As the only negative vote on two issues bought before the Falmouth School Board in early April, I wanted to now admit that my vote against the budget was based upon a false assumption, one cleared up by my wife, not anyone in the faculty, administration or Falmouth School Board. The vote was a continuation of my concerns about the absence of need for early-childhood foreign languages, which we learned at a workshop in 2011 would save the district $150,000. Using the example of our grandchildren, I believed that starting foreign languages before the teenage years, when they could, for example, be immersed in the country where a foreign language was primarily spoken, was an unnecessary expense.

Studies have now shown that younger children who can speak at least two languages significantly expand their brains. I wish that someone had pointed this out to me when I asked whether there was some other educational reason for early foreign language education. Would this knowledge have changed my vote? I don’t know, but there would have to have been a different reason for not supporting the budget.

My second negative vote was based on the inability of the School Board to separate the required (in my judgement) need to connect the Middle School to the new, voter-approved, wood boiler system from the rearrangement of the Middle School classrooms to better suit its current use. While the board was not given the chance to make that separation, the voters will be given that opportunity in June.

David Snow
Falmouth