By Jacob Borgman
Dear Citizens of Ipswich,
We believe in the best possible education for all children who live in Ipswich.
We also believe in a school system which adds as much value as possible for the entire town, for each of its citizens, young, old, employed, unemployed, or retired, without unduly burdening any segment of its population.
We believe in honoring a wide range of sentiments on issues of central importance for our community, and making decisions based on sound scientific studies.
For these reasons, we believe in keeping and improving our two elementary schools.
The current plan of a single school at Doyon dismisses the character and forsakes the culture at both Winthrop and Doyon.
It removes an essential source of charm and vitality from the center of town. It ambitiously over-builds on a site of natural beauty.
Instead, we should preserve and enhance these twin school cultures. We should pledge to improve the condition of both buildings as soon as possible, because both deserve our focus.
However, just because we can’t work on them simultaneously doesn’t mean we should diminish our vision for town-wide school excellence.
This is a vision which champions equity in a meaningful way. The noble goal of “equity” has been confused by many, and abused by many, including our school committee and school building committee.
We must acknowledge that equity is not the same as equality, but rather a much richer guiding principle for fostering equal opportunity for all our children.
Countless discussions have focused on providing identical facilities for all students, where equity is sadly confused with equality.
This focus blurs the individual faces of every child, and substitutes an anonymous, homogeneous concept of a child with a generic set of needs.
Instead, our focus should be on providing all of our students, including those who, for one reason or another, depend on a downtown school. They too deserve a fair chance at success and a happy elementary experience.
It is unfortunate that both grants were not simultaneously awarded, and that we cannot proceed in lockstep toward improving both schools.
This has created an embittered feeding frenzy around the original awarded grant for Winthrop.
It is time to shift from the fear and distrust this situation has engendered toward a pledge of full support for a multi-phased, financially responsible rehabilitation of both schools.
The 420-student school option at Winthrop would immediately improve conditions at Doyon by relieving its overcrowding.
We would in turn fully devote ourselves to securing a grant for Doyon’s reconstruction.
The current two school model best meets the diverse needs of all our children, and honors the desire for equity in its truest sense.