Schools in Lewiston serve an astonishing variety of needs. They push the most able and curious students to greater achievements (witness the state champion mock trial team), teach basic life skills to special needs students, provide meals and other goods to students who cannot get these at home, offer counseling to traumatized and otherwise challenged youngsters, teach and keep track of kids whose first language is not English, teach social skills like listening, respect, and tolerance, deal with anxious parents, and try their hardest to accommodate as many individual needs as they can.

As a long-term (part-time) sub in the middle school for the past couple of years, I have seen teachers and counselors go out of their way, pretty much daily, to make the system work for students. None of them is paid what they are worth to the kids, their parents and the city in general.

A lack of resources compromises the schools’ ability to serve the many and often pressing needs of students. We must go to the polls on July 9 and vote to pass the budget.

Mary Hunter, Lewiston