To the editor:

I recently learned about the proposed budget cuts to the Barrington School Fiscal Year 2018 budget. 

We moved to Barrington 35 years ago because of the excellent education this town had to offer our family.  Now that our children are grown, we are proud that both our son and daughter have received advanced degrees in their respective fields.

As an educator myself, I cannot stress enough the importance of maximizing the interaction between teacher and student. The relationship between teachers and students is one of the most, if not the most, critical characteristic of an exemplary education. When you eliminate teachers, you decrease the value of the product.

By lowering the quality of our education, Barrington children will be unprepared for college. You already know that 96 percent of our children go on to college, many of them top tier colleges and universities. How, then, do you expect them to achieve the same level of preparedness with less teachers and less educational programs?

How can our children be as prepared as other districts with fewer librarians, less foreign languages and less music and arts? Right now, U.S. News & World Reports ranks Barrington High School in the top 500. Our town has the distinction of being named National Blue Ribbon Schools by the U.S. Department of Education multiple times. These accolades, plus our graduation rates, are proof that our current system is a model one.

Cutting the Barrington School Fiscal 2018 budget will only serve short-term gains to the bottom line with long-term educational consequences. We need to be mindful of the investment of time that it takes for a K-12 education and realize that any budgetary changes that cut programs and teachers now will have a long term effect on students being poorly prepared for admission into competitive colleges and universities. 

Currently, when our graduates leave Barrington for college, every citizen here knows that that young adult is fully prepared to take on the challenges in his or her future. Please do not take away this critical characteristic of a Barrington education.

Sincerely,

Dr. Lloyd Matsumoto

Barrington