Todd Paris, Associate Editor and Salisbury Attorney
♦ I have read Chuck Hughes’ letter-to the Editor and it leaves me puzzled.
I like Chuck. He put up a few signs for me when I ran for Salisbury City Council. I thought he cares about “the kids.” Somehow he’s been led astray.
If you are a big architectural firm, you get paid for building new schools and/or being the managing architect for the other architects who do the work. What does one do to make more cash, particularly with a county claiming excess school capacity? How do you convince a system with excess school capacity to build more schools? They don’t need more schools, right?
Most growing counties with a properly functioning economic development commission (we lack this) crave, needs and wants excess school capacity. If “Mr. Big Manufacturer” wants to come to town you want to be able to provide schools for his employees’ children without having to spend money and raise taxes to build more schools, correct?
It’s simple, just convince them to start school consolidation! They can “save” maintenance costs, administrative costs and employee costs by shutting down perfectly good schools and building new ones.
But wait, won’t they factor in the fact we will be borrowing tens of millions of dollars for new school construction and paying the debt back over decades? It will take years and years to recoup these costs. Maybe we need to skip over the increased fuel and transportation expenses for longer bus routes. Let’s just tell tax-payers we’ll “look at that later.”
If an elementary school-aged child must get up at 5:00 a.m. to ride the bus–well, it’s just an “emotional attachment” to a school that has to go! If she or he gets home at after dark on the bus? Have them take a nap before they do their homework.
How does the Board of Education sell this? They just simply get a cash starved university to forecast a continuing negative economic and population trend and convince the public they need less desks and not more, all in a county where they have room to grow. “Last one out, turn out the lights.”
What if there is an up-turn?
The bonus? The savings comes from abandoning existing school property and creating “superfund slums” in these small towns. No one asks what happens to the abandoned schools and what about the clean-up costs from asbestos, lead and demolition expenses? Anyone take a look at Dunbar? Is this what Faith, Morgan and Mt. Ulla gets?
Sorry Chuck, you have been misled. Please remember that it is “all about” that 1st grader on Panther Point Trail that has to get on the bus in the dark and return in the dark and is way too tired to do their homework. It’s really “all about” those hard-working tax-payers who suddenly are upside down on their homes because they have been moved from “C” rated schools to “D” rated schools. It’s all “about folks” that will not buy property and move here because you are playing games with the most important things in their lives; their children, their property values and their way of life. Shame on you!
Telling people to check their emotions at the door is disabling a major part of their ability to know if they want or don’t want something. Emotions and reason join together create reality testing. Yah?
What’s up with nostalgia craziness? Do elementary school kids wax nostalgic about long bus rides and kissing their parents goodbye in the wee hours morning when the stars are still out?
It’s not too late Chuck. Be the guy we elected and fight this. Talk to Josh Wagner and Susan Cox and stop this debacle. We know you have it in you.
Dunbar School in Ruins:
