To the editor:
I am extremely concerned regarding the raise in Marblehead Public Schools user fees for families.
It becomes blatantly obvious that children from a higher income bracket household will play the sports of their choice. While too many others, potentially an asset to any team, potentially turned from making poor choices, potentially filling a long desired hope, lose out.
MHS a public school, supported by public funds. To lay that financial burden on students’ families is absurd. Yet again, the result of poor fiscal management and responsibility pounds on the doors of those least able to answer.
I recently chatted with a single working mother of two students. She has struggled to pay the user fees, plus costs of equipment for three years so her son can play high school sports. His younger sister had been asking for the same. She had had to say no, time and again; breaking two hearts in the process. The promise that her daughter’s time will come has worn thin.
Music, the arts, sciences, technology, and vocational/technical courses are as valid and necessary as sports to the futures of our most important asset. When will the costs to participate in any of those become another parental challenge because it is the easy way out?
To thrust the failures of our elected, appointed, or hired, town and school management and officials onto our citizens is a travesty.
Regards,
Joan Cutler