From Josephine Posti's Center Court blog:
Last week we began discussions about the 2012-13 budget and will continue those discussions until May, when we will approve our operating budget for next year. While we were able to pass last year’s budget without any millage increase despite state funding cuts, further state cuts this year place a greater burden on local taxpayers. As a result, the Board will discuss what combination of program reductions, use of reserves and millage increases will best serve our community’s needs. We look forward to your feedback.
Here's the thing. Josephine claimed in the meeting last week that the high school project had nothing to do with the tough budget this year. I know it doesn't make sense. But it DOES make sense to Josephine because she never saw any of the project as a tradeoff. It was never, "I can have this OR I can have that." It was, "We just need to raise taxes to get it." That's the mentality she and others on the board have. So technically she is right. Today's budget shortfall isn't about the high school project because they already raised taxes to "pay" for it. There was no tradeoff of bond payments for teachers. It was all paid for by a tax increase instead. And when you think back, that is the mentality that drove this project. There was never an understanding by many of the BOSN people that if you get $5 million a year in bonds, that you have to give something back. The District never gave anything back. They 100% raised taxes to pay for the school. There was NO PAIN associated with the bond payments. The majority just thought the taxpayers would absorb the shock and move on.
Tradeoffs...
3 comments:
Ms. Gillen:
That's a very good analysis. Your have identified one of the great moral and philosophical conflicts that scars our country today: The battle between the "either/or" and the "both/and" systems of logic. "Either/or" is predominately a Western philosophy dealing with absolutes; "both/and" is a synthetic system that has roots in Eastern philosophy and the works of Karl Marx. Our universities are filled with proponents of the "both/and" system.
Here are some "classic" examples of each system: You may marry this girl OR that one (but not both); given X amount of money, you may buy this car OR that one; we can have guns AND butter; we can have debt AND prosperity. As it applies to our school district, we can have a new high school AND a new athletic wing AND teacher pension increases AND (you name it). The "either/or" recognizes that you may follow a line of reasoning until you reach a logical contradiction (in the school district example, an absolute amount of money available to use, and beyond which you cannot go); the "both/and" says there is no logical contradiction (again using the school district example, there is no absolute amount of money to consider because we do not plan on spending more than the community's total resources!).
It is for these reasons that I have never thought of the members of our school board as "evil" people, wishing to throw little old ladies out into the streets. They are simply the products of our modern university system, acting in character; and that is what makes them dangerous.
Arithmetic is not an opinion.
Bill Hook
CHICAGO—This city's school board voted Wednesday to shake up the teaching staffs at 17 low-performing public schools, handing Mayor Rahm Emanuel a victory in his battle with the teachers union and highlighting an increasingly aggressive stance on education overhauls by a number of Democratic mayors nationwide.
Mr. Emanuel is part of a growing list of Democratic mayors, including those in Cleveland, Newark, N.J., and Providence, R.I. pushing policies anathema to unions. Those include dismissing the entire staffs in low-performing schools, evaluating teachers based on student-test scores, and opening more non-unionized charters, public schools run by non-government entities.
Just months into his tenure, Mr. Emanuel convinced state lawmakers to let him lengthen the school day, and to make it tougher for teachers to strike. A few months later, his hand-picked board of education rescinded teachers' 4% pay raises.
ttp://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204778604577239643010165010.html?mod=djemITPE_h
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