Monadnock School Taxpayers Association News

June 25, 2008
NY Post

Charter schools are flying high - with nearly 85 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards in math, and 67 percent in English.

The gains have Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein crowing.

“These outstanding gains made by students in charter schools this year show what a great choice these schools are providing for thousands of families across the city,” said Bloomberg.

“Results like these are especially gratifying for those of us who worked last year to convince lawmakers in Albany to increase the cap on the number of charter schools we can open.”

For the third straight year, charter-school students in Grades 3 through 8 outperformed their district counterparts statewide and in the city on the state’s math and English-language-arts exams.

“Charter schools in New York City immensely benefit the 18,000 children who attend them and remind the rest of us what is possible in public education,” said Klein.

“Our charter schools serve a higher percentage of poor and African-American and Hispanic kids than other city schools, yet their students are scoring at the same level in reading as the rest of the state and at higher levels in math.

“These results are proof that all children, irrespective of their background, can succeed if given the opportunity.”

Among those with sky-high scores were the Carl C. Icahn Charter in The Bronx and the Brooklyn Charter School.

At Icahn, 100 percent of third-, fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders met state standards in math.

Icahn principal Jeff Litt credited the school’s performance - which ranked in the top seven among charter schools nationally - to a “no-excuses” culture, small class sizes and dedicated teachers and parents.

“High academic achievement is something that is absolutely expected here,” he said. “We don’t teach generically.”

Litt also noted that charter schools have more flexibility.

“Instead of being rules-based you’re outcomes-based,” he said.

Former New York Giant NFL star Tiki Barber - a board member at The Harlem Village Academy Charter School - also weighed in on the super performances.

“[The] entrepreneurial approach to education reform is raising the bar for urban academic achievement,” he said.

Filed under: News by Admin - Comments Off

June 17, 2008
Union Leader

THAT OLD saying about the “foxes guarding the henhouse” happened in real life this month right in our own State House up in Concord. To put it more bluntly, the foxes of organized labor actually ran the place during the committee of conference hearings on reforming the state’s pension system for public employees under House Bill 1645. Local taxpayers didn’t stand a chance.
Op-Ed Logo
Click for Editorials & Op-Eds

As has been widely reported for well over a year, one of the most important pieces of legislative reform that we desperately needed from our elected officials in Concord was HB 1645. This bill was intended to not only shore up the current financial mess of the state’s public employee pension system (with a more than $2 billion deficit), but more importantly institute a series of critical long-term reforms that would protect local taxpayers from further hits to their tax bills down the road.

Among the long-term reforms included were: Capping pensions for new employees at 100 percent of their highest full-year base rate of pay; reducing the supermajority that union employee representatives have on the Retirement System Board from eight seats out of 14 down to four; eliminating the automatic 8 percent annual increase in medical subsidy payments; and limiting the types and amount of non-salary income that can be used to inflate pension payments.

All of these changes (along with several others) would directly mitigate the amount of money that local taxpayers (towns and school districts) are required to pay to the state through their tax bills.

The bill containing all of the needed changes originally passed the House back on March 18 by a wide margin of 259-60. Even though Londonderry had two of its own representatives (Frank Emiro and Sharon Carson) vote against these needed reforms, the rest of our delegation who voted did support it, along with the vast majority of the rest of the House. At that point, it was looking very promising for local taxpayers. All that was needed to get this important bill passed and onto the governor for signing was the Senate. Enter the foxes.

In what can only be categorized as a complete about face to the widespread acceptance the bill received in the House, the Senate gutted all of the reforms noted above in the House version and replaced it with nothing more than a watered-down, pro-labor bill of their own by a vote of 24-0 (including Londonderry’s senator). Yup, that’s right — a unanimous rejection of a reform bill that passed the House by a 200-vote margin.

How could that be? Quite simply, the Senate’s concern for pleasing the powerful organized labor lobby in Concord took precedence over the purpose of the bill in the first place — true long-term reform of a system the local taxpayer can no longer afford.

On a subsequent vote in mid-May, the House rightly re-inserted the wording of its original version back into the Senate’s amended bill, which then went into a committee of conference for final debate. At that point, local towns and school districts were holding out hope that the senators and representatives on the committee would hammer out a true compromise that would retain many of the original reforms that were so widely supported in the House. The foxes made sure that didn’t happen.

