Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2011 16:53:11 -0500
From: Elizabeth Bonitz
Subject: Our Superintendent and the real problem at hand
Mr. Logan is working very hard to find a way to provide the best educational services he can to more than 7,000 students–with a $2.7 million shortfall.
Anyone looking at the graph of Per Pupil Expenditure can see that educating our students in K-8 schools is financially inefficient (http://bit.ly/h9jp9H). It costs over $1,000 more *per student per year* to educate a child in a small K-8 school (such as Bennett and Moncure) as opposed to a K-5 or 6-8 school. People can fight for K-8 schools all they want to, and it will not change that hard fact of fiscal reality. Mr. Logan is performing his professional duty to be a good steward of our taxpayer money.
He has put forth a proposal that the Board of Education is free to approve or reject. He is not responsible for the ugly manner in which many in this community have responded. The prejudices publicly revealed, and hard feelings spoken against our own neighbors are the sole responsibility of ourselves. Whether to clap or not clap after a children’s performance, use derogatory language and name calling or not, are purely personal decisions that cannot be blamed on anyone else. His memo to his employees (posted in yesterday’s Chatlist) wisely cautioned people to remember that. To claim that Mr. Logan “caused” such damaging behavior is to give up your own autonomy, independence, and responsibility as a citizen.
In the 15 years I have been teaching, I have taught under five different superintendents in two different districts, and I can tell you with certainty that Mr. Logan is among the very best, and Chatham is quite fortunate to have him. Mr. Logan is sincere, positive, appreciative, knowledgeable, and works hard to make sure this county does the very best job it can in educating its students. Just because you hold a different opinion about a particular issue does not make him a bad superintendent.
Balancing the 2011-2012 budget is the very difficult task at hand, and tearing each other and our superintendent down is extremely counter-productive to reaching our common goal of providing the very best education we possibly can with the limited financial resources we have. I encourage everyone to keep your focus on meeting this important goal, rather than on personal attacks.
Elizabeth Bonitz