To Run or Not to Run, That is the Question

I wrote this email in response to a voice mail I received from Tom Auchtermonie, the editor of the Chappaqua/Mt. Kisco Patch.  Both he and Christine (New Castle NOW) asked about my plans to run again.

Tom, 

Thank you for calling.

That announcement put out by the LWV and the PTA regarding their April 2nd meeting is accurate.  They contacted me over the weekend to see what my status was, and I was ok with them sending out what they sent out.

I still have not decided.to run or not. They may have used the word "announced" which I prefer, but either way, I am still weighing the decision.

Serving on the Board for the past six years has been very rewarding for me and hopefully a positive for the district and community. There are many many factors both personal and school related that go into making this decision. 

I happen to think for a myriad of reasons that the district is at a critical crossroads as to the direction it takes.  While the budget issues that dominated my first terms are still there and will likely remain for years to come, I am very comfortable with how we have faced and will continue to face the pressures on the district in that regard. Negotiations with 3 of our 4 bargaining units have shown that the district and its units are trying to be true partners. 

I think, rightfully, that the focus going forward after this year's budget, will be a fight for the soul of the district.  By that I mean with a relatively new Superintendent, with new principals at Grafflin, Roaring Brook and Horace Greeley, with many many state and national mandates, the district has to decide who we want to be, what our mission will be going forward and how do we get there. It is going to take strong leadership to steer the district toward our goal. [Edit: Upon reread, I want to make it clear that I think we have that strong leadership in the district currently.]

Hopefully, one of the bi-products of Tim Bloom's open letter to the administration is a two way conversation between the district and the community about what we want, who we want to be, and how we accomplish those goals.  While I gave a general response on my blog,10514 Musings, I think it is important that the district, the board and the administrators have an open and frank discussion with the community about the future of this district. We need to find a shared vision, not an imposed one.

I think that being a Board Member for the next 3 years is going to take a significant commitment of time and energy.  It is why I hesitate. Whether I run or not, I strongly encourage members of the community to step up and make that commitment.  

I hope to make my decision shortly.  When I do, of course, I will let you and The Patch readers know.

Jeffrey

Tuesday's with Morrie; Wednesday's with the BoE

At our September 20th meeting, the Board voted unanimously to move our meeting date to Wednesdays (from Tuesdays) starting with the 2012-2013 school year.  Here is a link to my original post on the issue.  I would like to thank my fellow Board members for moving this idea forward for the next school year.

At that same September 20th meeting, Christine Yeres, editor and blogger for NewCastleNOW, asked if we would also move the meetings to New Castle Town Hall.  Without looking at the tape of the meeting, I recall my response was along the lines of, "That makes no sense whatsoever".

The more I think about it, it makes even less sense than that.  I think the reason Christine asked it was as a way to backdoor going live since the town is already set up for that and it would cost the district close to $10,000 to set up.

Here is why it makes no sense.  One of the issues that became clear during the Reader's Digest/Summit Greenfield development debate was that too many people equate the Town of New Castle with the Chappaqua Central School District.  We are very different.  First, the CCSD has a budget almost 3 times the Town's.  Second, only 90% of the people in the CCSD are also in the Town of New Castle.  Mt Pleasant is about 10% of the district.  Third, only about 80% of those in the Town of New Castle reside in the CCSD.

Second, we are the school district not in anyway associated with the Town.  We should be using district facilities.  Third, the most centrally located facility for residents of the CCSD is the Horace Greeley High School.  Town hall is at the south end of the district.  HGHS is also convenient for the Administration that has offices yards away from the meeting place.  Finally, HGHS give us the flexibility to change the location from the academic commons to the auditorium if there is a need based on attendance.

To me, the only issue remaining with meeting dates and locations is the production of the district calendar.  It was clear in April when this first came up and again the other night that producing the calendar is a burden for the PTA.  They are doing it as a favor at our request.  I do not think we should continue to place that burden on the PTA.  I strongly believe we should take that back in house.  It is not fair of us to burden an outside organization.  And, it brings control of the decision making with respect to the calendar 100% with the district.

Follow Up to Turf Post

The following are some questions I received and my answers.  These are my answers only.  I do not speak for the entire Board.  If you would like to send an email to me, I can be reached at the link below (comments@newcastlealternative.com) or JeMester@ccsd.ws.  Emails you send to my district email or to the Board's email (Board@ccsd.ws) are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.  To call me, click on the link on this page.  If you block your caller ID, I do not see the number.  Leave a message if I am unable to answer.


