To the Editor:

While many continue to be frustrated over the decision to consolidate our schools, at least some in the administration as well as teachers and, most importantly, students are working to form bonds between students that currently attend Pilgrim and Warwick Veterans High Schools.  For instance, current Warwick Vets Principal Gary Habershaw, who will be the principal of Pilgrim High post-consolidation, has been walking the halls of Pilgrim High and talking with the students. But perhaps more encouraging was an action that was a twist on “school spirit.”  With the Warwick Vets girls field hockey team competing in the State Semi-finals, Pilgrim high school sent a bus of Pilgrim students to cheer their “rivals” on.  These kids realize that very soon they will all be on the same team and have already started to support their soon-to-be friends and teammates.  We should be proud as a community that our kids are willing to take the bull by the horns and face the future with such a positive attitude. 

We adults need to turn the page and stop focusing on the negative feelings we feel towards school consolidation and embrace this time as an opportunity to improve our schools. That is not to say we should stop being involved in school committee meetings and holding them accountable: if anything, we need to be more active and involved.  It is our role as parents and adults to ensure that the school district follows through with their core mission of providing our kids with a first-rate education and that we hold the Mayor and City Council accountable for funding our schools adequately.  If we do that, then our kids will thrive in the positive environment that we as a community will have created.

As the aforementioned exhibition of school spirit illustrates, students at both schools are willing and eager to meet with each other and to lead their peers forward to a new era.  As parents, regardless of how disappointed we may be personally with the consolidation, it is time to support our kids as they make their way through this new and unprecedented process.  The next couple of years can be scary or they can be exciting – and will probably be both – and it’s time for adults to follow the example set by our kids. 

Marc Comtois

Warwick