Dear Editor,
This may strike a nerve, but with the Dodgeville School District asking taxpayers to approve additional funding through a referendum, it seems like the right time to ask some broader questions about what our schools truly need in order to educate all of our kids well.
A strong public school district is one of the foundations of a strong community, right alongside good employers like Lands’ End, a well supported public library, quality health care, an outstanding state park, and other institutions that make a place vibrant and worth calling home. I want our schools to have the resources they genuinely need, and I believe a community should be willing to invest in them.
But that investment should also invite us to look carefully at how those resources are distributed.
I’m all for athletics, physical exercise, teamwork, school spirit, and healthy competition. My concern is the disproportionate amount of attention and resources that may be devoted to sports compared with other interests, talents, and opportunities. My beef isn’t with sports themselves.
It’s whether the balance of spending, facilities, staff time, and attention reflects the full range of students we are responsible for educating. Not every child wins the genetic lottery that makes athletics a natural place to shine. Some discover themselves through music, theater, art, robotics, debate, journalism, skilled trades, science, technology, or pursuits we may not even have imagined yet. Those activities also teach collaboration, discipline, creativity, resilience, leadership, and teamwork.
So as we taxpayers are being asked for another contribution, perhaps we should also ask: What do our schools truly need to educate our children well, and how can we spend those dollars as equitably as possible so that every student has a meaningful opportunity to participate, belong, develop a talent, and excel?
Maybe the balance is already just right. If so, the data should show it. But when a community is being asked to invest more, I think it is entirely reasonable to ask not only how much we need, but whether what we spend reflects all the children our public schools are here to serve.
Claudia Looze, Highland, WI