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Rensselaer County Taxpayers Association

March 1998                                                                                                                                                     Volume 3, Number 2

Our Columbia School District added approximately 30 more employees between 1996 and 1997. No fanfare, no nothing. Remember that 80% of your taxes goes for salaries, increases, sabbaticals, utilities, excursions, more gym equipment, bonds, additions, borrowing, fees, interest, mailings, fund and games.

If on the other hand a new local business were to open up and hire 30 employees, it would make the headlines - a real boon to the community. There is a difference.

A former Assistant Secretary of Education Chester E. Finn Jr. Recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal "The public school system as we know it has proved that it cannot fix itself. It is an ossified government monopoly that functions largely for the benefit of its employees and interest groups rather than that of children and taxpayers. American education needs a radical overhaul."

Character and coin are two words of great importance which begin with the letter "C." There is an old parable which goes, "watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves." The recent events in the East Greenbush Central School District may be used to address both the pennies and the dollars as well as character.

The school district recently advertised for candidates to be considered for the vacancy created by the resignation of Mr. Dykstra, the Business Administrator, who had accepted employment elsewhere. Seeking qualified persons to fill a position in a public school system requires a substantial amount of money and time. Additionally, consideration must be given to the candidates who applied for the vacancy. What about them? Note: The position was filled by Mr. Dykstra, the very same person, who had resigned. By special action of the School Board, he was rehired with both a promotion and an increase in compensation. So much for coin.

Character is a more serious issue. Do we need the example cited in the previous paragraph as a role model for our children? The action of all those involved in this farce, while probably legal, may be considered by some as unethical. This apparently is the kind of action voters receive when they continue to re-elect to the School Board each year the same persons who claim to be independent, caring, and prudent users of taxpayers’ moneys. Are they truly worthy of your continued trust?

The Times Union ran an article on 2/24/98 which reflects the sentiments of far too many people within our education establishment. The title of the piece was "Demand equity in school opportunity" and the author was Michael A Rebell. The theme of the piece was outlined with these two sentences: "New York’s system for funding it’s schools is a scandal", and "...the quality of education a student receives depends largely on where he or she was born." While to many people with vision, this may sound like a call for school choice, it was not part of Mr. Rebell’s plan.

The false premise of his argument is a common one espoused previously by many liberal Democrats including state comptroller H. Carl McCall. That being that poor performing school districts need more money in order to compete.

He begins by stating the spending levels of "poor" and "wealthy" districts to be $6,000 and $17,000 respectively. These figures are grossly inaccurate. According to "The State of Learning" published by the New York State Education Department, the counties in which school districts spend the least, spend over $7,000 per pupil.

There are a few exceptional cases which we will exclude from the list of the state’s most expensive school districts. Those being, Kiryas Joel at $59,647, Fire Island at $29,877, and Fishers Island at $23,460. Aside from those, the most expensive of the states public schools begins with Bridgehampton at $39,343 per pupil, Newcomb $32,882 and Pocantico Hills at $28,839. Of the state’s 700+ school districts, 29 spend more than $15,000 per pupil per year, and 231 spend more than $10,000.

Contrary to Mr. Rebell’s claim, there is no correlation between these spending levels and the "combined wealth ratio" of the district. For example, the Albany county district with the lowest combined wealth ratio is Cohoes at 0.602, which spends $9,087 per pupil, while North Colonie with a higher combined wealth ratio of 1.341, spends only $7,801. The Albany city school district has a combined wealth ratio similar to that of North Colonie at 1.262 yet spends more than any other district in the county, $11,085 per pupil.

Moreover, there is no correlation between spending levels and student performance as we can see using Mr. Rebell’s numbers: "…only 40 percent of graduates in Albany [$11,085] and 38 percent of graduates in Cohoes [$9,087] earned Regents diplomas." Meanwhile, North Colonie [$7,801] graduated 71 percent of it’s students with Regents diplomas. If we were to compare per pupil spending and performance on a broader scale we would see lower spending levels result in better student performance. This can be said of private school, other states, and other industrialized nations.

Theories abound to explain this phenomenon but the one that seems the most plausible suggests that districts which perform poorly do so because of malfeasance in their administration. These poor performing administrators pass the buck by blaming their incompetence on inadequate funding, while simultaneously ostracizing any parent or taxpayer who demands accountability. With the help of the teachers unions, these administrators lobby the State Assembly for more funding. Being nearly autonomous in it’s control of education and comprised largely of liberal New York City Democrats, the Assembly eagerly accepts their "declaration of dependence", with the understanding that the unions will continue to "teach" our children that; Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bob Dole are senile old men, that budget cuts are "Draconian", and that conservative Republicans are evil and want to starve them, pollute the environment, and kill Bambi.

For parents and voters who are truly concerned about the direction of education in New York, I suggest contacting your local grass roots "Citizen\Taxpayer Organization". Our children need your involvement more that they need your money.

