Real Answers to Real Questions: School Funding and Taxes

Restore Education Funding (REF) is sponsoring:"Real Answers to Real Questions: School Funding and Taxes" Thursday, March 1st from 7:00-8:30 pm at the Nyack Center

NYS Assembly Persons Ellen Jaffe and Ken Zebrowski and NYS Senator David Carlucci will answer questions and concerns about the NYS budget, education funding and property taxes.  

Why are we asking you to come?Because our way out of this is going to take change on the state level, and for that, we need numbers. We're asking you to come learn powerful facts from local experts, and hear our legislators tell us what they plan to do to help us. (see below for speakers)

Way out of what?

1. Budget Deficit, which could get crazy within 5 years

Nyack School District will be about a half-million dollars short of its budget this year. But the big problem isn't so much this year. The administration and staff will feel most of that pinch, but they'll protect the classrooms until they can't.The projections for 5 YEARS OUT—with the 2% tax cap, slashed state funding, and rising costs—gets ugly. That's when our class sizes grow, and our music, art, and sports programs shrink or disappear.
Nyack Superintendent Dr. James Montesano will speak on where we are with the budget and where we're headed. And a parent from North Rockland, whose programs have been gutted, will tell us how that affects the kids.

2. Mandates, but no money

Unfunded and underfunded mandates means the state requires us to do things without giving us the money to do them. Race-to-the-Top provides a dramatic (read hair-pulling) example: we get $64,000 (over 4 years) and we'll likely pay millions to implement it. That is one bad trade-off. Furthermore, these mandates usually mean MORE STANDARDIZED TESTING for the kids.
Former Asst. Secretary of Education under President Clinton, Judith Johnson, will describe some of the issues around un/underfunded mandates like Race to the Top how they affect our budget and why they mean more tests for our kids. And we'll have someone talking about their personal experience with the overload of standardized testing.

3. And we certainly can't fix this with higher taxes

The property taxes in this area are pricing out folks who have lived here for decades. And the tax cap won't keep your taxes from going up. But there are alternatives: the circuit breaker, more progressive tax structures, surtaxes on the very wealthy. How do we get funding back for schools AND find tax relief for those in danger of losing their homes?

Bummer.

YES. Decisions are being made in Albany right now that will set us on an unsustainable course regarding school funding, the number of standardized tests, class sizes, the fate of sports, arts, music and more. 

Public Education will offer less and at lower quality, and your taxes will continue to go up, if NYS does not work to find real solutions, prioritizing our communities' interests over political ambition.

When we met with legislators and asked how this was happening, one answer was that they hadn't heard from large numbers of people about these issues. Other local groups are working on this, too. 

LET'S BE A LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE.

PLEASE COME AND LET ALBANY SEE HOW THEIR POLICIES ARE MESSING WITH REAL PEOPLE.