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I was gonna rep you and write "well in that case, I'll just rep YOU instead!" but it wouldn't let me either LOL.
I agree with all of that too, you're absolutely right. Long Island's stupid NIMBYism and nostalgia is destroying it. People in Garden City seriously thought that converting St. Paul's into $700,000 condos would turn the whole village into a blighted urban ghetto. Anything that isn't a disgusting McMansion, a useless 55+ community, a big box store or a fast food restaurant is viewed as a sign of the impending apocalypse. We are a joke...jobs, corporations, entertainment - these are all things that will never be lured out to Long Island given our population's absurd desire to keep things exactly the way they were in 1962. However, those people also forget that in 1962 we actually had a crap-ton of jobs on the island and that's one of the reasons why the property taxes remained stable for so long. It's not possible for an area this large and this dense to become anything but a complete financial burden with only residential properties on the tax rolls. These people are nuts.
However, that is an entirely different thought from this myth of a middle class white exodus to Brooklyn. I take it you're in your early-mid 20s? When I was that age, everybody I knew was moving into Brooklyn too....but give it a few more years and LI will make more sense, despite the cost (which, BTW, is pretty severe in the Five Boroughs as well). Unless you were raised in that urban an environment, it's a seriously huge leap to decide you'd rather start a family in a spiffy new Bedford-Stuyvesant loft as opposed to a Plainview split-level or something. You don't worry as much about the "cultural void" when you've got your own flesh and blood to worry about. BK is a logistical nightmare for having kids.
I don't think its a cultural issue for the vast majority of the cases. The vast majority of the problem is that jobs on LI are lacking, the taxes and housing prices are excessive, management is poor, and young people see these things and find better places elsewhere.
McMansions came out of the housing boom, easier and cheaper to build that then to sit around waiting to afford a nice already built home. Inflation rate for the past 10 years is about 23%, and since I've been in the real estate sections everywhere looking for a nice affordable home to move up to I can say that some people are just off their rockers, and the people that are actually buying are the same people who are claiming they never saw the bubble in the first place. Home sold ten years ago in a nice neighborhood for 199,000 is now on the market for 4-500K?! Is what world? S/D curves aren't showing there is a major glut in supply.
Taxes are the major problem with all of LI. We can't get business in here because the high taxes mean significantly higher wages, which means less jobs to tax, which leads to higher taxes. I personally think we should get all of our elected officials on Sim City before entering office to figure out the Laffer Curve. So far we've driven out 19% of our younger crowd, a figure that is not going to get smaller. In another decade we'll have a tax gap due to those people not coming into the island, further emphasizing the tax disparity, and we'll be seeing larger problems island-wide.
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Originally Posted by ClarkStreetKid
That method is incredibly ham handed at best and I think there are ways around that. I suspect that the magnet schools are one of the ways around two problems: one is racial balance and the other is raising academics in low performing schools. I suspect creating a situation where parents from somewhat affluent areas will want to send their high achievers to lower performing schools with the result being a school's rating going up is a better method. Think about it, you have parents wanting their kids to be bussed 40 minutes to a school in a neighborhood that they wouldn't dream of driving through much less live in, and then having their kids demographic and high academics averaged into that school. It's really clever.
I'm still waiting to see what effect this has on the kids in the lower performing schools that aren't in the magnet programs.
As far as the state allocation in NY, I can see funneling some money to other areas but it shouldn't be to the detriment of the Island.
What parent is going to send their kids from CSH schools to Brentwood or CI? Who is going to pay to have those kids taken? Why on earth do we care about the "racial makeup" of a school anywhere when they simply are reflections of the populations who live within the district boundries? Why should people who have chosen and voted to pay more to their school district be penalized by having that extra moneyt hey are taxed on sent to another school?
Programs like this get my ire up more then you can believe.
A parent that wants to send their kid to a IB program that doesn't go to CSH. My wife and several of our friends went to CSH so we know it's not the average LI school district.
The reason to care about the racial makeup is the Feds care about it. You have the choice of busing kids out of their areas, or having people choose to go to a program in another area. Your affluent school isn't effected.
