MWDN Endorsement – “Year after year, Ashland officials have tightened the town's belt. Two years ago, they cut spending and laid off town employees, hoping voters would appreciate the effort and approve funding to restore the positions the next year. But the voters shot down an operating override of Proposition 2 1/2 worth just under $2 million last year anyway.

Saying "enough is enough," however, doesn't change the arithmetic problem Ashland faces. When there's not enough revenue to cover the expenditures, something will have to be cut. So voters face another override decision on May 20. Without nearly $500,000, school libraries serving grades K-8 will be closed, two teachers will be lost, higher fees imposed for school sports and bus fees raised from $220 to $280 a year, per student, with no family cap. We urge a YES vote on Ashland override.”

Bob Powderly, Resident and Finance Committee Chair – “Ashland’s 2008 override is substantially different from the $2 million override on the 2007 ballot…The schools made convincing arguments addressing elements of the override request.  School libraries are significant to the learning process.  The considerable increase in athletic fees sends a “don’t play” message to our students, sending our kids to the streets with idle time.  Athletics teach valuable life skills.”

Rich Boccuzzi – “The neighboring communities around us have passed so many overrides (30!), to keep up with the cost of living, which has grown faster than the 2 1/2% that the town is limited to. Our town has never passed an (operational) override. Enough is enough.”

Cecelia Doucette – “I hope the citizens of Ashland will vote for this important measure.  Yes, it is a Band-Aid to a bigger problem, but an important Band-Aid nonetheless…. After the override is passed, we’ll push to resolve Ashland’s larger problems at the State level with equitable local aid funding.  But we cannot afford to let this gash happen to our schools for next year.”

Angela Rizzolo – “Ashland has since been one of the fastest growing school districts in the state, yet we are now faced with an education budget that is potentially less than we had five years ago.

Most would agree that education is the "difference maker" for many children. Only education can prepare our children to become the state's future businesspeople, educators and leaders. I want my child to get a good education from our public schools - I don't want to leave Ashland to accomplish this.

Our school officials have applied for every grant they could, they've raised fees, they've used volunteers - but they have now "hit a wall." Our School Committee and administrators are doing the best they can with available funding but they need the voters' help to keep our K-8 libraries open, save teacher positions and keep busing and sports fees affordable for all students.”

James D. Prybyla – “I understand that some voters are saying, "Why should I pay for the schools if I don't have children in school?" In my opinion that is a short-sighted comment. It conveniently ignores the fact that those same people likely received a public education many years ago, and went to schools funded by other citizens without children. “

Brian Merson – “If we had funded our town and schools to the same degree (per capita) as our neighboring communities, our budget would be about $2M richer (probably more). Instead of talking about what services to cut in order to reduce our budget by $1.5M or so, we would be talking about how we could improve the town's services and schools, or make things easier for the citizens who need it most.”

Dr. John Reap – “The truth is that with the proposed cuts and increased fees, not all of our town’s children will have an opportunity. The proposed fees will be prohibitive for many families in Ashland.

As a town, we should do our best to make sure the hard working families of our town aren’t the ones left to fend for themselves. We are a community. We should act like one. Please vote Yes on May 20^th.”

Gerard Vernes – “Ashland will become “the town that closed its school libraries.”  Once a town gets labeled with a negative tag line, it can take years to undo the damage to a town’s image.  Remember Nyanza?

Brian Merson – “…the average family tax bill is up 151% since 2000. We are all paying more in taxes…However, virtually all of this is due to the increase in home values over that time (193%). In other words, people are NOT being taxed more because the taxes are higher, people are being taxed more because their property is worth more… our hi-lo rank is virtually unchanged since 2000. Second, note that the overall assessed value of property in Ashland increased 217% in this time, but only 395 new parcels were created. That means the vast majority of the increase came from value appreciation, not from new growth.

Do we really think that town services are better now than they were in 2000? I think the town is being better run now. I think the town and the schools have worked VERY hard to be more efficient and cost effective (which is great), but I don't believe that services are really better now than they were in 2000. Hours are reduced in many departments. Any number of services have been trimmed or cut or now charge additional fees. Staffing is lower. I think that these folks are all working very hard, with less resources, fewer people, increasing costs, and more citizens to serve.] 

Do we feel like our children are getting a better education now than they were in 2000? As good an education? They (schools) are doing their very best given that they have more kids, higher costs, and fewer resources.] Are the school supplies as good or as plentiful? There are stories of kids sharing text books and work books. There are roofs that leak and have for a long time. Does this generation of kids have more or less access to educational opportunities outside of the core curriculum than did previous generations? Do they get more or less physical education? More or less arts and music? Do we have the sense that we are really educating more or less well-rounded people? 

We built a new high school. The town hall and the library are focal points of many small towns and ours have been beautifully renovated. Again, I think those things are nice and worthwhile. I'm sure that we have also made some basic infrastructure improvements and repairs.  Anything else? Anything to really improve (or even maintain the schools)? Anything major to improve or maintain the infrastructure other than spot repairs and upgrades? Anything to significantly improve or maintain a high level of emergency services? Mostly we are getting by on some very good, hard working, increasingly thinly-stretched and overworked people, who are doing their darnedest to tread water and maintain reasonable service levels in our town and our schools.

We haven't passed any overrides to provide truly adequate funding for our town and schools and all the people who work in both to support the citizens of this town. We haven't provided the same level of support for our town as our fellow citizens in neighboring communities have for theirs. In short, we've done some, but we haven't done anywhere near "enough". [Just one man's opinion.]

There are those (possibly many) in town who somehow feel that the school system already has more than enough resources to educate the kids effectively. They seem to feel that these services are either not necessary, or the cuts are not really going to happen. They seem to believe that there is always more room to cut without affecting the educational results...To me, one important question is whether the school system really has the money to to its job effectively. If not, one would expect to eventually see fall-offs in testing scores. The question is, where would any such fall-offs show up first?

In K-3, kids are learning their foundation skills. They are learning how to learn. And they are still critically dependent on quality teachers. Things like class size matter more here. As it so happens, in our town, these are also the kids who have essentially had their entire educational experience occur during a recent period of severe budgetary constraints.

Frankly, this is what we appear to be seeing in the MCAS results for the younger kids. [FYI - Higher grades seem to be showing more reasonable results, although the 2007 numbers for grade 4 (math and English) and grade 5 (math) aren't great either.]

MCAS testing results are available for only the last 2 years for our third graders. The data set is admittedly not large, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Like I said, it's difficult to say you have any kind of definite trend from only two years....The truth is, we can't prove it one way or the other. Time will tell.