An article in a recent issue of Taxpayer News seems to have struck a raw nerve in an East Greenbush School Board member.

We wrote of the frustration which a friend, who serves on a local school board, felt when he urged his Board to use a surplus to reduce taxes while other members of the board wanted to use it to purchase goodies which they would not otherwise have been able to fund.

The East Greenbush member wrote two very defensive letters. One to us and the other to the local media. We will not go into the details, but will summarize the complaints.

First, he felt we should have named the district in question. We specifically did not identify the district because such was not the point of the article. We were criticizing the philosophy of the board majority because too many public officials seem to feel that the taxes which they extract from the benighted taxpayer, under threats of durance vile is, in fact, their money, to be spent as they wish. Possibly our correspondent shares their philosophy and that is the nerve which we struck

We feel that any surplus in a government’s revenue should be either returned to the taxpayers or used to reduce next year’s tax.

His next complaint is that we do not praise the Board when it does something which he feels should be praised.

We thought about that for a bit. Then we looked at the 40 odd million dollar budget which the board has and compared it to ours. We decided that the Board would just have to muddle through on what they have.

We are conservatives and everyone knows that we are mean and rascally and selfish. We keep everything we have for ourselves, so we decided to leave praising the School Board up to the School Board itself, rather than do it for them.

Possibly B.O.C.E.S. will help the Board. It may even agree to publish the Board’s monthly Report Card. Yes, then the playing field would be leveled. Our critic could then rest easily knowing that in this great country even a little 40 odd million dollar county school board has a chance against a corporate giant such as SRCTA.

Our SRCTA is more convinced than ever that you can’t improve education by throwing more money at it. Our liberal administration in Washington caters to those who are dependent on government and thus they work against the best interests of American entrepreneurs, industries (large and small), and hard working average citizens who produce the goods and services necessary to achieve our economic success. The average tax for all purposes is approaching 50% of earnings. A frightening thought. Conservatives in Congress now have pending legislation to remedy this. Just listen to Dr. Thomas Sowell, in The Times Union 2/28/98:

"Headlines were made by the latest results of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. Yet nobody should have been surprised, since our students have been doing badly on international tests for decades.

"American 12^th graders fell below the international average in general mathematics and general science. In advanced mathematics, our students were tied for last place and in physics they had sole possession of last place.

"Students from Asian nations, who usually do very well on such tests, did not take part in these particular tests. So American students are trailing the pack among the also-rans.

"While the American educational system is falling behind academically, it is leading the world in excuses. One of these excuses is that more of our students reach the 12^th grade, so that we are comparing our average with other countries’ elites.

"While that may be true for some countries, there are other countries that have as high a percentage of their students finish secondary school as we do – and some have a higher percentage completing secondary education. Both kinds of countries beat out our students.

"Another excuse is that our population has so many disadvantaged minorities that this drags down the average. But when you compare our very top students with the top students from other countries, ours still get clobbered.

"U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley has responded to the sad results from these international tests by calling them "unacceptable." Nonsense! Such dismal results have been accepted for years and will be accepted for years to come, so long as the National Education Association continues to contribute millions of dollars to political campaigns.

"From the standpoint of the NEA, the American public schools are not a failure but a big great success. These schools provide NEA members with jobs where they have iron-clad tenure, automatic raises, and no accountability for bad performances by their students or themselves.

"The public schools also have a virtual monopoly on the supply of schoolchildren, except for those whose parents are affluent enough to be able to afford private schools or dedicated enough to homeschool their children. What this all adds up to is that the public schools can do pretty much whatever they want to, including avoiding academic training and indulging themselves in all sorts of fads and psychobabble, including ‘self-esteem.’

"In this last round of international test, American students led the world in one department: "self-esteem." As in previous international test, American students had the highest perception of how well they had done. Seventy percent said that they thought they had done well. This would be comic if it were not so tragic."

It must be a sad and lonely feeling for those few students who didn’t make the honor role - both of them!
Schodack Resident

Let’s give the new crew in East Greenbush Town Hall an opportunity to see what they can do.
Hampton Manor Resident

Why is it, Key Bank has the highest checking account charges when others have low rates or none?
East Greenbush Resident

Now that Ted Kaczynski, the darling of the environmentalists is saved from the death penalty, the Sierra Club and other worry warts can concentrate on plugging for our misunderstood President.
North Greenbush Resident

Don’t we have enough speeders racing down Columbia Turnpike hill breaking our traffic laws, without the State widening the highway to create more havoc?
Rensselaer Resident

Three job Ginny, now down to one. Bottom of the ninth - two down and one to go. Bye Bye.
East Greenbush Resident

Our newly elected people should bear in mind, a fairminded attitude toward businesses is essential.
East Greenbush Resident

Coming Attractions

• Next meeting, Tuesday, April 14^th, Town Hall, East Greenbush, 7 pm.
• School Board Election coming up - date to be determined
• Remember - Seniors file for your tax exemption!