Superintendent Should Think

Outside The Box (Store)

To the Editor:

As the parent of two children in Newtown public schools, I am very sympathetic to the need to find alternative revenue sources to maintain the high standards we have for education in this town (despite an electorate too stingy to finance them). But after receiving two email blasts from the office of the superintendent exhorting me to engage in a corporate-sponsored version of a school funding lottery, I felt the need to speak up.

I am certain the superintendent had the best of intentions in mind when she sent out the first email on August 18 with the subject line “Thinkin [sic] outside the box.” The missive encouraged parents, students, and their families to participate in a national competition sponsored by department store chain Kohl’s. All we had to do was click on a link to vote, “and ask others to do so also,” and one of our schools would be eligible to receive half a million dollars from the program.

That sounds innocuous enough — until you actually click on one of the provided links. To register a vote, you must agree to share all of your basic and profile information with Kohl’s. That means all the details in your Facebook account, including your shared likes, dislikes, photos and whereabouts, must be handed over to comply with the request from the superintendent to engage in “out of the box” thinking.

Again, good intentions surely guided the decision to clutter all of our inboxes. But an official distribution list like the one used by the schools should really only be used for urgent matters related to, say, budget votes, early dismissals, or lock downs — not as a tool to promote corporate interests, no matter how nice the people at Kohl’s, with their “Expect Great Things” motto, may be.

The superintendent is spot-on in identifying the need for creative thinking to overcome our fiscal woes. But asking people to sell themselves out by giving away their personal information to a $15 billion company for the chance to participate in what is effectively an online lottery is not an “out of the box” solution. It feels more like a successful corporate duping — one that this town’s failure to provide adequate funding for our schools has unfortunately led us to consider.

By all means, vote online and give Kohl’s your status updates, etc. But I have to think it would far more effective to come up with truly creative, grassroots solutions to our education and funding issues. In any event, to borrow from that catchy Kohl’s slogan, I would expect greater things from our superintendent and the Board of Education.

Sincerely

Rob Cox

136 Castle Hill Road, Newtown                                                                     August 31, 2010