Wellness Center: Pedagogical Peccadillo or Necessity?

Here is a letter to the Scarsdale Board of Education from Scarsdale resident Robert J. Berg about the proposed 2013-2014 schoo budget that he read at the April 8, 2013 School Budget Forum.
Dear Members: What do the following public school districts in Westchester have in common: Edgemont; Bronxville, Chappaqua, Rye City, Rye Neck, Blind Brook, Mamaroneck, Byram Hills, and Pelham? These school districts all are considered excellent school districts, and include the districts to which Scarsdale generally compares itself.

What else do these same school districts have in common? Each of these districts has proposed a school budget for 2013-2014 that falls within the state adjusted tax cap.

These districts face the identical pressures as we do in Scarsdale. Yet their school boards have followed the only responsible course to protect their taxpayers from even more ridiculous property tax increases. Unfortunately, this Board of Education has yet to step up to the plate.

I have repeatedly stood before this Board this year and urged you to adopt a budget that falls within Scarsdale's adjusted tax cap. I have explained how such a budget can be attained without cutting any educational or extra-curricular programs and without increasing class size.

To reiterate, I have asked you to eliminate funding of about $1,000,000 for a fancy, new Wellness Center -- a number that undoubtedly will increase because the Administration will certainly want to finish the unfinished core into a classroom/lab.

I have also asked you to eliminate the $115,000 in funding for a second public information officer whose task would be largely to act as a Twitter blogger and webmaster.

These two expenditures are low hanging fruit in a budget approaching $150 million. They are easy to challenge because they epitomize the Administration's spendthrift "If we spend it, they will come" approach to our tax dollars.
By eliminating these ill-considered expenditures and by drawing down our wildly excessive reserves, the Board can present the community with a budget that falls within the adjusted tax cap and that, at least, tries to lessen the rate of increase in our property tax growth.

Fundamental fairness to our taxpayers requires this approach. At the present time, close to one half of Scarsdale households have no students in the school district. Yet they must bear the incredibly heavy burden of educating the other half's children. Already, many long-term residents find that the property tax burden makes it irrational for them to remain in Scarsdale after their children have been educated. I see it repeatedly on my street and all around town. As soon as their children graduate or within a year or two thereafter, my neighbors are putting their houses on the market and moving away to avoid Scarsdale's ever increasing taxes. This is not a theoretical construct – it is happening all the time. And soon, it will lead to the Bronxville "death spiral" where eighty percent of households have children in the Bronxville schools, raising property taxes inexorably higher.

I have a neighbor who is in her early 80s. She was literally born in Scarsdale, was in one of the first classes at Fox Meadow Elementary School, and has lived in Scarsdale her entire life. Her children graduated the Scarsdale Schools probably over forty years ago. In 2012, she paid $36,000 in property taxes, of which $23,000 was the school property tax. I paid $43,000 in school property taxes alone in 2012. This is madness, and at least, I still have two children in the district.

It is just plain wrong to fund unneeded luxuries and maintain excessive reserves for a "rainy day" at a time when Scarsdale's taxpayers are faced with crushing property taxes that are driving our residents away.

I urge the Board not to indulge Dr. McGill's pedagogical peccadillos any further, and to adopt a budget that falls squarely within the tax cap.

Respectfully,
Robert J. Berg
32 Tisdale Road
Scarsdale, New York 10583