State Aid Drops, Who Will Foot the Bill?

State-wide, financial aid to Long Island school districts will fall from the 2010/11 school year level by over $2 billion in 2011/12. That represents a loss of 9.1% of funding for LI schools. These numbers are serious for all taxpaying residents and the children we educate.

Here in Smithtown, it means that we are losing $5,080,994.00 of state funding. This loss equals a -15.3% change. It means that the Smithtown Central School District will need to 'find' over 2% of our current budget to be able to afford a zero-change budget next year, if this is the only change.

Unfortunately, it is probable that we will, at the same time, face another multi-million dollar end-of-the-financial-year surprise payment to cover post-employment obligations. That is, the district must pony up when the depressed market doesn't cover retirement payments that are due. None of this large hunk of our school budget is 'for the kids.'

The special Citizens' Advisory Committee will soon give preliminary reports to our PTAs about potential school closings in order to better serve the declining student population and conserve our financial resources. Bear in mind that there are other ways in which to truly use our resources wisely that have not, yet, been put on the proverbial table.

As some parents learned in the busing referendum do-over, sometimes the savings we
spend so much time seeking aren't there; they reside elsewhere. Why aren't we looking in all the right places?

Referendum on Busing Change Restores Coverage for Students

Read the Smithtown Patch article on the contentious issue of busing students to New York State guidelines, about four months after the initial vote, the extra 5 miles are back in Smithtown.

One could be excused for confusedly calling this a re-vote, which is, of course, illegal.

click here to read the Smithtown Patch

Stupid in America

John Stossel's ABC story about education. see here

New Vote on Bus Controversy

Community outrage sparks board to set a Sept. 19 re-vote on its plan to limit bus service.

By Peter Verry, Editor,The Smithtown Patch

After more than two months of public outcries over bus cuts, the Smithtown Central School District Board of Education voted Wednesday night to give the public a chance to overturn a controversial transportation referendum.

The new vote, set for Sept. 19, was approved by President Gladys Waldron and Vice President Scott Martella, who were the only two votes to accept community petitions for a new vote on the referendum in June, as well as Theresa Knox, Grace Plourde and Joanne McEnroy.

Board members Louis Liguori and Joseph Saggese were the only two board members to oppose the re-vote.

read more at the Patch

Public Schools in Worse Shape Than We Feared

By: Walter Williams | Examiner Columnist | 07/18/11 8:05 PM

Last December, I reported on Harvard University professor Stephan Thernstrom's essay, "Minorities in College -- Good News, But...," on Minding the Campus, a website sponsored by the New York-based Manhattan Institute.

Thernstrom was commenting on the results of the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), saying that the scores "mean that black students aged 17 do not read with any greater facility than whites who are four years younger and still in junior high. ... Exactly the same glaring gaps appear in NAEP's tests of basic mathematics skills."

Thernstrom asked, "If we put a randomly-selected group of 100 eighth-graders and another of 100 twelfth-graders in a typical college, would we expect the first group to perform as well as the second?"

In other words, is it reasonable to expect a college freshman of any race who has the equivalent of an eighth-grade education to compete successfully with those having a 12th-grade education?

Maybe this huge gap in black/white academic achievement was in the paternalistic minds of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals justices who recently struck down Michigan's ban on the use of race and sex as criteria for college admissions.

The court said that it burdens minorities and violates the U.S. Constitution. Given the black education disaster, racial preferences in college admissions will become a permanent feature, because given the status quo, blacks as a group will never make it into top colleges based upon academic merit.

The situation is worse than we thought. The July 7 edition of U.S. News & World Report featured a story titled "Educators Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal," saying that "for 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history, according to a scathing 413-page investigative report released Tuesday by Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal."

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/07/public-schools-worse-shape-we-feared#ixzz1SaEVMsrd

"...you've got... to get a little bloody when necessary."

A BATTLE IS BEING WAGED AND MOST AMERICANS DIDN'T GET THE MEMO

See this short video....it sheds a small, bright light into the workings of a government union.

Now, what can YOU do about it?

Wisconsin on the Thames?

Read Michelle Malkin on Necessary Teacher Reforms in England--Sound Familiar?

by Michelle Malkin 7/1/11 in the Patriot Undate

LONDON — Big Labor looks the same wherever you go: petulant, irrational and wholly aggrieved beyond its means. I’m here on vacation with family as some 750,000 public-sector employees strike in protest over modest pension reform proposals. It’s a taste of Wisconsin on the Thames.

U.K. government teachers are just as shameless and entitlement-mongering as their American counterparts. More than half of England’s schools shut down on Thursday as union members took to the streets.

to read more click here