Our Website Has Moved
Click here to visit the new website: http://www.hastingstaxes.com
All new content will be published on the new site.
Posted by Jane Cody
Less Revenue means Less Spending: Time to Cut the Budget
No one is immune from the recession. Prudent fiscal policies dictate that expenditures should decline as revenues have declined.
Harvard gets it: The New York Times reports that Harvard that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences cut $75 million from its budget. Student services including shuttle bus service, team sports and breakfast menus are affected. See the full NY Times article.
Greenburgh gets it: ” Supervisor Paul Feiner will be meeting with all employees at Town Hall, the highway/sanitation/repair shop/police department/water department, Theodore Young Community Center , Parks department and Library prior to the submission of the 2010 budget to obtain feedback re: ways to cut costs. Sales tax revenue is down significantly (almost 10%), mortgage tax revenue is down by $1.2 million. Grievances that were filed resulted in a loss of almost $8 million dollars. To offset these revenue reductions, we need to make cuts in the 2010 budget.”
Now, the question is: does the leadership of the Hastings schools get it?
What do you think? Click on the comment button below to share your thoughts.
Posted by Jane Cody
A Dubious Distinction: Westchester Tops the National List for Real Estate Taxes
“Of the 10 counties in the country with the highest median property taxes, every one is in New York or New Jersey.” And Westchester is number one. Read the full article in the Oct. 4th issue of the New York Times, based on U.S Census Bureau data.
Posted by Jane Cody
My Lesson Plan
Make affordability one of our District’s stated goals
Articulate specific budget reduction goals for this year
Set a savings goal and work to achieve it
Create a Fine-Tooth Comb committee to identify short-term savings
Launch efforts now to achieve future spending reductions
Spearhead efforts to achieve significant long-term savings, such as cooperative efforts with neighboring communities
Represent taxpayers of all ages and income levels
Of all ages: seniors, people who don’t have children, parents, everyone
Of all income levels: those on fixed incomes, working class, middle class, affluent
Change communication patterns
Bring more people in conversation: seniors, teachers, people on fixed incomes, people without children, and parents
Try new things: web forums, senior outreach, community forums, table outside the A&P, etc.
Leverage community talent
Foster community engagement: creative thinking is one of our community’s biggest assets.
Stop equating higher spending with greater educational value.
If there is any proof that more spending results in better schools, I’d like to see it. The relationship between spending and quality is being debunked in medical care, and it should be challenged in education as well.
Stop trying to keep up with neighboring affluent suburbs
Can’t we create a more compelling vision than an affluent homogenous suburb? What about community values, economic, generational and racial diversity? The best lesson for our children is that we can shape our lives and our community.
Click on comments to describe what YOUR lesson plan would include.
Posted by Jane Cody 9/20/09
Opinions represent those of the poster.
School Board Retains Asst. Supt. Postion, Rescinds Salary Increase
Following is an email from the Board announcing their response to Monday night’s meeting regarding Jodi Hirschman’s petition to rescind the Asst. Supt. position.
HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON U F S D
Message sent – 7/2/2009
A Follow-up to Monday’s Board of Education Meeting
Dear Hastings Community Member:
On Monday night the Board held an open meeting for community members to share their concerns on the change in position of the district’s current Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Personnel to Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction and Personnel (CIP). We appreciated the chance to hear directly from many of you and listened to what you said. While the tone and focus of the input varied, many of the comments were quite constructive.
Following that meeting, the Board met in executive session to consider a course of action. The next day, board members met with Dr. Shaps and Dr. Cohen. We have tried to find a balance between the differing perspectives within the community and the educational goals of the District. Based on these inputs, we are keeping the appointment of Dr. Cohen in place, but will not be extending the salary increase that was associated with this promotion. The salary will instead align with that of the current Director position, which is governed by the Administrator’s contract. We appreciate Dr. Cohen’s willingness to take on additional responsibilities without a commensurate salary increase in recognition of the difficult economic situation.
We understand and share the community’s desire for openness on District issues and will work to provide for participation. However, decisions that include personnel issues do not always allow for public discussion. In those cases, the Superintendent, who is charged with leading and managing the schools, and the Board have the responsibility and authority to make decisions. We weigh all the available information and attempt to make the best decisions based on the interests of all involved.
We believe this position has already contributed enormously to the education of our children and to the productive collaboration among administrators and teachers. Dr. Cohen has worked very effectively in the past two years as the Director of CIP. With the additional needs to provide support that will complement and build on the strengths of our new administrators and to upgrade human resource practices in our district, we believe that Dr. Cohen assumes responsibilities consistent with the work of an Assistant Superintendent. Please note that the Assistant Superintendent will not have hiring, firing or disciplinary authority over the principals. That authority, along with their formal evaluations, will remain with the Superintendent.
