To cut or not to cut that is the question for the 2010-11 School Budget. Will the incumbents have the will to slash their favorites, the administrators and supervisors who earn more than Supreme Court Judges thanks to the present School Board giveway contracts? What do you think? Perhaps we can keep the school budget under $190 Million next year but that depends on the bleeding White Plains Assessment Roll.
And another thing, could we have a longer campaign period for the Board of Education elections. These citizen-“managers” “manage” a $185.8 Million budget — badly. They dabble and babble and say it’s “for the kids.”
Currently candidates get petitions in by May 1, and have 18 days to get the issues out before the elections. How absurd. That has to be changed if you are ever going to get persons who are not “politically correct” on this board to look down range and see what’s coming.
Could White Plains realize that there are persons in this city who have brains that do not live in the southend of town? In fact, they may have better math skills. Anyway, let’s have the Board of Ed campaign start earlier at least — and do away with the contrivance of the League of Women Voters Forum. Have a caravan — going around to the PTAs at least. At least one tough question was asked by Carrie Kyzivat — what the candidates would do about finances going forward, though all the answers to that question mystriously were given off-mike on the telecast replay of the forum — the microphones were off — so it was very hard to understand. But of course, there are no conspiracies, are there?
The results today in the school board election will most likely be the results like any other year.Budget passes. The usual suspects reelected.
Which means next year will be fun and we should pay real close attention.
Superintendent of Schools Timothy Connors departs his position in July. it is not too early to be thinking about what new School Superintendent. Dr. Christopher Clouet will inherit.
Few can argue that Connors has been a decisive, politically astute leader, persuading the district parents (because that is who votes in school board elections and bond referendums) to take on the mammoth $69 Million Capital Improvements Project. He has kept the wolves at bay on the achievement gap in White Plains by at least getting the tedious bureaucracy of the district to focus seriously on the district’s Hispanic and African-American population of which about little more than half can read proficiently two years ago, and write and do basic math when they enter high school. That may sound harsh, but that is what the statistics showed. Now latest results from Dr. Margaret Dwyer show that has been turned around by extensive remedial work in the middle school.
On the other hand, how much more improvement can the district make if they do not address the language problem facing the Hispanic community by not hiring and installing bilingual education in the lower grades? The African-American academic achievement gap is another problem. When parents are involved children learn regardless of their race or creed or background. Perhaps Dr. Clouet’s ability to connect with minorities will provide a new incentive to improve the learning ethic and needed parental involvement.
However the overriding issue facing the next Superintendent of Schools is the budget. As reported by WPCNR for years, the city blithely continues to rollover for certiorari suits by businesses that are the premier properties in town, continuing to erode the tax base on which the school district taxes for the balance of its budget. The city continued to bet the taxpayer’s wellbeing on development, while agreeing to tax givebacks and assessment reductions based on owner numbers which when you think about have to be contrived via accounting creativity.
How can buildings sold in a thriving downtown be assessed for less? But try and prove it. The city continues the certiorari givebacks and the school district continues to go along with them. If the Bradley Administration coming in (no Republican Mayoral challenger or Common Council challengers yet as of May19) does anything, they have to impose a city wide commercial certiorari “make-up” charge of some kind that will mitigate the assessment impact.
School taxes that traditionally have made White Plains attractive in the real estate market are going to have to rise about 10% a year to sustain the current level of district spending – which was brought to its lowest increase level in a decade last year but still 7% — double inflation, and this year they held the tax increase to 2.4%. But, how can they continue to fund their increasingly militant labor force? Teacher rapport is shot thanks to the gobs of cash thrown at administrators each of the last three years. The district negotiators continue to focus on holding the line on the merit raises, without looking seriously at the step contracts and longevity increases that really kill the district budget. How about lowering the starting salaries for new teachers? How about doing away with the automatic longevity raises – negotiated in deranged moments in the past?
The new Superintendent will face a budget that is out of control in a district that shows little heart for reining in spending until this year.
The present Superintendent made very token inroads on the teacher salary structure limiting the year to year contract salary increase to 3%, and negotiating token increase in what teachers pay for their health insurance. And the new Superintendent will have to negotiate this again a year from now. (Any arbitrated settlement will only be for two years, which will include this year (08-09) and 2009-10).
The portion teachers pay of their health benefits has to go up to trim the 10% increase in health benefits costs that continue to afflict the district. The negotiations in the first Clouet contract will have to begin with overhauling the structure. You have to lower starting salaries, and revamp the step levels (for degrees) for new teachers being hired into the system to assure the long term health of the district. It is easy to say this, hard to negotiate, but for too long the district has paid such generous salaries compared to other districts that when shown the White Plains schedules, teachers in similar sized districts drop their jaws in disbelief. I know, I’ve showed the salary and step schedule around.
