So this is what we’ve come to — putting our school properties up for sale because we refuse to commit resources to education.
The South Brunswick School District — like far too many others in the state — is looking into selling advertising space on school property to generate revenue, an effort that has been made necessary because of state budget cuts and a general unwillingness to consider real school funding reform.
I can’t blame the district for moving in this direction, even if I find the notion of commercialized school space deplorable. If the state is not going to follow through on its obligation to make sure that all schools have the needed funding, then local districts really have no choice.
The problem is part of the larger failure in the United States to commit real money to schools. Rather than fix the problems we have in our educational system, we employ gimmicks like the advertising gambit and gut the public education system with charters and vouchers and a slew of rote tests that measure nothing.
Our public schools are our most important resource, the one unifying civic institution in a fragmenting nation. But we have little concern for that. Instead, we are prepared to gut them and turn them into just another area where commerce can be done.
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- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Hank Kalet 