Before your referendum vote, talk to a BCS parent
To the editor:
I was not going to write a letter about the referendum; I’ve rather enjoyed taking a more passive role in local policy debates than my former job allowed me. However, after scrolling through some opinions about it, I feel compelled to add some context to what observers with no students in the district might not see or understand.
Whether you agree with every decision that every leader of Brown County Schools has made over the years or not is irrelevant when considering the district’s referendum request of 12 cents per every $100 of assessed property value. For my family, this will mean $5.90 per month more than I am already paying. Do I want to pay more taxes? No, but it’s $5.90, and if you own less property than we do, your increase will be even less than that. Do I think that everything BCS has spent money on in the past was justified? No, but school finance is not my area of expertise, and I am not going to hold some past decision made by people who are no longer involved in BCS against current BCS employees. We move on, keeping in mind the most important thing: The quality of public education we are providing for Brown County students. If you have no students in the district currently, please talk to parents who do, and ask them why they are there.
I have been a Brown County Schools parent since 2013. My children have attended every school but Sprunica, but now I have two at Helmsburg and one at the high school. For the most part, my boys have had teachers who functioned like backup parents. They established trust, recognized our kids’ individual strengths and weaknesses, showed genuine care in trying to rectify any academic or emotional struggles, praised them when they prevailed, and, in short, loved them when both of their parents had to be working to provide for them in other ways. The school is a huge part of their community. I couldn’t dream of taking them anywhere else, even though now, I work out of county and have the means and a geographic excuse to do so. Their world would collapse; these are people who know them, know their stories, and heck, are basically raising them. We’ve also had a couple of teachers who didn’t connect well with us or with our boys. Either they were brand-new to teaching and didn’t seem to know how to handle a less-than-attentive classroom, or they were tired, frustrated, and clearly looking to get out, and, as a result, didn’t seem as engaged as we’d like them to be. Those other types of teachers, thankfully, have been few and far between.
The reality now is that several great teachers are leaving Brown County Schools. The ones I know of are motivated to do so by a variety of factors: Housing here is too expensive for what they make so they already live out of county, which results in higher transportation costs to get to work. They’ve been offered a job somewhere else — maybe closer to home — that pays multiple thousands more, with fewer intense needs among their students or more financial resources in the district. They’re worried that if they stay in Brown County — which has been losing students, due, I believe in great part, to high housing costs and a lack of good-paying jobs in the county — their jobs will be cut or their school will be closed, or, at the very least, they’ll end up toiling for years in a low-pay district with no realistic hope of a true cost-of-living pay increase, because per-student funding isn’t adequate and the state doesn’t provide meaningful other ways to make up for it.
Unless they have a well-to-do spouse, or are saints, people who are really good at what they do can’t keep working forever in a low-pay, often low-respect field just because they love it or they feel called to do it. They’re going to be poached by another employer or they’re going to finally get fed up and find their own way out. Maybe that’s the way it was 30 years ago; you just stayed in one job and you quietly and patiently did your thing for whatever pay you got. Today’s job market — especially in fields for which demand for qualified, experienced employees outstrips supply — isn’t like that.
As a parent who depends on BCS, I do not want the teachers left in this district to be those who feel they have no other choices. I want them to feel respected and supported with fair compensation for their years of experience and the education investment required to do their job well. I want them to choose Brown County when they do have other choices. But to do that, we have to give them the means to stay.
Without a “good” school system, Brown County will cease to be a real place with real people living behind the facades of a quaint downtown and a picturesque countryside. You want reliable workers in your shops, entrepreneurs creating jobs, nurses at your bedside when you need them? Fund the schools.
You won’t have people left to work here if you don’t maintain our school community; if families have to go elsewhere for school, they will become part of those communities. A lot of work needs to be done in several areas to truly make Brown County an attractive and financially sustainable place to “live, work, and play,” as the tagline goes. It’s going to take decades and some mind-expanding exercises to figure out how to bring jobs here and ease the prohibitively expensive housing situation. But in the meantime, we cannot let our school community wither. It is an equally essential leg of the economic stool.
Vote “YES” on the Brown County Schools referendum. Whether you have kids in school or not, this vote greatly affects the future of your beloved Brown County.
Sara Clifford, Brown County
Thanks to all for Art Colony Weekend
To the editor:
We wish to thank the many community partners who helped to make Brown County Art Colony Weekend a wonderful success this year. The annual celebration took place Sept. 9 through 11, 2022.
Our partnerships included Artist Associates of Brown County, Brown County Art Gallery, Brown County Historical Society, Brown County Public Library, Brown County Visitors Center, Indiana Heritage Arts, IU Jacobs School of Music, Jackson’s Auction and Real Estate Company and T.C. Steele State Historic Site as well as volunteers Patricia Lloyd and Linda McQueary.
Our appreciation extends to sponsors Joanne Bennett, Nashville Arts &Entertainment Commission, Cindy and Rick Colglazier, Austin Insurance Agency, Inc., Brenda and Rick Kelly, McGowen Insurance Group and Toby Myers.
Lastly, many thanks to those who attended the events. Brown County’s rich art history and continuing presence of artistic life is celebrated during Art Colony Weekend every September!
Andra Walters, Executive Director, Brown County Art Guild
