No one likes not being able to decide how money that they are assessed is spent, especially in today's economic times. The frustrating part is when those who have to make the decisions of what is important do research and deliberate only to get trounced by those with few real facts or unrelated facts.
The school board is faced with many decisions, some of which they do not have much control over due to legislative guidelines. The Blaine County School District has a forward-thinking financial advisor who was able to do creative financing for new schools, new programs and new technologies that have made our district one of the best. While other districts are faced with cutting of programs due to the need to rebuild facilities, we are launching more programs for better learning.
If you at least compared New York school programs to ours dollar per dollar and program per program, that would have made sense. It takes ongoing training and money to continue to implement educational programs like International Baccalaureate but they could cancel that to trim the budget.
What the recreation sector of Hailey has failed to do is mirror the district's ability to follow growth trends; if they had we would also be seeing a recreation bond to implement a larger and better pool facility plus a public golf course. What many criticize, like land acquisition, building of new schools, and levies and bonds, is what has kept our district from trailer teaching and legal issues.
All in all I respect this district for the programs implemented and the ones that were not implemented, like artificial turf. Let those who have previously been involved with school budgets cast the stones, or sit down with the advisor and ask questions.
Sheri Thomas
Hailey
