Dear Editor:

Today we learned that a minority of voters who appealed the majority vote to approve the school construction bond have filed a further (unwinnable) appeal to Maine Superior Court. The minority appellants primarily want to delay the school construction project until it becomes financially infeasible (due to their very actions.). This appeal, in my opinion, opens (some might say “continues”) a battle for the very existence of public schools in Boothbay and Boothbay Harbor.

This is their wedge. I think their longer range goal lines up with those who think we shouldn’t have public schools here at all. This consists of two types of arguments; one comes from wealthy people who don’t want to pay taxes for education (they don’t care about the schools, they are retirees, their kids went elsewhere) and the other comes from people who think we ought to give taxpayer money to families so they can then choose to send their kids to wherever and thus we can do away with paying taxes for public schools here; the privatization argument ...

I hope we can fight both of these arguments. The community dies without its schools. And public schools are our best hope to level the playing field between the haves and the have-nots. This hope is under attack at the moment. But, in my view, we have to fight for this ideal; Where our kids, rich and poor, newcomers and long-timers, all races, all can learn to live with each other. This only happens in public schools where all our kids learn together. 

Bruce MacDonald 

Boothbay 

Member of the CSD School Committee