The Journal News blog Politics on the Hudson outlined Governor Paterson's decision to drop mid-year cuts in school aid.
“I acknowledge that your costs are rising, but I believe all levels of government must reduce spending,” Paterson’s letter to school boards and superintendents said. “This year, I have reduced state agency spending by more than 10 percent. In this unprecedented fiscal crisis, school districts, like all levels of government, will have to take a similar approach and find ways to reduce costs and improve the efficiency of their operations on behalf of taxpayers.”
But will they?
Here in the sleepy suburbs of Westchester County, from my perspective in Eastchester, neither school districts nor school parents will opt to cut the school budgets with any depth.
The concepts of increasing class size, freezing teacher's salaries and applying austerity-like measures won't happen without a fight. Variations of at least one of those three approaches will be resisted -- but 2009 might also be the year many local school budgets are defeated. People want the services. They don't want to pay for them.
This former member of the Blind Brook School Board, Monroe Haas, targets the procedure for teacher negotiations.
"Negotiations are the reason for union existence. School boards have limited terms. Union leadership remains constant and forever. School boards have negotiations as just one issue and therefore are never as prepared as their union counterpart. The present procedure places districts in competition with each other. Unions reach out to their fellow unions while school boards generally negotiate in a vacuum."
All it takes is one school district with a high contract and the rest follow.
The Buffalo News reported that school aid funding is set to rise 8.8 percent, or $1.9 billion, next year. Paterson called that a number "we simply cannot afford.”
Watching how anti-climatic November 18 turned out to be, I can't imagine December 15 will be much better. All talk and no action.
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