Briefing Book: Let the good times Roelle!

Written by J. D. Piro
Thursday, 04 March 2010 00:00

If you page through the proposed 2011 budget for the Katonah-Lewisboro School District and then peruse a recent report from a New York state think tank, you’ll think that teachers’ union president Sandy Grebinar must be smiling.

Beginning six weeks ago, Ms. Grebinar was cast as the villain du jour in an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation with the school board over the scheduled pay raises in the teachers’ union contract. The school board, following the approach taken in other Westchester school districts, had asked the union to voluntarily forego its contractually guaranteed pay raise for next year. When Ms. Grebinar refused to authorize the give-backs, the school board went over her head straight to the union’s executive committee.

Ms. Grebinar dug in, refusing even to discuss the matter of union give-backs, preferring to brave the onslaught of criticism from the media, various blog postings, letters to the editors, and an overwrought children’s crusade on Facebook. Ms. Grebinar stood eyeball-to-eyeball with the school district and the taxpayers.

And she won. The 2011 school budget proposed last week by Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Roelle is one that only a union president could love — a recession-denying mix of property tax hikes, spending increases, and a return to the good old days of “triple-tripping” bus routes.

Yes, gentle reader, triple-tripping is back — did you really think you had the last word on that subject just because you voted to reject it? Hey, that was back in 2005. Or whenever — it doesn’t matter. In the world of the public education bureaucrat, every taxpayer opinion comes with an expiration date.

Dr. Roelle has proposed a budget increase of 2.58%, an increase well in excess of last year’s 0.16% budget increase. Here at Briefing Book, we don’t think the economy has improved to the point where the school district should let the good times “roelle.” Judging from Dr. Roelle’s budget, you’d never know the economy was in the worst shape in a generation, that home values in Katonah and Lewisboro have cratered, that unemployment is up, and that taxpayers are in a bind.

One reason Ms. Grebinar should be grinning is that her union doesn’t pay much of a price for its intransigence in refusing to negotiate wage give-backs with the school board. Not only do the teachers get to keep their raises, Dr. Roelle keeps teacher layoffs to a minimum. For all the angst about John Jay teachers getting the ax and education heading back to the Dark Ages up on Route 121, only 14 general education teachers would get their walking papers — just one-third of the 43 positions being eliminated.

Moreover, six of the positions slated for elimination are bus drivers, who make less than a quarter of what a tenured school teacher makes. Dr. Roelle explicitly states that the return to triple-tripping is intended to protect teacher jobs. Solidarity with the working class, it seems, has its limits.

To pay for his union largesse, Dr. Roelle has proposed a hefty property tax hike of nearly 4%, with the Bedford portion of the school district slated to see a nearly 9% tax increase. This will support a budget of more than $110 million to educate fewer students than we had in 2000, when we spent $57 million.

What must really bring a smile to the face of union leaders is that this “Let the Good Times Roelle” budget does nothing to stem the rising salaries and benefits that taxpayers are funding across New York state. Salaries for teachers and administrators in New York state rose 5% in the 2009 school year from the previous year, according to a report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy.

The center also reported that public school employees making an annual income of more than $100,000 jumped by 19%. In our school district, the average salary for a school teacher is $106,000, making our teachers among the highest-paid in New York state.

And how much does Dr. Roelle intend to cut these exorbitant salaries? Dr. Roelle proposes a cut of just four-tenths of 1% in salaries across the school district. A 4% tax hike for taxpayers and a 0.4% salary cut for district employees — in the world of public education bureaucrats, that’s shared sacrifice.

If the school board would like to bring a smile to the faces of taxpayers, they can reject this budget and tell Dr. Roelle to bring them one that reflects the economic realities of 2010. Otherwise, the taxpayers will do the job for them.

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