Dear Editor: 

A true cost analysis teaches us the absurdity of the arguments being proffered by the Edgecomb School Board to justify their massive budget increases. In a cost analysis, one removes the item and determines what effect it has on the costs. In this case, if 29 tuition students don’t show up tomorrow, what would be the change in Eddy school costs? The “smoke and mirrors”answer is none. How can that be when there are “no free lunches” in life. 

Simple, the Edgecomb school board has over-built a “fixed-cost” school budget for 100+ students when Edgecomb only has 66 PreK-6 students. This occurred because of an extensive conversion of appropriately part-time services to full-time salaried positions with full benefits, higher than comparable school salaries combined with aggressive yearly increases that far exceed inflation, extensive “wish lists” which have had no measurable academic benefits, etc. Some services that used to have a variable-cost basis of $15,000-$20,000 per year now have a fixed-cost base of $100,000 per year. 

This creates the illusion that the cost of those 29 students is $0 when in fact that appearance is entirely created because Edgecomb taxpayers have prepaid those expenses.  

Instead of that tuition being “free revenue” it is, in reality, a paltry reimbursement to the Edgecomb taxpayers for those now expensive fixed-cost services.   

The solution is a change of leadership. We need school board members who understand basic math and accounting.   

A small school with a small variable number of students requires a nimble, variable budget adaptable to the needs of those students. Large fixed-cost budgets that only respond to burdensome bureaucracy are doomed to fail, as will Eddy if we don’t change the leadership and direction. 

The next time you hear the school board and/or staff say “they want to close the school” realize they are the only ones saying this. It’s like a 2-year-old in a temper tantrum saying they will hold their breath until they get the cookie. 

Call their bluff and vote for change. 

Kathryn Rohr MD 

Edgecomb