Town Politics. Now that is a mouthful if you live in Norton and my guess is it’s the same for a lot of towns lately. I have lived in Norton for 12 years and I have come to love this town as my own hometown. I love the people, I love the teachers, I love the sense of community we share. We are a very giving and supportive town in many instances.
But for some reason we cannot all come together on spending money for the schools. In this case we are as divided as you can be. We have an election coming up to decide whether we are going forward with our plan for a new high school or not. We are getting a huge reimbursement from the state for doing this now and getting our school up to code. If we don’t do it now, we still have to get it up to code and it will still cost people money.
I overheard a man talking at the baseball game saying, “a building doesn’t make a good education.” Ok, those of you who know me, know that I couldn’t let THAT one go by unanswered. So I politely said, “Hi! Are you talking about the high school building project?” And as you can imagine, I gave my two cents about why a building does make a difference. Our teachers have been doing without it LONG enough. They can only go so far, and they are hitting their limit. You can feel it. They have always gone above and beyond, but at some point, and I think that point is here, they are going to get frustrated and start saying I am only doing this or I can’t come back for that. And who could blame them? I am fully aware that a building alone does not make a good educational experience, and believe me, so are the teachers in this town. However, it’s time they have what they need to reach their full potential and in turn give our children a chance to reach theirs.
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I commented at one of our meetings that I didn’t understand why people would vote “NO” on this issue. I thought we were a strong community. I was told that it is about the bottom line. I respectfully disagree with that because if it is about the bottom line, then they should be voting “YES”! But I maintain that it is about community and making ALL parts of our community strong including the schools. You take care of us and we take care of you. That’s how it works and otherwise it will turn to gridlock. I hope we can finally come together and show our support on June 6th and June 11th and finally be proud to call ourselves a community again.