California Stop the School

The Courier Times had an interesting letter today that shows pretty fairly the outside perception of Morrisville

Hit the brakes

In reference to the article on the Morrisville School board hitting the gas for the new $30 million school, we own property in Morrisville and have an elderly parent who owns property and lives in Morrisville. Although we don’t live there, we are paying the sky rocketing taxes. I wonder if Sandy Gibson can see past this school to see the surrounding area.
I think the taxpayers would rather see Morrisville refurbished before a school is built. No one wants to live in a town with more than several cigarette joints, a bail bond company, a firecracker shop, a boarded up gas station, low-income apartments that have been in the news for violent crimes and a shopping center that has problems keeping tenants. I have been to my parents’ house on occasion when school lets out and the profanity and dress code is disgusting.
A new building is not going to teach these kids higher morals or better behavior. The number of students attending the schools it is not worth the money. People are moving out, not moving in with school-age kids. The registration declines every year. What happens when you have a $30 million school and too few students? If they need to consolidate, than use the schools that already exist.

Let's look at the letter:

I'm pleased that they are helping out their surviving parent, but I am sorry that they need to do so. It opens the question of how effectively the parents saved and invested for their future, but assuming they did the typical savings and investing, yes, it's a crime that inflation has eaten away at the savings stored up. That's a question of macroeconomics on a federal and world level that does not really have anything to do with Morrisville and a new school.

Yes. The demographics described are somewhat true. We have smoke shops at the foot of every bridge, enough nail salons to do one nail per shop and still have shops left over, a bail bondsman and a fireworks company. None of these establishments are illegal and they generate business and tax revenue. This speaks more to the rebuilding effort underway from the borough council than the school.

The low income apartments need to be somewhere. I didn't choose to have them there, and I'm sure the writer didn't either. The "low income people" don't have a child to help out with the bills like the writer's mother does. Where would Mom or Dad be living if you didn't assist? Low income does not always mean low morals or low standards. Violent crime can happen even in the safe "high income" suburbs.

And no one wants to live in a place like that? Would the last one to leave New York City please turn out the lights? If it's so bad, why do you allow your parent to live in a substandard place like this? How's the mother-in-law suite coming along?

However, our culture today does have low morals and low standards. Yes, the profanity and dress of today's kids is appalling. And so it was for every generation looking back at the "younger generation" then coming up. I bet the letter writer was a 60s flower child who has grown into a respectable adult. That's where the parents come in. If the parents use and teach the profanity and low morals and/or permit the children to use them, then that's a parental problem, not a problem of the school. The school systems have already taken over so many areas of education because the parents will not do the teaching they are supposed to. What are YOU teaching YOUR children?

A new building does not change the curriculum and what would be learned. There's a stroke of the blinding obvious.

Families with kids are moving out? Let me check on that and get some figures, but that's not what I'm seeing. The enrollment is growing.

Use the schools that exist? We covered that earlier. Look at the report and ask: Would the letter writer use the toilets shown in the appendix? This is written like a true believer who DOESN'T have to use the school and walk a mile in the shoes of a student and can speak from the safety of the outside. Take Mom or Dad on a walk sometime and visit the school to see what it looks like inside. If you lived here, you probably remember the high school from your days here...it hasn't changed.