Committee for Equity and Excellence in Education

Over the past five years, the OPRF School Board has taken millions of dollars that should have been used to pay for students’ education and used it to pay for capital expenses. Now, they plan to take $14 million more. They have scheduled a vote at the May 28th school board meeting to transfer these funds from the education and operations funds to the capital projects fund. This is misdirection of monies that should be used to pay for teachers, for aides, for targeted tutoring, for remediation, for acceleration – for educating our young people. The physical facilities of a school building are certainly important, but they should never come at the expense of teaching and supports. The availability of these funds for construction confirms what we have been saying for years – and what the district has been claiming is true – there is plenty of money to pay for whatever educational supports our students need. The board should move now to implement those supports.