need to go back to your legislatures and remind them of what ther’ve taken away from you in the last couple of years. Shortfall or not, they need to get thier priorties straight and follow through with what they promised. The Bus Stop in Lewiston has become all to convient to get off and pick up the State Welfare checks, and for every dollar given away in this game, it’s one less for your Educational process. Get to work and fight for what should be your s, as promissed.