The Price of an Education

Siri Kanter, Staff Writer|December 11, 2015

The Westport School system is envied by towns throughout Connecticut. It admired by principals, superintendents, and teachers from other districts from across the state. The teachers who work in kindergarten through 12th grade play an extensive role in making Westport schools as good as they are.
Teachers drive for up to an hour as they commute to and from school Some of these teachers, who come from areas all around Connecticut, do not have as good of a school system complete with advanced learning, incredible sports programs, and various after-school clubs.

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This issue does not get enough attention.

Teachers who are not residents of Westport have to pay a yearly fee of $6,000. Therefore, if an out-of-town teacher were to enroll his or her child(ren) in only the last four years of school at Staples, the cost would reach $24,000 per child. If they were to do it as the normal K-12 years, the number would continue to escalate even more.

This policy is not only unreasonable but also unfair to those who dedicate their careers to working for the benefit of children’s learning, who spend hours each day transporting to and from school, and who have to deal with issues their students struggle with every day.

Their children deserve to be learning in the positive learning environment that Westport offers .
One Westport elementary school teacher, talked with me about the issue.

“Moms and Dads who cannot afford such a good school district make sacrifices driving far distances to work, not being able to go to special school events, after school activities or sporting events for their kids who are so far away.” This is only one of the sacrifices teachers who don’t have the money to enroll their kids in Westport schools go through. The teacher went on to say that “If our kids were allowed to go here tuition-free, they [the out-of-town teachers] would naturally get to spend more time with them [their kids] and thereby potentially increase job satisfaction, which would boost morale.”
The point cannot be stressed enough that teachers who cannot afford to live in Westport have to deal with unfair, neglectful policies that the Westport schools have set up.

The teacher so perfectly concludes, “Westport teachers are an asset to the district and the perk of letting our kids go to school in Westport would be a small gesture of appreciation. If anything, Westport should be flattered that educators who know the system inside and out are choosing Westport as a school district for their kids!”