Thank you for the time you invested in addressing our concerns about the Perryville High School track and the urgency with which you moved to propose a solution. As you can tell from the outpouring of support from our PHS families and community members, we are very proud of the efforts of our student athletes and we want them to have the facilities and support they need and deserve to be successful in both academics and athletics.

I’m thrilled that everyone involved worked to together to find a tentative solution for this issue but the deterioration of our track surface is just a symptom of a long standing problem–the county’s history of failing to adequately fund CCPS–especially in the areas of capital and small capital projects.

In recent years, CCPS has been forced to defer $47 million in needed maintenance projects because they did not receive funding. Buildings and facilities can only be neglected for so long before disrepair becomes dilapidation and refurbishment becomes replacement.

More Examples of Needs

In some cases our children are working and playing in deplorable conditions. The thought of children in a school with the roof failing to the point of students putting out buckets in the classroom to catch water falling from the ceiling is heartbreaking and should be an embarrassment to all citizens of the county. The maintenance team at Conowingo Elementary and CCPS have made extraordinary efforts to remedy the leaks and cleanup after they occur and, while the building has repeatedly been tested and found to be free of mold, we all know that enough water for a long enough period of time will result in mold growth. And mold growth contributes to or exacerbates illnesses like asthma and allergies in both the children who are the school’s students and the adults who are the teachers and support staff, resulting in days lost from learning and teaching. You see, I was that elementary school student with asthma and allergies and I routinely missed time every spring and fall when the weather changed and my symptoms worsened–and I wasn’t in a school where I was exposed to mold growth–I can only imagine how ill I would’ve been if I had been in such an environment for 6 or 8 hours a day.

This is just one example of the many desperately needed projects within the CCPS system. These are not frivolous requests for amenities; in most cases, these projects are to protect the county’s previous investment in a facility built using taxpayer funds and failure to maintain these facilities is a dereliction of the county’s stewardship responsibilities.

Funding for Education

In the last month, I’ve been asked by several people how I expect the county to fund the CCPS budget. I don’t pretend to understand all the complexities of budgets and funding but I do know that there is a segment of the county’s population that understands the need for taxes and believes in the concept of the greater good. As I said when I spoke to the county council in March, my husband and I have always explained taxing to our boys like this: “The Bowmans don’t mind paying taxes because we like to know that police and fire companies will show up if we call 911, we like having our streets and roads maintained, and, especially this winter, we like knowing that our streets will be plowed in the snow. Above all, we don’t want children and senior citizens to do without.” We expect our taxes to be spent wisely but we believe in the necessity of collecting them.

School Athletic Facilities are a Part of Education Too

Many of us agree that the opportunity to participate in school athletics is a key part of the American education experience. Daily practices and games after school encourage students to be physically active while also giving them something constructive to do with that period between dismissal and their parents’ arrival home in the evening; in some cases, this may be all we have to do to keep some of our most at-risk youth from making poor choices that could impact the rest of their lives. But well-maintained facilities are necessary for these athletic activities and many facilities in Cecil County have fallen into disrepair or do not meet the needs of their communities. Right now, our football and soccer fields are more dirt than grass, our softball and baseball fields have large ruts that lead to turned ankles and “bad hops”, and the wooden basketball court at Bo Manor is severely warped. The rundown nature of these facilities detract from the academic success of our schools and, anecdotally, have led families to choose to buy homes in neighboring counties with better high school athletic faculties.

Fiscal Restraint Isn’t Always the Best Answer

While we all understand the need for fiscal restraint, restrictions that are too tight or in place too long can be detrimental to a community. The physical state of the school facilities in our county has deteriorated because the county has repeatedly denied the school system the resources needed to maintain the infrastructure.

Seeing is Believing

In the past few weeks, it’s become clear to me that the members of the council and the executive are not as familiar with the good work as well as the needs of the individual schools in our county as you could be and I encourage you to change that. To show your support of the students in our schools I encourage you to develop a plan that allows a council member or the executive to visit every school in the CCPS system every calendar year–visit the schools when there are students and teachers in the buildings or stop by the athletic fields in the afternoons to experience our community spirit as we cheer on our student athletes–and I guarantee that you will see the positive results and potential of our investment in education.
Respectfully,

Frances K Bowman

Emailed 4/15/14 to:

Tari Moore–County Executive–[email protected]
Alan McCarthy–Vice President–[email protected]
Joyce Bowlsbey–[email protected]
Michael Dunn–[email protected]
Diana Broomell–[email protected]
Robert Hodge–President–[email protected]

(In the interest of full disclosure: the email actually included the line “I encourage you to strategic plan yada yada.” I was in a hurry to leave for Disneyworld that day, what else can I say.)