For those who’d like more information, we can provide examples of recent activities and accomplishments in the District under Dr. Cohen’s guidance and details of her new responsibilities with the administrative team.
Our ongoing intent is to provide a superb educational experience for our children that reflects the values of Hastings and is fiscally responsible, particularly in these difficult economic times. Going forward we will strive to improve communication and relationships between community members and the school district and we ask you to work with us. As always, please feel free to contact Board members if you have questions and concerns.
Thank you,
The Hastings Board of Education
Eileen Baecher
Caryn Campbell
Lindsey Hicks
Donna Laing
Gabrielle Lesser
Jodie Meyer
Wendy Naidich
Posted by Jane Cody
“A FAILURE OF GOVERNANCE”?
One of the last and most forceful speakers at Monday night’s school board meeting reminded the Board that “it’s all about the money”; made the accusation that “you just don’t get it” (meaning the Board and the significance of the money issue); and pronounced that the handling of the Rhonda Cohen position and promotion was “a failure of governance.”
Do you agree or disagree with the speaker? Do you feel that the school board deeply understood the community’s message?
Another called for a Web site where the discussion on the topic could continue. Let’s do that here. Please use the light green ADD COMMENT link below to add your further messages to the Board.
–Posted by Karen Cure
Hasting Resident Tony Wan Responds to Eric Sweeting’s Letter
The following is parent and resident Tony Wan’s reply to Eric Sweeting’s 6/20 letter about the petition to rescind the appointment of the Assistant Superintendent.
Read Eric’s original letter below. Read the petition, view 458 signatories, and read the comments.
Mr. Eric Sweeting
Board of Education
Hastings on Hudson, NY 10706
Eric,
This letter pertains to your email response to Jodi Hirschman’s petition of the assignment of Dr Rhonda Cohen as Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Personnel submitted on June 18, 2009.
Your response to the petition detailed a list of five items that reduced the cost of the school budget and changes that where deemed necessary by the BOE as alternatives. The five items are a positive improvement of a stream lined administration, which by the way reduced the larger amount of tax increase on the community. But as a fact, the five items you listed are part of a continued increase of taxes and a burden which we as a community must put a leash on.
The point I am making is that we as a community have had a school tax increase every year. No matter the changes made by you and or the BOE, taxes continue to rise. According to the school budget enrollment has decreased but operating cost have increased. The school has an average per capita of $23,000+ per student, which does provide a sound education, but has finally boiled over and the burden on families needs to come to end. In over spent economic times and job losses reaching millions, the schools in Hastings need to learn how to work with what they have, not what they deem is necessary.
In 2007 Dr Shaps and the BOE created the “deemed necessary position”, Director of Curriculum, which is now a salary burdening the tax payers a $140,000+ annually, with benefits. In NYC my wife, who is an Assistant Principal at an elementary school, is one of the hundred’s AP”S who work with the Principals developing its schools curriculum every school year. Granted the student per capita is only an average of $9,000 per student in NYC and the education is not as sound as in Hastings but at a staggering $14,000 difference? And now the BOE and Dr. Shaps would like to promote Dr Cohen to Asst Superintendent, increase the salary by $18,000+ and add a new tax payer burden, “tenure”, after 2 ½ years of employment in our district, now this is obscene.
I am a self employed owner of a company in the construction field in NYC. My company prides itself on reducing the cost of a construction project by thousands of dollars. These savings are immediately passed on to the client and a fiscally responsible construction budget is created for all involved and agreed upon. If I were to reduce the cost and tell the client that they can go purchase the most expensive “toilet”, I would be flushing a part of my companies profits down that “toilet”, because I’ve reduced my cost and enabled the client to spend a percentage of my profits I’ve given back. My comparison is that of your five items, save here, spend it there. How about just save for a rainy day, the future budget and or no tax raise.
Lastly, as a concerned home owner and parent of two children who will be attending the Farragut Middle School this September, I urge you to listen. There are families in Hastings who pay a whopping $20,000 a year in taxes and do not even have children of school age any more. I will not and can not see myself in 8 years paying a 1/3rd increase in taxes which have already increased 100% to $16,000 a year since we moved to Hastings in 2003 and worry about college tuition and my own retirement.
Regards,
Tony Wan, Hastings on Hudson Resident
Posted by Jane Cody
School Board’s Response to Issues Raised in Petition
Second Letter from the School Board (6/29), reproduced below.
