small local schools

Hard Times High

August 25, 2012
By Mickey Friedman

In the old days, doing nothing cost you nothing. And there was a big difference between doing nothing and doing something. Somehow, now, doing nothing costs forty-two million dollars.

Monument Mountain Regional High School

I know squat about building new buildings or fixing up old buildings, about making buildings accessible to those with disabilities. So I’m a bit shocked to learn we’ll be spending forty-two to seventy million to either repair or replace Monument Mountain, our forty-year old high school.

I know a lot of people who are having a difficult time of it lately. Paying their mortgages, their rents, their real estate taxes. Quite frankly, after the new middle school, and the new police station, the new fire station, and the renovated library, I was hoping that the town fathers and mothers would find a way to begin reducing taxes. But it’s hard to imagine lowering taxes when folks are talking about forty-two million for doing nothing and seventy million for doing everything. Of course, those folks are quick to point out that the state will pick up 50% of the costs. Like the state will pay for Downtown Revitalization. But the state, unfortunately is us, so we pay one way or another.
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Small Schools

By Mickey Friedman
February 4, 2012

No kids, a different district, so I am just an interested bystander in the raging debate about the small schools of Monterey, Egremont and New Marlborough.

Having taught I have a continuing interest in how education happens; as a citizen and taxpayer, I care about how much education costs and whether those dollars are spent wisely.

I’ve tried to teach seventh, eighth, and ninth graders in New York City. I’ve taught and counseled college students in both New York and Massachusetts. While being a student is hard, being a good teacher is even more difficult.

It’s hard to separate the issue of small schools and rising school budgets from the larger money mess we find ourselves in. More and more, because of a radically unfair tax structure that favors the wealthy, the middle class is ask to pay a disproportionate share for government services. And the middle class has less to offer up. Here, in the South Berkshires, struggling taxpayer/voters are asked each year for an up/down vote for a rising school budget they can barely understand.

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