Final Vote Count

The final vote count was released by the Onteora School District on June 3. Turns out there were quite a few additional votes for our candidates, giving them an even larger percentage of the vote than initially reported. A pdf file with the full breakdown of votes, including affidavits and absentee ballots, town by town, for every candidate and every proposition, is available at the district web site under the header “Statement of chair.”

The summary of final vote counts for the eight candidates is as follows:

Adam Pollack 749
Donna Flayhan 2390
Laurie Osmond 2359
Ralph Legnini 2475
Ann McGilllicuddy 2407
Mary Jane Berholz 1391
Cindy O’Connor 1453
Rita Vanacore 1307

Woodstock Times on property tax cap

This week's Woodstock Times editorial addresses the Commission on Property Tax Relief's recommendation that local school taxes could be capped at either 4 percent or 120 percent of inflation, whichever is less. Brian Hollander writes:

Cap the property tax increases for school districts at 4 percent? No more votes for it? Those are among the centerpieces of a plan to deal with education funding that Governor David Paterson and Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi brought forth this week.

The plan received a big rollout and came complete with pros and cons from many sides of the story.

Attempts at easing the property tax crunch for paying for education have been feeble in the past. Governor Pataki's much vaunted STAR program simply lowered the taxes for some, without addressing how that funding would be made up.

The new plan is more multi-faceted than that, but still deals with juggling formulae for property owners to pay, still depends on property taxes. A 4 percent tax increase is higher than what was projected in budgets passed at Onteora, Highland, Ellenville and Rondout Valley. The city of Kingston's school district budget failed despite a 3.1 percent hike. Saugerties passed with a 4.92 percent increase, New Paltz approved a 4.88 percent hike. Marlboro's proposed 6.6 percent tax hike failed, as did Wallkill's 8.9 percent.

Under the plan, districts could still hike taxes up to 5 percent if 55 percent approve it in a vote, higher if 60 percent approve.

Teacher unions don't approve. They like to see the property tax, a stable tax base, they believe, be a source of funding that can make districts grow. What they especially won't like is a provision to freeze teacher step increases while new contracts are negotiated, putting a considerable crimp in their ability to wait out a recalcitrant administration.

There are things to like in these proposals, such as mandate accountability - having an understanding of what requirements actually cost, though not actually requiring the state to pay for them - and a circuit breaker to immediately help those least able to pay.

But for us, the problem still is with property taxes funding education. It's basic. We would favor ideas like one put forth by Kevin Cahill, who wants the state to do all the funding of education, collecting the money through a graduated income tax. This would far better reflect individual abilities to pay and would not endanger people's homes in a direct way, would not allow for property values (a subjective measurement, in any case) to outstrip income. Even shifting a portion of the property tax - c'mon guys, give us 20 percent, at least - to the graduated income approach would ease the burdens.

We still have to pay. Yes, your income tax would rise considerably. Yes, we'd have to deal with issues of local control versus the control that would come from those who are dispensing the money (as if we don't now...). But neglect education and our very mission as a free and open society fails. There is no question that more money is needed for education in this state, in this country. The state already has paid scant attention to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity's winning lawsuit, in which it was adjudicated that the state must pay more for poorly equipped schools.

It's crystal clear in these days how the splatter has to hit the fan before anything in this glacially paced society changes - the oil prices are finally changing the way we think about driving and what we drive; how we eat; what we can afford to eat; how we think about cities and suburbs; how we live. The ripples are creating tsunamis all around us.

This opportunity to straighten out how we pay for education is upon us and it cannot be missed. The Suozzi-Paterson plan seeks to merely tweak and perpetuate a system when much more is needed.

Read Governor Paterson's press release on the proposed legislation here
Download the Commission on Property Tax Relief's full report (pdf) here
Read Newsday's feature on the proposed legislation here

Onteora Students at Reel Teens Festival

Friday's Daily Freeman reported:

An Onteora High School junior is on a roll with his film.

Robin Richardson will watch his short animation chosen for the Reel Teens Film Festival, which starts today in Hunter. Then, in November, he will leave for the Youth, Film and Video Festival in Barcelona, Spain, where another of his works - the audience favorite in the animation category last year at Reel Teens - will be shown.

Read the full story here.
Learn more about the Reel Teens Festival here.

Community Celebration this Saturday

Join us as we thank everyone for their efforts in the recent Onteora School Board election, with a potluck barbeque and picnic.

Hosts: Ralph, Donna, Ann, Laurie and Campaign Team
Location: Kenneth Wilson State Park and Campground
859 Wittenberg Road, Mount Tremper, Ny 12457 Us
View Map |
When: Saturday, June 7, 4:00pm
Campground Phone: 845-679-6302

See you on Saturday, from 4-7!
Do bring food, drink, children, guitars, games and festive attitude!
Alcohol is allowed -- but be prepared for high temperatures and high humidity! Bring plenty water and other rehydrating goodies, hats and sunscreen.
RSVP to abbearonson_at_hotmail.com and let us know what dish or drink you are bringing!
PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN REUSEABLE/RECYCLABLE UTENSILS AND CUPS. We are a fun & low-waste district!

