The Pearl River County School District’s special bond election failed with 55.1 percent of residents voting against the bond and all it had to offer.

Personally, I was shocked by that outcome.

We as taxpayers should support the education system and the students that go through it so that they can have the best opportunities for success.

Some of these students’ dreams and aspirations were shut down Tuesday night after a majority of voters did not want to pay extra taxes to provide and expand the horizon of possibilities in those students’ lives.

The multi-million dollar bond included many assets that would have been favorable to many students and the community.

The bond proposed a brand new performing arts center that included a stage and over 15 classrooms, new and improved classroom facilities at every campus and moving district offices from the mobile trailers, constructing restrooms at the football stadium to replace the portable restroom units next to the concessions and renovating outdated classrooms across the district.

So many things have changed throughout the past couple of decades, but classrooms seem to stay the same. Cars do not look the same as they used to in the 1940s, phones don’t look the same as they used to in the 1970s.

Yet, if you look at classrooms from 1950, they look practically identical to today’s classrooms, and you must ask yourself, why is this? 

The future lies within the hands of the youth.

Twenty years from now, the children that would have been given these amenities the bond proposed could very well be the ones who are protecting your bank accounts through cyber security, or a variety of other jobs. If the bond had passed, we would have seen a change in the educational system.