Date: Sun, 27 Mar 2011 14:25:16 -0400
From: Jeffrey Starkweather
Subject: North Chatham parent pleads for full school funding
Below is a public input speech made by North Chatham Elementary School and Margaret Pollard Middle School parent Karen Howard that I feel other parents and citizens concerned with attracting good paying jobs to Chatham should read. I have made two similar public input comments that were certainly less passionate and powerful than Mr. Howard’s below. We both agree about the need to be continued improvements our local public school’s educational offerings to both prepare our children for a globally competitive world and to attract much needed high paying jobs to Chatham. We certainly cannot afford to be making significant cuts as currently be debated by our county school board. I do not buy that notion that we can make significant cuts in administrative and school personnel without dramatically impacting on educational offerings to our children. For the past two years we have been able to absorb state budget cuts, in part, through staff attrition and additional funding from the previous county board majority. Still, educational staff salaries have been frozen for three years.
If the county commissioners can offer back bonuses of over $600,000 to county administrative staff and an over $5,000 bonus to the county manager (withdrawn at the last meeting), then the new county commissioner majority can find funds to keep all our school staff employed. Thus, like I have heard from many parents, this grandparent of two future Chatham students calls on our school board to submit a budget proposal to the county commissioners that keeps all our staff, minus attrition, and to reject all nine of the severe cut scenarios that will be presented at this Monday’s evening special school board meeting. Our children’s and our county’s prosperity rides on these budget decisions.
Jeffrey Starkweather, Pittsboro
How did we get to a place where we even have to discuss removing teacher assistants from the classroom? How is it that we are at risk of losing field trips and enrichment opportunities? Are we really under the impression that some people’s jobs are the reason we cannot adequately fund education? Has it every occurred to you that perhaps we simply need more money directed toward education…that it needs to be treated like a priority and not a responsibility?
I am sorely disappointed in the failure of the Board of Commissioners to have worked together with our Superintendent and the Board of Education before we got to this stage to come to a better result for our children… To have come together, pooled their collective intellect and found the money that our school system so desperately needs, so that parents would not be coming out on a Monday night during our precious family time to fight, argue, push and beg for a budget that meets the needs of our children.
We should not be discussing how to cut more money out of our struggling schools. Rather you should be looking into alternative sources of funding to fill the multitude of gaps in our schools today….the paucity of foreign languages (all around the country students are offered French, Spanish, German, Chinese and Latin), the lack of technology, the large class sizes, the inadequacy of our ESL services. You were elected by people who believed that you shared their interest in strong schools, the pursuit of excellent in academics and the need for our children to be able to compete in a global arena.
You know that it is a fact, that education in Chatham County is already grossly underfunded and our children are steadily falling farther behind our neighbors right here at home and certainly behind international standards. Should South Korea, Finland and Chile, be doing a better job of educating children than we are? Are we suggesting that the children of Chatham County do not need to meet the challenge of the international community?
We could stand here and blame it on everyone else but the truth is that you…our County Commissioners have it in your hands to find the money to put Chatham County schools where they should be. Either you have been planning and thinking of ways to raise that money or you have made a mockery of the voters that put you there. Either you believe that our students deserve to go to competitive, 21st century schools befitting of a global leader or I would venture to say that you have chosen the wrong path for public service.
I don’t take it lightly when my 7th grader cannot take Art, Technology or Spanish because he is in the Band. I do not look the other way when my 2nd grader has been in the computer lab three times for the year. I cannot accept that my autistic son has to sit in a class crammed with 24 or 25 children. And I consider it a problem when our resources are so limited that we can no longer focus on the pursuit of excellence in our best and brightest children but must direct what little we have to help the struggling learner succeed.
All of our children deserve a first class education….the bright, the poor, the rich, the intellectually and socially challenged…..every single one of us. It is not a compromise that I am making when I put my children into the public schools, but a choice for my children to be educated by the school system of one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. They should not be shortchanged and the success of their education should not turn on how many County employees we can toss out the back door and keep going. What’s the plan for next year? Who will we toss out then? And supposed the economy takes years to recover? What will we do then? We need more money… not less.
There were some compromises we all made in choosing to live in Chatham County. Some of us are far away from family; we may miss shopping malls and neighborhood movie theatres; some of us have to drive miles to a food store or the airport and we have to put up with the occasional tornado warning….but education was NOT one of the compromises I made by living here. Please don’t make me feel as though it was.
And finally, let me say that if you can find over $600,00 for bonuses I have no doubt in your ability to find money for education.