To the editor:
I hope my Peterborough neighbors will vote with me in defeating the petition article for a feasibility study to see whether we should withdraw from the ConVal School District. The study itself seems like a waste of taxpayer money and will reveal that withdrawing would be immensely costly in many ways.
Convening a study committee would take the school board away from much more important work; serve to make other district member towns nervous about what a Peterborough withdrawal might mean for them; and ultimately result in a severely diminished education for Peterborough students, as well as those remaining in a depleted ConVal School District.
Reverting to a single-town school district because we mistakenly thought it would be cheaper won’t help attract businesses or families to our town.
The gains our kids have been making across the district and the greatly improved culture that has come about at ConVal High School over the last handful of years deserve our continued support. Currently, our kids — throughout the district — benefit from a talented and varied staff made possible by its size.
If we withdrew, Peterborough would have to take on sole responsibility of all the costs of a school district infrastructure — including buildings — and everything that goes along with it. Under the current arrangement we share those costs proportionally across a larger organization. Here, bigger is better.
Withdrawing from ConVal would be shortsighted and disastrous, and studying its feasibility is a waste of time.
Jonathan Gourlay
Peterborough