A budget and a school year

There is something deeply symbolic about the timing.

This week, students across St. Maarten are returning to classrooms, opening new notebooks, meeting new teachers, adjusting to new schedules and beginning another year of their educational journey. At almost the same moment, Members of Parliament and Ministers will gather to debate Budget 2026 later this week. Those two events may appear separate. They are not.

Inside the classroom, our children are being told to prepare for their future. Inside Parliament, the people elected and appointed to lead this country will be making decisions that will help determine what that future looks like. The connection should not be lost on anyone.

The students walking through school gates this week will inherit the consequences of the decisions being debated now. They will inherit the quality of our healthcare system, the condition of our roads, the strength of our economy, the opportunities available to young professionals, the state of our environment, our national debt, the efficiency of government and the institutions we choose to build or neglect.

That should bring a certain seriousness to the proceedings. Budget debates are naturally political. Government must defend its choices. Opposition MPs must scrutinize them. Coalition MPs have their own responsibility to question, improve and sometimes challenge what is placed before them. Debate is part of democracy.

But there must be a point at which politics gives way to purpose. Our children are not props in political arguments. Their future cannot be reduced to attempts to embarrass the person sitting across the aisle.

Our students are being asked this week to focus. We ask them to respect their teachers, meet deadlines, prepare for examinations, make responsible choices, use technology wisely and think about their futures. Surely we can demand the same level of responsibility from the adults governing their country.

The children returning to school are doing their part. They are continuing their education with an unspoken trust that the adults running St. Maarten are doing theirs. They trust that when they study hard, develop their skills and eventually step into adulthood, there will be a country capable of giving those skills somewhere to grow.

They trust that there will be jobs worth pursuing, homes they can afford, healthcare they can access, communities where they feel safe and a government that has not left them paying indefinitely for decisions made before they were old enough to understand them. That trust deserves respect and those young people deserve more than adults telling them they are "the future." They deserve adults making decisions as though they actually believe it.

So as Budget 2026 comes before Parliament this week, perhaps every MP and every Minister should keep one image in mind: a student walking into school carrying a backpack, hopeful about the year ahead and largely unaware of the hundreds of millions of guilders being debated on his or her behalf.

That student cannot vote on this budget.

That student cannot question a Minister.

That student cannot amend legislation or demand better execution.

For now, that responsibility belongs to the adults entrusted with governing.

Do not play with it.

Do not waste it.

Do not reduce the future of our children to political theater.

They are doing what we asked of them. They are learning, preparing and moving forward. The least their leaders can do is make sure the country is doing the same.

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