WHAT PRIORITY SHOULD WESTFIELD’S SCHOOL BUDGET HAVE?
While vacationing with the family last year, we spent a few days in Munich, Germany. It was an eye-opening experience. The roads were absolutely immaculate, perfectly manicured like a professional golf course, with not a pothole in sight. There were bike trails everywhere. The public swimming spas were spotless, on par with what you might find at a first class, private resort here in the United States. It was clear from my visit that the German people place a much higher priority on raising the necessary revenue to support a world class infrastructure than we do.
My point is not to argue we need to be more like Germany and that the United States is doing it all wrong. I simply wish to point out that the level of services provided by government is a function of the priority a society places on those services. We, as a democracy, choose what our priorities should be by electing the public officials who we think will pass the kinds of budgets that will reflect our priorities.
And so this brings me to my central question: what priority should Westfield’s school budget have? If you are a parent, you might be more inclined to spend what it takes to deliver a world class education system. Or maybe you don’t have kids, and you’d much rather see millions of dollars each year shifted away from schools and go to improving Westfield’s roads instead. Or maybe you don’t have a lot of money to spare each month and you’d much rather have lower taxes. Most likely, you are conflicted. And I often hear people say they wouldn’t mind spending a pretty penny on schools as long as they know their tax dollars aren’t getting wasted. There are no right or wrong answers here. It all depends on what value you place on our educational system.
As your elected official, I can’t tell you what I think your priority should be. All I can do is listen to your opinion and give you mine. I can also do my best to help inform you as best I can with what I know to help you make up your own mind.
But unfortunately, instead of healthy public discussions about budget priorities and what they should be, we often get sidetracked in an endless, largely unproductive public blame game of how the money is spent. “The teacher’s union is killing us! Get rid of unions!” or “The superintendent is blowing all of our money on central office staff! They need to go!” or “The mayor and city council is spending our tax dollars like drunken sailors! Throw the bums out!” But the fact of the matter is that Westfield’s school spending is right in line with other communities by just about every metric. Are there areas we can find savings? Absolutely, and we should continue to work to find those savings. But trying to find someone or something to blame for not having enough money or to pretend that there is some magic bullet to “fixing” our schools is just political bluster and nonsense.
The simple truth is that the reason we spend a lot on schools is because it’s a high priority for our society, not because there’s a gross level of mismanagement or greed that needs to be reined in. If the city council wanted to cut the school budget by $5 million dollars, layoff a huge number of teachers and issue a tax refund to residents, we could do it. But we have to ask: does Westfield want to spend the minimum amount on education allowed by state law? Or do we want to strive to deliver the best possible education to our kids?
It all depends what our priorities are. And that all depends on you, the voter.
Sincerely,
Steve Dondley
City Councilor, At-Large
