Week 3 UticaOD Their Hands in Our Pockets, Again!

This posting is in response to an article in the Utica OD today by Patrick Corbett entitled " Parents: Don't Close Any Rome Schools"
http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060202/NEWS/602020335/1001/NEWS01

A group of people turned out at a Rome School Board meeting to protest the possible closing of two elementary schools. Not surprisingly, the parents did not want their neighborhood school closed. The meeting was all too predictable. One person said that closing the school would scatter a close knit school family and end valuable programs for students. Another person said that closing these schools would be"driving people out of Rome and not offering a warm welcome to the hundreds of people who will be taking new jobs at Grifiss Business and Technology Park.". I had not been aware that there were many, if any, people who decided they just had to move to Rome because of the dream of their children attending one of these schools, much less that the hundreds of workers arriving for those new jobs would take it as a sign of a lack of hospitality on our part that two elementary schools had been shuttered. Why do people seem to feel that they are entitled to keep their little neighborhood schools open for social/ charitable reasons and that the taxpayers should pick up the tab for it? The schools, according to the article, need millions of dollars in repairs, and with declining state aid and a shrinking tax base, some hard decisions must be made on how to economize. Frankly, I think many more people would be driven out of Rome by soaring tax rates than by the closing of two elementary schools. If these parents think that spending money on these two schools is worthwhile, that is fine, let them spend their own money, but I resent that the rest of us of us might be stuck paying for their foolish dreams.