The relationships in the district between White Plains administration and teachers have always been so cordial and mutually symbiotic. No more. Two thirds of the budget goes to salaries for teaching and administrating. One could argue that a spirit of mutual cooperation where administration and teaching professionals work together is great for the district. But, the district, thanks to the city fiscal mismanagement of the tax roll, especially the last eight years, can no longer afford business as usual.
The new Superintendent taking over in July will also have to deal with the very secret process of the District Strategic Plan – in which action plans are being devised for presentation to the Board of Education this fall without any public airing to date. But who knows what those action plans are? The goals are generic. Not lower budget to inflation levels. Not attritition of staff by 10%. Things like that Are they even discussed?
Tomorrow and Thursday, the district gets together on the Strategic Plan. We shall see what comes out of it. The Mission Statement is fine. But what will they be doing?
Specifics have not been divulged, and oddly enough there has been no public recognition by the Strategic Planners (most of whom are school district employees) of the financial plight of the district and how to address it.
Creating a strategic plan with goals of a lofty variety that do not engage the issues threatening effective efficient, economic education of our youth in the face of a plummeting tax base is wishful thinking.
It’s living in wonderland.
Creating a strategic plan for a decade without coming to grips with the deteriorating buildings at Highlands and Eastview and George Washington School – in the face of cross-your-fingers population estimates based only on birth rate every year – is ignoring reality. The district is at the limits of what it can handle now.
Creating a strategic plan for a decade without coming to grips with the question of why we need to do $17 Million of infrastructure improvements the next two years when we supposedly have been spending $3 Million a year for building upkeep begs the question – how good is the fiscal plant maintenance year to year that is in place now? You have to ask those questions in any strategic plan. If you’re maintaining yearly, you should not have to upgrade $17 million-dollars worth in one crippling debt blow.
These are old schools, too. How long will they last? Where will the new school school buildings come from to handle our gradually increasing population?
The public needs to see those specifics. If they care. The City School District is essentially where they were seven years ago when they dismissed the previous Superintendent, but the financial pressure has increased substantially thanks to their own largesse. The district is running out of money sources.
If the district leaders do not recognize that they are creating a taxing disaster which will cripple the district for years and the quality of our education more than they will ever realize, the fate is sealed. The taxpayer will be bailing out for years to come.
That is the situation the new Superintendent faces now
On the academic side, one wonders, short of bringing in a bilingual education effort which the district is experimenting with next year – an English Spanish class where students are instructed half in English and half in Spanish – how serious they are at addressing the bilingual need. Port Chester has for years been able to handle their Spanish speaking population with a bilingual program.
The White Plains Board of Education was told that by this reporter seven years ago, and now thanks to Mr. Connors leadership they are beginning to see the light. Whether the administration will expand on this initiative to teach children of Hispanic descent bilingually is a fundamental part of Strategic Planning and what the new Superintendent will have to address. Are they even doing that? We don’t know because the district planners are not talking.
The new Superintendent, contrary to what one Board of Education candidate said last week, cannot afford to just get comfortable and schmooze the city in his first year. He must lead.
Mr. Connors, though we have not always felt he has moved hard and fast enough has taken decades of laissez-faire management in this district and has started to turn this very large bloated supertanker around out of the shoals, even though it is leaking red ink and billing the taxpayer for it. Had the Board of Education established a Special Education Academy as Connors suggested five years ago they would have a profit center and educational resource that would have paid for itself. So much for Board of Education vision.
Above all – school district and city government need a management that will pay attention to numbers more than two weeks out of the year, and will trim this district’s operating costs; negotiate a teaching salary structure which over time will keep labor costs at the inflationary rate instead of escalating exponentially. I am not saying you have to eliminate step increases. I am saying you have to stretch them out, negotiate them down – for new teachers being hired. Otherwise things are not going to change. And attack those benefit payments. They are way out of line with the private sector.
The new Superintendent is going to have to trim administration personnel. We have far too many administrators. Attrition after persons leave the district has to be looked at more seriously than it is. The district currently employs one administrator for every 13 teachers it has. That needs to be looked at very closely, and attrition strongly considered.
The city has to examine their labor force, too, with contract negotiations piling up, tax base tanking, and no development in sight.
Cross your fingers, taxpayers. | 
