Heads And Hearts

It is rare that the community’s most expensive enterprise — its school system — does not have its finances set for the new fiscal year by the time the fruits of all those labors in the classroom are annually harvested at graduation time. This year Newtown is struggling with knowing its own mind about the requirements of a good education. There are so many arguments in the continuing budget tug-of-war between costs and values that it can make a reasonable person’s head spin. But when the mortarboards and tassels come out for graduation ceremonies, and hundreds of teenagers attempt to temper the giddiness of the moment with the solemnity of the occasion, it is clear that Newtown knows its own heart when it comes to education: it is the single most important thing we do collectively as a community.

As always, one of the biggest challenges of the political stalemate Newtown now faces is reconciling heads and hearts and finding direction from that. Perhaps this week’s graduation will help Newtown’s body politic with that process. Putting faces to the facts and figures can serve as a reminder that we are really debating the direction of young lives as much as a budget. What is lost to students in an underfunded school? It can also be a reminder that we have to be smart about how we spend money on education. How do professional salaries and benefits, for example, correlate to excellence? Does generously compensating and supporting teachers and administrators also generously compensate and support students in their classroom experience?

Conventional wisdom holds that when we let our emotions (our hearts) control our thoughts and actions, logic and rationality go out the window. This argument suggests there is virtue in empiricism; add up the numbers, the scales will fall from our eyes, and the way will be clear. In this budget season, however, there has been much adding up of numbers in support of both a greater commitment to education and a greater sensitivity to overburdened taxpayers. All this adding up has not added up to much.

Newtown votes once again on Tuesday next week, June 26, on yet another budget proposal. The latest spending plan still is not adding up for those who want a higher education budget or for those who want a lower tax bill. Perhaps, while the images of 2012 graduation ceremonies are still clear in our heads, it may be time to let our hearts inform us that in this important business of educating the young people of Newtown, no group should presume that they will get everything they want. (The current iteration of the budget seems to have been designed for just this outcome.) But if we are to make sacrifices, whether it is in our school facilities and faculties or in our tax bills, let those sacrifices be made within the context of our commitment to protect and secure the future of those young lives we hold so dear.