Letter: Retired? Kids Grown? Did Your Children Benefit from Amherst-Pelham Regional Public Schools? We Need Your Help!
Instrumental music is on the chopping block again this year and is among several proposed budget cuts for the Amherst Public Schools. Photo: istock
by Rachel Hall and 18 others
Amherst schools are struggling to hold on to a regional school system that we are proud of, that attracts young families, and that meets the needs of our current students. We have already lost so many programs that used to be vibrant beacons of pride in our schools including languages, music programs, special education, and many others.
As the parents and guardians of young children, we worry that other community members are not aware that the quality of our schools has declined since the days when they were among the top ranked schools in the state. We worry that our Town Council members, very few of whom have recent experience with our schools, and some of whom have expressed a lack of concern, don’t fully appreciate the situation our schools are in or the impact that declining schools will have on our community as a whole. We fear that our children, and the incoming preschool age children in our community, will be left with schools that have been stripped of the robust offerings Amherst used to be known for. This isn’t about fancy new technologies, buildings, or sports equipment…. This is about maintaining paraprofessionals to support kids with disabilities, maintaining our music program which so many families cherish, benefit from, and which helps our schools compete with neighboring schools. This includes administrative staff providing crucial support, and of course our valued educators – whose positions continue to be cut, leaving our classrooms overcrowded and our children without the support they need to learn. We know dozens and dozens of families who have already left our school system and our community. We want that to stop.
Please help our schools return to being a source of pride and excellence, so that our children might have access to the same quality of education as the generations of Amherst children who came before them. We are not naive: we understand the fiscal pressures our town government is under AND we deeply believe that prioritizing the needs of our schools both reflects our values and is to our long-term economic benefit. Please ask the School Committees to vote on budgets that preserve essential positions and services, reflecting the needs of our students and educators.
Showing up and speaking at either (or both) of these meetings will be very powerful:
- Regional Schools (ARMS & ARHS) – Wednesday 2/26 6:30 p.m., ARHS Library
- Elementary School – Thursday 2/27 6:30 p.m., ARHS Library, or virtually via Google Meet (meet.google.com/fbb-fwur-odp)
Can’t attend? Leave a public comment voicemail by 3:00 p.m. on the date of the forum by calling 413-362-1891. Voicemails are played aloud at the forums so they have more impact than writing.
- Send written public comment by 3:00 on the date of the forum by emailing SCpubliccomment@arps.org
Marlow Bull, Karen Kurczynski, Rachel Hall, Nina Mankin, Katie Dixon-Gordon, Sharyn Routh, Brian Fitzgerald, Meghan Fitzgerald, Venuta Carulli, Alexander Lopez, Cora Fernandez Anderson, Lynnette Arnold, Angelica Bernal, Cassandra Golding, Michelle Marinelli Prindle, Daniel Prindle, Jennifer Curiale Kyle Busacker, and Davida Hall
Having kids in the schools is no guarantee of sympathy for the school system either, it seems. One such councilor, for instance, has been a major proponent of reducing Amherst’s per-pupil costs, while also being a major supporter of landlord- and developer-friendly policy that undermines the town economically. The neoliberal playbook is this, same as it was under Reagan, Clinton, the Bushes and Obama, Ds and Rs alike: 1) undermine public services by cutting budgets and staff , 2) attack the now- dysfunctional system, 3) privatize the system to “improve” dysfunction you’ve created. It’s working for Trump and Elon right now, and what we see here in Amherst is exactly correlary. And yes, I am comparing our own town manager and majoirty of councilors to the Hamburger Reich. The rhetoric might not align, but they share the same policy playbook. While working class people like us are scolded by the electeds about the aesthetics of public discourse, the wealthy and powerful will continue to subject us to their vanity projects and profit-seeking for their peers in the ownership class. Same here in sleepy little Amherst as the rest of the country. Our own petty little bourgeois are currently running a price-hike scheme on the house across the street from mine to drive up future student rental fees. It could be a lovely family home, more kids for mine to play with on our quiet cul-de-sac. But no, seems like Roberts or Jones need new swimming pool, Tesla, or maybe to slow down the whole town to move another rental house. These are flagrant wealth grabs and displays of opulence, while teachers lose their jobs. It’s class warfare, Amherst. The rich know this and they play for keeps. What are we going to do about it here?
We have a community full of retired educators. Why not set up a volunteer tutoring group to get the 48% of students who are not meeting expectations up to speed? It could make a huge difference for the children and support teachers in the fine work they do every day.
Un fortunately, we also have “retired educators” in our community who are still relatively young but who must work at poverty-level wages to pay their rents or property taxes and associated fees.
While volunteers might make a difference, it would also make a huge difference if
1) our public schools weren’t losing students — and associated funding — to privately-managed charter schools in the area;
2) our well-endowed private institutions would dig deeper into their pockets to support their host communities (not only are their real-estate holdings exempt from local taxes, the income from and appreciation on their endowments is also tax exempt); and
3) our publicly-funded but privately-owned town library weren’t making massive demands on our town’s capital and operating budgets for the foreseeable future.