We are six months away from getting our tax bill and finding out just what effect the revaluation had on our taxes. While I did not go to the budget meetings in January, I hear that the Council has been combing through the budget line by line to find savings for the Teaneck residents. While I applaud the Council's & the infamous FAB serious efforts to reduce taxes, if the Board of Education that controls 60% of the taxes, doesn't do the same then we will all be in for a big surprise when we get our tax bills. We should encourage our Council members to keep scrutinizing and find cost saving measures and remind their Bd of Ed counterpart to do the same.
50 comments:
The citizenry is concerned about the tax burden whether it is derived from the township budget or the Education budget.
The council should be encouraged to continue in its efforts to hold the line. The Manager has come back to the Council with new proposals for zero (or close to zero) per cent and 4% increases for this year. Long range planning to wean the township away from regular hefty increases is necessary.
In the wake of the Nogera Report, the deficient school system must be reformed. The heavy load of administration (there are too many ineffectual administrators) is a burden to the township. The Board of Education must exercise oversight in pruning the bloated budget. The shameful effort to cut sports when the budget was rejected last year must not be repeated. The budget will only pass this year if the voters see a good will effort to take care of the students, not the administrators.
While I respectfully disagree with some of your assumptions (too many administrators taking $ away from student needs), I agree the budget must pass. The past BOE budget increases have been no higher than 5% for a number of years, and the state imposes strict caps on public school budgeting. The reason that sports were recommended for a cut last year was a strong directive from the Board NOT to touch classroom dollars.
I remind you (and anyone else who is following this blog) that the BOE conducts all its budget discussions in public and will be having two in-depth workshops on 1/24 and 1/31. The ACT recommendations are being taken very seriously by the superintendent and BOE, and administrators are working hard with teaching staff to determine what it will take to implement them.
The school budget will not pass again if they the BOE do not curb their spending...and show us the taxpayers we are actually getting our monies worth!!!
There is more "administration" going on in the Teaneck school system than in comparable systems. The way to show the public good faith is to prune administration back.
There are other ways to protect our wallets. While I strongly agree that there are too many (non-teaching)administrators compared to the student enrollment, I do not believe that cost saving should come on the backs of our children. Fine with me if the BOE can trim the administrator population. Lets make certain that the buildings receive the proper preventative maintenance. Teaneck Public Schools will lose more good students to area private schools if the Athletic Depts. experience cutbacks. This in turn, will make it even harder to increase standardized test scores. I will vote against the budget if it does not indicate loyalty to the students as opposed to the admistration and I will vote against any incumbent who does not make this a priority.
As far as the Council is concerned, they must do more to protect their constituents. They must tighten their reigns on the manager. Maybe if she proposed a less expensive phone system we could have a better recycling program. Maybe if she delt with the cellphone towers proposals in a timely period we could afford the new phone system AND appropriate DPW services. I want to see a serious effort to increase revenue from sources other than taxpaying residents. When the time comes, I will vote against any incumbent Council member who has not worked hard to support these ideals. We need development not mud-slinging disagreement.
Improved township management skills could eliminate the need for employee $$$$$ lawsuits. This might actually result in improved services for the residents without increased taxes for the taxpayers, without harming our kids.
BYE BYE HELENE
There are at least 28 non-teaching positions listed on th Board of Education website (not including secretaries). The cost in salaries and benefits is probably two to three million dollars a year. Surely some of the positions are justifiable. But the taxpayers are entitled to a full explanation of why each non-teacher is on the payroll if the budget is to be passed.
You don't like paying for public schools in Teaneck because your kids go to private schools. Get over it. You still hve to pay for public schools.
Anonymous 3.54
You obviously don't have very good reading comprehension skills (and/or you are one of the administrative persons Taxpayer is complaining about).
The budget's problem will come from parents using the schools who know their children are being cheated by the system while they are being robbed blind. The days of fooling all the people (and especially the Trustees of the system who apply their oversight with blind eyes) so that administrators can feed at the public trough while their kids are shunted aside are numbered.
