The controversy over the renovation of the Monument Mountain Regional High School building is about more than just a building. The implications of the arguments we’re having here in Great Barrington go far beyond the borders of our own little town.
Part of what we’re wrestling with is the inherent American problem of supporting a federally mandated public education with a patchwork of uneven local property taxes.
More broadly, our local issue connects to the disturbing, accelerating national trend in American education towards top-of-the-line resources for the wealthy, and mediocre inadequacy for everyone else.
It’s about the increasing stratification of American society, following a feudal model of inherited wealth, power and privilege for those at the top, and inherited poverty and lifelong struggle for those at the bottom—and the constant slippage of the vaunted American “middle class” into the ranks of hard-working, barely-getting-by debt bondage.
As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof pointed out in a recent column, public education is the one American social institution that can maintain the social mobility upon which our nation was founded. And yet because our national K-12 public education system is funded by local tax dollars, we must live with huge inequities in educational resources.
Every realtor knows that one of the first questions asked by prospective homebuyers with children is, “How are the public schools?”
Having a clean, safe, vibrant public high school with up-to-date labs and other facilities will draw young working families to settle in our town.
The message we currently send to such families is — you’re better off looking for a home in Lenox or Williamstown.
Do we want to become the kind of town that serves its weekend and tourist population better than it serves the people who choose to make Great Barrington a year-round home?
Do we want to become the kind of town that sends the clear message to its teenagers that they will have to move away to succeed?
Do we want to turn down $23.2 million in state aid to renovate our high school because we’re too cheap to invest in our children’s education?
Do we want to kick the can down the road, condemning more generations of our teens to suffering through four years in a leaky old building with poor ventilation, poor heat, inadequate security and science labs that are decades out of date?
Education is a priceless investment, and every single year matters. A high school student who has the chance to learn biology in a modern lab may be inspired to become the doctor who saves your life. But if she is not turned on by science as a teenager, it might never occur to her to pursue medicine as a profession — or worse, she might not have the necessary background to succeed in college science classes. She might never live up to her potential.
Think back to your own high school years. What kind of high school did you attend? How did your experience in those crucial teenage years affect the adult you have now become?
Of course it’s true that education is not just about bricks and mortar. But the physical environment does matter.
Do we want to send the message to our young people that we don’t care enough about their education to invest in building them a better school?
Or do we want to affirm that Great Barrington is a place where we value our kids enough to step up to the challenge of providing them with the best K-12 education our tax dollars can buy?
Is there anything more important than educating the generations coming along behind us? These young people — our kids and grandkids — will be facing a whole array of serious social and environmental challenges. They’re the ones who will be taking care of us as we age. An investment in their education is an investment in our collective future as a town and a nation. It’s in all of our interests to put as much of our resources into their education as we possibly can.
Vote YES for the renovation and the 2½ percent override on November 4. Do the right thing for our kids, our town, our society and our nation.
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The weekly EDGE WISE column is curated by Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D., associate professor of comparative literature, gender studies and media studies at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and the Founding Director of the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers. Women writers interested in publishing in EDGE WISE can find writers’ guidelines on the Festival website, or may submit queries or columns to Jennifer@berkshirewomenwriters.org.
