Here’s a Novel Idea

Manchin to study school funding

Governor wants to be sure money gets to classroom. This is also a great time to engage your local legislators and invite their considered opinion on school investment dollars; their impact on what communities in Harrison County will thrive and which are chosen to go into decline by causing the older neighborhoods to lose their schools.

The Board of Education seems to have missed that point as well as most City Council members throughout the county’s cities and towns. If you want your neighborhoods to improve and attract young families bring back local schools and start de-consolidating the grades schools. What false economy is gained by the mega-schools only appears on the Board of Education’s books; the overall decline in the economic and social value of the older neighborhoods is staggering in property values and loss of community worth.

 

Avoid being seduced by the appearance of committees with names promising to identify your real school needs when they are created and sponsored by School Board incumbents . Be sure their product is not just another effort to circumvent the last bond referendum results . Your local municipal government better get involved and stake out your community’s interest.

Require of your legislators that they make clear what their policy choices are on neighborhood schools versus schools in new developments where no one lives. Then ask them what they will do about it. You should also be asking similar questions of the County Commissioners who approved the tax incentives, which is part of the developer’s drive to move community resources, including schools, to places, such as, Charles Pointe. They want to be asked. Ask them often and ask them in public. If you have to, pull them out of their pizza and gambling joints and yell in their ears. But ask them.