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Health & Fitness

VOTE "YES" TO MOVE FORWARD!

Here's a perspective from a former Board of Education member, former town councilman, AND retired school teacher Tim Curtis: "My wife and I moved to Windsor in 1984 from Massachusetts. We were looking for a suburban town with a diverse population where we could raise a family and be close to our jobs. We had heard nice things about Windsor by word of mouth. So, we decided to give Windsor a try; and, after renting in Windsor for a year, we decided to make it permanent and bought our first house. We have had no regrets, sending our two daughters through the Windsor public school system. They both went on to earn their college degrees. Windsor takes its education and town politics very seriously, at times passionately. I hope this blog can generate some discussion on the education side. I don't consider myself an authority, but I have had some experiences to share that could be useful. I have spent sixteen years as an elected official in Windsor, six on the BOE and ten on the Town Council. And for twenty-six years while living in Windsor, I was a middle and high school teacher in East Granby. Windsor and East Granby are two towns that are right next to each other geographically. Yet, in educational and demographic terms, they are quite different, particularly based on the limited indicators that the State considers important to rank towns, indicators such as standardized test scores, which puts towns in competition with each other on a playing field that is not level. It took Hartford Magazine to give Windsor a #1 ranking with an indicator it considered important: "Most Bang for the Buck". And awards have recently been given to both our middle school and our high school. I have strong ties to both Windsor and East Granby, and I value those ties equally. This is the background for my upcoming blogs. But first we need a budget. This year, East Granby's budget was voted down by four votes. On the second try, the budget passed by four votes. So, East Granby can move forward. Windsor needs to move forward, too. I encourage Windsor taxpayers to vote Yes on the upcoming budget vote. A resounding message was delivered by the voters the first time. It will be a heavy lift to turn enough of those No votes to Yes in just one round. But I hope it can be done. No matter when we pass the budget, Dollar Tree will still be here, the achievement gap will still be here. And we will be left to deal with those issues as best we can with limited resources. Let's not hold on to our buck so tightly that we jeopardize our bang."

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