Budget Woes

I love the work I do representing educators in Winslow at the local, state, and national level. I also like the challenges of assuming a Whitefield School Board position...but today brought bad news. The town of Whitefield voted not to accept the School Board's proposed budget, by 8 votes!! We now have to go back to the beginning of the process: cut the budget, town meeting, and then referendum vote. This is a difficult process for me, I can see very clearly that little Whitefield is WAY behind in many areas already. To give you an idea of how bad it is consider this: Winslow has a 9 million dollar budget and the state lowered its share by $25,000. Whitefield has a 3 million dollar budget and the state lowered its share by $340,000. That's not a misprint. I think the Dept. of Education is trying to kill these little town schools. What yesterday's vote means is that the ONE thing we had on our side - good class sizes - will now be a thing of the past. I love this kind of work very much, but I've two big heartbreaks this spring: the "Cliff Bill" defeat in the Appropriations Committee, and now the shredding of this little school's budget.

~MET