I was stunned to see a front page article in the Aug. 19 Fountain Hills Times reporting on the FHUSD’s weaknesses, threats, strengths, oppor-tunities and goals from a retreat by the School Board and the superin-tendent.

Pretend you’re a young couple, relocating to the area, and are visiting Fountain Hills. One im-portant item on the list is schooling for your chil-dren. You pick up the lo-cal paper and read the fol-lowing school weaknesses: “lower teacher pay, com-munication, ability to offer a greater variety of courses,” a solid founda-tion for all classes being taught, “school transi-tions” and community outreach.” The last two items garnered the most attention from the board?

Next the article listed threats: “Low state fund-ing, availability of other educational options (arti-cle didn’t explain), teach-er shortages and families that don’t begin with FHUSD and are unwilling to give it a chance.” Would you read any fur-ther?

The strengths (on page 8A) were: “small commu-nity, amazing teachers, small class sizes and anti-bullying campaigns.” Op-portunities: “existence of an empty building, wider range of courses, dual en-rollment and stronger re-lationship with district and town.” I found noth-ing regarding reading, math, science and writing, absolutely nothing good or bad.

The National Center for Educational Statistics, under State Education Profiles, shows the Arizo-na schools rated below the U.S. average in all the above academic catego-ries.

G.K. Chesterton: “Edu-cation is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” What kind of education soul are we passing on?

Evaluating the common core debate, Arizona’s ac-ademic ratings versus the U.S. average and the newspaper article, I couldn’t help but wonder what tops the list of im-portance on the board’s and superintendent’s list.

Are the schools in Fountain Hills an asset to the children and the community?