Soon Monmouth voters will vote to stay in or leave Regional School Unit 2.

I hope that Monmouth residents’ primary concern is for the welfare of the children we are educating. I have seen dramatic improvement in areas that were seriously deficient before consolidation, including information technology, food service, transportation and, most importantly, our coordinated curriculum.

RSU 2 is at the forefront of Standards Based Education. Recently teachers from other schools visited Monmouth schools to see these improvements in action. Our administrators work daily with teachers and students because RSU 2 has the structure that employs professionals managing our transportation, food service, information technology and buildings and grounds programs.

Leaving the RSU will force our principals back to having to manage these non-student/teacher issues daily, taking them away from classroom issues.

How would leaving RSU 2 make schools in Monmouth better? Withdrawal at this time, just as we begin to see successes of this partnership, is wrong for our educational system. After going through the turmoil and adjustments that happen with major change, leaving RSU 2 will result in several years of “normalizing” as we work to hire a new superintendent, business manager, special education director and others, with no assurance they’ll be even comparable in expertise to the great people we now employ.

Some say we can address some of these issues simply by joining with Winthrop. Is Winthrop’s leadership committed to Standards Based Education? Are we ready to bus our students to Winthrop? Would this partnership make education in Monmouth schools better?

I don’t believe it would, and I will vote “no” on the question of withdrawal from RSU 2.

Richard Howard

Monmouth

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