| Author | Message | ||
     Diversity Man Citizen Username: Deadwhitemale Post Number: 613 Registered: 5-2001 |
We get what we elect. DWM | ||
| C Bataille Citizen Username: Nakaille Post Number: 1642 Registered: 5-2001 |
Redsox: "why is it that my child should be subjected to mental defectives in the classroom???" And you call the super a "pompous *sshole"? You can't even sign your own name to a post like that, can you? Cathy | ||
| jfburch Citizen Username: Jfburch Post Number: 1287 Registered: 6-2001 |
Ok, Jim, imagine for us. How can it be done? I'm not asking for a detailed plan, but point me to a district that has held costs flat, or decreased them while improving the quality of the education and/or the parent and community satisfaction with the education? It's worth noting that per pupil expenditures rose rapidly in the 70s and especially the 80s, during the "good old days" and have been rising much more slowly since the 90s, especially post Abbott. Point me to a good or excellent private school that does not have regular tuition increases (in addition to having endowments that public schools lack). Bonus points if you can point me to a good or excellent private school that takes and keeps all comers--including special ed, lower achievers, and discipline problems--and still manages to hold costs down and the level of service up. Additional bonus points if they pay competitive wages and honor union contracts. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see how to lower costs in a public school district. Some BoSE members suggested it at the workshop on Thursday: Increase class sizes. I don't think many parents want that. I know teachers don't. I don't think it would help make this district competitive with those of other communities. It might let us spend less in the short run (and it might well cost us more in the long run--see below), but it will not buy us "more". Even if we tried that for a few years--and pulled it off in terms of results (test scores) and parent satisfaction--there are sharp limits to how much and how long such cost cutting strategy could be implemented. A year or two of savings would be accompanied by, and followed by, cost increases of nearly the same magnitude we see now, and driven by the same factors. We can't just plan to increase class sizes year after year until we have a one-room schoolhouse for 6000+ kids. Moreover, like it or not, public schools operate with a host of constraints in the form of state and federal mandates--in addition to community and parent demands and desires. Most of these cost money one way or the other; many introduce some level of inefficiency. They certainly reduce flexibility in some areas. One of those mandates is NCLB and some of the sanctions that it provides for are expensive. It's not just losing Title 1 funding. Within a year or two, "failing" schools will have to either provide transfers to a different school (space permitting) at the parents' request or provide individual tutoring to all students below proficiency. Space limitations would make it impossible to bus large numbers of SB and Clinton kids to South Mountain, say, though we could well have to deal with the administrative costs of handling such requests and some transportation costs to honor them. So we'll be looking at individual tutoring that I'll wager would cost a lot more than current remedial efforts. (Private tutoring companies are chomping at the bit to get this business.) Raising class sizes is likely to raise the bill for such NCLB sanctions and make them more likely to kick in. If we want to be a community with good schools, we have to pay for them. The current funding model is lousy--but until we, and our legislature and governor change it, it's what we've got. If we don't pay for them, we won't have the schools we want--and I think that will have fairly predictable results for our community. That said, even if we commit to funding the schools, there are still many things to talk about, and imagine, and work for to make them better, and more satisfactory for all. And not all of those things will necessarily cost additional money. And even lots of money wouldn't automatically improve some of the things that need improving. So there are two questions: 1) Will we fund our schools? and 2) How can we make them better? If the answer to #1 is "No" then I am not sure we can meaningfully address #2, no matter how imaginative or revolutionary we want to be. | ||
| andream Citizen Username: Andream Post Number: 12 Registered: 9-2002 |
I am definitely in agreement with Bookgal. I am NOT in favor of the continuing escalation of taxes. But I've lived in this town many years and know many people. Most of the families I know who have moved out of town have done so because they perceive that the quality of education is not good enough for them. It's much easier to tell people they are leaving because they can't afford the taxes than to tell their friends who are staying that the schools are not acceptable. The truth is that some of these families would happily pay those high taxes if they lived in Mountain Lakes. But they lose confidence in the schools and the BOE's ability to demand excellence, and they're gone. It goes on year after year. So be careful and read between the lines when someone says they're moving because of the taxes. Yes, there are absolutely those who in fact cannot afford the taxes. But keep in mind that there are more differences between Maplewood and Westfield than just the tax rate. | ||
| ffof Citizen Username: Ffof Post Number: 1902 Registered: 5-2001  |
THe grass is always greener. And if they end up not liking the schools, they'll never admit it, to us Maplewoodians anyway. So why is Westfield so desired anyway? No talk of race ad nauseum. I personally wouldn't move there - we're too entrenched. Unless a job change dictates a move, we stay put. | ||
| doublea Citizen Username: Doublea Post Number: 436 Registered: 3-2003 |
In the case of my son, he really wanted to live in Maplewood. He really likes the diversity, and has always championed it. Had he and my DIL still been working in the City, they might have still considered it, but were always aware of the tax situation. They both started working from home, and therefore commuting was not an issue. They bought a modest house in Westfield with taxes of $5600. As far as the people across the street, they really loved Maplewood. Then came the revaluation and they couldn't handle the taxes. If you want to try to read behind the lines, you can. It was all about the taxes. | ||
| michael Citizen Username: Michael Post Number: 469 Registered: 1-2002 |
My Vision (said the BOE or TC candidate) is for our "Town of Diveristy" to become the "Town of the Wealthy and Diverse" (!!!?) That would be an interesting campaign platform.
