Pocono schools’ tax crisis looms: spending rises despite enrollment drops…
Pocono schools’ tax crisis looms: spending rises despite enrollment drops…
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5 Comments
Four school districts with average budgets of over 100 million dollars apiece and teacher pay hikes of five percent or greater.
Average payroll for each district of over a thousand people…..
Its obvious that staff needs to be cut and pay frozen for the teachers, custodians etc.
The top administration needs to take a pay cut.
The benefits need to be reformed to get the employees paying 20 percent.
How many members of my union and their relatives serve on these four school boards??????
We need a state law that bans public school employes and close relatives from serving on school boards…..
Here is an idea also to lower school taxes and taxes in general. Start by forcing the retired government school teachers, employees, and elected officials take less in their pension checks. The fact less revenues are being generated from these retirement funds. This in part is due to the lack of accountability on the part of the administrators of the investment firms and their continued malfeasance with the investing of the pension proceeds. The government should not be forcing taxpayers to make up the difference for these losses from the mal invested funds. The retired government teachers, employees/ elected officials instead should be forced to take less of a pension check due to the fact the administrators invested poorly and at the same time go after these same administrators for the losses they created. Does your investment officer or pension manager in the private sector make up these losses when you lose in your retirement fund? No you just have to settle for less if there is any left to settle for. Ask the Enron employees what they had to settle for with their pensions, or 401K. Where is the accountability on the part of government on this issue? The answer to them is simple just raise taxes!
This unionized public school education system has become too extravagant for a part time postion to suite me and other taxpayers of this state and country. I believe it is time to move this education system back to a non unionized status and to a private schooling status also without the government funding at the levels they are presently at. The school system should stand on their own two feet with the support of the people that utilize their services just as it is with private schooling. By the way, what schooling system continually out performs the other schooling system? This should tell the taxpayer something also about the public school system. Tthrowing more money for less work is not the answer to the school system problems. Make the school system more accountable not less for the product they produce. Unions interfere too much with the process of teaching. The games the unions play when it comes to contract time and otherwise. Our Founding Fathers NEVER had a desire for our government services to be unionized to begin with. They were not in favor of driving these costs up to the point it would be a burden to the taxpayer. I believe we have arrived to this end quit a few years back and the full realization this fact is hitting the taxpayer NOW!
This is a very thoughtful article. Analytical and useful. Whatever the causes, it is clear we are headed toward a fiscal iceberg.
Most school boards are dominated by those related to district employees. They've all got one line down pat: "I hate to raise taxes, but I have no choice."
Then, after this lie, they go back to revelling in being important until the next budget hearing. It's almost impossible for someone who'll vote against excess spending to get through the primary, in which 20% of the voters turn out.
So, if there are ten thousand voters in a district, and two thousand of them turn out, it only takes 1,001 votes to elect more big-spenders "who understand the issues" and "want to improve public education". There are usually that many employees, relatives, and others who profit from public education in every district. Reform is, therefore, basically impossible.