If you are interested in the development of the school budget, there are two budget workshops coming up on Wed., 1/24 and Wed., 1/31. The one on the 24th will discuss Operations & Maintenance and Special Education, and the one on the 31st will discuss instructional and administrative costs.
My reading skills are just fine. My problem is with people who suck up to the town council with anonymous web postings.
The actual percent of property taxes that goes toward the school is not 60%. It is just under 58% for 2006. This is down from 59 1/4 % in 2004 and 58 ¾% in 2005. This reflects the fact that the town local tax rate has been increasing faster than the school tax rate. From 2004 to 2005 the town tax rate increased by 5.5% versus the school tax increase of 3.9%. From 2005 to 2006 the town tax rate increased by 9.0% versus the school tax increase of 4.5%.
It should also be noted that this only represents property taxes. The town budget actually went up by 8.4% in 2005 and by 9% in 2006. The town’s revenues from other sources went up during this period. The most notable increase was the result of the new hotel occupancy tax which netted the town $1,000,000 for each of those years.
As the percent of the town budget supported by property taxes went down the opposite was happening in the school system. During the same two year period, the school’s outside revenue sources (mostly federal and state aid) remained flat requiring property taxes to support a larger percent of the budget. As the town budget went up by 8.4% and 9% over this two year period, the school budget went up by about 3.5% and 4%.
While the school administration and board receive some credit for the smaller budget increases, it should be noted that the Board of Education does not have the unbridled control of the school budget that the town council has over its budget. Increases in the school budget are capped by the state which with New Jersey’s Department of Education provide oversight to the school board and the budget process.
LETS BE FRANK..THE COUNCIL AND THE B OF ED BOTH MUST BRING IN BUDGETSAS CLOSE TO 0% INCREESE AS POSSIBLE. IF IT MEANS SOME CUTS OR FREEZES SO MAY BE IT.
WE DO NOT HAVE THE LUXURY TO BE ABLE TO AFFORD A COMMUNITY POLICE UNIT. ON THE BOARD SIDE THERE MUST BE SOME AREAS WHERE COMPRIBLE SAVEINGS CAN BE FOUND AS WELL. THERE IS NO CHOICE.
Actually, Teaneck's ratio of adminstrators to students is pretty average for NJ. Where Teaneck jumps off the charts is teacher compensation. Teaneck is in the second year of a three year contract (although the contract was announced last June, it turns out to retroactively cover the 2005-2006 school year). This contract gave generous increases to what were already among the top pay scales in the State.
Since teacher salaries and benefits are well over half the budget, no meaningful reduction or slow down in BoE spending happens unless this issue is tackled.
No quick fix on salaries. Average teacher salaries will probably decline gradually through attrition as older, highly compensated teachers retire.
It does not take that many years to get to the top of the scale and graduate degrees have a major impact as well. As a result, retirements or even an early retirement program can
only be part of the solution. Assuming that salary reductions are a non-starter, to make a difference, the next teaches' contract will need to (i) introduce a 2 tier wage system to bring in new teachers on a lower scale, introduces different pay scales for different specialties (reflecting the ease/difficulty of attracting qualified teachers) and limits the bonuses given for hire education to situations where the educational benefits to students are clear (does a kindergarten teacher really need a PhD?) ; and (ii) increase productivity - for example, by requiring some degree of participation overseeing after- school activities - which currently results in extra pay.
Forget about the teachers' contract. Their union is not going to budge. Besides, they teach our kids. Keep your eyes on the non-teachers. Make them justify their non-teaching jobs in our educational institutions. How about that, Board of Ed members?
This one does not get solved without confronting the Unions. Teachers' salaries are just too big a chunk of the budget to be viewed as a constant that cannot be changed. If you don't touch the salaries, to have a meaningful impact on the overall spending you will have to make pretty deep cuts elsewhere and that is certain to have a negative impact on students.
