In her recent My Turn, Linda O’Rourke says that Rundlett Middle School “is quite literally falling apart and being held together by tape.” As a teacher, she knows the definition of hyperbole: “extravagant exaggeration.” Her statement is a textbook example. As the parent of a 2024 graduate of Rundlett, I’ve been in the building on many occasions, and my kid had a wonderful experience in her three years there. She came home each day talking about friends and teachers, classes and homework, social media and school lunches, the usual things that kids are concerned about. Rarely did she mention the building itself, and certainly never as it being the catastrophe that Ms. O’Rourke depicts.

The regrettable effect of Ms. O’Rourke’s hyperbole is that it triggers emotions and raises anxiety that can hurry well-intentioned people into short-sighted decisions with long-term outcomes. Few people, including me, doubt that a new middle school is needed. But to further burden already exhausted taxpayers, to destroy over twenty acres of pristine forest and wildlife habitat, and to exacerbate the existing traffic snafu at Broken Ground in order to build as quickly as possible smacks of a panic-button reaction rather than a calm consideration of what makes for excellent education, fiscal responsibility, environmental preservation, and traffic and student safety.

Robert Maccini

Concord