The challenge

I attended the community forum on Jan. 28 and felt that the school board did an excellent job of communicating the difficult situation that we face in developing our school budget for the 2012-13 school year.

The “Board Challenge” was the name of the exercise where attendees were divided into groups and had to discuss and agree upon program cuts and tax increases to fill the potential budget gap.

Yes, it “made several participants uneasy.” These are difficult decisions.

I thought the “challenge” was an excellent way of developing community awareness of the tough choices the board is again facing this year.

I was impressed that pictures were taken of all of the finished white boards, so that the board could further analyze the conclusions that each community team had decided upon.

It was clear that our school board worked extensively to present the choices that we must make to develop a balanced budget for the upcoming school year.

It was disappointing that the article in the Feb. 3 paper titled “Warwick school board seeks...” failed to note that there were at least eight teams that participated in the “board challenge” and only one group decided not to participate.

While none of us wants any teachers to be cut or programs eliminated, we need to separate our frustration with the situation from the board, which is made up of a group of volunteers trying to determine the best outcome for a wide constituency.

Diane Rowe Warwick