Response to William Lenoir PTA ‘statistics’

June 29, 2010

This is to respond to Maleah Haas and Celeste Brantolino of the William Lenoir Middle School PTA (June 26):

My old Scoutmaster would have read your letter and huffed, “Figures lie and liars figure.” I won’t go that far.

First, you accuse me of arguing that “senior adults…are not interested in…quality…education…” I didn’t say that at all. I said that “few” older citizens who DON’T have child
 ren or grandchildren in the school system are “enthusiastic” about building $19 million schools. I whole-heartedly agree with you that any grandparents worth their salt are supportive of their grandchildren and their schools.

But, please, if you are going to attack my opinions, attack what I wrote, not something else that you conveniently to attribute to me. I support a new school, but not a $19 MILLION school!

Further, congratulations on your internet research, but your statistics don’t bear on the discussion. Comparing Caldwell County with Watauga’s or Avery’s educational spending is like comparing apples and oranges, isn’t it?

Watauga County has a huge influx of STATE tax dollars into the Boone community through a little thing called Appalachian State University, plus it offers skiing and other tourist activities that attract hundreds of thousands of visitors per year. Watauga also has just one high school to support, not three.

Avery County, too, has a skiing industry, other lucrative tourist businesses (Grandfather Mountain?) and a higher education institution called Lees-McRae College. Avery also has only one high school.

Caldwell, if you recall, has seen over 10,000 furniture and textile jobs disappear in the last decade, and we’ve had a chronically high unemployment rate for much longer than the current double-dip recession. Could that be why we don’t spend as much per student?

Part of my premise was that Caldwell officials need to focus on bringing jobs to our county—good-paying, “career” jobs—to help keep our best and brightest students here after they’ve finished their educations. You didn’t address how, if our best grads move away, we in Caldwell can get ANY BENEFIT from having spent ANY money on them.

While you assert that “senior adults” care about “investing in education,” you generalize only that “they understand that it pays off in multiple dividends.” I challenge you on what those “dividends” might be when our best students move away as adults.

In your analysis of regional per-student spending, you also don’t address the fact that the previous Board of Commissioners built several new buildings and spent millions of tax dollars on non-educational priorities while raising property taxes by more than 22% in 2007.

While they were on a spending spree, why didn’t THOSE commissioners build the new middle school? Did you publicly criticize THEM? And, didn’t we elect the Republican commissioners in 2008 expressly to rein in both spending and taxation? Were you paying attention then?

In fact, what do polls now show that most Americans think is our NATION’S biggest problem? Debt?

Statistically and otherwise, you ignored all these points. I hope your logic and reasoning skills were not, themselves, products of our Caldwell county schools. I applaud your passion, ladies, but not your conclusions.