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Rensselaer County Taxpayers Association

September 1996                                                                                                                                                     Volume 1, Number 3

Welcome to the third edition of our newsletter. Yes, my friends it’s true, we’re still in business. We hope you enjoy this issue.

The cereal companies have started to reduce their prices after a long protest by the public. This was accomplished by continuous exposure by consumer groups and normal people. Now, in order to be honest, all these companies have to do is fill the boxes with those wonderful products, to the top that is. Democracy does appear to work in mysterious ways. A few years back, when imported Japanese cars started to sell in great numbers, our domestic auto makers were slow to understand that the public wanted a reliable car without gimmicks and being cajoled by useless advertising. One thing we understand and appreciate is competition. Another thing is truthfulness. Something most politicians and bureaucrats have GREAT TROUBLE WITH.

Recently a poll was taken which showed that a vast majority of Americans believed that ALL taxes of any type or amount should not exceed 25% of the average person’s income, period. Our taxes on average are already up to 38% and counting. The exceptions are New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut and Alaska, all of which are approaching 44%, a gross miscarriage of justice. Our bureaucrats and school moguls are so far out of step with the public that they do not even hear the band music. Not to be outdone, we have public monopolies such as power and telephone companies, etc. spending millions of dollars via the media telling the public how great they are, and then jacking up their rates to force the public to pay for this nonsense. What the public wants is good service at reasonable rates. Do we not have a Public Service Commission that is supposed to oversee this function? Where have they been for the last several years?

The above, to prove that if the public is persistent enough many inequities can be corrected. Public apathy is the bane of our existence. People consistently complain about elected officials and their many caprices, yet the same individuals who are so dissatisfied with the way things are, will tell you that they are too busy to vote. Take a firm stand when asked to write a letter or make a telephone call to a politician and let them know what your complaint is. Patrick Henry once said, "We will lose our liberty when good men do nothing."

Another aspect for righting the wrongs of public miscreants is by a concerted effort by all persons of good will who agree on certain issues affecting their well being. Taxpayer’s groups are good examples of group efforts to achieve reasonable goals. It must be born in mind, public officials and bureaucrats are sensitive only to votes. If they feel that a large segment of the populace is for or against a particular situation, they are inclined to take some form of action. Only then will our people be able to defeat the forces of greed and ineptitude.

There are many areas of deep concern -- illegal immigration, welfare, extravagance, fraud, government waste, crime and so on. It’s time for the public to stand up and shout ENOUGH!

According to a Times Union, June 13, 1996, article by Carol DeMare, the way Money magazine sees it, the Capital Region is not a very good place to live -- worse this year than last.

In fact, the Capital Region ranked 293 out of 300 -- only seven worst places to live in the country.

It’s past time for a serious correction in which our schools are failing to educate properly and call for a halt in expending citizen’s money with very little positive result. Our new state education commissioner is listening to the public’s many views on improving public education in New York State. The Empire State Task Force for Excellence in Education Methods has made their concerns known to the commissioner. In a recent Times Union article, July 25 by Rick Karlin, the group advises, "’If State Education Commissioner Mills is serious about raising academic standards, he should focus on reading, writing and arithmetic. He should also abandon concepts like whole language, peer tutoring and bilingual education. Schools are getting chaotic because they are trying to be all things to all people’, said Aldo Bernardo, a retired University professor (Binghamton), chairman of the group." The piece further says, ‘Bernardo and other task force members urged Mills to push for a basic curriculum and to bring back phonetics while dropping whole language. The phonetics versus whole language debate has been raging in academic circles for years. While unlikely to be resolved soon, such issues are typical of what Mills and the Education Department officials must grapple with as part of their plan to raise standards.’

‘Part of the all-Regents plan calls for greater emphasis on devices like essays rather than multiple choice questions in English and Social Studies. We are very worried about that’, said Bernardo. On the other hand Mills said teachers aren’t worried about watered-down tests as much as the possibility that the all-Regents program might be too tough.

