Briarcliff has once again been shnookered by their Board of Education. Terrorized into believing that if they don’t approve millions of debt, their BOE will rip the guts out of our prized educational component of our budget. And the terror plot worked, as it has previously for this and previous iterations of our BOE. Approve this budget, approve this bond, or we will push the plunger and blow up your prized academic program. We’ll shutter programs. We’ll discontinue sports. We’ll fire teachers. We’ll turn the heat down to 60 degrees and freeze your children.
And the residents of Briarcliff once again responded like good little sheep and went out to approve ridiculous $2.3 million expenditure. No one asked questions. No one sought alternatives solutions. No one asked WHY? WHY did the cost of remediating the practice field quadruple from an estimated $500K to over $2 million? WHY are we now spending more on the practice field than we are spending to recondition the game day field and track with artificial turf and the finest coverings? WHY should we spend $2 million on an odd-shaped piece of land that has no real utility other than practice situations? Can we go back and revisit the other (less expensive) alternative remediation solutions for the practice field and offer one of them to the DEC instead?
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For a few hundred thousand dollars (and no bond) we could pave over that relatively useless, tainted patch of land. THAT would have been fiscally prudent and responsible. Not terrorizing the district into believing that if they don’t approve a bond issue the BOE will torpedo our educational program. Anyone who actually believes that our BOE would (or could) actually follow through on their terroristic threat has simply not thought this through. Spend a few moments and think about this fictitious scenario: Yesterday’s bond vote fails. The school board then announces $2.3 million in cuts to core academic and sports programs (as they promised to do in their terrorist rhetoric). Now imagine the volcanic uprising of parents and students district-wide to this ridiculous course of action. Guess what would happen next? The BOE would go back to revisit the less expensive remediation options and offer one of those to the DEC for approval to SAVE our educational and sports programs.