Quote:
Why should people who have chosen and voted to pay more to their school district be penalized by having that extra moneyt hey are taxed on sent to another school?
So why should people who never had a chance to choose or able to afford to pay more for their school district be penalized? I live in an affluent area by choice, one reason was to make sure my kids went to the better schools. I don't have a problem with some, not all of my taxes, going to help a school in a less privileged part of the county.
Long Island's stupid NIMBYism and nostalgia is destroying it.
+1,000,000,000
I couldent have said it better. The NIMBYism is what prevents progress here on Long Island. So what if the Lighthouse Project creates some more traffic? It's ensuring a future for Long Island so that we can remain competitive in the modern world.
That method is incredibly ham handed at best and I think there are ways around that. I suspect that the magnet schools are one of the ways around two problems: one is racial balance and the other is raising academics in low performing schools. I suspect creating a situation where parents from somewhat affluent areas will want to send their high achievers to lower performing schools with the result being a school's rating going up is a better method. Think about it, you have parents wanting their kids to be bussed 40 minutes to a school in a neighborhood that they wouldn't dream of driving through much less live in, and then having their kids demographic and high academics averaged into that school. It's really clever.
I'm still waiting to see what effect this has on the kids in the lower performing schools that aren't in the magnet programs.
As far as the state allocation in NY, I can see funneling some money to other areas but it shouldn't be to the detriment of the Island.
I think pigs will fly first. Certain areas have name recognition. I doubt the Old Field parent is going to want their bright child graduating from Wm Floyd HS in order to make their grades look better.
If you have higher achieving students being bussed out of a school which is highly competitive, and in return are replacing those students with mediocre students, that school's averages will in turn, decrease. Everything averages out. Instead of one underperforming school and one better performing school, we wind up with two average schools. I have to disagree about it being clever. It's more social engineering than anything.
About 2 weeks ago the SUNY Stony Brook newspaper had a student written article about student self segregation on campus. Students tended to hang around with those most like themselves, despite the university's best efforts at creating an ethnically and racially mixed, intelligent student body more reflective of our population.
My sister lives in Florida where they have county schools. She deliberately selected an area with a very well regarded HS only to have the redistricting shift and find herself in the area of a very good HS, but not the one she had hoped for. There's always a chance the lines will shift again. According to my father, who is also in that county, there is little busing done, but judging by the maps it appears to be more an issue of barrier beaches and lengthy rides.
The PJS thread which was started a couple of days ago indicates problems Comsewogue is having (and according to Comsewogue alum on the cd boad has had for years) What is the point in mixing problems into a school where those problems don't exist on such a level, or perhaps not at all?
You've mentioned traveling school psychologists, pooled resources, etc., and that makes perfectly good sense financially, but I would have to ask (in the case of the psychologists and other specialists) is something on the personal level lost if the psychologist has a multitude of cases?
I'm all for saving money wherever practical, but really need to do a lot of reading up on the case for county districts.
I think pigs will fly first. Certain areas have name recognition. I doubt the Old Field parent is going to want their bright child graduating from Wm Floyd HS in order to make their grades look better.
If you have higher achieving students being bussed out of a school which is highly competitive, and in return are replacing those students with mediocre students, that school's averages will in turn, decrease. Everything averages out. Instead of one underperforming school and one better performing school, we wind up with two average schools. I have to disagree about it being clever. It's more social engineering than anything.
About 2 weeks ago the SUNY Stony Brook newspaper had a student written article about student self segregation on campus. Students tended to hang around with those most like themselves, despite the university's best efforts at creating an ethnically and racially mixed, intelligent student body more reflective of our population.
My sister lives in Florida where they have county schools. She deliberately selected an area with a very well regarded HS only to have the redistricting shift and find herself in the area of a very good HS, but not the one she had hoped for. There's always a chance the lines will shift again. According to my father, who is also in that county, there is little busing done, but judging by the maps it appears to be more an issue of barrier beaches and lengthy rides.
The PJS thread which was started a couple of days ago indicates problems Comsewogue is having (and according to Comsewogue alum on the cd boad has had for years) What is the point in mixing problems into a school where those problems don't exist on such a level, or perhaps not at all?