This poses a question -- Why would people in the business of education think that any improvement in standards would be "too tough"? Are we missing something here?

To whom would you attribute the following quote? "The family is ceasing to be a necessity of the state, as it was in the past…since the task of bringing up the children…is passing more and more into the hands of the [village]… Henceforth the [working] mother, who is conscious of her social function, will rise to a point where she no longer differentiates between yours and mine, she must remember that there are henceforth only our children…" If you said Hillary Clinton, you would be in good company, but you would also be wrong. Those words were first spoken by Alexandra Kollontai, the first Soviet Commissar of social welfare, in 1920. The Soviet education program insisted on an absolute monopoly of the means of information and values formation. Marx felt that children must be indoctrinated against the pernicious effects of the family and it’s competing values which were seen as a threat to the state’s authority. Lenin subsequently removed religion for the same reason.

The idea of using the common school to indoctrinate the nation’s children with a set of values and loyalties in the interest of the state and its ruling elite was not invented in the United States, nor in the Soviet Union, nor in our age. In 1792 the French Jacobin orator Billaud-Varenne advised Robespierre and his colleagues, "You will lose the younger generation in abandoning it to parents with prejudices and ignorance who give it the defective tint which they have themselves. Therefore, let the Fatherland take hold of children who are born for it alone."

In Educational Freedom in Eastern Europe, Charles Glenn writes, "…it is important to recognize that few political leaders in times of rapid social change can resist the temptation to promote their own agenda through schooling, regardless of what parents want for their children. In making education a primary concern of government, Horace Mann and his allies were convinced that society could not afford to allow parents to determine who would educate their children. The "prejudices and ignorance" of parents would lead them to favor schools and teachers sharing their benighted views, and thus the grand project of creating a new humanity through schooling would be frustrated."

The compulsive mass education of humanity is relatively new. In societies prior to this enlightened age, education was limited to the privileged few, and not viewed as necessary for the common worker. The growth of Democratic societies has lead to an acknowledgment that ‘knowledge is freedom,' and that a free society necessitates public education. This is not to be confused with public schools [government schools]. Compulsory funding of public education in a free society naturally requires freedom of choice. It is ironic that the most free society on Earth would allow the establishment of a ruling class that places limits on knowledge [freedom]. Perhaps this is because we have taken our freedom for granted for so long. This is not the case in the newly established Democracies of Eastern Europe, where, after decades of totalitarian rule, varying degrees of school choice are being established. The ex-communist countries of the former Soviet Union have joined Australia, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Sweden, which have seen choice in education as a natural progression of freedom, and necessary for the advancement of civil society.

Currently, school choice in the United States is limited to our institutions of higher learning. The G. I. Bill, and Pell grants are examples of school choice where tax dollars are used by students to choose their college, be it public, private or religious. This competition for students has made our Colleges and Universities the best in the world. Our elementary schools should be given the same opportunity.

For more information on school choice call the Capital District Citizens for Educational Freedom at 283-2819.

Superintendent Brewer of the East Greenbush School District has seen fit to proceed with his $29.7 million remodeling project despite the fact that litigation is ongoing. Mr. Brewer has stated in the July Report Card, that Supreme Court Judge Harold Hughes ruled that the issues raised by David Crawmer were ‘without merit.’ This is not true. Judge Hughes’ hasty decision said only that Commissioner Mills’ holding that the school district’s flyers were factual, was rational. Neither Commissioner Mills nor Judge Hughes considered the conflicting evidence in the December 1994 issue of the Report Card. To date the school district’s lawyer has been successful in preventing this evidence from being presented. The very fact that they have gone to great lengths to do this is testament to the merit of Mr. Crawmer’s claim. The next step is the New York State Court of Appeals. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court may be asked to review the Constitutional implications of Mr. Crawmer’s claim. Who’s neck will be sticking out if the Crawmer appeal prevails in the higher courts?

