To the editor:

Once again our town uncomfortably mimics the dysfunctional national stage. 

If an agreed funding formula wasn’t found in Washington, the government would have shut down last Friday, now it is kicked to September. They try to compromise in an environment of brinksmanship, high stakes, righteous pride, fear, and too little time for adult conversation. Thus the game of “chicken” — like two teenagers, rebels without a clue, hurtling at each other’s cars and daring the other to swerve.

The local echo — the spectacular collapse of a long tradition of limping to the finish line with a middle-ground budget between the committee on appropriations (COA) and schools. The sides couldn’t be further apart — $1.2 million and a potential massive cuts in programs and staff separate them.

They are also separated by mutual misunderstanding.  

The COA and its supporters lay bugbears out in OpEds — that “plenty of money” exists even without the $1.2 million, or that fancifully cheaper versions of the twice-passed middle school bond exist. They also deride the power of the “backpack express,” and claim that it is time for “business as usual to end” so that they can force the schools to admit extra money has been socked away all along.

The school side plays its own part in this high-stakes drama — trying, unsuccessfully, to articulate how prudent it has been, or how reserve funds relate to bond savings, or how the uptick in June payouts relate to lump-sum summer salaries. The fact that time is short and clear communication is an “evolving art” for the district and school committee complicates things further.

Fear drives school decisions, predictably leading good people to make bad decisions. 

No one describes the school’s “real-world” final budget, which is effectively hundreds of thousands of dollars greater thanks to the time and money contributed by PTOs, parents, and BEF — probably for fear that the COA will think it safe to cut further. A core of the school committee and the district even quietly sacrificed school start time change in order to palliate opponents who threaten the budget — but they also don’t advertise this fact for fear of angering another cohort of voters. Consequently, the COA gets a garbled picture of how brutal the compromise budget originally was.

There is a way forward: 

• Stop the games.

• Engage in a year-long conversation where COA questions and school answers are put in writing — argument and rebuttal — on public websites for all to judge the merits of before we vote again.

• Involve the COA in the next teacher contract negotiation — addressing a years-old complaint that they have no input on the main drivers of costs.

• Actually use the joint budget forecasting committee to strategically project costs so we are not blindsided by “perfect storms.”

• Finally the COA should follow the school committee’s lead and pledge its own code of conduct, respecting and allowing for public comment rather than claiming to speak for taxpayers, but literally refusing to hear them at COA meetings.

• Stop the game of chicken before there’s a car wreck. Our children already bear the brunt of our collective inability to have a strategic adult dialogue, with start time change sacrificed, and now perhaps, programs too.

Scott Douglas

Barrington