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Nonetheless, we really should focus on Long Island public sector compensation here. Some of us have offered solutions. Now we just need to figure out a way to implement them. As I said, we need a reform minded candidate to take on the entrenched special interests here on the Island. I personally wouldn't mind running for public office, but since I have conservative fiscal and social views, I don't think I would ever get elected in this region of the country.
Nonetheless, we really should focus on Long Island public sector compensation here. Some of us have offered solutions. Now we just need to figure out a way to implement them. As I said, we need a reform minded candidate to take on the entrenched special interests here on the Island. I personally wouldn't mind running for public office, but since I have conservative fiscal and social views, I don't think I would ever get elected in this region of the country.
It's difficult to just cut salaries for our public sector workers. If all salaries were held constant for a period of time (say 7-10 years) and pension and healthcare benefits required some contribution on the part of the employee, I believe taxes could be held relatively stable for a long time. Our teachers and cops would still be very highly paid, however the gravy train would begin to slow.
Do you think there would be a mass exodus of teachers if they didn't get raises for say, 7 years? Salaries are kept the same with no increases...
I don't think so. I think teaching jobs on LI are primo because of the parents and the kids and the pay. To me, this is something that's worth the risk because taxes are simpley out of control. And if teachers start leaving, you can give them COLA increases to stop the bleeding. But why not at least TRY to control these costs??
We know that performance and pay are linked. Apologists for the CEOs in the private sector seems to make this point again and again. If it's true of CEOs it is true for teachers. Just yesterday Newsweek listed top high schools, and my son's is listed as 700 nationally (Northport). Various other Long Island schools are included in that list.
Weaken the schools, and you make Long Island less attractive to high wage earners. High wage earners keep property values high. This makes tax revenues high. Chase them away (and you would, and you'd reduce the attractiveness of the area), and property values drop. Local tax revenues drop, which necessitates higher rates of taxation. And what will you have to show for it?
Less expensive schools.
Sounds like a model I've heard of. It's called, "Making your state look like a Southern state."
We know that performance and pay are linked. Apologists for the CEOs in the private sector seems to make this point again and again. If it's true of CEOs it is true for teachers. Just yesterday Newsweek listed top high schools, and my son's is listed as 700 nationally (Northport). Various other Long Island schools are included in that list.
Weaken the schools, and you make Long Island less attractive to high wage earners. High wage earners keep property values high. This makes tax revenues high. Chase them away (and you would, and you'd reduce the attractiveness of the area), and property values drop. Local tax revenues drop, which necessitates higher rates of taxation. And what will you have to show for it?
Less expensive schools.
Sounds like a model I've heard of. It's called, "Making your state look like a Southern state."
Weaken the schools? By holding teacher's salaries constant for 7 years? Please... as I said, if you really believe there will be a mass exodus of teachers because they won't get a cost of living increase for a while, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you! You are making broad sweeping generalizations of consequences that have no factual basis.
Maybe I am wrong and if the current crop of teachers don't get a raise every year they will all leave. But where will they go? What will they do? What about the thousands of other applicants for LI teaching jobs? Will they reject a LI teaching job also? Will all high wage earners pack up and leave right away if new teachers are in place? Where will they go? Can they still earn a high wage if they leave?? Your logic has more holes than a slice of swiss cheese!
As I've said here before, my wife is a teacher. If they froze her pay for 5 years, we wouldn't leave. If they froze her pay, doubled her pension and health care contributions, we'd start thinking about it. If they cut her pay by 20% in addition to adding all those contributory things, we'd be gone in a year. As I've said before...she could get that salary in any number of suburban areas where we could buy a McMansion for what we paid for our condo, with 1/3rd the property taxes of LI, much lower car insurance, cheaper food, and schools rated where they would be middle of the pack on LI. Plus, with her resume and experience, she'd be the head of a department in North Carolina, PA, Virginia, MD, etc, because that's what's happened for many of her friends who've moved.
So, yeah, I think that pension contributions and medical contributions should go up for cops and teachers, and salaries should be frozen, with new scales going in for new hires. However, I can tell you that there IS a tipping point for many Long Island teachers that is much closer to their current salaries, than say, where it is for a Suffolk or Nassau cop who most likely would stay even if you cut their take home by a 3rd. I have friends who left NYPD and moved to other areas, and they made similar salaries, but they were shocked at how much more pension and medical cost them every paycheck. They'd move back if Nassau or Suffolk called them, no question. No Suffolk cop in his right mind would leave NY even if you cut his base from 98 to 70K because of the ridiculous overall comp package.
So, I'm not going to tell you that the school system would collapse if you get concessions from teachers..that's nonsense. However, if you think you can just hack away with no consequences at the school budget because it makes you the most angry...it's not really that wise to think that way.
Nonetheless, we really should focus on Long Island public sector compensation here. Some of us have offered solutions. Now we just need to figure out a way to implement them. As I said, we need a reform minded candidate to take on the entrenched special interests here on the Island. I personally wouldn't mind running for public office, but since I have conservative fiscal and social views, I don't think I would ever get elected in this region of the country.
