Buchanan on the school budget
The MRJs Jesse Buchanan had this piece on the Thursday BOE meeting and the adoption of next year's budget:
The budget eliminates 21 teaching positions - five or six through layoffs - to bridge budget gaps. It would also institute a $75 participation fee for sports and band and color guard. Bob Behrer, Gerald Brittingham, Tod Dixon, Cathy Hellreich, Peter Massey and Stephen W. Mrowka voted in favor of Florio's budget. Alan Sobol voted against it.
Come October 1, we'll need to see the actual number of teachers. I'm confident it won't be the currently budgeted 392 (413 teachers in 08/09 less 21 in 09/10).
FWIW, while I was knocking on doors today I was rather surprised by the reaction from non-school residents today. Several people brought it up... and they were all annoyed with it. So I'm guessing most people in town are probably very happy with Alan Sobol right now. As the MRJ reports:
Alan Sobol said he opposed the budget due to the inclusion of the participation fee, which is expected to raise about $100,000 next year. This amounted to another tax on residents, Sobol said... Sobol also said he voted against the budget due to the lack of union concessions.
Tim White
6 comments:
Just to be clear, the BOE and the Superintendant are asking for union concessions on a labor agreement that has not yet gone into effect, right??? Anyone else see the absurdity in that. Asking for union concessions is simply a ploy to appease the public. They don't expect any concessions and they will get no concessions.
Hurray for Allan Sobol, he gets it. Most of the others say they voted for it because they didn't want to lose anymore teachers and they were wrong.
The only way to get the union to negotiate would have been to cut the budget drastically and layoff at least 10%, going right into the tenured group. Instead, more money was added back in and the students and parents were stuck with activity fees, and Allan was 100% right about not sticking it to the students.
It is ridiculous to save teacher positions with funds from students. How much of the activity fees are to pay teachers additional money for out of classroom time?
Don't believe Florio and Massey's propaganda when they say they couldn't find any more cuts. Sure you can't find them it you don't want to look at everything. How about eliminating all seminars, travel and junkets. How about cutting out classes with less than 7 students. How about reducing assistant pricipals and other staff that simply fill out neat organization charts. If they can't find cuts, hire non-union consultants that can find the cuts.
The major problems with Cheshire's school system are;
It is unionized from the superintendent down to the maintenance staff. The unions goals are to enrich the unions and its members.
Teachers have tenure and regardless of how bad they are you can't cut them loose.
Teachers have to be certified.
There is no constant review of the system to find new and better ways. Not much changes in a world that demands change.
What's the answer? Charter schools or outsource the entire system. That way one can hire highly qualified people to teach who are not certified, eliminate the union strangle-hold by allowing none union people, eliminate tenure and hire experts to bring education into the 21st century.
I usually reserve the "i" word for the teachers and school administrators who have done my kids wrong over the years. Many of them simply lack a certain common sense. There should have been many more layoffs in the budget--not more taxes for the parents.
Tim doesn't need anyone to defend him but I must say he is certainly no idiot--I would lean more toward the genius end of the spectrum. I tried blogging once and it consumed far too much energy for me to follow through with it day after day like Tim does. Way to go, Tim! Keep up thre great work! Your an asset to the community!
If they can't find $100,000 out of a $60M budget maybe they (BOE) should take a math class. Hurray for Mr. Sobol the only one with some sense for how the taxpayers feel. This is what he was elected to do. Thank you.
Thank you Greg. What I found funny was that someone took the time to post that comment about twenty times. Talk about having nothing to do!
I notice that someone has been spamming "Tim White is an idiot" on several posts, even on the Mother's Day post.
Dear Spammer: by all means run for Council as a Democrat! They're looking for people of your 3rd Grade intellectual capacity who just give the finger instead of discussing the substance of issues.
You'll fit perfectly into their programs of no fiscal impact studies, put-nothing-in-writing, ask no questions, and vote as we tell you.
Post a Comment