Our children are our future. I think everyone agrees with this statement, no matter what side of the school issue you are on.
I did not grow up in this school district so maybe I do not completely understand the animosity, but I have lived in the Yellow Medicine/Chippewa County area for nearly my entire life. I cannot grasp why some people want our school to fail our children. No matter what the differences between the two communities are, we need to put them behind us and look to our future.
Think back to the classrooms you each had as a child. You probably had 15-20 kids in each classroom. Should our youth today not receive the same type of education that all of us had?
If this levy does not pass, the school is going to have to make cuts. I’ve heard from school officials that the cuts will be in the range of $1 million to $1.2 million. The school only has so many places they can cut spending. One of those cuts is going to have to be classroom teachers.
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Do you want your kids sitting in a room designed for 20 kids, with one teacher, and 30 other students in the room? Wouldn’t you want your kids to have as much one-on-one time with a teacher as possible?
I know that’s what I want for my child. I want my child to have the opportunity to do anything he wants, whether it is music, band, sports, or taking college courses in high school. But if this levy doesn’t pass, those things are part of the small list of discretionary spending in the school that could be cut.
Even if your kids do not go to school at YME, the state aid money generated from this levy follows your kids when they open enroll to another district or to a charter school.
Get out and vote for YME on Nov. 3. Our kids need our votes because they are the future, and only we can ensure they have the ability to become that future.
Jeremy Blackwelder
Granite Falls
