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One chancellor and a team of 15 is still cheaper then the director of finance for dinky little Locust Valley making over half a mil a year. That's why LI has to rob from Peter to pay Paul. Go look for yourselves:
Forget about the stupid pensions. If you didn't have that many superintendents and heads of this and heads of that, you would have much less pensions to give out at such a high cost.
I don't disagree with the theory of your post. However, I have yet to see this in real life translate to significantly lower taxes in an NYC metro area setting.
As I posted above, PSes in NYC that provide an education of comparable quality to, say, OBH's 3V or Syosset also necessitate families to pay more for programs and frills that DOE cannot afford. Then you also have NYCers in higher income brackets paying more punitive income taxes.
So obviously something else is missing in the picture if the theory looks sound yet unachievable in practice.
It's almost counter intuitive to do this education thing right long term... Schools can be run at the county level and still honor neighborhood schools with clusters. It's done well in other states. The only major downside to this approach is redistricting because as density fills in and schools fill up, they have to redraw boundaries.
This is true, and I wonder why this is never mentioned. When I lived in FL thats exactly how it worked, there were "good and desirable" schools in the nicer, more well off areas, and "bad" schools in the poor areas. First thing you would ask when looking at houses is "what schools will my kids go to" rather than what district. It could work the same way here, they could even keep all the boundaries the same.
Make Nassau have 1 unified school district and Suffolk have 1 unified school district too. Enough with all this village/town/city crap too. It should be 2 counties comprised of a couple hundred neighborhoods and that's it. It sounds cute on paper, but that's why you guys pay so much in taxes. One school district, one fire department, one police department, etc.
Also, focus on building up Hempstead and Riverhead.
Ha Ha. You're joking right. One unified school district. That will never fly. The sports/school crazy parents of Jericho, Manhassit, Greatneck, Syosset or any other one you can think of having their kids going to school with a kid from Westburry or worse yet Hempsted. Never never I tell you
The solution to move to county wide districts will no doubt never fly either, for two other reasons, yet to be discussed. Currently, each district has a school board who are the decision makers (along with the supt.) I will bet having them give up that decision making ability will not come easily. ( i.e.) we know our students better than someone from 5 districts away with different demographics. Also a decision would have to be made on the distribution of debt. Suppose district one was in good financial condition and just a little short term debt and district two had just recently passed a bond that has a debt that is still 18 years out from full payment. Imagine the upheaval if district one now has to help pay off districts two's debt!!!!!!
This whole thread is depressing and frames perfectly why I was panicked to leave Long Island when I did. In not quite five years my monthly payment had increased by nearly $300 due to tax hikes. I did a ten, fifteen and twenty-five year projection for my wife and quantified why staying where we were would only work if she a) returned to work full-time and b) we cut back considerably on our creature comforts. It was impossible to keep up with all of the annual cost-of-living increases and justify our staying there.
Long Island is unique and offers so much for a family with school-age children, but is it really worth it?
Leaving LI was the best decision I made. Most people I know my age (26) are still living at home with their parents. Yikes. That's probably good for getting a date...
Illusory steps like the new teacher evaluations, 2% tax cap, increases in employee medical contributions, temporary teacher pay freezes (w or w/o /steps), limited sales of school district property, Tier V and VI pension reforms, etc have done absolutely nothing to reduce (or even prevent the growth of) residential property taxes.
"Illusory" is the absolutely perfect adjective. I just posted about the newest proposed illusion, which is the Governor's supposed "two-year property tax freeze":
This whole thread is depressing and frames perfectly why I was panicked to leave Long Island when I did. In not quite five years my monthly payment had increased by nearly $300 due to tax hikes. I did a ten, fifteen and twenty-five year projection for my wife and quantified why staying where we were would only work if she a) returned to work full-time and b) we cut back considerably on our creature comforts. It was impossible to keep up with all of the annual cost-of-living increases and justify our staying there.
Long Island is unique and offers so much for a family with school-age children, but is it really worth it?
Why cant we just do this? For god sakes they did this in California, tax and spend central (with plenty of powerful public employee unions)! (I know it would never happen here but I can dream)
Section 1. (a) The maximum amount of any ad valorem tax on real property shall not exceed one percent (1%) of the full cash value of such property. The one percent (1%) tax to be collected by the counties and apportioned according to law to the districts within the counties.
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