Q. Will the Board us district funds for the turf field?


A. No.  The Board and the district has said repeatedly that we will not use district funds for the turf when we have academic priorities that take precedence.

Q.  Then why was the Board voting to sign the contract with the Engineering firm before it had the funds in hand from the turf committee?


A.  First, we tabled the motion initially and approved the motion at our September 8th meeting contingent upon having the funds in hand from the TCTC or them demonstrating that it was placed in escrow for the district.  Second, the turf committee is a community group and is made up of members of the community, natch.  Quite frankly, I trust them to honor the legally binding MOU we signed with them.  I do not think we should treat them any differently from other community groups that use our facilities.  For example, the PTA currently owes us $40,000 for a program they run.  We have not said, "No, you cannot have that program until you paid."  That makes no sense for many reasons.  One, we asked the PTA to be a conduit for the program.  Two, they are a community group whose word is their bond.  They told us they would pay and we know they will without doing a D&B report on their credit.  Why should we treat the TCTC differently than the PTA?

Another reason why I think we could have and should have signed the agreement prior to having the actual funds in house is that there are other issues that arise that are critical to the timing.  As this is district property, the district has to sign the contract.  In order to actually undertake the work on our fields, believe it or not, Albany (Dept. of Ed) needs to approve of the work.  If you have ever asked for government approval on a construction project, you know that it takes time.  A lot of time.  So, in order to install turf in the summer of 2012, we need to file in the early fall and we need to submit an engineering study as part of that filing.

Also, if we file in a timely matter and meet certain criteria there is a chance that the state will give us matching funds for up to around 23%.  Why not try to get that money?  It was taken from us as tax payers.  Let us get it back.

Q. Why is the PTA and others in the community saying that you are rushing into this without public input?


A. Again, I have no idea.  That simply is not true.  There were significant meetings on this two years ago.  Again in the spring , the Board of Ed's Facilities Committee announced and held (June 1st) a public meeting on the issue.  There were approximately 30 people in attendance.  Of those who attended, some were neighbors with concerns, some were community members with other concerns and some were supporters.  We stayed and answered every question and gave anyone who wanted to a chance to speak.

In fact, that meeting was announced by the PTA!!!  Below is the relevant section from a copy of the email they sent announcing it.

Artificial Turf The topic of artificial turf in Chappaqua will be on the agenda of the Facilities Committee when they meet on Tuesday June 1 at 7:00pm at the Education Center.  Consider attending if you would like to learn more about private fundraising to bring turf to Chappaqua and how the process of gaining approval for a turf field will work.  You are also welcome to attend the meeting to raise any other questions or concerns about the facilities of the Chappaqua School District.

For the PTA to claim that we are doing anything hastily is simply incorrect and disingenuous.  The PTA tried to make some point that the September 8th meeting was not on their precious district calendar, but the September 1st one was and they chose not to attend.  In fact, in response to concerns a Board member expressed, the motion was tabled until those concerns could be addressed one week later.

Additionally, the district did not announce the meeting two hours before it began.  The PTA sent out their own email.  The district posted the meeting on its website and sent out an announcement to everyone on our mailing list that has asked to receive such emails.  Ours was sent on Tuesday, a full 52 hours in advance.

And, I personally sent emails to both The Patch and NCN to let them know about the meeting.  I certainly would not characterize sending an email to local bloggers to get the word out as anything but full transparency.  I cannot control their publication schedule or their editorial decision on what is worthy of being blogged about.

Schools Open!! Email, Turf and more

Schools Open!! Congratulations to Dr. McKay, the administrative team, the teachers and the entire staff on a terrific first week of school. Also, thank you to Joe Gramando and his staff for the outstanding job they have done over the summer and this past two weeks dealing with the terrible weather conditions that has affected so many of us and our neighbors.