I'll make it easy for you burch, (by the way, have you ever personaly gone shopping in a real supermarket)  When your taxes go up significantly above the rate of inflation over a period of 6 years you are coming closer to "inaffordability" than not, for most people. Sure some can withstand any increase, but cannot and WILL leave or NOT choose to come. | ||
| Dad23 Citizen Username: Dad23 Post Number: 45 Registered: 8-2003 |
I'm going to say it again. The superintentdent could start by making cuts in his own building. 3 assistant superintendents! 2 business administrators (+8-10 business staff) 1 director of assessment 1 director of public relations and others This staff might be an acceptable amount in good financial times. But when he cuts programs or raises class size, he never cuts anyone who supports him. The teachers' jobs get harder. The principals' jobs get harder. But his job gets just as much support as before. He doesn't even try to make it look like central office is making a sacrifice. Arrogant and selfish. | ||
| CageyD Citizen Username: Cageyd Post Number: 74 Registered: 6-2003 |
Burch "Ok, Jim, imagine for us. How can it be done? I'm not asking for a detailed plan, but point me to a district that has held costs flat, or decreased them while improving the quality of the education and/or the parent and community satisfaction with the education" Here is your answer Burch - MONTCLAIR. As has been extensively reported in many local papers, the Montclair school system had a rapid brain drain a decade ago when they instituted deleveling. Many parents pulled their kids and went private. The superintendent that came in the SAME YEAR AS HOROSHAK managed to lower school spending, improve test scores of white, black and other minority students and so improved the schools and the perceptions thereof that a number of parents who sent their kids to private schools have begun re-enrolling their kids in Montclair public schools. Our school leaders are failures!! Outside of the Seth Boyden experiment (?) they have no success to show for themselves. THey should be run out of town on a rail! Despite having spent the last 4 years putting in tremendous sweat and money and love into our home - leaving SO for a smaller house in a better school district is a consideration for us if things don't improve and fast. | ||
| jfburch Citizen Username: Jfburch Post Number: 1288 Registered: 6-2001 |
How did Montclair lower spending? How much? What years? My quick newspaper search shows tax increases in '96, 97, 99, and 2000 (all the years I find mentioned specifically--I'd be curious about numbers for the most recent years.). And in the district's send off for Osnato, they credit him with building "support for the budget" and note that most recently "Many improvements and upgrades were accomplished in the district this summer and we thank Montclair residents and the Town Council for supporting the school budget, which provided the resources to make these improvements become a reality." He is also credited with securing some outside funding (I don't know specifics or how much), which is certainly something we can try to emulate. We can compare the districts if you like, but it doesn't look like Montclair is making improvements with lots of budget reductions. | ||
| bobk Supporter Username: Bobk Post Number: 4579 Registered: 5-2001 |
Sometimes perception is more important than fact. It appears that Montclair's Board and Administration have seemed to get the support of the taxpayers. Nobody would credit Latz and SuperH with that ability. I also kind of doubt that Montclair ever tried to ram through a 10% budget in a year where student population has stabilized, although I stand willing to be corrected on this if someone has the facts. | ||
| Montagnard Citizen Username: Montagnard Post Number: 405 Registered: 6-2003 |
Even a property tax of $20,000/year would still be less than the cost of private school for two or more children. Many of us would be willing to pay whatever is necessary, so long as the quality of the system remained high, and the district was responsive to our needs. Raising the cost of living here might get our "diversity" back down to a level where we can afford the remedial education. | ||
| J. Crohn Citizen Username: Jcrohn Post Number: 886 Registered: 3-2003 |
Montagnard: "Raising the cost of living here might get our "diversity" back down to a level where we can afford the remedial education." Well, I doubt it. Has the underclass in New York diminished just because housing costs have gone through the roof? No. Instead, middle and upper-middle class families have moved out here. When they leave here for greeener pastures yet, they will take their diversity-loving values to other places, making those places more livable. (Which is what happened here, incidentally, and in countless suburbs in the northeast that used to be havens of whitebread-ness.) And they will leave behind a bigger gap between rich and poor. Moreover, consider the fact that a rapidly rising tax burden pushes older citizens out of town. People who have no school-age children, or who are struggling to pay college tuitions, certainly have no "private-vs.