To the editor:

Over the last 20 years of my involvement with the Barrington School Committee, most of those serving as chair, our district priorities have always been clearly articulated. Student health and safety has always been "Number 1", followed closely by student achievement. These priorities guided our strategic plans and policy decisions over each of those years. While extracurricular activities, including athletic teams, were always on a rung below the top priorities on this ladder, the district made tremendous efforts to support a greater number of quality athletic teams and other non-athletic extracurricular activities than any other school district in Rhode Island. Some of these, such as girl's hockey, were added only after a cost-benefit analysis, including careful consideration of impact on budget and a determination that augmenting or adding any activity would not jeopardize any academic programming. 

In the face of imposed school budget reductions, the school committee proposal to sacrifice athletic programs and other extracurricular activities in order to save academic programming is exactly what long standing district policy would dictate. To suggest that this proposal constitutes nothing more than some kind of a desperate effort to mobilize school community support for the district's original budget or a thinly veiled publicity stunt is very unfair and can only be characterized as total ignorance of the long standing policy and a "cheap shot".

The Barrington school district has always been a careful steward of our community tax dollars. The numbers don't lie and the numbers show that among the 39 cities and towns in Rhode Island Barrington had spent less per pupil than all but 7 or fewer other communities for many years and well below the state average. That is not to say that some of the ideas for district efficiency presented by community members at the recent hearing conducted by the committee on appropriations aren't worth pursuing, but in each case will involve very deliberate and long range planning. There are no quick fixes. 

There are many other points I would make, but considering space and time limitations, allow me to end with this. The school district does not negotiate its educator contracts or buy goods and other services in a vacuum. Our neighboring school districts in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut constitute the market in which we compete for quality educators and these other services. Our district has put together and maintained a highly skilled and effective educator team, despite still inadequate (although improved) state funding. I was proud to play a role in building and supporting that team in the face of market forces which throughout my tenure threatened to jeopardize that effectiveness. Any proposal to materially reduce the current level of academic services would be huge mistake unworthy of our reputation for quality schools. If as I believe a community is best known by the quality of the schools it keeps, we need to trust those whom we have elected to create the school budget to do their job in maintaining and continually improving that quality.

Kind regards,

Patrick A. Guida

Barrington