 I received more calls, texts and emails tonight about the schools than I did in the past two months combined. Apparently, many residents read the email (copied below) sent out by the PTA late this afternoon and had questions and concerns about the email. First, tonight, the Board approved an amended motion to accept the contract with the engineering firm for preliminary work on the potential turf field contingent upon either receiving the actual funds from the community group spearheading the effort, TCTC or TC2 or their demonstrating that the monies have been put in escrow on behalf of the district. Tonight's 5-0 vote reiterates that the Board never intended nor will spend district funds on a turf field. For those who attended the September 1st meeting and those who took the time to inquire with the district, that fact was never in dispute.

To respond to your questions about the PTA email, let me reiterate that I do not speak for the entire Board (our President, Alyson K does), I speak only for myself. 

I regret that the PTA sent the email to the community prior to asking for and understanding the facts of the issue. As they did not attend the September 1st meeting, their decision to rely on published media reports for their information lead to their own hasty email filled with innuendo and inaccuracies that in the end reflected poorly on the PTA. I am quite confident that going forward the Board and the PTA can and will resume our terrific working relationship with the common goal of helping the children of this community.

I also want to publicly thank the Sports Boosters and Jim N for all their efforts especially in coordinating the many various town and school related groups to make this effort a true community project. For the first time, Jim has managed to get five local youth sports organizations to work together in addition to several school organizations. At tonight's meeting he also extended an olive branch to the PTA to join the group effort on turf and noted his regret that they had not communicated sooner.

Should this fundraising effort prove successful, the gift of a turf field will reduce district maintenance costs by around $50,000 annually, will benefit all the district's high school JV and Varsity teams and will significantly increase the available fields for local youth organizations both in terms of hours of availability and with the current weather related closings. This is a win-win-win all around.

Let me also make it clear that the monies sought are not being siphoned from monies that would otherwise go to the district. These are completely private funds. The TC2 is working with the CSF to find ways to benefit both groups without diverting contributions from the CSF. The TC2 intends to make in clear in their fund raising efforts that they are only seeking donations for the field and do not want to affect any other donations a contributor may make. They want this to be incremental giving not replacement giving.

The Board's next regularly scheduled meeting is on September 20th at 8:15 in the HGHS academic commons. See you there.

Here is a link to the email and below is the text.

The Chappaqua Board of Education will be meeting at 6:30 tonight, Thursday, September 8th, at the school district Education Center, 66 Roaring Brook Road. This special meeting is not on the district calendar and was scheduled hastily, mainly to consider an action tabled at the Board's September 1st meeting. The action under consideration is whether the Board should approve advancing approximately $141,000 in taxpayer funds to pay for an engineering study of what has been promoted as a privately-funded effort to build a lighted turf sports field at Horace Greeley High School. Private fundraising efforts by the Chappaqua Turf Committee have just begun and the Board of Education is considering advancing the cost of the engineering study until such time, if any, that sufficient private funds are raised to reimburse the school district. Please consider attending tonight's meeting if you'd like the Board of Education to hear your views before it decides whether or not to approve the use of school district funds for this purpose during a time of severe fiscal constraint.

It is Not the Board's Schedule

Tonight, my suggestion and motion to move our meetings from Tuesdays to Wednesdays got voted down 1-4. I obviously was the only one who voted yes.

Budget and Messages?

As always, my usual disclaimers apply. I am writing as an individual. I do not speak for the School Board or anyone else but myself. No district resources were used to write this post. Your mileage may vary (YMMV). Shake well before using, etc.

Recently, the New Castle Citizens For Responsible Education (NCCRE) a group of 5 Chappaqua school district residents published an open letter to the New Castle Community suggesting that residents vote "No" on the CCSD proposed budget on May 17th. Apparently, they are not opposed to the budget per se but they want you to vote "no" to send a message to "the School Board, Administration, School Unions, Union Leadership and Albany legislators that the continued budget and tax increases are not sustainable and that State Mandates must change."

First, their actual message of changing or eliminating state mandates is a good one. So good in fact that despite the group's claim to the contrary, at the CCSD School Board's January 11th meeting, we passed a motion proposed by me based on a similar motion passed by the Westchester-Putnam School Board Association that calls for mandate relief. Here is a link to that resolution. To be clear, I fully and unequivocally support mandate relief.

But, their method for getting this message out is seriously flawed. There is no, and will be no, link to voting "no" on the budget and getting this message out to the community. The only valid assumption about the budget, should the proposed budget get voted down on May 17th, is that the proposed budget was voted down. Complete stop.

