After reading about how "Healthy and Promising" Belmont's school system is last week, I could not help but recall former superintendent Peter Holland's comments at a budget presentation around 2007. Given the Town's failure to meet the financial needs identified by the School Committee (SC) and staff, Dr Holland pressed the idea that Belmont will have to settle for "good enough".
In the 1990s, many people in the region said Belmont, Lexington, Wellesley, Newton, and Concord in the same sentence. Now only we do. Even in magazine rankings, which I don't think especially highly of, we've slipped to 23rd.
My oldest kid entered the Belmont Public Schools in 1999, and my youngest has a few years until graduation. Every year it has been more cuts, where most, if isolated, were fairly minor. Through my six years on the School Committee and four years since, resource have been in constant decline.
- Class sizes creep up just a little - every year. Is 32 (the number my kid told me Friday) an appropriate size for a BHS physics class?
- Technology? We depend on private fundraising to drag us into this century.
- Elementary library aides and part time librarian for each school? Forget about that. The SC even occasionally discussed shutting them down.
- I had hoped that study hall would have gone out of style with my junior high bell bottoms. Sadly, no. (Yes, it's re-branded as "directed learning", or some other nonsense.)
- $1000 for your student-athlete to play three sports?
- The attitude of some members of the town's finance committee (Warrant Committee) is that the Foundation for Belmont Education can absorb more, far beyond their charter. We're talking basics, like textbooks.
- In my last year on the SC we went through an exercise of considering dropping anything not "required" by the state. Yes, that's fine arts, music, foreign language (one then-selectman questioned our offering Chinese), and science electives.
The retreat from excellence in no way reflects badly on the staff or volunteers. The reason we achieve what we do is because of those talented and dedicated people. The problem is simply resources. There is only so far you can go on momentum gained in the past. With our staff and volunteers and just a the state average funding level, Belmont would be superb.
But I would not dare suggest our per-pupil spending should match that of Lexington or Newton or Watertown or Waltham. I doubt we'd even know what to do with that much money - about 30% above ours. I would dare, however, to say we should halve the gap between Belmont and the state average. That would do us wonders. It would be about $1.3M. (in 2012 school year) At Town Meeting over the past couple years I hear mild allusions to an override for resources across the board, for all town services (the last successful override was 2002). I've seen zero action in this area from the Selectmen.
Whenever someone runs for elected office in Belmont, I hear talk of maintaining "excellence" of the school system. I find myself rolling my eyes at that. A more realistic focus would be on returning to excellence. Or maybe "good enough" is our destiny.