After pretending they were both private academies for years, and spending money like water on green houses and lighted turf football fields, now the brain trust wants us to believe that merging Canton with Potsdam is in everyone’s interest. Why? So a few kids can get advanced college credit, or play on super sports teams? If more teaching staff is needed, dispose of at least 1 superintendent and bus the teachers back and forth as needed. This is merger not the silver bullet solution. What happens when the 7 years have passed? Will our taxes go down? Let us consider not paying taxes to fund sports. We can have club sports instead and pay as you go. Heck, the Canton girls track team won it all without a track, go figure! It is time for all options to be considered including starting salaries, paid medical benefits, outrageous retirement perks, tenure, class sizes, teaching load, and a countywide school system. In the real world when corporations and sole proprietors can’t pay their bills they either get streamlined or go bankrupt. If mergers make sense then merge the struggling small schools into the bigger ones or split up the small district and do away with them entirely. Whoops that might cause a lot of non-teaching staff to lose their jobs. Two retired teachers told me how stressful their jobs had been and how much they needed summers off and early retirement. They work half as many hours as most of us work per year. Hum. I responded that if they had only known how tough it was going to be before they started teaching, they could have chosen to be coal miners or loggers instead. Stop the nonsense, now. Speak up and vote no on the merger.