The new budget proposed from the last workshop is partly due to suggestions as to where to cut in order to support services and teachers. The majority of the School Board decided that they’d take some of those cuts and still not support needed positions.
What this means is we will get the math specialist at the Gorham Middle School, but the real problem is at Village, where students who are one year behind in math and literacy will not be getting support.
In turn, this lack of support will continue to send unprepared students to the Gorham Middle School. The math specialist we hire this year will be on a one-way ticket to burnout. Now we have administrators who have claimed that they needed a social worker at the high school.
We have the Village math and literacy heads telling us that they needed the two ed techs to get all the students the service who need it. Yet, here we are not providing this to our students. Mr. Sharp stated that the administrators would have to live with the decision, but that is not the case. Our students will.
The two positions I felt that needed to be funded, if I had to sacrifice a teacher, would have been the two ed techs for Village and the social worker for Gorham High School. The total funding would have been $111,000, $18,000 per ed tech and $75,000 for the social worker. I suggested taking from the capital funds,both projects were for the Gorham High School floors, and taking $30,000 from athletics to support these two spots. Instead we have athletics losing $10,000,from a $400,000 plus budget, and the capital fund is going towards fixing the theater floor and relining the high school gym to bring it up to Class A requirements.
While I understand people feel strongly about athletics, it should not be considered “Kryptonite” when it comes to cuts. We live in a time when other nations are producing highly educated students and we are losing jobs to outsourcing because of this. In order to make sure our children get the best education possible, we really need to fund services to get them to the top.
Some may argue that 70 percent of the students at the high school play sports so therefore it should never be touched, what about that other 30 percent? In addition, if you are letting teachers go because of funding, but adding coaches, fields, equipment and space for athletics, you are seriously doing something wrong.
I know that my one vote against the budget won’t change anything, but it is only fair that voters know what they are not getting by the current budget. The loss this year will cost us not only in our pockets next year, but in our future year ahead.
Jason Libby is a member of the Gorham School Committee
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