The Hastings Alliance for Affordable Taxes doesn’t endorse the thinking set forth in the School Board’s letter. This letter is published because we want to give community members all relevant information, even when we don’t agree with the perspective. (I removed the cell phone numbers of Board members because I don’t want to distribute them on the web.)
Dear Hastings Community Member,
As we stated in our earlier email from this afternoon, we want to give the community information on why we support the promotion from Director to Assistant Superintendent. We have organized this information to address the four basic categories of questions that appeared in the petition’s comments: Why make this change now? Why wasn’t a search conducted? How can our District afford this? Why the short tenure track?
1. Why make this change now?
We had to make a number of very important management decisions in the past few weeks and this promotion was made in the context of those decisions. We now have a new administrative team that includes two new principals and two new assistant principals (one still to be hired). We have assembled a strong team and recognize that they will need help in aspects of their new roles where they have less experience. We now have the opportunity to move the District forward in tackling the curriculum and instruction issues that cut across grades and buildings. By elevating the curriculum position to the Assistant Superintendent level as the new team begins its work, we can ensure that these issues are not neglected, that the solutions reflect the need for continuity across the grades K-12, and that the administrators will have a strong mentor and coach to lead them in these efforts.
Raising this position to the Assistant Superintendent level does not mean that we will also have to hire a new Director. This position will cover the duties of the Director position as well – working with teachers on curriculum and instruction. Also, the Assistant Superintendent is not automatically next in line for the Superintendent’s position.
2. Why wasn’t a search conducted?
The primary reason we did not conduct a search was that we were not looking for a new outside candidate. We’ve had two years to observe Dr. Cohen in the Director of Curriculum role and feel she is very well qualified for this expanded position. She has moved the District forward on major curriculum changes that had previously seemed impossible and worked with all the teachers involved to include them in the decision-making and implementation process. The Assistant Superintendent role calls upon these same skills and experience, but also includes the responsibility of mentoring and training the four new administrators as well as working with all the administrators to drive improvements in curriculum and instruction K-12. This does not mean that this position will have hiring, firing, or disciplinary authority over the principals. That authority, along with their formal evaluation, will remain with the Superintendent.
Some examples of her work: At Hillside Dr. Cohen has succeeded in creating curriculum review processes that involve and engage all the teachers, general and special education, as well as the aides and other support staff. She has designed and led grade-specific training programs and a multi-year training model. Due to her efforts and leadership and the hard work of the grade teams she’s worked with, Hillside had a virtually seamless transition from a weak math program (Trailblazers) to Everyday Math, a program that the Hillside teachers feel meets their needs as it challenges and supports students.
While Dr. Cohen has spent much of her initial two years working on major efforts at Hillside, she has also been guiding the teachers and staff K-12 in making sound and economical curriculum decisions, including revamping the K-8 literacy programs, and redesigning our K-12 professional development days so they are more focused on crucial department-specific work.
3. How can the District afford this?
We realize in this time of economic hardship that any increase in expenditure must be subject to scrutiny. Over the past three years we have decreased administrative personnel costs in the support areas (finance, technology, facilities, and food service), so that we can focus our resources on curriculum and instruction. For example, by replacing our Assistant Superintendent for Finance with a District Treasurer we saved over $50,000/year. Even with expected salary changes, the total administrator salary budget will be lower next year than this year. Just as we looked at how to apply the $600K in restored NY State aid to the budget and decided to apply $139K to program and the other $461K to tax savings, we feel it is important now to apply some of the administrator cost savings from this year to ensuring we have strong curriculum and instruction leadership.
We feel this expenditure is offset by Dr. Cohen’s track record of ensuring quality and cost management in the areas of curriculum implementation, professional development, and vendor relations. In the past, committees of teachers and administrators worked over several years with consultants on how to write curriculum documents. In our Strategic Planning discussions we learned that both faculty and administrators had major issues with this process. There was no support for implementation, little department-specific professional development to improve instruction, and very little cost management. Dr. Cohen’s work over the past two years has given the District a collaborative model for analyzing curriculum, smooth implementations of large multi-grade projects, and fine-tuned professional development. On top of that, she has saved the District thousands of dollars by managing the costs of all these efforts. For example, in the Everyday Math implementation, she negotiated for free math materials and 30% discounts on teacher kits, pre-screened Everyday Math instructors to select the best and then obtained five free days of professional development, and secured the exchange of $7K in Trailblazer math materials for elementary science equipment.
4. Why the short tenure track?
State law requires that for a district of our size, all administrative and supervisory positions, other than the superintendent, must be eligible for tenure. In addition, the law states that when the responsibilities of the current position constitute a majority of those under a different title the person changing from one position to the other continues in their existing tenure track.
