A park lies across the street from our house, and at the far end is a quaintly old-fashioned brick elementary school. The structure dates back to the 19th century, and unfortunately its quaintness extends beyond the facade to the inside. The school has no cafeteria, no gymnasium, no auditorium, no athletic fields. Nothing is up to code, so nothing can really be properly renovated unless the whole thing is redone. Every summer, the fire inspector threatens to close the school for some infraction or another. Last year, I was told, a local contractor performed some Labor Day weekend heroics that allowed the school to open on time. Since then, the City Council decided that it’s not feasible to keep open a school that will eventually need to be replaced or gutted. The school will close for good this summer.

The other two elementary schools are already overcrowded, so to accommodate the additional 60 kids, the schools are being completely restructured. All the kindergarten classes will be housed at one schools. All the first through fourth grades will be housed at the other. Fifth and sixth grades will be moved to the middle school, where they will be maintained separately from the seventh and eighth graders, with different principals and staff. The newly renovated (but not-yet-paid-for) high school will remain as is. This means that if our boys go to public school they will travel through three different buildings before they’re out of fifth grade.

It’s a small town, so that’s not such a huge concern. The farthest school is only a mile and a half away, so they’re all technically walking distance. The big problem is the budget cuts that are accompanying these changes. The district, which has already lost 36 teaching positions in the last few years, is slated to lose another 30 next year. Foreign language is being cut in the middle school. Class size will increase, foreign language at the middle school will be eliminated, and one English or history teacher from each middle-school team will be fired, leaving the other to combine both subjects in a “humanities” course. I used to teach middle-school English, and this sounds like a very bad idea to me. Public school teachers are (supposed to be) certified in their subject areas, and although it’s certainly possible to stay one chapter ahead of a bunch of seventh-graders in a subject in which you are not an expert, it’s not desirable. If it were a great idea, every school district in the country would be firing English teachers.

Did I mention that the high school is in danger of losing its accreditation?

In response to the proposed cuts, a group of concerned parents formed a political action group to push for a tax override intended to be used to restore the positions. With the override, each household’s yearly tax bill would increase between $90 and $450, depending on property value. One of my fellow playgroup members asked for my help, so I became the “data guru” for her ward. I was very surprised to learn that this group, using a six-degrees-of-separation methodology, was compiling information on how different people were likely to vote so they could focus their efforts on undecideds. My job was to input the information into a fully functional web-based database that they threw together in a few days. I must be very naïve about politics, because I had no idea a small grassroots group could organize that quickly or efficiently.

Unfortunately, the referendum on the override took place last week, and it failed, with about 60% of the voters opposing the increase. I believe the vote split mostly along age lines, with parents of young children generally in favor and older people generally against. The political group will try to have the override question reinstated on the November ballot, but I don’t think another campaign will change any minds. The “no” voters don’t want their taxes to go up, are upset about the conditions that led to this budget crisis in the first place, and want to work on reform at the federal level instead of funding increases through property taxes. The “yes” voters feel the exact same way, but at the same time realize what a disaster it will be to lose 30 positions from the school district next year.

So now what? Unfortunately, there are not a lot of alternatives to the public school system. There is one private Catholic school, close enough to see from my window. They have a lot of applicants and can afford to restrict enrollment to sincere church supporters, which we are not. There is one private Montessori school, which is reputably good, but tuition is high and the kids would have to transition to another school by fifth grade anyway. There is one charter Montessori school that runs from kindergarten through eighth grade; unfortunately, the waiting list is twice as large as the current school enrollment, and next year several hundred people are expected to apply for fewer than 20 kindergarten places. (By the way, the closest private prep school, perhaps in anticipation of the soon-to-increase applicant pool, recently changed its name from the unfortunate “Governor Dummer Academy” to the more blue-blood sounding “Governor’s Academy.” Damn it, I was really looking forward to sending my kids to “Dummer.”)

I have friends who have decided to move over this, and others who are thinking about moving. That seems drastic to me. This is a wealthy community. If we can’t get this right, than who can? Certainly, with “school choice” programs in place, schools have to respond to community needs to continue to attract students, but at some point doesn’t the community have to turn around and support the schools as well? I’m starting to fear that the community gets the schools it deserves, and our long disengagement from these issues proves that we don’t deserve a whole lot. I include myself in the “disengaged” group, because this is the first school issue I’ve followed in the five years I’ve lived here.

The one good thing that came out of this election was an increased awareness, as demonstrated by the high voter turnout: 46%. If even some of the no-voters are willing to work with the rest of us on finding some solution to the school crisis that does not include raising property taxes, it will be a bonus.

What this really brings home, for me, is a sense that we cannot entrust our children’s education to the schools, whether they live out their tenure in the public schools or they end up at Andover or Exeter. However they spend their days at school, we’re going to have to make sure they get reinforcement in the basics and critical thinking skills at home. I’m not talking about formal sit-down lessons, but enrichment that’s integrated into home life. I hope I will know how to do that.

Even so, I hope they reinstate foreign language, music, and English by the time they get into middle school, because that’s a lot of curriculum to cover on the weekends.