The Vote
This entire exercise by the NCCRE is simply an attempt to change the vote from a vote on the merits of the budget to a vote on mandates. I urge you to read the line in the voting booth they are asking you to vote "no" on.

It says:

"Resolved: That the Board of Education of the Chappaqua Central School District be and hereby is authorized to expend the sum of $111,448,488 set forth in the School District Budget for the School Year 2011-2012, and that the necessary tax be levied thereof."

There is nothing in that language to suggest this is a vote on mandates or messages, it is clearly a vote on the proposed budget.

The Message
The best and appropriate way to send a message is to do so in a clear and unambiguous manner. Changing state mandates, especially ones that are constitutionally protected, will only come with a ground swell of public support that threatens financial well being and the re-election prospects of our legislators in Albany. It will not come from voting down a local budget. In fact, the only message sent from voting down a local budget is that we have a community divided.

Additionally, in the likely event the budget passes, they have set themselves up for the claim by our legislators that the community does not want mandate relief as evidenced by the budget vote. As the vote on the ballot is for the budget not mandate relief and they are not mutually exclusive, it is quite probable that most of the community is like me in supporting both the budget and getting mandate relief from Albany.

The Process
Should the budget get voted down, the Board would then have to decide how to proceed. The Board's choices are to present a new proposed budget and a new contingency budget, to keep them the same and have another vote, or to go straight to the contingency budget. The Board can also decide to change the amount of reserves used to offset any tax rate changes.

In fact, in these times of fiscal austerity the Board cannot know if a budget was voted down because of some tangential message, because we are spending too much, or because residents are upset with the amount of cuts or the increase in class size and want us to raise the budget. There is no one message to take from a rejected budget other than a divided community.

Budget Bargaining
Further, the decision to advocate for a "no" vote is tantamount to bargaining in bad faith. The School Board this year took great pains to craft a budget that reflected a broad swatch of the community. Included in that was input from the NCCRE. At every budget meeting they had a member speak and ask questions. Many of their suggestions were incorporated in the final proposal. In fact, the large amount of reserves committed is a reflection of their input and suggestions.

The five members of the NCCRE themselves in their opening paragraph of the letter state that the contingency budget is only $132,000 less than the proposed budget so a "no" vote does not take away from educational programming or the excellent quality of the Chappaqua School system. If they think the proposed and contingency budgets are good and fair ones, why the "no" vote suggestion?

The NCCRE bargained in what I assumed was good faith for a budget that they could live with and now that they got what they wanted, they are suggesting it get voted down to send some sort of message. That is not bargaining in good faith. They want you to vote "no" for reasons that have nothing to do with the budget itself.

Penny Wise, Pound Foolish
This NCCRE plan is a plan that, like my mother used to say to me, is "cutting off your nose to spite your face". The NCCRE members are willing to sacrifice their real estate values to send a message to the teacher's union and their elected officials in Albany despite they themselves having been active participants in negotiating for this proposed budget. They choose to ignore that home buyers in this community are motivated by the school system and that they will not move here if we start voting down budgets that are reasonable ones to begin with. They are willing to vote "no" to send a message that has no immediate effect on taxes or that at best will save them an amount on their yearly taxes that will take them 20 or 30 years to make up based on the resulting loss in real estate value. It makes no sense.

Contingency Budget
Then, in order to convince you to vote "no" these five residents make certain assumptions and claims in their letter that are not necessarily valid. In the same first paragraph mentioned above, they correctly point out that the contingency budget is only $132,000 less than the proposed budget, but there is an implied assumption that if the budget is voted down, that the contingency budget will automatically kick in.

That is an erroneous assumption. If the budget is voted down on May 17th, as stated above, the School Board would have several options including presenting a new Proposed Budget, a new Contingency Budget as well as adjusting the amount of reserves committed to offsetting the tax increase.

"Real Budget Increase"?
In their reasons to vote "no", they try to come up with a concept of "Real Budget Increase" that is erroneously calculated. They have used a projected actual spending number for this year that is incorrect. This year's approved budget was $109,391,348. But, that number is not the amount authorized to be spent. As one of their members repeatedly pointed out at Board budget meetings, the actual spending budget was $110,800,000 as there was a reserve of approximately $1.4 million used on the expense side this year. The "Real Budget Increase" is actually $688,000, or approximately one half of one percent.