Disappointingly for local taxpayers, the House members ended up throwing in the towel on just about every aspect of the original bill when they were pushed by the Senate conferees. The end result was a bill that contained very little in the way of long-term reforms to the system. A quote attributed to Rep. Ken Hawkins of Bedford captured the moment perfectly when he told the House, “We failed you badly.” Ken, you were right.

More disturbing than the final outcome, however, was the process itself as personally observed by representatives from the towns and school districts attending the committee of conference. Numerous times during the talks, labor representatives were able to enter the area where the conferees were seated and pass notes to senators during deliberations. The same access was not provided to others. And in one telling moment, when it appeared that the Senate was about to agree with the House recommendation of capping pensions so that no retiree could earn more in retirement than 100 percent of the highest year of base pay, the president of the Professional Firefighters of New Hampshire stood up and shook his head at the Senate and called for one of them to come out. In the end, that reform as well was removed from the final bill.

The foxes ran the State House.

Filed under: News by Admin - Comments Off

Dick Bauries from the Monadnock School Taxpayers Association will appear on WKBK 1290 AM from 10-11 AM this Saturday, June 21st to talk about educational issues.

Please visit WKBK’s Website for more information on how to tune in.

Filed under: Opinions by Admin - Comments Off

Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Keene Sentinel

SWANZEY CENTER - Big-ticket items such as budget increases and teacher contracts have not gone over well with Monadnock Regional School District voters in recent years. And next March, residents could have a much bigger pill to swallow - a $47.4 to $49.3 million pill.

That’s what architects say it will cost to build a new two- or three-grade middle school and renovate the existing high school on Old Homestead Highway.

Representatives from Connecticut-based architectural firm Kaestle Boos Associates presented these numbers along with detailed plans for the new middle school district officials are considering to relieve some of the facility problems at the middle/high school.

Fixing the overcrowded middle/high school has emerged as a priority for the school board, made more urgent last year when the New England Association of Schools and Colleges downgraded the high school’s accreditation status from “warning” to “probation.”

Among the problems the association’s public accrediting commission cited were a crowded facility, plumbing and electrical problems, and science classrooms that don’t meet OSHA standards.

A new 62,614-square-foot middle school for 7th- and 8th-graders would cost about $18.7 million, according to Kaestle Boos. Adding a third floor to bring 6th-graders to the middle school would cost a total of $20.6 million.

The new middle school is being proposed for a 14.5-acre plot of land behind Mount Caesar Elementary School. Each grade’s classrooms would be on a different floor, with shared street-level spaces such as the media center, gymnasium and a room that would double as a cafeteria and auditorium.

Moving the middle schoolers to a building of their own would ease the cost of renovations at the current middle/high school, since it would then only need to house students in grades 9 through 12.

Fixing the high school for grades 9 through 12 would cost $28.7 million, according to Kaestle Boos, which would bring the total expense for both facilities to between $47.4 million and $49.3 million.

The renovated high school would have 16,436 square feet of new construction at the front of the building to contain music rooms, administration offices, the school nurse and a science room.

Other science classrooms would be relocated to larger rooms now used for business, social studies and math, according to project plans. And the rest of the building would get fix-ups ranging from light refurbishment to heavy renovation.

Kaestle Boos also provided cost estimates for building a new 9th through 12th-grade school from scratch - $34.8 million. Another option would be to renovate the the middle/high school as a space that would continue to be shared by 7th- through 12th-graders, which architects said would cost $40.1 million.

This latter figure is 5.9 percent higher than the $37.8 architects previously said renovating the middle/high school would cost.

The higher number is adjusted for inflation for an April 2010 start date, as opposed to the April 2009 date used in the original estimates.

“The ship has sailed there,” said David W. King, vice president of Kaestle Boos. “The clock is ticking with regard to inflation costs and escalation costs.”

Exactly how much the state would contribute to the project has yet to be determined, according to architects, who gave preliminary state-reimbursement estimates ranging from $4.5 million to $5.2 million for building the new middle school.

After the presentation, however, King said he and his staff needed to review exactly how much of the project’s cost would be eligible for state aid.

Regardless, Richard Bauries, president of the spending watchdog group Monadnock School Taxpayer Association, said any state reimbursement would be eaten by the interest on the multi-year bond that would be necessary to fund the project.

Numerous school board members, including Edward W. Jacod of Gilsum and James I. Carnie of Richmond, also expressed concern about the feasibility of a septic system in new middle school’s proposed location.

Further study is needed to determine what kind of septic system would be best and where it would be located, according to King, who said prices included in the cost estimates are based on septic systems used in other Kaestle Boos projects.

