Published: December 02, 2008 09:19 am      

Money for stadium could buy back a school

Please allow me to add a different and real perspective, to the controversy pertaining to the request by some citizens, for the Allegany County Board of Education to fully fund the renovations of Greenway Avenue Stadium.

While I have been critical of the board’s action of building a new 1,000-student high school in Frostburg, and yet, coming up about $3 million short, and expecting the public to go bumming for the necessary funds to complete the sports facilities; it should be noted that in school board minutes of meetings ... they have repeatedly stated that, “They are not in the business of funding stadiums.”

Now, please realize that with the opening of the new high school in Frostburg, there was a real pretense made by the school board (and it’s in the records) that the school board could save $120,000 per year if they closed the Westmar Middle School Building in Westernport, and moved the children to Lonaconing.

Therefore, Westernport lost yet another operating school in their community (I guess closing Bruce High School wasn’t good enough for them, and didn’t hurt us enough to suit them)!

So you see, since the school board made the assertion that they could save $120,000 per year by closing Westmar Middle School in Westernport; if they now spend what would be several hundred thousand dollars ... or perhaps over a million dollars renovating Greenway Avenue Stadium — then the people of the Westernport community would consider this to be “educational discrimination” in its blatant-rawest form!

We lose an educational community school under the pretense that the board needs to save $120,000 per year ... and then they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a ball field? That is simply not fair!

Therefore, if the school board intends to spend any money, on any stadium, equaling or surpassing the $120,000.00 that it claimed it could save by closing our school; then the only fair and equitable thing for them to do is to re-acquire the closed school building from the county, and reopen it for the community of Westernport.

A few closing thoughts. Only $120,000 to continue the operation of a community middle school would be the best bargain the school board ever spent money on! Also, today, the building of a 1,000-student sized high school, goes against all educational studies on school size and is considered to be a mistake. High school size is recommended to be much smaller, around six to seven hundred at the most.

The federal government is spending millions of dollars breaking down high schools of 1,000 students or more into smaller high schools. Baltimore City is spending millions breaking down high schools of 1,000 students into smaller high schools. And, the Bill Gates Foundation has spent millions supporting smaller sized high schools.

But in Allegany County, we always seem to have a way of being 10 years behind the rest of the country ... and making huge mistakes ... when the rest of the country knows better! Bring back our school now ... or don’t spend a penny of our taxpaying money for any ball field!

By the way, the school board is now wasting an additional $10,000 per year in increased busing expense, busing children up and down Georges Creek, and to the new consolidated high school. Real smart!

Thomas R. Marsh

Taxpayers Alliance for Fair

and Honest Government

Westernport