This article was published a few years back; but hits the nail right on
the head in regards to the problems we all face today. We all agree
that the education of all of New Hampshire's children is paramount to
their future and to the future of New Hampshire; however the system
is broken and has been for some time.
Education Funding Editorial
An enormous transfer of wealth has taken place in New Hampshire over the past 5 years, coming from the pockets of home owners into the coffers of the Education Establishment.
Five years ago the New Hampshire Education Monopoly spent in total $1.3 billion. In the year ending June 2003 they spent over $2.0 billion, an increase of 43% in 5 years. During the same time enrollment has gone up 5%.
This increase of public school spending comes largely from those who pay local real estate taxes. This unprecedented transfer of wealth has impoverished our senior citizens and has drained the earnings of all working families who are homeowners. If this spending spiral continues at the same rate for the next five years a large majority of New Hampshire citizens are going to have great difficulty paying their real estate taxes. We do have a school funding problem but that problem is dwarfed by the spending problem of our government schools.
It is the relentless spending increases that have created the funding problem.
What we have is a serious management problem and unless the management problem is addressed the funding problem will never go away. Could it be that some school superintendents are unqualified to run a multimillion dollar organization? In what other organization would the board of directors not dismiss the manager who runs up his cost of product as rapidly as many of our school superintendents have run up their spending per pupil over the past five years.
When one asks how is it that the non public schools can do a better job for less than half the price? We get whining and excuses rather than solutions. The excuses won’t halt the rise in my real estate taxes. One would almost have to conclude that a clever superintendent has purposely cried wolf, or “we have a funding problem”, in order to divert the attention of his local school board and taxpayers from his management weaknesses and spending extravagances. Even if the exaggerated spending of our government schools had produced good academic results people could not afford the continued drain on their on their savings and earnings from ever higher real estate taxes.
As the season of town meetings and warrant articles approach, homeowners feeling the heavy burden of their real estate taxes must stand up and tell their school superintendents that unless this spending spiral is halted they will be replaced.
by State Representative David Scott of Durham; published March 14th, 2004
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4 comments:
The one thing that kills us the most on our town & school budget is the "special education". This year it is almost half of the school budget (Regular Programs = $4,115,357 vs $3,005,667 for Special programs). When you look at the number of students in each of these programs, it is staggering how much we spend per student!
If only we could put “the screws” and press upon the other schools that we are sending our special needs children to, too also cut back on their budgets. It is very frustrating as a parent to hear how these students are going skiing/snowboarding once a week (some are even on ski teams), while the children in the "regular" programs are lucky to go on ONE field trip each year. My youngest son has been on one field trip in the past three years.
I honestly believe that the “Special Education” schools should cut back on their spending and stop charging such high rates.
How can we accomplish this?
Is this something that our Board of Education and Unit 38 could urgently press them on? Until we tell them that we have a problem paying their tuition, they are going to keep sticking it to us. Who is regulating the Special Education schools? Is anyone regulating their spending? Do they have a board of education staffing their budgets? Is this something that as a community we can press upon them to accomplish? That’s what I want to know! Let's get the special education schools to cut back on their spending too!
Just how many students fall under this special education here in town and are they all Winchester kids or are we also paying for kids coming from other towns? Can the people running this site or someone from the school board provide answers for us? School spendings seem to be way out of control and there doesn't look like there's going to be any changes to lower the school budget any time soon. Just how do these school people propose we tax payers keep up when none of our employers is giving out raises or bonuses and the cost of everything is going up. Where does it end ?
This morning, in the Sunday edition of the Keene Sentinel, there was an article about how the coming state budget cuts will begin to affect local town budgets. I do hope that people will vote with their pocketbooks, because to do less is to invite financial disaster up on our community. The scope of this global downturn is huge and to ignore it is criminal. Our locally elected leaders need to get their heads out of the ozone.
It was explained last nite by school board member[Brian Moser], the gov. tells us what to do, the special ed providers tells us what to pay, and neither is obligated to explain or justify anything. Its time for another tea party .
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