By Mickey Friedman
December 13, 2014
My friend Matthew, a recent graduate of Monument Mountain, reminded me of Give-to-Give, a program that enabled students here to help students in impoverished Haiti. So when he felt a slight chill at school, he added a sweater, compared his lot with others and soon felt grateful for what he had. Matthew imagined Haiti. I imagine Iraq.
Before shock and awe, Iraqis went from grade school to university for free, in schools the envy of the Arab world.
Now too many Iraqi children have no schools to attend, or find it so treacherous to travel, they stay home.
UNICEF found that “Fewer than half of children who enroll in primary education actually finish school … Just under half of secondary school age children go to secondary school …
“In Baghdad, classrooms built to accommodate 25 to 30 children now hold more than 80, and sometimes up to 120 students … schools suffer a severe lack of basic resources … such as desks, chairs, books and blackboards. Schools are frequently without clean water supplies, sanitation and garbage disposal systems …”
Why should you care about Iraqi schools when Monument Mountain needs a roof?
How about morality: we destroyed civil society in a country we hardly knew. How about money: we wasted a fortune smashing the dreams of an entire generation of young Iraqis.
According to the National Priorities Project:
Every hour in America we pay $10.54 million for war.
Every hour we in Great Barrington pay $74 for war.
Since 2001, we in Great Barrington have paid $11,096,292 for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. What would you do with eleven million?
Yes, Monument Mountain needs help but a bit of Matthew’s perspective helps. Imagine Baghdad, or my Bronx high school: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/nyregion/after-closing-schools-a-principal-fights-to-save-a-bronx-high-school.html
To those of you still blaming and shaming the voters: public education. The public. The people. For the moment there’s still some small vestige of democracy available to us. And when our representatives no longer adequately represent us, there is still the power of NO. Which is what happens when the folks who ask to represent the people don’t listen to what 60 percent of them want. Public representatives who cared more about what they wanted than what we needed: a school renovation plan we could actually afford.
So some of you still fault the public, not the School Committee. But wasn’t the School Committee these last many years supposed to ensure that our annual school budgets included the money for timely repairs? To make sure the maintenance people had everything they needed to make those repairs?
It was their job to craft a renovation plan that would not only win state support but also the support of taxpayers. A renovation plan that would work – not just for the students, the teachers, the administrators, but for the public that pays for it. To win the election, not lose. Then after losing the first election, to listen and make the changes necessary to win.
A letter-writer thinks instead of writing I should be on the Monument roof patching leaks. But I did my job. I sensed early on that the taxpayers in Great Barrington were straining to pay their taxes. That a $56 million, then a $51 million renovation might be too much for them.
I had one vote. I haven’t run for political office or claimed to represent anybody but myself. I am not on the public payroll. I don’t get paid to fix Monument’s broken doors. What I have done over the years is to make films, write, and to fight to make General Electric clean up PCB-contaminated neighborhoods, schoolyards, a children’s playground and the Housatonic River. You can watch it at: http://www.mickeyfriedman.com/?page_id=533
Then I made a film about a soldier’s year in Iraq: http://www.mickeyfriedman.com/?page_id=535
Only one of the alternatives I wrote about was the Accelerated Repair Program of the Massachusetts School Building Authority. I wrote extensively about the much more comprehensive Core Program for Repairs. After the first election, I urged that we revise our MSBA proposal, prioritizing the most important repairs and crafting a proposal that would make the school safe while reducing the total cost.
Some suggest that the MSBA’s decision that we’re not eligible for money for roof repairs and the boiler under the Accelerated Repair Program was a thunderbolt of dreadful news. That we will now have to pay for everything ourselves. Well, the fact is the School Committee could easily have applied for Accelerated Repairs several years ago, but they didn’t. Don’t blame the voters.
Despite a new onslaught of sensational, inaccurate news coverage and the pessimistic statements of some town officials, there is no reason to believe the state has abandoned us. In the most important section of their letter, the MSBA said it will entertain a new proposal for major repairs in 2015. I expect this time they’d appreciate a proposal that stands a chance of passing.
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For more information:
http://www.natureasia.com/en/nmiddleeast/article/10.1038/nmiddleeast.2014.218
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=49237 – .VHhnS77Z9JY
http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/06/world/meast/iraq-mosul-attacks/