You've mentioned traveling school psychologists, pooled resources, etc., and that makes perfectly good sense financially, but I would have to ask (in the case of the psychologists and other specialists) is something on the personal level lost if the psychologist has a multitude of cases?
I'm all for saving money wherever practical, but really need to do a lot of reading up on the case for county districts.
It's the same thing in NC - schools run at the county level... They tried the busing and it created a glut in the "better" Middle and HS - essentially causing more issues and more costs in the long run. There wasn't any "reverse" happening, things were extremely imbalanced, and they scrapped it. In the end - just like with your Sister, you always want to be cognizant of your feeder HS and the surrounding areas in a county based school system. All too often you see great Elementary schools and I'm amazed that people overlook the fact that their kids will grow older and lines can (and will) be redrawn.
Granted - you do get the options for IB, magnet, or charter schools (albeit lottery based) and private schools as a worst case scenario. But, you have to be heavily involved wherever you are.
Could town run schools work on LI similar to how other areas do it at the county level? Economies of scale, etc... I don't know for sure, but as stated earlier I would agree that LIers are typically way too NIMBY for such a drastic change.
I think pigs will fly first. Certain areas have name recognition. I doubt the Old Field parent is going to want their bright child graduating from Wm Floyd HS in order to make their grades look better.
If you have higher achieving students being bussed out of a school which is highly competitive, and in return are replacing those students with mediocre students, that school's averages will in turn, decrease. Everything averages out. Instead of one underperforming school and one better performing school, we wind up with two average schools. I have to disagree about it being clever. It's more social engineering than anything.
And I can see that point of view when I look at it through Islander eyes, but in our county it's not that way at all. When someone says that their kid is going to Moody Middle (for example) it has prestige as it's part of the elite IB program, but at the same time the local middle schools are still excellent. So the very bright kid gets their IB education, the magnet school gets the benefits of more influx of cash, some better students, more attention from parents and county, and the county can point at diversity and better performance at disadvantaged schools. The local school still keeps the same great teachers and programs that it had before, and there isn't any replacement of excellent students with mediocre students as it's not a swap and a lot of very bright kids choose to stay in their local school for various reasons (friends, happy with the school, etc).
In a nutshell Old Field would still be Old Field but WFHS would have a magnet program that could draw better students to it.
Could town run schools work on LI similar to how other areas do it at the county level? Economies of scale, etc... I don't know for sure, but as stated earlier I would agree that LIers are typically way too NIMBY for such a drastic change.
And it would be a drastic change. The better schools would be wondering what they'll lose and all the districts would be worried about losing their autonomy and power. I think even the bad districts would be worried about that as they, parents, teachers, admins, students, might be held accountable for why they're failing.
And I can see that point of view when I look at it through Islander eyes, but in our county it's not that way at all. When someone says that their kid is going to Moody Middle (for example) it has prestige as it's part of the elite IB program, but at the same time the local middle schools are still excellent. So the very bright kid gets their IB education, the magnet school gets the benefits of more influx of cash, some better students, more attention from parents and county, and the county can point at diversity and better performance at disadvantaged schools. The local school still keeps the same great teachers and programs that it had before, and there isn't any replacement of excellent students with mediocre students as it's not a swap and a lot of very bright kids choose to stay in their local school for various reasons (friends, happy with the school, etc).
In a nutshell Old Field would still be Old Field but WFHS would have a magnet program that could draw better students to it.
When bright IB child leaves his 'home hs' to attend the IB program at the magnet school, you are writing that he is bringing an influx of cash to the magnet school. If he is bringing an influx of cash to the magnet school, does that mean the 'home hs' loses money?
So there is no import of mediocre students, but the loss of bright students. Averages will still go down in the school, perhaps not was much as if the bright students were replaced with underachievers.
The better performance at the disadvantaged school occurs when someone shifts the beans around. Make the magnet school in the disadvantaged school to bring in bright children who might just be of another race or two to prop the numbers and give an appearance of diversity.
It's gonna take me awhile to reply to everything I want to in this thread LOL...
Hopefully this is still going when I get home tonight, cuz I gotta get on the road right now.
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