Letter to the Editor: It takes a village—be a villager

I always end up feeling disheartened during school budget voting season because I hear a fairly common sentiment from some members of my community: that because they don’t personally have kids attending schools in the district, they shouldn’t be required to pay taxes to support the schools.

As someone who loved my home district so much that I chose to dedicate my academic life and career to researching and studying schools, I feel this line of thinking is misguided. Those are your kids. Every kid who lives in our town or our county is our child. We owe the next generation kindness, respect and the opportunity to receive a fulfilling public education, and it is our duty as a community to always strive to give new students a better education than the one we received.

Decades of research shows that students who attend schools that are well-supported and funded by the community are more likely to graduate, more likely to earn a livable wage and less likely to become unhoused or involved with the criminal justice system. Positive social repercussions like these that come from good schooling are known as “neighborhood effects,” and the likelihood of them occurring is directly in the hands of us as a community. Support for our local schools is an investment that pays for itself thousands of times over that we should never take for granted.

Whether or not someone chooses to vote for a budget based on its content is one thing, but I feel that rejecting the idea that one should pay taxes to schools because their children are grown is another. Even if someone’s children have graduated and moved away, it is important for them to realize that every child deserves a comprehensive education, and it is our obligation as adults and neighbors to provide it.

Rox Aclin
Goshen