Please pass on this invite
to anyone who wants to join the fun...
all are welcome!!!

The fine print: No dogs and no lifeguard, so no swimming. Park charges $5 a car - please carpool.

Phone number for Park is (845) 679-7020.
Ask at entrance for exact location of our party,
reserved under the name"Osmond."

From Woodstock: Follow Rte. 212, turn left at Bear Cafe on to Rte. 45, two miles on, turn right onto County Rte. 40 (Wittenberg Road). Campground is approx one mile up, on the left side of road.

From Shandaken/Olive: Take Route 28 to intersection with Rte 212 in Mt Tremper; half a mile up 212 take right turn onto County Rte 40(Wittenberg Road). Campground is approximately four miles up, on rightside of road.

From West Hurley. Follow either route above.

June 3 Board Meeting

The Phoenicia Times/Olive Press has a brief report about the June 3 board meeting at the end of a longer piece on the restructuring of the School Board. You can read Lisa Childers' full report here:

Letter from a teacher

This letter by local teacher Donna Bryan appeared in last week's Woodstock Times as a full-page "Point of View." It has now been printed in the current Phoenicia Times/Olive Press and can be accessed online.

We hope you can take the time to read it

Dear Editor,

I follow the comings and goings of our school district not only as a member of the community but also as an educator. I had intended to write this letter several weeks ago but perhaps my procrastination served me; elections are completed and perhaps the tide of passions, platforms and convictions has ebbed.

It must be said that we all have a stake in how our school district is run; we are all affected by decisions made—the political, the financial, the pedagogical. And, the greater majority of those at the forefront, on either side of a given issue, make decisions and take actions based upon what they sincerely believe is best for all. Certainly, arguably, there will be dissent and even struggle as our community manages our district and this is important because local issues at least for now, are an area where the will of the community can affect change.

However, as I read the commentary of many community members published in these pages in the past few weeks, there surfaced a social issue that transcends the exigencies of the election process and the direction the district is to take. I continue to be dismayed and often disgusted by the attitude of American citizens toward its teachers. The disdain for and at times vehement rhetoric directed at educators betrays an insidious yet palpable anti-intellectual gestalt that so seldom surfaces in any discussion about education and how it is to be shaped.

One particularly shrill and nasty letter from a community member sneered about the salaries of Onteora’s teachers and unabashedly called for salary cuts. As teachers and those that do appreciate them know, a teacher is always a teacher, it’s a mindset, it’s part of the very identity of those who spend their days with students in a classroom. In that spirit, I find myself compelled to enlighten those members of my local community who would give less to those whom they expect to, and even demand, do more.

A teacher’s day does not end at 3 pm. I am a high school English teacher; I worked at Onteora from 2002 to 2004 and now teach in another county. I have 100 students, I teach five classes a day; I moderate two school clubs and teach SAT test technique to students, an endeavor in which, in that season, I work two 18 hour days per week for four weeks. I spend a minimum of 15 unpaid hours a week, at home, grading papers and writing lessons. The conventional wisdom among educators about this part of our careers is “Well, that’s just part of the job.” In any given day, we have 45 minutes of preparation time, hardly enough to grade a minimum of 400 papers a week. We are not paid overtime, not time and a half; we are expected to live by our ethics and make sure our students are served no matter what it takes. I am relatively certain nurses, construction workers, law enforcement professionals, and many others do not expect to work overtime for no pay. Most teachers do this with alacrity. Most teachers do live by their ethics and do whatever it takes. If I calculate the at-home, unpaid hours I work, and the two unpaid months of July and August, my hourly salary is about $10.31. American teachers are among some of the lowest paid workers in the industrialized world.

And by the way, we do pay for our insurance. We do pay into our retirement funds. I pay over $600.00 a year to my union that in addition to protecting my rights as a worker, lobbies tirelessly on behalf of American schoolchildren for funding and the creation and continuance of programs that benefit families.

We are mandated by the state to obtain advanced degrees, all NYS teachers must be “Highly Qualified,” a masters degree in one’s discipline is not optional. We do not get grants or state tuition aid for these advanced degrees; we must pay for them ourselves. I completed my masters’ degree last August. My degree took one year to complete. During that time, I wrote over 400 pages of discourse based on research and analysis. My day began at 5 am and continued until midnight most nights; weekends were a fond memory during that year and I had to continue to grade those many papers and continue to deliver the “best practices” of education to my students. Happily, my advanced degree earned me a raise—$200.00 per month gross income. However, cost of the degree was $21,500.00 dollars—fifty percent of one year’s gross income. The $200.00 per month increase in my pay does not cover the monthly loan repayment of $280.00 per month. Yes, you read that right, it is costing me $80.00 per month to bask in the cache of an advanced degree which the state says I must have or cannot teach.

