Letter To The Editor – A Vote Is Coming Up

To the Editor:
It amazes me how things get presented to the public at Board of Education meetings (BOE). If you take what is given to you and just rely on what the administration tells you, then you think that things are run smoothly. But if you look into the facts that are presented you will find that even though the administration works hard, it’s not always the best for taxpayers and education for our students. That is exactly what unfolded at the BOE meeting on April 22.
The BOE had asked the administration to bring them a 0% tax increase. That is just what they gave them – exactly what they wanted – nothing more, nothing less. It looks great to taxpayers – a 0% tax levy. What you need to know as taxpayers and voters of the BCSD is that we are actually spending OVER $1 MILLION MORE than last year mostly on BOCES! Thank you Thomas Morelli for making it clear for ALL of us to see – even if the administration could not answer any of your questions.
If you want to thank Charlotte Gregory for something, you can thank her for not going up to bat for our district. She has the ability to approach BOCES to lessen our tax burden but chooses not to.
It’s also interesting how the administration can make anything look like it is in their favor. When we had Bill Hogan speaking about how we have a decrease in state aid – that decrease was never seen again, and now that we are actually getting close to a $240,000 increase in state aid it’s now considered restoration.
I have been to enough BOE meetings to see the contradictions that are being told. It was said that we needed to close schools because of a financial crisis, declining enrollment and declining state aid. Well, we seem to be handling the financial crisis just fine, the declining enrollment has leveled off and the state aid money keeps increasing each year. Not only that, we have seen how the “assumed” savings of closing the Stephentown Elementary School, which is actually much less if you look into it, was just absorbed into the District budget. How is it that some BOE members have allowed our school to be in this “financial mess,” have let our school buildings get run down, and now we are told we have to play catch up by closing schools, only to be promised the money will go into improving education, yet the money gets absorbed into the District without improvements. Not only was the money absorbed into the District, the only staffing positions we are saving on by closing SES is around $120,000. The savings on the other staffing positions could have been made sooner by changing the flex zone.
I do not see this budget as a “bare bones” budget. I think there were worse times in our District. I was in school when sports were taken out of the budget, and we had to work from a booster club, not that I would like to see that happen again – just to point out that we have had too much “fluff” in the budget to direct taxpayers into thinking we have no money. We also have fewer students from when I was in school, and all the reports show we have many more administrators than we have had in the past. Frank Zwack recognized that closing SES was “big” and that the District has a track record of absorbing “extra money” as it has with the savings from closing SES. Zwack also commented, “Kids will adjust; we need to do what is the best bang for our buck” – the kids will adjust but is it really the best bang or our buck when the money is just absorbed in regular spending?
The CCBCSD (Concerned Citizens of the Berlin Central School District) presented data to the BOE and administrators about why consolidation does not work. Our data is already proving itself true. As commented by BOE member Bev Stewart, “Sooner or later we are going to run out of buildings to close, then what?”
Best Regards,
Amy Reger
Parent, taxpayer, 1993 BCSD graduate, CCBCSD
County Road 85, Grafton