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Present School Funding System Shortchanges Education
To the Editor:
Since taking office, I have been actively involved in lobbying the state to reform the funding of schools. The present system of funding education is destructive to communities and families who are burdened with regressive school taxes. The present system mitigates against school stability in budgeting, works against diversity, and causes conflicts about funding among different groups. It calls into question assessment methods and leads to inequality in taxation. It shortchanges education....and it is wasteful.
The Coalition for Education Funding Reform went to Albany on Feb. 28th to meet with key legislators. The Coalition expects these legislators to spearhead funding reform. The coalition groups that met with the legislators included:
-The Task Force
-Wawarsing Reform Group
-Patchogue Area Civic Tax Watch Org.
-N. Country Alliance for School Funding Reform
-Putnam Valley Taxnightmare.org
We met with Sen. Bonacic, Assemblyman Cahill, and key representatives of Assemblywoman Galef, Sen. Bruno, Sen. LaValle, and Sen. Trunzo. Our coalition supports sweeping education funding reform. We are in a crisis and the coalition is looking for action NOW. We made clear our unanimous objection to any form of FrankenStar. We asked the legislators not to consider STAR to be the solution. This program has been proven to be counter productive, a band-aid at best.
We asked that the Senate and Assembly work together to reconcile bills presently in both houses that would mandate a state takeover of education funding to be paid for from general revenue just like any other essential service.
We rejected any funding that could lead to the taking of people's homes to pay school taxes. This is occurring because school property taxes have risen 42%-60% in the last five years, independent of income or ability to pay. All segments of the community, renters, homeowners, city, suburb, and rural would benefit from the ideas in the bills we are supporting. Those bills are A 4746 (Cahill) and S 2070 (LaValle).
We are happy to report that every meeting produced complete agreement on the crisis in education funding. We assured the legislators that we will continue to tell Gov. Spitzer that STAR is just an expensive, wasteful bandaid and we want his budget to reflect a s u b s t a n t i a l c o m m i t m e n t to real funding reform. We applaud the legislators and staff with whom we met. They were forthcoming, supportive, and on the side of change. This statewide crisis demands a statewide solution.
Our Coalition for Education Funding Reform is large, statewide, and growing. We will continue speaking with legislators and the administration.
Sam Davis Putnam Valley Supervisor
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