According to law, if I do not make timely payments on this loan, I can be denied any other kind of installment loan for any purpose including a mortgage or a car loan.
With regard to cutting teachers’ salaries, there are legal, negotiated contracts that cannot be just waved away. The teachers at Onteora who make salaries that irritate those who hold teachers in such acrimonious contempt have earned those salaries one year at a time over many years of service. Is this any different than members of other public professions? Instead of railing against teachers and their administrators for their salaries, salaries earned in service to community members and their children, why not take a look at the industries and careers in which you serve? Why not demand from your industries or professions professional organizations and unions that protect your interests. A strong, organized workforce protects all Americans. Rather than stand up to the avaricious practices of those social structures that raid the pockets of industry and citizens, many engage in a green-eyed money counting of those who have worked hard to protect their rights as workers, in this case teachers. Why call for the abolition of teachers’ benefits when outraged demands should be made on those who can get away with the unregulated and absurd cost of those benefits? Why not rally against an administration that imposes strictures of operation and delivery of services in a way that bankrupts local districts by way of impossible-to-meet edicts of accountability? Why do so many find it so much easier to submissively take what is dished out by profit-hungry employers and call for the reduction in salaries of their fellow workers, when all should be treated fairly, when all have the right to demand from society as much as they put in?

Teachers are not the enemy of a community, our social structures are. Speaking of which, we have been invested by a not-so-well-hidden, undiscussed-in-the-mainstream yet inescapable structure in which teaching, actual delivery of instruction, can seem secondary while we cope with the needs of students and their families who daily bring to us issues attendant to poverty, substance abuse, neglect, issues of behavior, learning, mental, emotional, or physical disability. We are expected to attend to the needs of all with professionalism, compassion, alacrity, and impartiality. Often, we do so deftly, successfully, compassionately. Sometimes we cannot. And yet, to make an analogy, if health care costs rise do we call for cuts in hospital funding? If crime rates go up do we call for salary cuts for law enforcement? If a judge makes an unpopular decision do we cut his salary or take away his dental insurance?

The teachers I know, and indeed there is a plethora of wonderful teachers at my school and at Onteora, are truly in service to their students and their families. I have seen teachers repeatedly pay for lunches for students who cannot afford them, I have seen teachers surreptitiously send money to families they know are struggling, I have seen teachers buy medicine, clothes and school supplies, sew prom dresses, buy glasses, fund field trips for individuals and entire classes—from their own pockets. Some of my colleagues do this routinely; many, many of them are carrying student loan debts of $50,000.00 and above.

This issue is certainly too long to be treated properly in this forum. And though teacher bashing is alarming for the reasons I have stated above in the particular, in the general, it is a symptom of our society’s educational schizophrenia. We SAY we value education, we SAY we want academic performance, we SAY we want change, yet we do not really value what school is meant to teach. Many individuals and families are too mired in popular culture or their own consumer needs and desires to pay careful attention to learning. We do not value our public intellectuals, and a recent U.S. Department of Education study indicated that less than half the citizens under forty in our country have read a book in the past year. Functional illiteracy in the U.S. among those 16 and older is at a brisk 39 percent. I have had more parents than I like to think about tell me that I “have no right to demand that [their children] read over the summer,” “I don’t feel it is my job to be on top of his homework, it’s yours,” send me notes that a student cannot do his homework because he was “up too late last night because we were out,” and have had parents who took kids on trips to Disneyland during the school year demand to know from me why their children are failing. If I had a dollar for every child who tells me that reading is “a stupid waste of time,” I could handily pay off my student loans. I have had students who tell me they could not afford to buy a $6.00 book for our summer reading projects come into school to brag about their $300.00 I-Pods or X-Boxes.

Recently, I had the misfortune of overhearing one community member, whose occupation is to sell $90.00 t-shirts and $150.00 blue jeans to other community members, quip to a “client,” “Those Onteora teachers are parasites on the body of this district.” Luckily, she once had an English teacher who schooled her in the use of irony and metaphor, most likely at Onteora.

No one becomes a teacher to milk the system or to get rich, I assure you. The work we do is valuable, important, and most of the time exhilarating, but it is difficult, sometimes impossible, and often, as the recent rhetoric of some community members indicates—utterly thankless. Please do not cannibalize those whom you have charged with a very important task—the needs of human beings, the needs of your children; needs for which many families, social ideologies and government structures have abdicated responsibility.

Donna Bryan, West Shokan, NY