In Candace Leary’s May 5 column, “The Widening Income Gap,” she makes an argument in opposition to a new Norwood High School. From the column: “Many other Massachusetts towns with lower average annual incomes cannot afford to build, operate, or maintain the deluxe facilities that wealthy towns have.”
I appreciate people being opposed to the building of a new high school, but would hope they would base their arguments with factual data, and spare us the use of the same tired and worn-out rhetoric. I don’t believe that proponents of a new high school have ever asked for a “deluxe” facility. Maybe it is the guesstimate at the cost of the new school that causes her to use the word “deluxe” (though no cost estimate is completely accurate at this point). Whatever her reasoning, her column would have been more credible had she used some factual data to form her argument. She could have given information as to the proposed square footage of each classroom, and how that compares to the current NHS, and to other “deluxe” facilities. Maybe list some of the amenities included, if any, and how they might be out of the scope of an “educational” need.
Then we, as taxpayers, could make our own determination as to if the new NHS is in fact “deluxe.” Instead, Ms. Leary thinks we should take her word for it. Hopefully the taxpayers of Norwood are smarter than that.
