Thank you to our school dept officials and School Committee for working to find a way to fund All Day Kindergarten (link below), saving one of its priorities from the cuts caused by the FTR-approved Katz budget that nearly forced its elimination. Unfortunately, there aren't sufficient funds to restore the other programs eliminated as a result of those budget cuts.
This situation has illustrated the destructive consequences of making mindless cuts to a budget prepared over months by those we elect and hire to do so, in order to save a few tax dollars in the short term. The idea that you can strip away reserves required to handle emergencies, cut funding for services, count on unexpected savings to restore those cuts, and somehow not cause severe damage to the community is foolishness. It's a self-defeating and shortsighted way to operate a town, and a mistake that hopefully won't be repeated.
Brian Medeiros
Tiverton, RI
http://www.heraldnews.com/article/20150625/NEWS/150627372/0/breaking_ajax
Let's also give credit to Mr Fiore, Mr Rearick, the parents & community members of Tiverton for helping make this happen. Sometimes we don't need political agendas to make great things happen. In this case some persistent parents worked together to reopen the discussion of all day K that had previously been voted against on May 26. Instead of giving all the credit to the school committee let's be fair and thank and credit everyone. Because political agendas were left at the door the town was able to come together as a community and with persistence from Mr Fiore & Mr Rearick with the budget savings we were able to accomplish the goal of giving our children all day K for this upcoming school year. This made me very proud seeing people join together- and because of this there was one group of clear cut winners- our incoming kindergarteners. They were the big winners last week and hopefully in the future we can work together again to make good things become reality.
ReplyDeleteMike, I share your hope that going forward people will work together for the common good. That is exactly why Tiverton 1st was started, and what we work to achieve. We have no political agenda beyond supporting budgets and candidates that will best support our schools and our community in a fiscally responsible way. We are about people, not politics.
ReplyDeleteThere is no equivalence between T1 and Justin Katz and the other former TCC leaders who pushed FTR Budget 2, whose cuts to the School Dept budget nearly cost us All day Kindergarten. They have spent years and tens of thousands of dollars pushing an extreme political agenda, one of the main goals being to impose destructive cuts to the School Dept. Why? Because they have no children in the schools, and resent paying taxes to support something they don't benefit from personally. If we all followed that path, we'd have few if any school or community services. Like most who supported ADK, I have no child who will benefit, but I was willing to pay a bit more in taxes to support it because I believe it was the right thing for your children, and the community as a whole.
Those who were willing to jeopardize ADK for political reasons, and then tried to lay responsibility on the very School Cmte that proposed it, will no doubt continue this destructive path. I hope you will join us in rejecting that type of short-term, self-interested thinking and support fully funding our school and town services. Some of the cuts may affect your child, or mine, some may not. But hopefully we can agree that all the children of Tiverton, and all the people of Tiverton, deserve the same support we provided for our incoming Kindergarteners.