Priorities

In last week’s issue of The Photo News, Monroe-Woodbury School Board President Dr. DiGeronimo is quoted as saying that public education is at risk, in large part due to New York State’s 2 percent spending cap. In the same issue, a reader tries to convince us that artificial turf will cure Monroe-Woodbury’s damaged reputation and increase our property values. Are they living in a vacuum? Dr. DiGeronimo quotes Barrons, a financial publication, with regard to the Chinese Yuan usurping other world currencies by the end of the decade. He makes no mention of the same publication’s predictions of the USA spiraling into the Greek malaise during the same time or of its criticism of the American education system. Dr. DiGeronimo seems to feel that it is the lack of funding, or cuts, that are hurting education. Sometimes less is more, as evidenced by a recent New York Times article that described a school in Silicon Valley that has eschewed computers in its classrooms. The school uses blackboards with colorful chalk, bookshelves with encyclopedias and wooden desks filled with workbooks and No. 2 pencils. A private school whose tuition is comparable to what Monroe-Woodbury spends, on average, per student, this school sends 94 percent of its students to college. Monroe-Woodbury’s cycle of “spare no costs for the children” mentality has to be broken. Our job is to educate our children, to stress the value of learning and to help them master intellectual pursuits. School sports are extracurricular activities of secondary importance to education. Schools have priorities. Fred Ungerer Highland Mills