It is unfortunate that Superintendent Brewer chooses to depict Mr. Crawmer’s claim as ‘without merit.’ If Mr. Brewer can convince people that Mr. Crawmer’s claims lacked merit, perhaps people won’t listen to him. Then they will not learn that the school district was being deceptive when it originally claimed that the project was about creating space for increased enrollment. Notice that since Mr. Crawmer’s appeal, the need for $29.7 million has been changed to target ‘replacement, renovations and/or repairs of key areas of safety.’ Little or no mention is now given to creating space for increased enrollment. Could it be that the delay has uncovered the fact that the predictions of increased enrollment were wrong and that Mr. Brewer has known this all along?

When a taxpayer group in nearby Hoosick Falls heard of our bond debacle, a red flag went up. Their superintendent was priming the district for a similar expansion based on a claim of increased enrollment. Drawing on our experience and information we were only too eager to share, the Hoosick Falls Taxpayers, with the help of an accountant, found that Superintendent Nancy B. Chase created a fictitious increase in enrollment. By using biased [artificially high] raw data, Superintendent Chase created and filed a report with the State Education Department that portrayed a district growth of 13.2% by the year 2000. This figure was 75% higher that the enrollment projection done by the independent accountant. She then submitted this false report to the School Board and State Education Department. If she were an officer in a private firm she would be fired.

Further north, the former superintendent of the Fort Ann School District, Richard Hogan, plead guilty to illegal use of public money in 1994. Do you think he went to jail? No, he was hired as Superintendent of nearby Watervliet Schools.

Fort Ann replaced Hogan with Vernon Hobbs. Hobbs did not last long either, and the school board was not content with getting rid of him, they also eliminated the position of Superintendent. That role is being filled by volunteer committees. Now that’s truly ‘a school and community working together.’

Even closer to home, allegations have been made of several improprieties within the Wynantskill School District involving Superintendent Colleen Fennell including falsifications and insubordination.. One of the allegations is that she hid money in the budget by claiming more teachers on the payroll than there actually were.

On July 18^th, a coalition of parent/taxpayer groups representing thirteen local school districts met in Saratoga to coordinate a strategy for dealing with unresponsive administrators, sharing experiences and strengthening our voice. We plan on meeting again next month when our group is expected to include over three dozen districts. The operative word is ‘comeuppance.’

From Dr. Thomas Sowell in the Times Union August 10, 1996:

"Maryland must be a very safe state, because it has time to prosecute a mother who is teaching her daughter at home. The little girl of 7 scores above the national average on tests given by the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, which leading colleges across the country rely on. But that is not good enough for Maryland prosecutor Andrew Jezic.

What this fearless defender of law and order wants is for the state to come into the mother’s home and see how she is teaching her child. Good results aren’t enough.

In one sense, this is just one of many harassing tactics used by the educational establishment to discourage people from educating their own children at home. Home-schooling thwarts the main purpose of public schools -- providing jobs for teachers and administrators.

With an estimated 11,000 people educating their own children at home in Maryland alone, and more than half a million nationwide, home-schooling could get out of hand. Like the little girl in Maryland, home-schooled children nationally score above average on standardized tests.

Think what this means: With all the "expertise" claimed by the educational establishment, with all the highly touted "innovations" that spring up like mushrooms in schools across the country and with all the thousands of dollars per child poured into the system, parents do a better job in their own home.

While home-schooling remains a relatively small movement, it is growing by 15 percent per year, according to the National Home School Education Research Institute in Oregon. The number of children being home-schooled today is double what it was just a decade ago, and is about 30 or 40 times what it was in 1970.

Much more than the numbers bothers the educational establishment. As home-schooling becomes a larger and more visible phenomenon, more and more people are likely to question the performance of the public school system and the vaunted "expertise" it hides behind.

At a time when there are constant pressures to have parents’ rights and responsibilities over-ridden by "experts," whether at school or in the home, the idea that a mother can tell the education bureaucrats to mind their own business is anathema to those with the collectivist mentality, who talk about "America’s children" and say "It takes a village" to raise a child.

