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Status:
"Let this year be over..."
(set 15 days ago)
Location: Where my bills arrive
19,220 posts, read 17,075,134 times
Reputation: 15536
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ovi8
Others have responded, so I'll just ask, what do your teachers make over there and what are their benefits/pension like?
For the metro Richmond area I just looked, for a Secondary School English teacher the position is offered at 44.7K - 79K there is a math and history position posted at the same range. I tried to pick basic teaching positions, here is a link to the benefits https://henricoschools.us/benefits/.
These are good ideas but what happens in reality is that local control is exerted anyway, and the better, more affluent regions find ways to get funding while the worse off schools get the shaft and the results are universally bad poor districts. When someone asked "why can't we do it the way everyone else does," this is what everyone else does. Fights over a pool of aid money to be doled out by the state as "equitably" as they can get away with governed by strict education laws. LI grovels too but to a smaller degree because the lions share comes from property taxes. Some districts get less than 10% of their budget from state aid. Some upstate get 99% of it from the state. LI pays for local control, period. With local control comes quality outcomes. Is the "quality" of LI schools mostly smoke and mirrors...some yes, some no...but by and large we have a region of well above average schools to go with our well above average taxes. That is the hand we're currently dealt. How to walk back the value vs cost proposition is really the problem...and I'm as guilty as most for bitching and moaning about what we pay...because I know why we pay so much...and it does not go directly to quality. It goes to onerous contractual obligations weighted by years of bad negotiating by those trusted to protect the taxpayer.
The trick is to tell the taxpayers that if the poor schools don’t improve then those schools will close, redistricting will occur and those students will be put into better schools. Of course there are ways to game the system like my county in VA has done by putting magnet programs in the poorly performing schools and injecting ugh performance students into them.
It continues to amaze me when this discussion arises how New Yorkers are the only ones who believe that maintaining 50+ districts in a county is more cost efficient than consolidating into 1 or 2.
And it continues to amaze me that some people are convinced that consoliidation will provide significant savings in total cost or tax liability. There are no facts to support that claim. In fact, studies indicate just the opposite. For school districts with 1500 or more students (the vast majority of LI districts), there are no expected savings.
I'm not claiming that savings aren't possible. I simply don't understand how people are convinced that tremendous savings are obvious when there is absolutely no data to support the belief.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 987ABC
I don't think any rational person thinks multiple small districts is more cost efficient than one large district. Instead, they think the cost savings in moving to a single large district is overstated, and in practice, will be trivial.
Well stated. I would agree that any savings would be trivial, which would be cancelled by the high cost of transition to a new system. More likley, by the time things evened out, local corruption and political deals would put us right back where we started. That also doesn't account for the potential hit people might take in the real estate market while things settle out.
Show me some actual proof (as opposed to conjecture and assumption) that consolidation would actually have a positive effect and I will gladly board that train.
And it continues to amaze me that some people are convinced that consoliidation will provide significant savings in total cost or tax liability. There are no facts to support that claim. In fact, studies indicate just the opposite. For school districts with 1500 or more students (the vast majority of LI districts), there are no expected savings.
I'm not claiming that savings aren't possible. I simply don't understand how people are convinced that tremendous savings are obvious when there is absolutely no data to support the belief.
Well stated. I would agree that any savings would be trivial, which would be cancelled by the high cost of transition to a new system. More likley, by the time things evened out, local corruption and political deals would put us right back where we started. That also doesn't account for the potential hit people might take in the real estate market while things settle out.
Show me some actual proof (as opposed to conjecture and assumption) that consolidation would actually have a positive effect and I will gladly board that train.
Can someone explain how duplicating services over 50 times is more cost efficient?
Simple answer this is New York State. Not exactly the most efficiently run state.
For instance, New York City has one consolidated school district. The largest in the country. Should be saving them tons of money right? And yet New York City, a consolidation of 5 counties, 3 former cities, and all or parts of 22 Towns, is one of the only local governments in New York that has its own income tax.
Status:
"Let this year be over..."
(set 15 days ago)
Location: Where my bills arrive
19,220 posts, read 17,075,134 times
Reputation: 15536
Quote:
Originally Posted by LINative
Simple answer this is New York State. Not exactly the most efficiently run state.
For instance, New York City has one consolidated school district. The largest in the country. Should be saving them tons of money right? And yet New York City, a consolidation of 5 counties, 3 former cities, and all or parts of 22 Towns, is one of the only local governments in New York that has its own income tax.
I like your opening statement, NYC makes a bad example because it is so unique in so many ways but can you tell me how their costs would be lower if they were broken down and separated using the example you provided?
These are good ideas but what happens in reality is that local control is exerted anyway, and the better, more affluent regions find ways to get funding while the worse off schools get the shaft and the results are universally bad poor districts. When someone asked "why can't we do it the way everyone else does," this is what everyone else does. Fights over a pool of aid money to be doled out by the state as "equitably" as they can get away with governed by strict education laws. LI grovels too but to a smaller degree because the lions share comes from property taxes. Some districts get less than 10% of their budget from state aid. Some upstate get 99% of it from the state. LI pays for local control, period. With local control comes quality outcomes. Is the "quality" of LI schools mostly smoke and mirrors...some yes, some no...but by and large we have a region of well above average schools to go with our well above average taxes. That is the hand we're currently dealt. How to walk back the value vs cost proposition is really the problem...and I'm as guilty as most for bitching and moaning about what we pay...because I know why we pay so much...and it does not go directly to quality. It goes to onerous contractual obligations weighted by years of bad negotiating by those trusted to protect the taxpayer.
Control from more affluent areas is already the case. Look at some of the less affluent areas of LI. These districts are not performing very well. In addition, even though LI has some more "quality" schools, these are generally in the more affluent areas anyway: Jericho, Manhassett, etc. Again, there are much higher quality public schools in other states that do not have the same per pupil expenditure as LI. Consolidation may get rid of local control, but maybe it would be more equitable to the poorer districts that have reduced performance. I don't believe there has been a correlation between spending more per pupil and better educational results. However, I think there is a stronger correlation between higher income communities and more successful educational performance. This may not be fair, but it has been factual for many decades.
Control from more affluent areas is already the case. Look at some of the less affluent areas of LI. These districts are not performing very well. In addition, even though LI has some more "quality" schools, these are generally in the more affluent areas anyway: Jericho, Manhassett, etc. Again, there are much higher quality public schools in other states that do not have the same per pupil expenditure as LI. Consolidation may get rid of local control, but maybe it would be more equitable to the poorer districts that have reduced performance. I don't believe there has been a correlation between spending more per pupil and better educational results. However, I think there is a stronger correlation between higher income communities and more successful educational performance. This may not be fair, but it has been factual for many decades.
In some of the analysis I have read, it seems folks have moved away from emphasizing the dollar savings possible via county-wide consolidation (since it is generally agreed that there is very little - if any - dollar savings in the long run) to an emphasis on the positive social engineering that might be done via consolidation. The theory being that with the consolidation of Nassau County (for example) into one school district there might be a levelling of educational opportunities between, say, Garden City and Hempstead. This would include, but would not be limited to, a more balanced socioeconomic mix in many of the Nassau County School District high schools and a more equitable distribution of funding. This, the theory goes, will result in positive change for the currently disadvantaged students in poorer areas within the county.
(Obviously there are innumerable flaws in this theory and numerous possible objections to its relevance but the fact that the tiny number of 'consolidationists' have moved on to this speaks volumes as to the validity of the old dollar savings argument.)
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