To the editor:
The argument that the Eight Town Regional School District merger is the only solution to declining enrollments misses the point and is false.
All the proposed merger will do is put the students on a single campus. I am still not convinced Mt. Everett High School can’t accommodate all high schoolers and at far less the cost of a new high school, despite an outside consultant’s report.
Declining enrollments are symptomatic of increasingly older populations in each of the eight towns. Older people, housing most young families can’t afford, and the fundamentals of people having fewer children are the issues; declining enrollments are an outcome.
Combating declining enrollments won’t be easy, but progress will be made by focusing on greatly increasing affordable housing, affordable broadband to support working from home, having vibrant communities, and providing excellent educational options. The two districts will continue to provide excellent choices for families with no merger.
Providing affordable housing in the amounts needed has been poo-pooed by some, yet, until we face our collective reality, merging and paying for a new high school—plus all the other costs—will only spread the real costs over a shrinking and aging tax base and make each of the eight towns even less attractive to the newcomers we must attract.
Think of the potential outcomes if each of the eight towns took their share of the $145 million high school cost, including interest payments, and invested that money over the next 25 years in housing and in their communities.
Rene Wood
Sheffield
