“Don’t believe the mayor’s lie.”
By Steven Pinto
Everett politicians and the mayor are clearly anti-education.
The deliberate inaction of the city to meet the public school overcrowding issue is an embarrassment.
It actually could possibly be an underlying form of discrimination. Everett public school students are only about 19% white.
This leaves 81% non-white students – Blacks, Browns, Hispanics, and numerous other minorities making up the vast bulk of young people in the school system.
We are refusing to properly educate minorities in Everett.
Maybe the Feds need to step in and investigate the issue. Maybe they already are.
There have been too many documented acts of racism in Everett. And not providing safe and proper education facilities could be another act of racism and or discrimination or both.
It’s my belief that certain politicians eventually hope that minorities will move out of Everett. That isn’t going to happen. The only folks moving out of Everett are old time families done with the changing city and newcomers to the thousands of apartments that have been built who come and go like the wind.
Between the high cost of housing and overcrowded schools it might cause a certain demographic of people to move out of the city.
We have to accept the issue and bite the bullet.
It’s time to invest in our school buildings and our youth. First step is keep Pope John as a school.
Don’t believe the lie that Pope John needs to be rehabbed. It simply needs to be painted and brought up to code.
Will taxes go up if and when we build a new school? Maybe. But if our politicians stop wasteful overspending, we might have a better handle on the tax situation.
We have been facing this issue of overcrowding for at least a decade. Maybe our politicians thought the problem would just disappear. It’s a complete lack of representation and leadership from our mayor and our city government.
Bottom line is, the longer we wait the more it’s going to cost.
A new high school is said to take about 8 years from application to completion. The cost is estimated at $400 million to $450 million.
We don’t have 8 years to wait.
Stop bowing to developers and start investing in education.
It is possible to do both.
Build housing and invest in education at the same time. Don’t favor one and shut out the other.
We saw what happened to the MBTA. They only concentrated on one issue, expansion at the expense of all else. Let’s not make the same mistake. Our council for years has taken the mayor’s advice on budget matters and overspending.
It seems that we’ve backed ourselves into a corner.
We now need more and more tax money to support a bloated city payroll filled with many bloated salaries.
Does anyone at city hall have the courage to say “enough is enough”.