-public" cost incentive to pay twenty grand a year in taxes. When they leave, who moves in? Younger families with school-age children. And what happens to the school district enrollment rate? It rises, necessitating... higher taxes! (The person who pointed this out to me, by the way, had an example to offer of a town in our region in which this very thing had taken place, but I forget what it was.) The situation we're in is admittedly dynamic, but while it may seem to make sense on one level to say that increasing school quality will keep families in town, I think you're not taking account of all possible outcomes involving tax escalation... Burch: "In our towns, 25% to 30% of homeowners are paying 35% or more of income for housing expenses. 40% to 45% are paying just 20% or less." So? Total cost of housing is hardly the only relevant financial consideration in a family's decision about where to live. If it were, there would be little difference in preference for homes over apartments (and of course, there is). The fact that a growing proportion of one's housing costs are taxes as opposed to equity-building payments is significant to most rational people. All things being equal, if one had a choice between towns in which 30% of housing costs were taxes and 70% mortgage, or vice versa, who wouldn't choose the bigger mortgage and the lower taxes? *** All that said, I find the latest developments rather intriguing. I'm watching and waiting to see what happens, but two things look interesting to me: the proposal to eliminate the K-8 curriculum supervisors and the proposal to reduce class size in (I think) K-2. The first of these, if approved, could pave the way for schools to take local responsibility for designing/choosing and implementing curricula. That could be a very good thing, as long as each school in the district was supported by and held accountable to the central admin for meeting specific educational targets. If this were done, then the necessity of implementing a published reading curriculum across the district could be obviated as each school came to workable solutions on its own. (I have no doubt that these would include increasing systematic phonics instruction, by the way, but the change might be easier to swallow if teachers and principals were permitted to make their own collective choices about how to go about that. This might be newly possible in the absence of the language arts curriculum supervisor.) However, eliminating the curriculum supervisors also utterly wipes out the promise of ongoing training in differentiated instruction, which was assured not only to the 6th grade teachers, but also to the public, which was explicitly told that ongoing staff development in differentiated instruction would make deleveling work. (Neat hat trick, huh? Promise improved education via integration; but deliver only integration, and blame any failure to deliver education on the public: 'well, you see, you people wouldn't pay for educational quality'.) Moreover, it would be a real shame to lose the K-8 science supervisor, as she seems to have done her job exceptionally well. Our district's science curriculum is quite good, and someone would have to figure out how to keep in that way in her absence. Nevertheless, I think the BOE should call the admin's bluff and approve the supervisors' elimination. At the same time, it should demand that the superintendent ensure all 6th grade students are taught and graded to the highest possible standards, and that a plan for doing so be submitted before the school year is out. Concerning early-grade class size reductions, a) I wonder if this is supposed to be a sop to a disgruntled SOMEA, and b) I doubt class size reduction at this level will do much good (except that, as a means of impressing the public, it's not a bad PR move). As things stand, it's been my impression that class sizes in K-2 are already pretty much within reason and only need to be kept stable. What happens if we reduce class size and enrollment increases? Class size rises. Reducing it repeatedly is probably unsustainable. Any benefit from smaller classes could evaporate in only a few years' time. Wouldn't we just turn out to have been paying the inevitable costs of growing enrollment in advance? As a means of improving education outcomes, better preparation in reading would help more than class size reduction, and it would probably cost less to hire teacher aids (or shift Project Ahead personnel) to work with young kids in class, than to hire more teachers before we're desperate for them. Again, to cite the highly regarded Abington school in Newark, average class size is around 33 students, at least three quarters of whom are impoverished or minority. However, the number of aides and trained volunteers per class apparently reduces the student-to-instructor ratio to about what we have in classes where the teacher has one aide. | ||
| fringe Citizen Username: Fringe Post Number: 289 Registered: 5-2001 |
