The mayor and his Chief Financial Officer Richard Demas must be made to understand that the School Department cannot run its game for the full year with what it is being given.
The School Department needs more than it is being given, perhaps $5 million more.
This is incontestable fact – not mismanagement or overspending, either or both.
With the added $5 million, the School Department would not have to lay off 100 employees.
The gem of the city would remain the gem.
What is needed as much as the money is the belief of the city government that nothing, quite frankly, is worth more than the education of our children.
Until such a place is reached, battles over $5 million to maintain the dream will seem to be game changers for a government that ought to know better.
Five million one way or the other isn’t going to break the city of Everett, is it?
The mayor knows this. Demas knows this.
Yet they fight against a relative pittance that has the tendency to change the world in the public schools.
Some people fight to win. Some people fight to lose.
Underfunding the School Department is a losing battle.
Everyone loses because of the battle, and the underfunding.
We ask the mayor to show he knows exactly what is at stake.
We urge him, we ask him to put up another $5 million immediately.
The city can afford it.
The mayor understands the kids in the public schools, in so many cases, have only the Everett Public Schools as their support vehicle.
If he is inclined to believe what he often says about the public schools, then the mayor must act.
> Laying off 100 teachers doesn’t achieve anything in the greater scope of things here