Joseph Sheppard
Special to The Citizen
The 2020-2021 budget is a good balance of tackling immediate needs, like recovering from COVID-disrupted learning, while making long-term investments in lowering class sizes, restoring art and music, and providing much needed social and emotional supports for our students. This year has been a tremendously challenging year for our students, parents and staff. We are confident that with your support of the budget this year, we can come together stronger than ever before; our students deserve nothing less.
Thankfully, after some worrying signs in the early versions of the state budget, the federal stimulus package included funding to pay for the unbudgeted costs associated with keeping our students safe and learning as best as possible during the pandemic. On a momentâs notice, the Auburn Enlarged City School District had to distribute laptops and internet hotspots to our students. We also had to take on ever-changing rules for sanitation from deep cleaning every surface multiple times daily, to purchasing expensive electrostatic sanitizers to deal with the aerosolized nature of the virus, to temperature screening machines at the entrance of all of our buildings. The school district also became the largest distributor of food in the county. With students not in our buildings, we knew that so many of our families relied on the schools to provide at least some of the three square meals they need to be healthy. Our staff stepped up to distribute these meals, even at the height of each terrible surge, and even set up a food pantry at Genesee Elementary to help the community.