To the Editor:

Thank you to Mayor James Gaughan and The Altamont Enterprise for the mayor’s column and newspaper article on the Guilderland Central School District proposing hiring a facilitator to lead the district in a strategic-planning initiative, with a projected cost of $45,000.

I got a good laugh how in the same issue that Superintendent Marie Wiles submits her own letter to the editor saying how our voices matter.  I read over and over how the school administrators are always concerned about meeting the tax gap but they can always find monies to spend on professional consultants.

What are we paying the administrators’ huge salaries for if they need to always engage outside consultants?  The comments made by board members Barbara Fraterrigo and Allan Simpson should make Wiles rethink her priorities and use the monies towards helping our children, not finding an excuse to waste our tax dollars.

If you want help, engage the public; you have many qualified people who would be willing to donate their time if they truly felt their voices did matter.  We all know what the definition of insanity is, and wasting money on consultants expecting a different outcome is what we see in state government every day. Why should school districts go down that same road?

John N. Decatur

Guilderland