Wine, cheese, and wisdom are some of the things that better with age. Being built in 1971, Middleboro High School is not one of those things. In late 2013, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges stated that Middleboro would either need to update/build the school or lose accreditation. This decision brings a lot of chaos and opinions to the town meetings. Taxes, land, and time are the biggest upsets. Why would anyone not want to have the best of the best? We want what’s best for our children, right? Is there a town in Massachusetts that does not have their own high school?
According to high school building standards of today, MHS is in last place. The classroom sizes are too small and there are classrooms without windows at all (basement classes). The building does not support a special needs program as well as inappropriate lab spaces. Something so scary, even grandfathered in, MHS does not have an automatic sprinkler system! In order to grow as a community, we should nurture our future by giving our children all they need to grow themselves and support one another.
The most voiced complaint regarding the new high school is money. Of course no one wants to pay more in taxes than they already have to. Is there a max price to spend on your child’s education? According to the town, property taxes would increases less than $600 a year over a 30 year period. If MHS loses accreditation, individual families would have to pay a lot more than this to send their child to a private high school or to another town high school.
Voting day came and went! Voters voted almost 2 to 1 in favor for a new high school. In order to be a town where people want to live or move to, we need to have what people want. People looking to settle down want good schools, low crime, and a home town feel. This small fee over 30 years will help bring in countless businesses, abundance of people, and a great education to build a future.
Mealy, Erin. 2016, September 29. New School for Middleboro? Retrieved from http://middleboroughtv.com/new-school-for-middleboro/
This is a student’s point of view on the reasons why the old school has affected students.
Reece, Eileen. 2017, November 5. Middleboro voters Overwhleming Approve New High School Retreived from http://www.wickedlocal.com/news/20171105/middleboro-voters-overwhelming-approve-new-high-school-project
This is about the voting numbers and the money it will cost for the new school. It also goes over what the new school will have and how much land will be needed for the new construction.
Seltz, Johanna. 2017, November 10. Middleborough votes yes on new high school Retrieved from https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/regionals/south/2017/11/10/middleborough-votes-yes-new-high-school/qTWoo9ZrbHCwx74BdJWRYN/story.html
This is a short write up on the cost of the new high school.
This doesn’t quite work as a proposal since it seems like the issue has already been settled (a little like arguing gay marriages should be legal when they already are). Is there some way you can tweak this to make a proposal about what should be done or how something should be done moving forward? Did the debate over school funding uncover something that should be changed in town, or some attitude that could be improved (like support for schools)? You could use the recent vote and new school to come as context for some issue going forward. (You could still use most of this–essay is quite short and could use some development anyway).
A few other issues:
–You’ll need a thesis statement–what do you propose?
–Your research sources do not have to related specifically to Middleboro–they could be more general about advantages of good education in town (better educated citizens, higher property values, etc.)
–You’ll need in-text citations in final draft–those parens after a sentence that give author’s last name or title of article if there’s no author (that’s the quick version!).
–You don’t need annotations for this one–just the citation itself.
–Works Cited entires are not quite in proper format. title of journal/newspaper or website needed. Article titles with quotation marks, not italic, Dates in wrong place.
Feel free to pass an idea or the start of a revision past me before final–I’ll be checking email often tonight and over the weekend.