By Art Dale
How can a community save its schools when the dollars supporting them have dropped by 38%? The loss of operating dollars means the loss of local schools. Consolidation is the only way to save them. Efforts to “save our schools” have disastrous consequences. When bills can’t be paid, schools can’t be saved. Saving our schools by trying to maintain what we have ultimately means the loss of those very schools.
In Orr, Cook and Tower/Soudan the compounded efforts to block the ISD 2142 plan will save the Virginia and Ely schools. They will provide our students a quality education for the 21st century. Consider the results of “Saving our schools.” Tower will lose its school altogether. A complete impasse will result in the Cook and Orr communities without a school between them. “Saving schools” does not increase the number of students in our communities. With 38% loss of students our schools can only operate in the red. “No School At All” is the bottom line for those blocking the only plan that can provide a higher quality education and balanced budget. Those working to “Save our Schools” will loose them. Everything else is “red herring.”
The Planning and Zoning Committee and the Board of Adjustment interpret zoning laws to protect communities. By their very name they make adjustments. They make adjustments in zoning laws to build factories that provide hundreds of jobs and insure a clean environment. Making adjustments for a building that will house activities providing quality education to our students is their job. The have the power to make adjustments that will enable a community to balance school operating budgets and provide quality education. “Saving our schools” by blocking the building of schools makes no sense at all.
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