Rye Schools Propose $2.3M in Cuts Impacting 29 Staff
Climbing costs and the tax cap are wreaking havoc on the Rye City School budget. Superindent Alvarez prrovided and overview at a school board meeting last week:
"Dr. Alvarez discussed the recommended 2013-14 school budget. He reported on some of the challenges that public school districts are facing, particularly relating to the tax cap and growth in TRS and ERS costs. The District will need to make $2.3 million in cost cuts, which will impact 29 FTE positions. Dr. Alvarez explained that it has been a painful budget development process. He announced that an advocacy letter is posted on the District's website, www.ryeschools.org, and encouraged community members to send it to elected representatives urging them to take action in modifying the tax cap and reducing unfunded mandates."
Untouchables that I have experience with: Bolnick, McNamara, Avnir, Tennaro, and Potter. Others forthcoming.
And so it finally begins . Despite Westchester residents paying highest property / school taxes in nation , the need to feed the insane union pension / benefits is now causing firings of teachers as well as slicing middle school sports programs by 50% .
Give it a few years and word will spread that Rye’s schools are bust and the home buyers willing to pay absurd sums to come to Rye for their kids goes POOF!
The buffoons running the school system want you to believe this would all be fixed if we made that horrible property tax cap go away but that assumes Rye homeowners would be thrilled to pay even more to the school system ( trust me , we are not ) .
The real question is this : how does the rest of the United States run their school systems with property tax bills 40-50-60% lower than Rye/Westchester property taxes ?
Why don’t parents of kids show up at school meetings and ask how it is schools in Greenwich , Darien , Westport produce graduates who apprently get into same top colleges as Rye kids without spending anywhere near as much per student in taxes ?
The answer of course is they aren’t giving away to the unions insane retirement packages or paying 6 figure salaries to large numbers of teachers nor are school managers gettting paid $200-300-400k a year .
Once the vaunted Rye school system starts coughing up blood , its game over . Real estate reverses because many house buyers have to price in private schools for their kids and the exodus of everybody whose kids finish school intensifies as it makes no sense paying the property taxe sof Rye with kids gone .
Unions are a cancer destroying NY state . City of Rye pays its state mandated union pension / benefits each year and then cancels all road work because the money is all gone . Now we will issue bonds to pave the streets ? Insanity . How will your kids pay off today’s bonds and then issue more bonds topave the roads next time ?
Rye , Westchester , and NY deserve whats coming . Crumbling roads , once superior schools going into decline , more and more fees for services your taxes previously covered , and its all to feed the union machine .
Batman told everyone Cuomo would do this to us. Batman was right.