Hard sell: Uniontown school proposal short on details
Let’s get this straight: A couple of unnamed private foundations may be interested in pumping money into a $43 million renovation of Uniontown High School, reportedly because they are interested in spurring economic revitalization? That’s the word from school board director Ronald Machesky, who says the foundation cash would help defray the project’s hefty cost to taxpayers. Apparently, the foundations are willing to help out taxpayers in exchange for what’s being called “curriculum change.”
The vagaries of this plan are numerous. Exactly what type of change do the foundations have in mind? Would the state permit them? Would the public accept and support them? How much money are we talking here? Who would it be coming from? What precisely is “curriculum change”?
Machesky told his board that the renovated high school “should be more for the future,” but it’s hard to ascertain exactly what that means. If this plan yields some type of cutting-edge education, more power to Machesky and those who would support it. But in the absence of more details and a thorough airing of the proposal, we tend to stick with the old axiom that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.