Area school superintendents move to push back on mandates
December 16, 2011
by Christine Yeres
Superintendent Lyn McKay reported that she had met the week before with 50 other superintendents of the Lower Hudson Council of Superintendents and a dozen legislators to discuss the pressures they feel from non-funded or unfunded mandates regulating transportation, fiscal reform and special education in a climate of diminishing funding.
For example, according to a December 9 Journal News article, Hudson Valley schools seek voice to reduce state mandates, if school districts were to succeed in changing the outside distance to which they are required to transport students to private schools from 15 miles to five miles, 14 school districts would save $3.5 million a year.
McKay said that it would help greatly if the superintendents’ group were able at least to persuade Albany to “‘freeze and review all currently proposed and impending mandates’—just stop some of what they’re asking us to do, which includes evaluation of teachers and principals—at the pace they’re asking us to do it, as well as the additional assessing they’re asking us to do at that pace.” [The new Annual Professional Performance Review requirements by the State—a complex system of reviews of every principal and teacher every year—are due to be put into place in CCSD beginning the next school year.]
By way of financial context, according to the JN article, over the last three years, “30 of its member districts cut $179 million in programs and 1,559 staff positions — costing almost $11 million in unemployment costs. In the same period, the 30 districts lost more than $300 million in state and federal aid.”
“The superintendents’ group,” said McKay, “will now hire a firm and survey districts about mandate relief and transportation across several of our districts and counties.”
Eliminating busing to private schools is not the answer to our problems in CCSD. Many families choose to send their children to private school because of the cutbacks and shortcomings of chappaqua or to address special needs that cannot be addressed adequately in public school. These families still pay huge taxes for schools they are not using. Now you are looking to eliminate their means of transportation to a school that is better suited for these students (including Eagle Hill, or any of the excellent learning specific schools in our area). Why should these families suffer? They pay school taxes and all they are using is a bus. Lyn McKay should stop trying to cut busing and focus her energies on improving curriculum. If the curriculum was better there would be fewer families looking for other options.
And Lyn, exactly how many private schools are there within 5 miles of downtown Chappaqua? None that I am aware of.
This is just another example of poor management in our district.
Editor’s Note: The reduction of the transportation radius was an example taken from the Journal News article and may not even be something our own district is seeking. Lyn McKay listed “transportation” as one of the issues the group of superintendents looked at, and the JN article explained what might be meant by that. CCSD may have no intention of reducing its mile number.
LIFO issues and the inability to have arms length negotiations with our public teachers, administrators and other staff that work for the town is the core problem that creates the largest stress on our financial resources compared to any other mandate. The board of ed has acknowledged this last year as part of their mandate relief resolution. I hope the superintendents spent 90% of their time focusing on that. If you look at the raises that our administrators got last year, I am not sure they get it.