“We need to know what the proposal is on that septic (system) - where it’s going to be and whether it’s going to be capable,” Carnie said after the meeting.

Chairman Eugene White of Swanzey said the price tag for the middle school was cheaper than he expected.

Still, he said, “We’ve got a lot of meetings to have on it. … There’s nothing in stone.”

The school board is scheduled to discuss the various proposals for the middle and high school at its next meeting, on July 15.

Filed under: News by Admin - Comments Off

June 12, 2008
AP/NY Post

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and his Washington, DC, counterpart joined the Rev. Al Sharpton and others yesterday to press for a shake-up of public schools from coast to coast to narrow the achievement gap between white students and black and Hispanic students.

The group called the gap the nation’s most pressing civil-rights issue.

Klein, Sharpton and DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee appeared together to announce the creation of the Education Equality Project, an advocacy group to reform a public-education system they say has been paralyzed by special interests like teachers unions.

Filed under: News by Admin - Comments Off

June 11, 2008
Keene Sentinel

Dennis Kinnan was apparently still asleep when I called him at 6:30 a.m. So I left a voice mail telling him I was on my way to the gym and would be having yogurt and orange juice for breakfast when I got back. I also called him to say I had finished folding the laundry and was taking my golden retriever, Alice, to the vet for a checkup. And I called him in the afternoon to say that my husband and I were thinking of going to the Chinese restaurant to have lemon chicken for dinner.

I’ve been trying to keep Dennis aware of my comings and goings to save him the trouble of following me. He’s a retired state employee from the Department of Corrections who now works for the state employee union - the State Employees Association or SEA. And he’s been following me around Concord and then e-mailing my activities to the several thousand members of his union. I don’t know whether following me is his idea or part of his job with the SEA.

What I do know is that the SEA and the other public employee unions are really mad at me for siding with the taxpayers in the battle over reform of their pension system. The New Hampshire Retirement System is a mess. It’s $2.7 billion in the hole, has been bleeding red ink for years, and is in the worst shape of almost all the state retirement systems in the country.

So my N.H. House committee worked through legislation that over a period of years and decades would restore the system to health. The full House overwhelmingly went along with our changes and sent the bill to the Senate. The Senate gutted most of our reforms and sent the bill to a committee of conference to resolve the differences between the Senate and House versions.

The committee of conference was a breathtaking example of special interest politicking. The two sides were unevenly matched. On one side were the approximately 77,000 current and retired public employees in the retirement system. At risk for them were the changes the House had proposed: capping retirement benefits at 100 percent of salary (So we don’t end up paying people more not to work than to work.), a reduction in the medical subsidies that reduce the cost of retirees’ health insurance, replacement of the union majority on the retirement system board with some financial experts, and requiring newly hired police and firefighters to work for 25 years, as they do in 48 other states, rather than the 20 years they work here.

On the other side were the 1.1 million typical taxpayers of New Hampshire who don’t belong to the retirement system. At risk for them were: the 15 percent increase in contributions by towns, cities and school districts (meaning property taxpayers) that had already occurred in the previous two years, a potential 53 percent increase in those contributions in coming years if the system is not reformed, and (eventually) getting stuck with the $2.7 billion bill if the system collapses.

It turned out to be no contest. The 77,000 members of the retirement system easily bested the 1.1 million taxpayers. They boasted of mobilizing 1,000 members to send hundreds of e-mails to legislators; they recruited so many retirees to show up for the committee of conference that I couldn’t open the door of my hearing room because of the crowds in the hallway; and mostly they flexed their muscles in the Senate.

During the committee of conference negotiations, the union reps routinely intruded into the proceedings, handed notes to the senators, and summoned senators into the hallway for additional instructions. And in one episode I found particularly troubling, a union lobbyist, in the wee hours of the morning when everyone’s nerves were frayed from a long day of negotiations, stood in the corridor openly screaming at the Senate president, the second highest elected official of our state.

And from the other side, the regular taxpayers, there was silence, because those 1.1 million people didn’t know what was being done to them. In my case, versus the hundreds of e-mails, the dozens of phone calls, and the corridors crowded with union people, there was a grand total of two phone calls from ordinary taxpayers.

The triumph of special interests is as old as politics. But there is an aspect to this episode that is unique to New Hampshire. The founders of our bicameral system envisioned that the lower house would be closer to the people and the upper house would be able to take the longer view, watching out for the interests of the body politic as a whole. And from that synthesis, according to the bicameral theory, should come good public policy.

