Liberate Yourself And Vote

To the Editor:

I was at the polls on Tuesday to hear the referendum results and at the Legislative Council meeting the following night to hear how the defeat was going to affect me. By being in these two places I learned a lot. For one, we here in America are lucky. If anyone has turned on the news in the past month, we are fighting a war with Iraq in part to help liberate their people. Their people have been silenced for decades, and have had no voice. It is time we here in America wake up and realize no one is coming to liberate us. No one is coming to give you a voice. It is something we already have here. However, only 4,200 of the people in this town took advantage of that voice last week. Only that many people cared enough about the issue at stake to speak up and only that many people were able to make a difference. No one is coming to liberate us here in America, you need to get up yourself and go vote.

I was also at the Legislative Council meeting. I was there as a student, a swimmer, a club member, and a violinist, and I learned that I am going to be hurt next year by the budget cuts. The Board of Education budget was cut by $775,000. That is a lot of money no matter how you look at it. I would like to thank the Legislative Council for not cutting the originally proposed $2.7 million, and other drastic cuts, but this amount will still hurt. Chances are the council will not add anymore back in if this budget doesn’t pass; they will take more out. So I am asking those of you who did not vote last time to please go and support it, to support the students in Newtown.

There are already 26 people in my math class. The orchestra has almost 90. There are over 40 girls on the high school swim team and over 150 kids on the Parks and Rec team. There are over 5,000 students in Newtown schools, and already this cut will hurt us. Further cuts will only hurt more. I cannot even begin to think about what would happen if the Board of Education closed the pool, cut teachers, cut the fourth grade violin program, or took other actions. Our schools are among the top in the state, and I know that is why my parents moved here. A few years back our high school was a blue ribbon school. What kind of blue ribbon school has no extra curricular activities?

Please, go out and vote for this budget. I am only 15, and I have not been given a voice yet. But if I were able to vote, I would have. I would have voted to keep Newtown’s schools among the top in the state. We here in America are lucky enough to have a voice, so use it. I would really appreciate every voter, every parent who cares about their child’s education, every teacher who cares about their job, every citizen who cares about their town, going out to vote for this budget, taking advantage of their voice. At the very least go out and vote. If you really want to make a difference, vote Yes.

Thank you,

Sarah Hemingway

10 Overlook Knoll, Sandy Hook                                  April 25, 2003