They also erroneously try to use the projected surplus as a reduction in spending this year without accounting for a potential surplus next year. They seem to make assumptions only when it suits their purposes and not use them consistently throughout the analysis.

Tax Analysis
They also claim the real property tax increase is 5.2% not 2.11% if reserves aren't used. Well guess what? Reserves are being used. So, the real property tax increase is 2.11%. They are correct in saying that the reserves are previously collected but unspent tax dollars, however, if they want to be intellectually honest in making the claim that the real tax increase is 5.2% because of the use of reserves, they would then need to restate all the previous tax changes (20 years?) to say that the actual tax rate in years when no reserves were used but we spent less than budgeted was lower than it was claimed. I strongly supported returning as much of the reserves to the taxpayers as prudently reasonable. Now, after the Board committed to using more reserves than the Administration initially recommended, the NCCRE is claiming it does not matter what number is used, the tax rate is really 5.2%. Under that theory, we might as well eliminate the use of reserves and make the tax rate increase 5.2% since that is the basis on which they are making their decision.

Causal Relation Confusion
When they make the case that enrollment is declining, staff levels are being reduced yet compensation levels are increasing, they are 100% correct, but I fail to see the correlation to voting down the budget.

In fact, they are making the argument to vote for the budget. In spite of a significant increase in pension expenses and other employee contractual obligations, this budget increase is less than the amount of the increase in expenses. The Board and Administration is being fiscally prudent in maintaining the academic excellence in our schools while limiting the budget increase to an amount that is less than the increase in contractual costs. What are they suggesting the Board do different from what we have done? Nothing, they just want you to vote : “no" to send a message unrelated to the current budget.

Contractual Givebacks
The five members of NCCRE suggest that the Board, in accepting the $1.1 million in givebacks from a union that has seen approximate 7% raises the last three years, could have imposed a unilateral freeze on teacher salary increases while the teachers had a valid contract in place. It appears as if they are suggesting that we should have accepted nothing less than a freeze.

First, of course we suggested a freeze to the CCT, it was rejected, but it is unrealistic to expect agreement to a freeze when an employee unit is only voluntarily reopening a contract that has another year to run at higher compensation. Second, with a valid contract in place, the appropriate way to analyze the savings made is versus the contract and in the event of an extension of that contract versus what would be imposed under the Triborough Amendment to the Taylor Law. In this case, imposed step increases. In this proposed budget, the district is saving $1.1 million versus the existing contract. In the following year, the district will be paying $600,000 less than we would have had to if we came to no agreement on a contract and the Triborough Amendment was imposed. Those are real and significant savings.

The NCCRE would have you believe we live in some theoretical world where a union will rip up an existing contract and offer to give back everything they negotiated on salary AND, not only that, what the law says they are entitled to. To assume this could or would happen is disingenuous on their part.

School Board Public Support
Finally, the NCCRE makes the claim that the School Board "has not publically supported or advocated for mandate relief even though it is recommended by the School District Budget Advisory Group, the Westchester Putnam School Board Association and the New York State School Board Association." As stated above, this ignores the resolutions passed and the Board's public support of both the Westchester-Putnam School Board Association and the New York State School Board Association's public lobbying efforts to address mandates.

The NCCRE is also directly aware of the fact that the Budget Advisory Group recommendations will be on the May 24th School Board agenda. To claim that we are specifically ignoring a recommendation by an advisory group is incorrect. While there is no guarantee we will accept that recommendation, we have made it very clear to them that we will be considering it. While the consideration does come one week after the budget vote, the timing of that is not relevant to this year's budget vote. A decision to accept, reject or modify the recommendation will not have any effect on the budget numbers, even if we had voted on it a month ago.

The group's claim of lack of public support also ignores the very fact that they had representation on the Budget Advisory Committee Mandate subgroup. It was the School Board that established the committee and suggested that one of the subcommittees be focused on addressing mandate relief. If the Board creating a group to address mandate relief with the charge that there were no areas they could not address is not publically supporting mandate relief, then I am not sure how we could ever satisfy them.

The Vote
Let me be clear. The vote on Tuesday May 17th is whether or not to support the academic and fiscally responsible budget proposed by the Board of Ed. Mandate relief is not on the ballot.

I advocate you vote "YES" on the budget and support mandate relief by contacting our legislators in Albany.