As Nov. 4 draws closer, I am reaching out to encourage my fellow Freeporters to vote yes in favor of Freeport withdrawing from RSU 5.

From the time I started the first grade at Soule School in 1975 until my own son did the same in 2006, I watched a slow but steady arc of educational progress unfold in my town. While struggling to properly fund its schools in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Freeport gradually overcame its challenges and began to develop a reputation in the 1990s for strong, community-supported schools. By the early 2000s, Freeport schools were a force to be reckoned with. Our sports teams were competitive in their divisions and our class offerings were strong and diverse. Not only were young families choosing to settle in Freeport to raise their kids, other families who in the past might have chosen Cheverus, Waynflete or NYA chose to keep their kids in Freeport’s public system instead.

Credit for this impressive march of progress ultimately rests in one place: Freeport’s voting public. It is the voters, after all, who make or break a school system. It is the voters who elect school board members; it is the voters who approve budgets; it is the voters who approve bonds. Great school systems are built – in fact – on the shoulders of a supportive voting public.

Which brings me to why I am so motivated to see Freeport return to its pre-consolidation roots: The Durham and Pownal voting public does not support the RSU system. For the past five years voters in those towns have consistently, and now predictably, voted no to RSU budgets and no to RSU bonds. And when the large numbers of no voters in those towns are combined with the (fewer but still present) no voters in Freeport, things start to look eerily similar to the way they did back in 1975 – when Freeport schools were badly under-funded due to a lack of voter support for public education.

I am very concerned that the voting records we’ve seen unfold since the RSU was formed, puts Freeport at serious risk of returning to the days when the concept of excellence in education was not supported by a large enough segment of the overall voting public. Seen through this lens, suddenly the steady arc of progress that Freeport worked so hard to achieve over the past 30-40 years doesn’t look so steady anymore. As many of us know from first-hand experience, once Freeport families lose their faith in the local schools, it takes decades to restore it.

Freeport has tried to make the RSU system work, but I have seen enough annual budget meetings and budget referendum results to conclude that Freeport schools will be in a much stronger position if Freeport voters govern them.

Please join me in taking back control of our schools and resuming Freeport’s progress in building great schools for our kids.

Eric Horne

Freeport