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Healthy schools foster healthy communities just as healthy communities foster healthy schools. Newton and the school system are both suffering from two principal problems. One is political and the other is financial. They are both intertwined and, therefore, one is not a higher priority than the other. Each is critical.
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| First the political problem: |
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Elections Matter! They are not a poll. They are not a focus group. They are not just a survey of public opinion. They are the direct voice of the people and last spring the people spoke.
We had a watershed moment. An override election was held where a disproportionate share of the benefits were targeted for the schools. Not to enhance and/or improve the schools, but just to maintain current services. It lost. Not only did it lose, it was crushed. This is not due to the fact that we have lost the belief in having excellent schools but we
have lost the public trust to make it happen under the current
structure. To ignore this result and these facts is to do so at the community’s peril. We can no longer ignore these dichotomies.
A great school is not a slogan. It is group effort of the entire community working together to make it happen. It is a primary goal of my campaign to reestablish this trust and to regain a new consensus over the public schools. It will involve all elements of the community. It will not tempt to play one constituency off against each other, whether that be within the school community or to play the school community off against the larger community. We are all in this together, because we need each other. Healthy communities foster healthy schools and healthy schools foster healthy communities.
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| The Financial Problem |
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Once again, to claim to have an excellent school system, you must have one that is on sound financial footing. Not only for the short term, but one that is financially feasible for the long term as well. Currently, we are in the opposite situation. We run a structural deficit where costs are rising at approximately twice the rate of the expected rise in revenues! Left alone this situation results in yearly reductions in the school system. There is no enterprise, system or endeavor that can maintain this phenomena and still maintain overall quality. Eventually the system will implode of its own accord.
To extricate ourselves from this situation, we must look at all aspects of the school structure. To have a vibrant and energetic system, it has to have an operating model that is financially sustainable.
The first order of business is to have a financial reporting system that is intelligible to the ordinary eye. Any citizen of our community should have access to budgets, reports, data and happenings of the school administration. All of this should be easy to access and easy to understand. The current financial budgetary system is arcane, obscure and virtually indecipherable to all except for the select few that are trained in its intricacies. This makes it virtually unmanageable.
Also we need a more transparent financial reporting system to do long range planning. Because we are under constant financial stress, strategic or long range planning is non-existent. Excellence is a long term achievement not an annual one. We can no longer accept sloganeering for achievement. No school system that aspires to be an excellent system can survive without a feasible cost structure and a financial reporting system that is intelligible.
To deal with the long term health and sustainability of the Newton Public Schools, we must first address these two fundamental situations. We must restore the political consensus of all parties of the Newton community, and restructure a financial model that is financially feasible with a reporting system that is far more transparent and intelligible.
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“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
Helen Keller (1880-1968)
American humanitarian and advocate for the deaf and blind.
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