Bloated School District

I reside within the Carmel Central School District and am taxed to educate the 5,000 or so pupils that attend the CCSD schools. Local taxes account for about two thirds of the $83 mm budget, and the rest comes from Albany and Washington, entities that also tax me. CCSD welcomes public input to the budget process, and I read with interest the many ideas that have been put forth. Most of these involve expanding programs and spending more money, but there are some vague cost cutting proposals. The only concrete cost cutting proposal is to hire a full time employee to look into cutting costs!

I will tell the CCSD for free how to cut costs. Firstly, get rid of some of the hundreds of administrative personnel. Secondly, start replacing teachers with paraprofessionals so as to have a less expensive mix of teachers and aides. The teacher student ratio is less than 15 to 1. A teacher/aide to student ratio of 15 to 1 could be maintained at significantly reduced cost without any adverse impact on the pupils. Thirdly, charge fees to participants in extracurricular activities that are not available to every pupil. Fourthly, encourage families in the district to home school and support them in this endeavor by providing access to district resources and programs on an equal footing with pupils in school.

There do not seem to be any advocates for cost containment on the school board or the various constituencies that participate in the life of the district. Parents, teachers, other district employees and pupils all aim to spend more and more money and increase programs ad infinitum. Those of us who fund the district but derive no benefit from it are not well represented. We don’t go to meetings or run for the board because we don’t have kids in the schools and because we are busy earning money to pay for other people’s kids to be schooled. I aim to pay more attention to the activities of the CCSD in the future.

The denizens of the CCSD are perfectly capable of paying to educate their kids. The population is overwhelmingly white and enjoys a median income well above the national average (although housing costs are way out of control). Taxing the childless among us for this purpose is nothing short of larceny, and parents should be called upon to contribute more to school their own offspring. I am all for education, and I would voluntarily contribute to schooling for poor children if I were not coerced into paying for schooling for families don't need my help.