If we are to break this cycle, we will have to take a chance on a teacher's strike. The maintenance staff contract expires this year - perhaps a tough stance in these negotiations will send a message to the teachers.
BTW, if there are 28 adminstrative positions and we cut 25% (which would put Teaneck well below the state average in terms of administrator/student ratio), assuming 7 individuals at 150K per year (probably high) you have about $1m in savings or well less than 2% of the budget. Almost background noise.
Teachers' salaries are the key because they are so significant in the budget and Teaneck could afford to cut salaries considerably and still be in line with many. neighboring towns. To paraphrase Willie Sutton, you go there and not to items like athletics because "that's where the money is."
Re school budget: go back to neighborhood schools, and end busing in Teaneck. Savings: $2-3 million.
HOW CAN YOU DO THAT WITHOUT SCHOOLS IN EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD/?????
I can see the usual anonymous cowards are here to raise the level of discourse.
Tom-
Don't be fooled. What you are seeing is a subversive attempt to interrupt a serious discussion by turning this site into a joke. This is a place for Teaneck citizens to discuss important isses in a civil fashion. The person (or persons) propagating the vulgarities and idiotic comments wants to cut the discussion off. My advice is for the smart decent people to disregard the flaming.
WELL THEY LEARNED HOW TO SPELL ONE WORD....
HEY JA-MONICA
WHEN THOSE FAT NEW TAX BILLS ROLL IN NEXT JULY WHAT YOU GONNA SAY? SORRY, DIDN'T DO MY JOB KEEPING EXPENSES DOWN AND BRINGING NEW MONEY IN!!
It's easier to ignore the SCREAMERS if you hit the collapse comment button at the top.
Would someone please explain why the township's outlay in expenditure should go up much more than inflation each year?
I'd like to seriously explore the notion of ending busing and going back to neighborhood schools. Can anyone explaine why this doesn't seem to get discussed very often? If busing is really costing us $2-$3 million per year, then I think it's worth some discussion.
nothing wrong with disagreeing with someone, but to be rude or crude is not right.
judgeing by your posting you do not have any better ideas to offer.
If I recall correctly, the town gets over $1m in State aid for busing making the overall budgetary impact of busing relatively minor in the big picture. Just another red herring the BoE likes to raise to deflect attention from the real spending issues. Another one is the Charter School which runs at a lower cost per student than the public schools, constitutes a similarly small part of the budget and unless the BoE can educate more students for free would probably result in at least 75% of the same costs if the students returned to the public school system.
If you were at the last Board meeting on the 24th, you would have heard the facts about transportation -- $5.1M of the school budget, a huge portion of that is mandatory for either special ed transportation or private/yeshiva/parochial school bussing mandated by state law. You would have also heard that Teaneck no longer gets state aid for transportation -- this has been true for the past few years...
Don't even go there on busing Yeshiva students. Only our BoE would complain about the 2-3,000 it costs to bus the students which saves the district that 10,000+ is costs to educate students. Can you even imagine what our tax bill would look like if Yeshiva students showed up in public schools next year. Numerically, it would roughly double the size of the district.
Contrary to what you may believe, To Anonymous 6:51AM-
I totally agree with your point. I only provided the clarification to make sure everyone understood what the true costs were of transportation (far more than one previous blogger estimated) and how cutting out courtesy bussing would impact our public school students much more seriously than students who are served by other types of bussing contained in the school budget.
I have no idea how many yeshiva students there are in Teaneck, so I don't know what it would do to the school budget. How many are there? How does one find out?
I will say that I just don't understand how it is that busing students to Elizabeth, for example, or Dwight Englewood, should be paid for with Teaneck tax dollars. If someone could explain the rationale, I'd like to be educated.
The choice is not between busing yeshiva students or having them attend the public schools. They are not attending yeshivas rather than public schools because of the availability of busing. They are attending yeshivas because that is where their parents want them to be educated. For example, Bergenfield does not provide busing, but the Orthodox population in Bergenfield is growing.
So why does Teaneck provide busing?
