For kids of the Covid-19 generation, the hits just keep on coming. Whether they were 6 or 16 when lockdown came in March 2020, those two years of isolation and academic deprivation –- classes held remotely or on a hybrid schedule, masks instead of smiles, canceled sports seasons –- were formative, an endless epoch in their young lives. For the high school grads of 2020, there was no public pomp and ceremony, no prom. And now, for some of those same 2020s, college graduation won’t come, either, because of the unrest on university campuses from Morningside Heights to Los Angeles.
And this is why a call for empathy and understanding from Adam Fine, the East Hampton School District superintendent, struck a chord with us in March. It had to do with the school district’s plan to pierce the tax cap for its 2024-25 budget, which will be decided on by the district’s voting public on May 21.
How do you get from Covid to the tax cap? Consider what will be lost if sharp cuts have to be made to school budgets, Mr. Fine argued, taking a stand for the kids: “I do not think the timing to blow up the academic program is now, for what our kids have been through the last four years,” he said during a March 19 board meeting.
We don’t believe he was overstating how different, and how difficult, school life has been for this generation. Most of us adults may have been able to compartmentalize the pandemic and leave it in the past, but that simply isn’t so for children whose brains were still forming and who were learning not just their ABCs or algebra equations but to navigate the world outside their kitchens and bedrooms.
State test scores in reading and math are still down when compared to pre-Covid years; schools have faced behavioral challenges from students for whom the effects of isolation and remote learning are still marked. (Remember “Devious Licks”? See: “TikTok Fad Spells Trouble,” Sept. 23, 2021.) Many students with disabilities and special needs regressed in their skills and are in need, now, of additional support to catch up.
Our young people have lost so much and stand to lose even more if the budget fails.
The East Hampton School Board’s $82.88 million spending plan provides resources for them, and competitive salaries for the faculty and staff to deliver those resources. You can’t separate the two; it’s just not possible to keep programs in place but slough off employees, as some districts on Long Island are doing. There just wouldn’t be enough qualified adults left in the room.
The budget plan maintains reasonable class sizes; team sports and after-school activities that keep kids engaged, and robust counseling services.
School district officials cannot legally lobby their residents to vote “yes” on the budget, but we can. Vote “yes” in East Hampton on May 21.