This week’s blog entry will focus mainly on the East Allen County School situation we find ourselves in - I wish it could be short and simple, but it’s a complicated issue.  The East Allen County Schools (EACS) have a tough situation. They’re dealing with declining enrollment, less funding from the State, and an aging infrastructure. Their solution is to close some elementary schools and keep five high schools. This issue isn’t anything new. It’s been a fight for over twenty years. School Boards have proposed plans - mostly been rejected.  Superintendents have been hired and fired.  Unfortunately, we became one of the worst performing school districts in our area (and State).  People and companies previously wanted to move to East Allen because they knew their children would have the highest quality education. Now our school system is a deterrent to both the real estate market and economic development in general. That’s both a tragedy and something we need to get fixed - quickly!

A group of citizens in New Haven organized about three years ago to study the situation and provide their input to the school administration. We put on forums, had private meetings with the administration, I even brought Dr. Tony Bennett (the State Superintendent of Public Instruction) to New Haven for a public forum. For the most part, both our suggestions and help offered by Dr.  Bennett were ignored. When the School Board realized that their project would require a referendum (vote from the public) to pass, they broke the project into chunks so that they could proceed with the smaller projects (Woodlan and Heritage) without public opinion - and both of those will increase taxes.  We begged them to keep the projects together so that the communities wouldn’t be split - to no avail.  The only “say” we have is with a remonstrance process. There is one currently in process for the Woodlan project and another remonstrance will have to be done for the Heritage project (starting March 1st).

There has been a huge mis-information campaign ran by members of the school board and their supporters. They blame the New Haven City government and Chamber of Commerce for being against them and even say that if people sign the blue petition, Leo or Woodlan will be closed. That is a ridiculous statement and has never been proposed. To make things even more confusing, they’ve promised to go ahead with the Woodlan and Heritage projects no matter what the public wants. The remonstrances could end up just being a say whether we want our taxes increased or not. Also, there is NO organized effort by either the City of New Haven or the Chamber in this fight.  There are people from the City Administration and the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors in this fight, but we’re private citizens. We’re speaking for ourselves, our families, our community, and our businesses. We don’t have an absolute plan that we’re pushing - we just know a bad plan when we see it. There are so many things wrong with their plan, it would take pages to cover everything. What we want is a plan that provides the BEST education for our children, makes people want to move to our area again BECAUSE of our school system, and is ECONOMICALLY SUSTAINABLE.  We feel that their current proposal doesn’t guarantee any of that.

I’m asking you to please sign the blue petition which is against the tax increase. Signing BLUE is NOT signing against better education - it’s just telling them they have a bad plan. We are all about providing a better education for our children. We just don't see where their plan will do anything but divide communities and maintain budget problems. The Woodlan remonstrance signatures have to be turned in on Tuesday, February 14th so we’re running out of time. You can sign the petition this Sunday from noon to three at the Kroger parking lot in New Haven, or anytime Monday at New Haven Print. If you can’t make those times and want to sign, please let me know and we’ll get a petition to you.

Whether the Woodlan remonstrance passes or not, the Heritage remonstrance will begin March 1st.  Please help us send a message that we need to re-think the plan. It's obvious we need to do something - but it shouldn't be at the expense of our children's education and well being.