I live in Town of Smithtown...you would have a hard time "not" being elected if you were not viewed as fiscally and socially conservative. But of course I am not so sure we need this whole layer of Township government in the first place aside from Park and Recreation.
We know that performance and pay are linked. Apologists for the CEOs in the private sector seems to make this point again and again. If it's true of CEOs it is true for teachers. Just yesterday Newsweek listed top high schools, and my son's is listed as 700 nationally (Northport). Various other Long Island schools are included in that list.
Weaken the schools, and you make Long Island less attractive to high wage earners. High wage earners keep property values high. This makes tax revenues high. Chase them away (and you would, and you'd reduce the attractiveness of the area), and property values drop. Local tax revenues drop, which necessitates higher rates of taxation. And what will you have to show for it?
Less expensive schools.
Sounds like a model I've heard of. It's called, "Making your state look like a Southern state."
This is some of the worst Northeastern Elitism I've seen on these boards in a while. Virginia is a southern state and they boast the best High School in the nation...and they don't pay a King's Ransom in compensation and benefits to their teachers.
This myth that high property taxes are needed to make this area great is mind boggling to me.
This is some of the worst Northeastern Elitism I've seen on these boards in a while. Virginia is a southern state and they boast the best High School in the nation...and they don't pay a King's Ransom in compensation and benefits to their teachers.
This myth that high property taxes are needed to make this area great is mind boggling to me.
Who do you think you are kidding? I'm assuming you are talking about Thomas Jefferson in Alexandria VA.....every redneck in Virginia refers to Northern VA around DC as "elitist". Alexandria "southern". Nice try.
I'm not a big fan of using the number of students who take AP tests as a measure of a good school...it just means a lot of parents push their kids to take AP tests, it doesn't mean the teachers are performing.
By the way, the 75th percentile for public school teachers in Bethesda MD, where highly ranked Walt Whitman HS (I pulled that one at random because it didn't appear to be a "specialty" type school like all the ones in NYC) according to salary.com is $62K.
The 75th % for Jericho NY (another highly ranked school) is....$63K.
This is some of the worst Northeastern Elitism I've seen on these boards in a while. Virginia is a southern state and they boast the best High School in the nation...and they don't pay a King's Ransom in compensation and benefits to their teachers.
This myth that high property taxes are needed to make this area great is mind boggling to me.
Because many of these states function as tax havens, people are attracted there, but they run to gated communities. I lived in Florida. Florida has many of the finest high schools in the country. They are in uber-rich and exclusive areas. Northport is no such place, and East Northport, where I live, is certainly not a super-rich place.
And places like Virginia get these great schools and teachers because they pay RELATIVELY more. Virginia is not well known for teacher pay. Trust me. Note too that these super rich communities do not consolidate their districts. They keep them small, with small class sizes, and plenty of local control. Consolidation is for poor districts, like what Orange County Florida is trying to do with its 10,000 student school proposal.
I'm not picking on the South. The south has fought public schools since the idea emerged. The first governor of Virginia famously wrote that universal writing skills would create rabble rousers and would subvert allegiance to the king. Every state in the old south resisted publicly funded and universal education until North Carolina (famously progressive for a southern state) started a public system in the 1870s. Mass. christians, by contrast, pursued universal education almost as soon as they arrived. Remember it was the Georgian's who kicked the literate literate Cherokee out so the moronic dirt-farmers could move in. The states rights, anti segregation, and voucher movements have resonated throughout the south because of their disdain for Washington forcing them to educate their children.
Call me elitist all you want. It's ad hominem and a transparent way to avoid the point at hand. Cutting costs does one thing; it cuts costs. There is no reason to believe it maintains or helps the education system.
Weaken the schools? By holding teacher's salaries constant for 7 years? Please... as I said, if you really believe there will be a mass exodus of teachers because they won't get a cost of living increase for a while, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you! You are making broad sweeping generalizations of consequences that have no factual basis.
Maybe I am wrong and if the current crop of teachers don't get a raise every year they will all leave. But where will they go? What will they do? What about the thousands of other applicants for LI teaching jobs? Will they reject a LI teaching job also? Will all high wage earners pack up and leave right away if new teachers are in place? Where will they go? Can they still earn a high wage if they leave?? Your logic has more holes than a slice of swiss cheese!
You can't hold me to the standard of providing evidence and avoiding spurious links between assertions and evidence, when you yourself are essentially saying that cutting pay (as that is what freezing pay is if you think about cost of living) won't negatively impact schools because, well, because you think so. Seems a touch like a double standard.
But I will maintain that my argument has the force of common sense.
I didn't claim that there would be a mass exodus of teachers. I will say that the market is just right for good teaching. People go to school to teach and want to teach here because the pay is good. That creates competition. That's what good ol Republicans want (unless they just want to pull apart the whole communistic notion of public education).
While it won't work to chase teachers away, I'll grant you, pay influences motivation. I want motivated teachers.
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Because it solves nothing.
Nice try. 
