The Price of Education

By Lisa Cohen

Our community faces funding challenges.

In contrast, our revenue intake has fallen off dramatically. Property values here in Croton have failed to keep up with surrounding communities. Many property owners in town have successfully lobbied for reductions in their property tax payments. Croton's commercial tax base is quite small and there has been a large drop in sales tax revenues. The residential property taxpayer is bearing an ever increasing burden in funding our schools.

We have to creatively solve the problem of paying for a quality education for every student as well as deal with unfunded mandates handed down to our district by the state and federal government.

The Board of Education has a responsibility to find the best value for the education dollar. Can we combine administrative or managerial jobs, even temporarily, to save on salary and benefit costs? Our Village administration went paperless last week. Can the district administration follow suit? Our current Board of Ed members have explored the idea of sharing services with both our Village administration and neighboring school districts as well. We can build on this foundation to save money spent on building and maintenance charges. Additionally, area district administrations could create a consortium to create reasonable salary and benefit packages for non-unionized staff. At present the teachers' and transportation unions dictate salary schedules and how much an employee pays into their health coverage. This is the year to bring temporary pay freezes, permanent increases into employee contributions and performance-based pay into salary negotiations. Our residents are suffering through job losses and salary cuts. The Board of Education should demonstrate an awareness of what residential taxpayers are experiencing.

The amount of mandates passed down to school districts with no funding to support them is staggering. Croton is a founding member of READ, Regional Educational Advocacy Districts: http://www.read1.org. Their mission is to achieve relief not only from unfunded mandates but also from mandatory standardized testing. I consider it vital to provide district voters with the information necessary for individuals to lobby their elected officials for help in these matters in concert with the district. It is the individual voter who has the most sway with politicians, after all.

Working together we can get through times of difficulty and emerge stronger from our efforts.