That theory didn’t work in this instance because of numbers and dollars. The New Hampshire House, with its 400 members, is indeed close to the people. And it’s hard for special interest groups to corral 201 members to their way of thinking. But in the 24-member Senate, the lobbyists only have to round up a baker’s dozen of senators - 13 is a majority - to control the legislative process.

And many senators are eager to be rounded up. In the six years I’ve been in the Legislature, the cost of a Senate campaign has risen even faster than the price of gasoline. In 2002, Senate campaigns cost around $20,000. This year, many senators are talking about spending more than $100,000 on their coming campaigns. So they need the support and the donations of special-interest groups.

And that is why, when the interests of 77,000 public employees collide with the interests of 1.1 million ordinary taxpayers in the Senate, the taxpayers don’t have a chance.

Anne-Marie Irwin, D-Peterborough, represents Greenville, New Ipswich, Peterborough and Sharon in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. She chairs the Executive Departments and Administration Committee.

Filed under: News by Admin - Comments Off

June 4, 2008
NY Post

ALBANY - Gov. Paterson’s bid to cap soaring property taxes was in doubt yesterday as powerful labor unions lined up against it and key lawmakers offered only tepid support.

Paterson wants to introduce a bill this week that would cap annual school hikes at 4 percent.

Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Rensselaer) has supported a tax cap similar to the governor’s, but Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) has said he won’t take up the proposal this year.

The proposal met swift resistance from organized labor, school officials and their allies in the Legislature, who argue it would crimp school districts’ ability to meet expenses.

“The Assembly and the Senate will be wise enough to reject this educationally unsound proposal,” New York State United Teachers President Richard Ianuzzi said.

The AFL-CIO called the tax cap “ill-conceived,” and the labor-backed Working Families Party dismissed it as a “gimmick.”
###

MSTA comment- HB 1436 was recently passed by the NH legislature and sent to the governor’s desk for signature.  This bill “requires that municipalities continue to fund expired public employee contracts while negotiating new ones.  The bill as amended would allow these “evergreen” contracts to continue individual step-pay increases because of seniority…” (Sentinel- 5/30/08) Some MSTA members believe that this is, in effect, an unfunded, unconstitutional government mandate which will raise property taxes regardless of how voters vote on school or municipal budgets.  It is a back door tax sneaked in by tax and spend members of the legislature at the behest of the labor unions.

Filed under: News by Admin - Comments Off

HIGHS HITTING A LOW
US Students Flunking the Global Test
June 1, 2008
New York Post

More Americans are graduating from high school this year than ever before - but our grads are failing to make the grade compared to their foreign counterparts, according to a slew of new reports.

As students in China and India are attacking calculus and physics, Americans are focused on football games and Facebook, experts say - and test scores prove it.

* The United States’ high-school graduation rate was No. 1 among developed countries in the 1960s; it dropped to 21st out of 27 in 2005.

* American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math literacy and 21st in science in the most recent comparison of developed countries.

* They fell near the bottom in problem-solving skills.

* Almost 60 percent of Ph.D.s in engineering awarded in the United States every year go to foreign students.

“It’s not that our educational system is getting worse,” said Bob Wise, author of “Raising the Grade: How High School Reform Can Save Our Youth and Our Nation.”

“It’s that a lot of others are concentrating and focusing and working harder and faster and stronger.”
Wise, a former West Virginia governor who is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, said the United States now has to worry about high-paying, high-skilled jobs going overseas, not just low-paying ones.

“If education abilities and educational outcomes are rising in other nations as fast or faster than ours, then that, over a number of years, spells real problems,” he said.

Mark Bauerlein, an Emory University English professor, said students have migrated from reading books to reading text messages. He documents the effect in his new book, “The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future.”
Professors complain it’s harder to assign students novels over 200 pages, Bauerlein said.

“They just don’t have the rhythm in their lives to sit down in a chair and read uninterrupted for two hours,” he said. “The cellphone buzzes; the BlackBerry dings an e-mail coming through.” The disparity in the preparedness of foreign and American students is highlighted in the new documentary “Two Million Minutes.”

Teens in India and China are seen clocking nine-hour school days or attending tutoring sessions and classes on Saturdays, while students at a highly regarded Indiana high school have plenty of time for TV, part-time jobs and goofing off.

Filed under: News by Admin - Comments Off