In this letter, we have tried to be open and answer the questions raised about this promotion. As we mentioned in our previous email we will be meeting on Monday, June 29th, at 8 p.m. in the Farragut Complex Cafeteria to review all the points made and discuss your concerns and questions. For those who cannot join us and have specific questions you want the Board to respond to at the meeting, please forward them to either Gabrielle Lesser or Eileen Baecher so that we can include them in our public discussion (see contact info below).
For the coming year we are also considering changes to our meeting structure that would allow for question and answer time rather than just a hearing period. We welcome any thoughts on how that might be structured, as well as any other ideas people have for improving the functioning of the Board. Please remember that though we may be Board members we are also members of the community and share its challenges and concerns. We work hard and put in the time to understand the issues facing the District. While some may disagree with individual decisions, we hope that our work is judged in the total context of what we are doing to improve cost effectiveness while improving the quality of education.
Thank you,
Hastings-on-Hudson Board of Education
Eric Sweeting, President
Gabrielle Lesser, Vice President – gablesser@mac.com
Eileen Baecher – ebboard@verizon.net
Caryn Campbell
Lindsey Hicks
Donna Laing
Jodie Meyer
Posted by Jane Cody
School Board Announces Public Forum Monday (6/29) @ 8:00 PM in HS Cafeteria
First Letter from the School Board (6/29), reproduced below.
The Hastings Alliance for Affordable Taxes doesn’t endorse the thinking set forth in the School Board’s letter. This letter is published because we want to give community members all relevant information, even when we don’t agree with the perspective.
HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON U F S D
Message sent – 6/26/2009
School Board Meeting – Monday, June 29th at 8pm
Dear Hastings Community Members,
A week ago the School Board ignited a controversy when we announced
the promotion of our Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Personnel
(CIP) to Assistant Superintendent. Our intent was to strengthen the
administrative team, which will have four new members this coming
year, and enable them to lead the District forward. Instead we angered
many residents and confused others. We have read the petition signed
by many, many residents demanding a reconsideration of the decision.
We have also received numerous calls and emails both for and against
the decision. While we have issued some early responses, we need to
take the time now to acknowledge what went wrong and what needs to be
done to move forward.
As a Board, we think the CIP position has strong merits and answers a
real need, which was identified in the community’s development of the
Strategic Plan. However, our understanding of the position’s benefits
and the process we used to make the promotion decision needed to be
much more open so that residents could share their opinions. Through
our work on the budget this year with the community and the Citizens
Budget Advisory Committee, we had achieved an unprecedented level of
transparency for this District. However, through our lack of
interaction with the community on this promotion, we have seriously
damaged the trust we built during the budget process. We must now work
to rebuild the community’s trust in us and ask you to join us in that
effort.
We are especially sorry and concerned that this decision came across
as insensitive to the economic hardship the community is facing. In
our deliberations, we looked long and hard at the budget impact of
this move and consciously scaled back on other administrative costs to
make sure the overall administrative budget would stay flat. However,
we understand that any decision to grant a raise and not pass on a
savings to the community should be clearly explained.
In order to give all community members a chance to discuss these
issues and share their opinions, we are scheduling a Board meeting for
Monday, June 29 at 8 p.m. in the Farragut Complex Cafeteria.
We apologize for the tight timeframe but hope you will join us if you
are available. The meeting will be videotaped and available later for
viewing online and on Channel 77.
Later today we will be sending out another broadcast email with more
detailed information on our reasoning for this promotion. At the
meeting on Monday, we will review all the points made and discuss your
concerns and questions. For those who cannot join us and have specific
questions you want the Board to respond to at the meeting, please
forward them via email or phone to either Gabrielle Lesser or Eileen
Baecher so that we can include them in our public discussion (see
contact info below).
Thank you,
Hastings-on-Hudson Board of Education
Eric Sweeting, President
Gabrielle Lesser, Vice President – gablesser@mac.com – cell: 914-318-0783
Eileen Baecher – ebboard@verizon.net – cell: 914-275-7318
Caryn Campbell
Lindsey Hicks
Donna Laing
Jodie Meyer
Posted by Jane Cody
Board of Education President Eric Sweeting’s Reply to the Petition
I thought it would be helpful to publish both the original email that launched the petition, along with Eric Sweeting’s response. It is not clear if he is speaking on behalf of the entire School Board. Both emails are in widespread circulation.
–Jane Cody
Sent: Sat, Jun 20, 2009 4:58 pm
Most recent comments