Letter to the Editor: Observations on the Chappaqua school budget

April 16, 2010
by Steve Walsh

Dear Editor,

On April 20, just a few short days away, the Chappaqua Board of Education convenes to approve the 2010-2011 budget for our school district. If you’re like me, you likely have many questions for the hearing on May 4.  The vote takes place on May 18. 

If you’re like me, you’re torn between admiration for our great school system and the continuance of its excellence on one hand, and the spiraling costs and maybe cataclysmic results of these ever-growing tax burdens on the other. My literary deficiencies aside, please allow me a John Donne moment: “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” 

Will it?  At what point do our taxes cross the threshold of attracting people to our school system versus driving them away?  Will onerous tax levies drive out elder citizenry who no longer have children in the school system (and may not have had for decades), and who actually subsidize those households that have school age kids? Will my house become unsalable because no one in his or her right mind would want to assume the liability?

Can we sustain the rate of budget increases that have averaged approximately 7% annually since 2000 while the rate of inflation has been in the 2% to 2.5% range? Can we continue to sustain mandatory obligations to a pension system that will exacerbate fiscal conditions for decades to come?  The questions go on and on, with opinions on both sides.

Now some observations. I have three children who have graduated from the Chappaqua school system, and three currently attending. My children have had a wonderful array of teachers, and their education has been top notch.  I want their gifted and compassionate teachers to be compensated well. I want the Chappaqua school system to continue to attract the best and brightest teachers. 

But I also want fiscal reason when dictating what is affordable and what is not. An almost doubling of our school budget in a span of ten years has a least a hint of some complacency on the part of our administrators.

Admittedly part of that rate of increase has nothing to do with teachers, and is due instead to the construction of the second middle school.  But we’ve got it now. It’s had its effect on the budget and we have to work around it.  The board has said for two budget years now that it would examine structural changes in the middle schools, and maybe the time has come to do that. 

In the meantime we have to make some hard decisions on what we can afford going forward and what we can’t. Current agreements that provide 7% annual increases in pay, unfunded and generous pension plans and full benefits have proven to be unaffordable.

Responsible fiscal planning assumes there will be bumps in the road going forward, fraught with strains like our recent (and current?) recession. We cannot afford (there’s that word again) to be shortsighted. The right decisions are usually the hardest ones, and the bell now tolls for thee, and me and you. We need to strike a balance between what is fair and what is not, what is sustainable and what is potentially disastrous.  Let’s put our heads together and make this work. Let’s avoid politics, dogma, and personal benefit. Let’s be fair.

Steve Walsh