BRATTLEBORO — There is no such thing as a free lunch - and those who are trying to convince you otherwise are going to hurt the Brattleboro school kids if you believe them.
I'm talking about the school mega-merger on the ballot for Nov. 7. The big merger plan calls for equity between the schools in Brattleboro and the smaller schools in Guilford, Putney, and Dummerston. In a nutshell, equity means that the smaller schools will get the special programs currently enjoyed by Brattleboro students.
But since we Brattleboro taxpayers are already paying for the programs in the Brattleboro schools, we will have to cough up more tax money to add these programs to the smaller schools.
If you can swallow that tax hike, plus swallow the impending 8-cent statewide educational tax hike on top of it, then it sounds like it might be valuable for the kids, if not the taxpayers. But we all know that's not what will happen.
Faced with this massive tax hike, voters will do what they usually do: cut budgets. That means cuts in teachers, cuts in programs, and cuts in sports.
And these big budget cuts hurt the kids.
But we don't have to do this. The Act 46 Study Committee is fixated on this mega-merger, refusing to seriously consider anything else. But the law allows local school boards to work out an alternative. Representatives from all five WSESU towns, including school board members from Brattleboro, Dummerston, and Vernon, are doing so right now, independent of the study committee.
We need to defeat the mega merger on Nov. 7 and finish work on the alternative. If the alternative turns out not to be the best answer, we can always reconsider a merger down the road. But if and when we do that, we will do it for the best interests of our kids, not to clean up a punch list for some bureaucrats in Montpelier.
Put our kids ahead of the state Board of Education on Nov. 7, and then let's work out an alternative that is good for the students.