Vote NO on UCS Bond

 Click here to learn about the zoning article -- number 10 on the town ballot.

Vote NO on the UCS bond, article 9.

* The School Board has only been interested in one hazard, the "active shooter." No risk assessment, indeed not even any casual brainstorming, has been done to consider other hazards to kids at school.

* There is but one written document analyzing this current proposal, Jen Botzojorns's notes from 2 January 2014, which explains that no one (consultant, police, government agency) would recommend the main ideas cooked up at the school board meetings during the preceding year -- no bullet-proof glass, no automatic shades, no reflective window film.

* Even though there are school security consultants, CESU/UCS did not hire any.

* At the bond hearing, with skeptical comments from citizens and no evidence to support bullet-proof glass, automatic shades or reflective window film, the School Board stripped these items, along with the expensive reception window, from the project.

* The project was never about safety, and it has turned out not really to be about security, either. With the removal of the worst ideas, what's left is the conversion of a classroom to administrative space. If there's one thing that UCS doesn't need, it's a new "administrative suite." (Architect's memo, 7/17/13)

* No population projection has been made for UCS -- We don't know if we will need that lost classroom space. (CESU has no population study for any school within the supervisory union.)

* No consideration was given to the affect of the lost classroom on the usefulness of the remaining adjacent classroom.

* There was no research in evidence to support the notion that hardening the school against "active shooters" is effective, indeed research shows just the opposite: when a school is hardened, it damages the school environment, increasing disorderly behavior.

* This proposal distracts from the important work of creating a quality learning environment.

Most kid deaths are traffic deaths. If you have been at UCS during drop-off or pick-up time, you will undoubtedly have noticed that the blind sidewalk along the multipurpose room wall is the ideal place for a kid to get a downhill running start at darting out into the school's driveway traffic. Someday, it will happen. There are other traffic-related problems around the school -- far more likely to result in calamity than the hypothetical "active shooter."

Please vote NO on the Underhill Central School Bond (Article 9).

If you have any uncertainty, vote NO. If they really think this is necessary, the school board will bring it right back to the voters, just as they do for annual budgets.