A potential BOE candidate above asked jln for his solutions to the budget crisis. In the years prior and subsequent to the poster's arrival here, Jim forecast and offered numerous solutions to the current budget mess - and he continues to do so. But he is a privte citizen, not a member of one of the most highly paid school administrations in New Jersey. See several links at hometown.aol.com/njfabian under Education Spending. It seems to me that Super H and his staff owe the citizens a more detailed presentation. Is the Groundhog budget their only solution? Are there options, or simply an up or down vote? What happens if the BOSE rejects? Will they suddenly discover other solutions then? And what position does the BOE candidate take? Does she side with Latz/Frazier in calling for adoption of the budget as presented? Or would she alter it, and if so how? Seems like something voters will want to know. While I have no interest in a BOE seat, the superintendent's salary of ~$160,000 might be enough to attract even me to spend a year developing an educational program that is within our means. One thing is certain - it would not be the status quo, or as Latz put it, "Preserving what we have." For me there is more than enough evidence showing that it does not work for all students. JTL | ||
| fringe Citizen Username: Fringe Post Number: 290 Registered: 5-2001 |
And certainly not enough evidence of its success to calmly acknowledge that an unspecified number of current residents will have to leave because of the funding requirements - without even a hint of an apology. | ||
| jfburch Citizen Username: Jfburch Post Number: 1290 Registered: 6-2001 |
"In the years prior and subsequent to the poster's arrival here, Jim forecast and offered numerous solutions to the current budget mess - and he continues to do so." Great, so give us newer arrivals the short version. Neither he, nor you, have answered the question. | ||
| bobk Supporter Username: Bobk Post Number: 4581 Registered: 5-2001 |
A large proportion of the people leaving are middle aged with children out of the school system. Guess who is replacing them? People with young children. This is a vicious cycle. | ||
| bookgal Citizen Username: Bookgal Post Number: 486 Registered: 7-2001 |
Bob, maybe we move in different social circles but all the people I know who have moved in the last two years had kids in the schools and moved to Westfield, Chatham, and Mountain Lakes (or out of state). The retirees and empty nesters we know have remained in town, apart from one couple who divorced. I don't doubt that some retirees and empty nesters have chosen to move over taxes. We've lived in Maplewood for over 12 years and cannot imagine moving over any issue except the schools. I can't afford the taxes and private school... I find it discouraging that the people moving have been extremely active in the schools for many years not newbies who don't have kids in the schools yet. Many of our neighbors with preschoolers have already stated their intention to send their kids to private schools which I find very troubling. | ||
| Diversity Man Citizen Username: Deadwhitemale Post Number: 618 Registered: 5-2001 |
The empty nesters don't have to put kids through college, or feed them any more. jf: perhaps you should have attended budget sessions and workshops through the years you have been here. You didn't, and you don't have any answers. The Latz view is cruel, if you can't pay for my sociological experiment in dumbing down everyone to the lowest common denominator, well, tough. Latz and H inhabit a town without pity. {Sorry, Gene Tierney] How many on the board are with Latz? Gagnier, Jasey, Slafkes, Campbell. So, this April's election is crucial. Vote DWM | ||
| Copperfield Citizen Username: Copperfield Post Number: 15 Registered: 1-2004 |
I'm reading this thread to educate myself about this debate, but I'm surprised no one's called J.Crohn on his assertion that: >>Has the underclass in New York diminished just because housing costs have gone through the roof? No. Instead, middle and upper-middle class families have moved out here.>> Now if I'm reading you correctly, that's a twisting of the facts. The underclass has pretty much disappeared from Manhattan and many areas of Brooklyn. The problem for families is scarcity of affordable housing which stems directly from the scarcity of family-size apartments- there just aren't that many large classic 7 apartments, so the prices for family-size apartments is sky-high. That's why people are moving out here. (Not to mention the fact that even a large NYC apartment is smaller than a suburban house.) It's not the underclass who is left in NYC - it's all the young singles, empty nesters, snowbirds and others who don't need anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment. Because those small apartments make up the bulk of the available housing stock in NYC. That's not the case in Maplewood, where even the smallest houses are family size and can easily be expanded. Look at Millburn- small houses sell for well over $500k and the new owners renovate and expand. I see no reason to assume this wouldn't happen in Maplewood. |
