A Reader Responds to a Recent Posting

“Schoolmahal.” That is what a recent poster on the Lisbon Reporter called an institute of learning that has yet to be built. My question to that poster is “have you seen the plans yet, are you psychic or just bloviating?” I’m not sure if the poster has even visited our dilapidated ~50 year old school to observe firsthand the staggering (literally) condition of it. If he/she has, I’m sure a different opinion would/should be had. Instead of worrying about the yet-to-be decided on “schoolmahal,” maybe we should be concerned if a school is needed. Which if you have taken the tour you would agree that it most certainly is. Instead, he/she assumes, and we all know what assume means. (Makes an a** out of u and me.) I do agree with the posters inference that we shouldn’t build something that is so extravagant that we won’t be able to afford it. The poster presumes that the citizens of Lisbon have no voice in the planning and construction of a new high school. We do! (planning committees, etc…) Those who don’t think they have a right to be heard are most likely the folks that sit back and make decisions based on conjecture of the ill informed and their ilk—probably one and the same.

One of the most ominous outcomes of not building new or overhauling our high school is the looming accreditation from NEASC. If accreditation is lost, which is horrendous as is, the ripple effect will be far worse. The following are a couple of downfalls the community will endure with unaccredited high school:

· When admissions officers review applications, they notice two students have the same grades, win the same awards, take part in the same extracurricular activities. The sole difference between them is that one student went to a high school accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and the other's school was not. So could the lack of accreditation be the deciding factor? Yes!

A quote from Annie Cappuccino, senior associate director of admissions at Brown University. "In general, we expect a school will be accredited and would notice certainly if a school was not."

I’m not saying all our kids are going to Brown University, but if the opportunity arises shouldn’t they at least start out on a level playing field?

· When people with children, or just folks in general are choosing a place to raise their children, what do you think is the first thing that they investigate? You guessed it. The school system. And what do you think will happen when the discover that the high school for which their children would attend is not only not accredited, but lost their accreditation (which is much worse)? Your supposition is correct. They will choose not to live here. And what’s more disheartening is that you’ll see that people that live here and love it here will make the hard decision to move away because of the non-accredited high school. What will be left? I don’t know (I’m not going to stay long enough to find out). But what I do know is that if the population goes down you still have bills to pay as a community and the cost will be much higher than if the decision is made to not fix the “money pit”, or to build something we can reasonably afford as a town.

At any rate, I’m not here to make cutting remarks to anyone directly, but as a town I feel it would be totally and absolutely negligent to flout the professionals (NEASC) that not only assessed the facility, but could (by taking accreditation away) make graduating from Lisbon High School a hindrance instead of a crowning achievement.

Signed, A Lisbon Concerned Citizen