Alex Sandberg of Princeton
In response to the page one article, “Governor’s Plan for Special Education School Aid Alarms Officials”, in Tuesday’s Packet, I have to say as a student that stories like this worry me. Loss of funds, or even a series of flat aid may lead to budget restrictions for school districts. My concern is that the area too often deemed “expendable” is the arts.
Arts are an integral part of an overall education. I am an academic student who is committed to “doing school” well, but what I really enjoy are extracurricular activities like performance, art, and the gifted and talented program at my school, which include a variety of state funded programs such as Cognetics, “a team sport of the mind” that is offered by the National Talent Network .
In Cognetics, teams of up to seven students can choose from different “challenges” where the “solution” is a presentation that integrates all the arts. My team and I did this last year on civilizations, and used the Native Americans as a basis. We did research, which included interviewing some actual Native Americans. This experience took me beyond the traditional classroom and encouraged me to push the limits of what I can do.
The issue with this is that lack of funding too often means cutting of valuable extracurricular programs, such as Cognetics. If this would be the case, Gov. Corzine’s plan may do more harm than good.
Alex Sandberg
Sherbrooke Drive
Princeton
