Letter: Community needs to vote yes on Barrington Middle School bond

EastBayRI.com ·

To the editor:

I attended the forum for the Barrington Middle School bond held on Wednesday night. It was the first time I had been in the building, and I was sadly dismayed to see the condition of the school.   

Two years ago, my family and I moved here from a city district comprised of 20 schools, many of which are in the same condition as BMS. We chose Barrington over several other towns so that we could give our child, through our taxes, an excellent education.

The $68.4 million dollar price tag is steep, but it will only get higher with each delay.   

The state will provide a 35 percent reimbursement of the costs, however, if we do not approve the project, we will have to make do without the state’s help. We will not have a new school. In fact, what we will have is a building with Band-Aid fixes at a cost of $11,000,000, which will still need repairs down the road. 

That is unacceptable.

We live in a town blessed with parents and grandparents who want the best for their kids. We live side-by-side with elderly residents who once fought for a new building for their own kids 60-odd years ago.  

I see young people doing yard work for their neighbors. I see groups of people chatting outside the hardware store. I see the hard work our educators perform everyday. We’re on the bike path, at the beach, exercising at the Y. We are a community. And we can all come together, as a community, to provide this generation of children with the stellar education Barrington is known for.  

Allowing our children to attend an unsafe, broken, outdated school is antithesis to what I see in our community.

Vote yes for the BMS bond.

Sincerely,

Jodi Multer

Barrington