To the editor:

I feel truly blessed to live on South Whidbey. It’s a wonderful community and great place to raise a family.

Overall, I have been very pleased with the public school experience my children have had. It’s difficult to run a great school program with the current levels of state and national funding. Our citizens need to demand an improvement to the education funding formula our state is currently using.

But until that happens, it’s up to our local community to make up the difference.

I would invite others to view the decision to move the middle school program to the high school campus as an opportunity to create something great for our kids instead of debating over and over again the reasons for the decision.

While there are many unknowns, and still some questions to be answered, I trust that the school board, in conjunction with the district administration, staff and community members, have looked at all the relevant data and made the best choice for the education of our students, as well as their health and safety, given our current financial and enrollment situation. So while I may not know all the facts and figures myself, I support their decision.

Keeping the identity and programs intact for the middle school kids will be in serious jeopardy if no changes are made to the current high school building prior to their move. As will appropriate facilities for electives and core classes for all kids at that facility. And voting no on the bond will not keep the program at the Langley campus.

The LMS building is a great and historical building with lots of memories for people. People carry those memories with them. It’s like the family home; it was a great place to raise kids with lots of great spaces to play and where many memories were made. But when the children grow up and move away, it’s too big of a house for mom and dad alone.

So if we had enough students to keep it open, then we should. But we don’t.

Although enrollment was above budgeted estimates (schools want that to happen instead of the reverse), our overall enrollment is still down this year over last. Enrollment is down about 500 students over the past 10 years. That is a lot of classrooms and teachers.

I don’t want LMS to close. But I do want our limited funds to go towards quality teachers and programs, not to maintaining an older facility that is too big for our student population to be able to fund.

Change can be difficult, but it’s often necessary, and more often than not, turns out to be a good thing.

I challenge the voters of this community to support kids and what’s best for their education, not adults’ ideas of what must be preserved.

If you have questions about the bond and the decisions behind it, please attend the bond forum to be held at 9:30 a.m. Saturday,

Oct. 9 at the high school. Our future, not just the kids, depends on it.

Shelly Ackerman

Langley