VALLEY PATRIOT EDITORIAL
VALLEY
PATRIOT EDITORIAL
>>Valley Patriot>> |
Parent Power in North
Andover
After
the July 10th Special Town Meeting resoundingly defeated
the trash tax, four of the School Committee’s five
members – with only Ormsby dissenting – decided
that the proposed teacher cuts should not be reconsidered
and that what remained was merely execution of the plan.
But the customers disagreed and a revolt ensued.
Any way you cut it, the schools will lose a substantial
number of positions. The question is whether health
benefit savings from cut positions are fully recovered
and whether some classroom teacher losses can be avoided
by making alternative cuts. For seven months, the
horrible consequences of cutting classroom teach-ers have
been shouted from the rooftops: unacceptable class sizes,
lost courses, multiple study halls, loss of high school
accreditation, etc. Now these need to be weighed against
the pain of alternative cuts. No one is saying that those
cuts don’t incur pain – that is not the issue.
The issue is whether the pain from these alternate cuts
is less than those listed above. Setting a meeting
schedule is a start, but only a start. Parents need to
keep up the pressure and make sure that the classroom is
given top priority.
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