It even goes beyond education. If the peasants are allowed to talk back to their betters, who knows where it could lead? All the anointed who think it is their role to tell others what to do would be frustrated in their constant quest to "make a difference."

Most of the differences they have made have been for the worse, but that is another story. The well-being of children is not their real concern here, any more than it was their real concern at the big June rally in Washington called "Stand Up for Children" or in the efforts of liberal groups like the so-called Children’s Defense Fund to override parents’ rights.

Power and money are the issues. The rhetoric of "compassion" and "caring" are ways of getting power and money.

The power to brainwash the next generation with politically correct fads and fashions will be lost if parents keep their children out of the public schools. Indeed, many parents are keeping their children out of the public schools precisely to avoid having them indoctrinated by those who are supposed to be educating them.

Home-schooling takes much time and dedication but the academic results speak for themselves. As for associating with other children, the parents of children who are home-schooled have many ways of providing that, including connecting with other parents who are doing the same and engaging in joint activities.

Auxiliary educational materials designed for home-schooling also help. So can the Home School Legal Defense Fund, which helps fight off prosecutors who harass parents on behalf of the educational establishment.

Although home-schooling has grown rapidly in recent decades, in response to the deterioration of the public schools, it is not a new idea. Among the many people who were home-schooled in the past was John Stuart Mill, one of the best educated men in history, though he never set foot in a school house.

Among the arguments being used against home-schooling is that this will permit all sorts of far-out notions to be taught to young children. It is ironic because that is what is already happening in the public schools, where everything from witchcraft to homosexuality is being taught, at the expense of the academic basics."

The speeders on Old Post Road and Schuurman Road are the worst around. The children at Green Meadows School are at risk daily, as well as residents. Why isn’t something done about it?
Schodack Resident

In a Forbes magazine’s recent edition, it says "For years there has been a device that is successful in flagging the kinds of plastic explosives favored by terrorists, that are next to impossible for old line metal detectors to catch. The equipment is now used at major airports in Europe and Asia but is still virtually nonexistent at ours. Although American made by Vivid Technologies, Inc. the machine has yet to be deployed by the FAA. Under congressional mandate, the FAA was supposed to have had such a device by 1993." We’re still waiting. Why?
Park East Resident

Thank heavens, that the upcoming presidential election will give parents an opportunity to vote for a candidate and political party which favors the school choice "voucher system." It’s about time.
East Greenbush Resident

By means of a special number, people can now catch quick hang ups and harassing callers who seem to bedevil innocent people for no reason.
Sherwood Park Resident

The volunteer services in town deserve commendation. The Bruen Rescue Squad in particular.
Prospect Heights Resident

Why don’t the joggers pick a better spot to run around than on public highways?
East Greenbush Resident

Thomas Jefferson warned that America need not fear invasion from foreign soil, rather, he said, the danger to our liberty lies with petty government officials who forever seek new and creative ways to justify their existence.

The Old Testament prophets were never more inspired. Today we are faced with a greater danger. The petty government officials have been joined by tens of thousands of private individuals who provide themselves with a higher standard of living by advocating for some "charitable" cause funded by the government.

No government has the moral or ethical right to take property (or money) from those whom the government feels can "afford" it, keep a finder’s fee for itself and its supporters and then give what is left to those whom it feels need it, though they have done nothing to earn it.

This is robbery, not charity. The act becomes even more heinous when committed in the name of God.

Each of us has an obligation to help others who heed help, but none of us has the right to use government to force others to do what we feel is right, this is Marxism. Nassau Resident

Nothing is as satisfactory as going to a barber shop and finding no one ahead of you.
East Greenbush Resident

The SRCTA will hold its first annual awards buffet at Evergreen Country Club on September 19, 1996 at 6:30 pm.

This event will honor former East Greenbush School Board members Kevin Acton, Frank Coppa and Betty Krug. These awards are in recognition of their efforts in furthering accountability, cooperation and excellence in the operation of our school system.

In our next edition...

1. Importance of Elections
2. Local Problems

And much, much more.