Gosh. Sounds like I went to the wrong meeting.

All the action last night was at the Board of Education meeting (held in the library for chrissakes - didn't you anticipate lots of folks showing up?) The mayor and several Common Council members were there. Lots of angry parents were there. And what did the board do? Exactly what they were expected to do - not close any schools, while stripping the budget of such "non-essentials" as lunch monitors, language teachers, bus monitors, substitute teachers and, uh, books.

Two important Middletown meetings

The Board of Education meet tonight to decide how to parse cuts to its proposed budget. Closing McDonough Elementary, or the Kegwin 6th Grade transitional school seem to be off the table. The meeting, will be held at the high school at 7 pm..

Also, the town's Plan of Development is currently being rewritten and the city is looking for input tonight on environmental issues which will affect the town in the coming decade.

This invitation to attend was sent by transaltmiddletown.

If you're interested in codifying air quality into Middletown's Plan of Conservation and Development document, read on: Middletown’s Environment — The Next 10 Years Tuesday, May 20th, 7-8:30 pm First Church, 190 Court Street The Plan of Conservation and Development is a document that can help guide the City in making land use decisions and adopting policies that affect our whole community and its natural resources. It is also a way to express the needs and goals of citizens. The City of Middletown is currently updating its plan, as required every 10 years. City Planner Bill Warner is seeking comments and input from the environmental community, since there are many sections of the plan that address natural resources, greenways, air quality, transportation, recreation, parks, open space, land use policies, and urban design. Bill will discuss the current plan and potential revisions. This is an opportunity for you to state what environmental issues are important to you and to make specific recommendations. Help us spread the word about this opportunity. For more information contact John Hall, 346-6657 ext. 13.

Schooled by the Board of Ed

Last night, 70 angry citizens confronted Middletown's Common Council about alleged plans to close McDonough school, the last of Middletown's neighborhood school, in the city's North End or to close Kegwin a 6th grade transition school.

The meeting began with the mayor explaining that the Council passes an entire budget, and that line item decisions, including those about school closures, are made by the Board of Education.

That being said, parents, teachers and other residents (38 of us by Councilman Phil Pessina's reckoning), walked to the microphone and asked the Council to support education and to oppose the school closings.

When it was time for the Council members to speak they were uniformly indignant. Most inferreed that the Board of Education, in the person of the Superintendent of Schools, and the chairman of the board, had floated rumors of school closings in order to stir up fear, and to activate parental support of the school budget.

The budget the Board of Education proposed, based on the opening of a new high school, asked for a 9% increase. The Council granted 5%, and several councilors claimed that the 5% increase was generous in a poor economic climate and that the Board of Education had plenty of room for the kind of cuts that the Council had to make on the City side. Councilors also indicated that no one from the Board of Education had ever formally suggested to the Council that a school would have to be closed, and no many on the Council made it clear that they were opposed to any school closings.

The Council approved the budget as proposed. The Board of Education will meet on May 20 to address the budget and to discuss where cuts will be made.

You teach a child to read and he or she will be able to pass a literacy test.

Said George Bush on February 21, 2001. So newly minted as President, and he was already showing how wrong he was going to be about how best to educate America's children.

But Bush, and his No Child Left Behind, legislation, while disastrous, are not alone in the blame for the dismal shape of our education system in the US.

We get it wrong at every level. And every last one of us bears some responsibility, parent, teacher, student, administrator, teacher unions, taxpayer, political leader.

We give great lip service to education, and its importance, but somehow we miss the fact that many of our public schools are in great trouble, and that a University education can leave a family and a graduate, reeling financially for decades.

We're about to get it wrong in Middletown, again. Town leaders have proposed closing the McDonough Elementary School to save a million dollars a year in the education, and inevitably the town budget.

How'd we get to this point? Town leaders will go double-jointed as they rush to point fingers at someone else, but it's a clear lack of foresight that got us into this mess.

Yes, we're in trouble because the state surplus somehow morphed into a severe deficit. But who are these leaders who could not have projected that an upward moving economic cycle could not, and has never, lasted forever?

Yes, we're in trouble because we build a new high school, and our town fathers awarded a contract to a contractor who could not complete the school within budget, so we have a brand new school, but we don't have the money to pay enough teachers, or to fund the programs the school was designed to offer.

Yes, the sub-prime mortgage scandal has created a flood of foreclosures, and has crippled the property-tax system we use to fund our schools. But isn't this funding scheme, which leaves individual towns on the hook, and puts pockets of students at risk, the most ridiculously backward way of guaranteeing everyone an equitable education?

So closing McDonough will save a million. And what will we have lost? A neighborhood school, albeit one with a reputation for problems, which is now on the rebound. Students who will have to be bussed miles from their neighborhoods. More students who will sit in even more crowded classrooms at the town's other elementary schools. The stability of a fragile neighborhood, which the school provides.

This situation in Middletown is a microcosm of what will be happening in the state, and across the nation.

We will continue to harp on the value and import of education to the future of our nation. While we cut the legs out from under students, teachers and families.

There is one theory, and it is one I ascribe to, that if a town makes it a goal to have the best schools in the area, it will have no problems in other areas. People will flock to the town to live. Businesses will vie to open in the town. Crime will fall as neighborhoods stabilize. Students will return home to make it a better place.

If education is so important, then we need to find other places to save. One less parking lot here; one less sponsorship of a public event there; one less tax break for an incoming business. It might add up to an education for us all.