MARLBORO — Dear fellow Marlboro Residents,
We are writing to you as members of the Marlboro community and also as two current members of the Marlboro School Board. The opinions expressed in this letter are ours alone and are not meant to represent the thinking of the entire board.
The ballots have now been mailed for the 2023 Marlboro School District voting, and we hope that you will join us in voting no on Article 10 on the upcoming school district warning. Article 10 proposes that our town stop providing grades 7 and 8 at our school and instead pay to tuition our 7th and 8th grade students to other schools.
There are two overarching reasons for which we hope you will vote no on Article 10:
• First, after careful financial analysis, Principal Wayne Kermenski and the Marlboro School Board concluded that there would be no financial benefit to tuitioning our 7th and 8th grades at Marlboro to attend other schools. (There are potential additional costs associated with any building renovation or moving to another location for various school structure options, and a study of the tax implications of these options is being published by the School Board and is available by contacting either one of us.)
• Second, we think this is the wrong time to make an important decision like this, given the following:
—The Covid pandemic was socially and academically challenging for many students and teachers, and a challenging time for all schools. Making a long-term structural decision based on the last two or three Covid years is a shortsighted way to make a decision of this magnitude.
—We now have an incredible core of relatively new faculty and staff teaching grades 5 through 8, motivated to create an academically and socially rigorous and exciting middle school. We believe these educators should be given the chance to implement their ideas.
Some town residents have pointed out that they do not have enough information at this point to make an informed decision.
For these reasons we ask that you vote no on Article 10 and allow Marlboro School time to figure out what structure best serves the different needs of our students.