Should LI consolidate School Districts? (Hicksville, Valley Stream: calculated, salary, income tax)
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The problem with consolidation is that the school districts (and this includes both the "better" and not so good districts) who have been judicious in spending money and accumulating debt would be forced to pay for the "mistakes" of other districts. Why would a district in sound financial shape want to merge with a district in financial trouble?
Additionally, each district who has a superintendent and God only knows how many Assistant Superintendents, all have contracts that would have to be bought out unless you have a way to determine who would stay and who would be excessed. Sorry, it was done in Virginia and if you want to read some interesting stuff google it.
Consolidating will do little to decrease supply spending as it's all done on bids and awarded contracts now. There is little to be saved there and in fact budgets go down most years. Believe it or not, on programming and supplies, we all run quite lean.
Cutting out some admins will save a nominal amount (a few million) in the grand scheme of things. Not nearly enough incentive for any district to give up local control.
The big ticket is teacher contractual raises and pension obligations and consolidation does nothing to deal with that. Only a Con-Con that reopens the constitution and breaks those contracts can change it and we just voted that down.
Again, taxpayers don't want to give up local control to save .05% of the budget and zero tax decrease just to give up local control and turn it over to the county. Nassau County can't even manage assessments on homes, you think they can be be trusted to run 50+ school districts?! It would be funny if it weren't so scary! lol
Last example (hypothetical): Just because Hempstead can't manage to fix a boiler doesn't mean Jericho can't get a landslide majority bond vote approved for new ball fields and a pool complex. THAT is what local control is about and no district except the poorest ones (actually, they don't either) want to give that up.
The big ticket is teacher contractual raises and pension obligations and consolidation does nothing to deal with that. Only a Con-Con that reopens the constitution and breaks those contracts can change it and we just voted that down.
Exactly - think about the ratio of teachers to superintendents that are being compensated. It doesn't matter if one superintendent is making $300k when 3 teachers make more than that combined. The ratio of teachers to superintendents is considerably greater than 3:1. Why focus on the superintendents / # of districts? It's the sheer amount we're paying all the teachers. It would be high even if they weren't ridiculously overpaid to begin with.
Exactly - think about the ratio of teachers to superintendents that are being compensated. It doesn't matter if one superintendent is making $300k when 3 teachers make more than that combined. The ratio of teachers to superintendents is considerably greater than 3:1. Why focus on the superintendents / # of districts? It's the sheer amount we're paying all the teachers. It would be high even if they weren't ridiculously overpaid to begin with.
Exactly, and the 2% tax cap means in bad economic times, the districts run even leaner. Can't tax more and still have the raises (sometimes upwards of 6,7,8%) plus pension obligations pegged to CPI to deal with. The smarter admins know how to max out state aid and get grants. The less smart ones don't. THAT is why some taxpayers are fine with paying their superintendent $300k and Cadillac benefits...because they think they're worth it! Ask them if they think the $125k/yr w/ Cadillac benefits kindergarten teacher is worth it! But can't break that collectively bargained contract no way no how. Add tenure for every ding dong who works 3 years without poking themselves in the eye with a pencil and it's even worse!
I think the idea that school consolidation leads to reduced teachers/teacher assistants/teacher aids is a bit flawed - the same number of kids still need to be educated.
But with less districts we would need less superintendents (and the multitudinous assistant superintendents, associate superintendents, deputy superintendents, even more multitudinous superintendent staffs, etc.) So the dollar savings is not much in the big picture but the district administration is probably where the savings (if any) in school district consolidation would be.
If people like consolidated SD, move to NYC. NYC has far lower R/E property taxes. NYC loves to bus kids across SD and have a lottery system to shuffle kids all over nyc. Now the goofball Mayor of NYC wants more dumber kids in Stuy and Bronx Sci too.
Consolidated school districts do work but what makes the biggest difference is the School Board has to submit a budget request to the County Government (where I am) for approval. There is no taxing authority, they must budget, submit, be approved and then operate under that approved budget.
It does wonders when you take away the Carte Blanche spending...
One real consequence (that I think is positive) of school district consolidation is it spreads the tax base across the whole county. There are huge disparities in tax rates across the county because some districts have much more high value commercial property in them than others.
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