Quote:
Originally Posted by buckman
There is enough Mansfield guys here for our on thread.
What's your take on the schools threat to eliminate sports?
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Technically, not a threat. On the other hand, it was conveniently timed with the Selectmen/School Board/Finance Committee meeting last night.
The school can't sacrifice significantly more teachers and they saw that last year, when they did fire a lot of teachers, people in the town weren't outraged because the direct effects on their kids wasn't obvious. Fortunately, stimulus money came in from the state to hire some teachers back.
On the other hand, this will immediately and directly affect the residents kids. It also affects many parent's source for "after school child care". So this is the school's way of saying "hey, we've done all we can with the budget we've been provided. They're your kids, it's your money, you decide."
In my opinion, there's a huge budget gap that needs to be closed. The town doesn't want to fire many more teachers. After school sports and arts programs are elective. Schools are expected to but aren't required to have them. If the residents want a service, they're going to have to pay for it. If they don't want to pay for it (which I feel is an acceptable opinion to have), then they won't get the service.