A Call To Action for Mount Airy Residents
The Mount Airy Blog is committed to ensuring we communicate all the issues of the day affecting Mount Airy. Budget issues in Carroll County have resulted in a "Call to Action" regarding the expansion and modernization of Mt.Airy Middle School.
Please read below a letter to the Carroll County Commissioners from neighbor, friend and advocate, Rita Misra. Please share!
Dear Carroll County Commissioners -
In this uncertain economy many of us have had to adjust our spending in order to protect what is most important for our families and communities. Likewise, I appreciate your efforts to reduce waste in public spending and protect the taxpayers dime.
After reviewing this year's proposed budget I am writing to urge you to find a way to preserve and protect (and fully fund) our public schools. Over the last few years Carroll County Public Schools has done its best to trim waste. Consequently, CCPS has put forth an extremely conservative funding request this year. I believe that fulfilling their request is critical to ensuring that our children have the resources necessary to thrive. Reducing the County budget by deferring necessary school modernizations/renovations or denying our children access to educational resources necessary to prepare them for an increasingly competitive job market would be short-sighted and fiscally unsound.
In 2007/8 CCPS developed an Educational Facilities Master Plan that recognized the true costs and adverse educational consequences of deferring modernization of our aging schools. In 2009, our County Commissioners and the MD school construction funding board agreed that it was time to expand and modernize Mt.Airy Middle School, and planning and design of this important project began.
MAMS (built in 1958) is the oldest un-modernized middle school in Carroll County. Although North Carroll Middle (built in 1956) was modernized in 2005, modernization of MAMS has not yet been done. Although MAMS has a functional capacity of only 510; the current enrollment is over 600. For the past four years one third of the school (all of our 6th graders) spend the bulk of their school day in 10 aging portable units in a deteriorating parking lot. In addition to the fact that all of our 6th graders are in noisy and crowded "outbuildings", many of our 7th and 8th graders receive instruction in small, noisy, outdated, classrooms with class sizes exceeding 35; CCPS predicts that enrollments at MAMS will continue to grow. While an addition would provide more permanent classroom space, it would do nothing to address all of the limitations associated with other parts of the building (e.g. small and outdated cafeteria, and outdated HVAC system, ADA facilities, and educational resources/technology). Clearly the children and teachers at MAMS have not been afforded the same level of safety, security, privacy, or educational resources that children in modern/modernized schools across the County and State routinely enjoy.
This project has already received funding approval from Carroll County Public Schools, MD State Dept of Education, and the previous Board of Carroll County Commissioners. Design and Planning for this project has already been completed and funding was appropriated from impact fees that have already been collected specifically for Capital improvement projects such as schools. Pulling funding for this project now will adversely affect the quality of our children's education and will render useless significant funds already spent on the design and planning. Refusing ~$12 M of State funding already allocated for this project in these tough economic times is likely to result in significant burden on Carroll County taxpayers down the road.
I sincerely believe that the strength of Carroll County lies in the strength of our families and historic communities, and that the heart of each community lies with its children and schools. Please do all you can to provide our community schools with the resources they need to challenge and inspire our children, so that they can become productive citizens ready, willing, and able to sustain our communities and meet new challenges that lie ahead.
Thank you for your service and for considering my point of view,
Rita Misra
707 North Main St.
Mt. Airy