The BoE website indicates there are 4700 students in the district. The 2000 census indicates that there are 8500 school age children in Teaneck. The apples-to-apples comparison requires a slight reduction in the 2000 number because Teaneck only educates 50 nursery school students and probably a much larger offsetting increase in the 2000 number because of the growth of the Orthodox community in the last 6 years and their larger average family size. So, as I indicated in a previous post, the BoE is educating roughly half of the school age population in Town.
The BoE website indicates there are 4700 students in the district. The 2000 census indicates that there are 8500 school age children in Teaneck. The apples-to-apples comparison requires a slight reduction in the 2000 number because Teaneck only educates 50 nursery school students and probably a much larger offsetting increase in the 2000 number because of the growth of the Orthodox community in the last 6 years and their larger average family size. So, as I indicated in a previous post, the BoE is educating roughly half of the school age population in Town.
I'm not sure where you get 8500 as the number of the school age children, according to the 2000 census. If you take the population of Teaneck (39,260) minus 18+ (29,139) minus under 5 (2521) you get 7600. Alternatively, you can click on Social Characteristics Show More, and, under School Enrollment, you can add Kindergarten (483) and Grades 1-8 (4942) and Grades 9-12 (2238) to get 7663.
The 4700 enrollment figure is from the old Teaneck Public Schools website. The current enrollment is 4136 in the public schools, 138 out-of-district placements, and 233 in the charter school (which is not part of the district but is publicly funded), or 4507 students. The district provides busing for 2003 private school students, and aid in lieu of transportation for 324 private school students, or 2327. The district also buses children to out-of-district public schools, such as the academy; that number is probably around 100. This brings us to 6934 students. Some students not captured by district data are those who attend private school in NY or in Teaneck; if they are not eligible for busing or aid in lieu of transportation, the district does not track them. There are probably 200-300 such students. And remember, the 2000 census was 7 years ago. But it is probably accurate to state that the public schools (including the publicly-funded charter schools which are part of the school budget) educate approximately 60% of the school-age children in Teaneck.
So potentially the Teaneck public schools could be 40% more populated.
Anonymous said...
So potentially the Teaneck public schools could be 40% more populated.
I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Do you mean that the children who are enrolled in private school could potentially be enrolled in public school?
The source for 8500 was http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/educLevel.php?locIndex=18661
But whether it is 40% or 50%, the point is that Teaneck's spending is even more astounding when you consider that it has no instructional expenses for a large part of its school age population. Rather than moaning about the spending on busing, they should be thankful that they do not bear the full cost of educating these students.
Why should we be thankful that 40% of the children who live in our town do not attend the public schools? If more children living in our district did attend the public schools, then perhaps we might have greater buy-in from the entire town and a higher overall quality in the district.
The answer to your question about bussing is that, because the district provides courtesy bussing for elementary students for both safety and integration purposes, the state requires that we bus private and parochial students to the same extent we bus public school students - K-4 kids who live .9 miles away from school, 5-8 kids who live 2 miles or more from their school, and high school students who live 2-1/2 to 30 miles away from their school.
Of course, based on those guidelines there is no busing to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson or Teaneck High School, where the overwhelming majority of public school students in grades 5-12 go. Most busing in those grades is for private and parochial school students.
The previous blogger sounds like a bigot. Why don't you move out of town?
Ah, that ever-useful b-word, a favorite fallback for people on both sides of Teaneck issues.
Seriously, I have no problem with how Teaneck buses its students, nor whom it buses. And I have no problem with what Teaneck spends to do that, even if our busing costs ARE the highest in the county. (You always have to play the hand you're dealt.)
But reading previous posts, one could come away with the wrong idea about what it means to bus private (including parochial) school students to "the same extent" as we bus public school students. That is a fine policy, but as a practical matter we do not spend "to the same extent" to bus private school students in grades 5-12 -- we spend more, considerably more I would think.
That too is fine with me. I would just like people to be clear about it. Wouldn't you?
And no, I'm not moving out of town.
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