When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
An information director who refuses to give out any information? Only in Schenectady. Either schools, assessor's office or County? All the same disgrace run by the same idiots.
This is the story that keeps on giving for local bloggers and columnists. Keep digging. This could save the newspaper industry around these parts. The best is yet to come.
The May 19 school board and budget votes ought to send a message to those in charge, especially Superintendent Eric Ely, that people want change. As to “negative media publicity,” Mr. Ely, it was there — and it was well earned. Schenectady schools are doing a poor job. We need more quality teachers and fewer overpaid administrators.
Truth needs to be told about Schenectady school administration
Being a concerned taxpayer in the city of Schenectady has definitely become a full-time job. Between our reassessment woes and our schools’ administration and board problems, a person could actually think negatively, but perish the thought. I guess that I should not be bothered by a school system that is cloaked in secrecy insofar as major problems that have happened in the past. Cleverly disguised job descriptions to circumvent the civil service process enabled good-paying patronage jobs to be created for certain individuals. One such recipient, a so-called department head, faces multiple felony counts for his alleged strong-armed deeds. He could be recruited by the Sopranos if this were fi ction, unfortunately it’s not. Teen suicides, until recently, were kept under wraps. Multiple sexual harassment charges have been filed against the school system. A school budget was voted down, only to reappear scaled up. And the kicker is that if the people vote it down again, we will be facing an even bigger tax increase. One could suspect this was done by design, again a negative thought. As the Gazette editors aptly pointed out (May 30 editorial), “only in Schenectady.” All this happened under the watchful eyes of our superintendent and the current school board president and board members, who according to the May 21 Carl Strock column, rubber-stamp a consent agenda with more hidden items than a carefully worded credit card contract. It’s time to clean house. We have a good start with two newly elected school board members, and as other positions become available, we can hope that other independent-minded citizens will step up to be counted, and the voters will again respond. Superintendent [Eric] Ely and his underlings should, if not voluntarily, be asked by the board to hand in their resignations immediately if not sooner. Thank you to the Gazette beat writers editors, and Carl Strock for pointing out the truth in what has been going on in the upper echelon of the Schenectady school system. Contrary to what some believe, we can stand the truth. Those who pay the bills have an absolute right to know.
Don't talk negative, people are sick of that, and only want the good news. Accentuate the positive you all!!!
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
Someone I work with was shocked to find that her son 15years old was taken to a school ballgame about an hour away via a female teachers car....
Schenectady city school....
then her other son had the school sic their Psychologist/Psychiatrist/counselor on him/parents/MD and hence----ADD drugs.....given out like candy in the Schenectady city schools......
I think they would fall into the 'jeopardy' category if rated like nursing homes......
I'm beginning to think this goes WAY BEYOND the city school system itself......Detroit schools are reported to be poor too....why??? same, industry and the turning out of 'ants' for the local industry.......I would venture to say it is how NYS sets itself up to 'move the sheeple' for the industries and continues to 'feed the monkey' on our backs......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Back-up budget: Take that, Sch’dy Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
In case you’re wondering why the Schenectady school district’s fall-back “contingency” budget is $5 million higher than the regular proposed budget, one version of which the voters already turned down at the polls, the answer is simple. It’s because the school administration plugged into the state formula for calculating the fall-back budget an enrollment increase so high that it doesn’t believe it itself, a projected increase of 471 students, on top of some 10,000 at present, which requires an extra $6 million in the budget, exempt from any cap or limit. It is $6 million that the school board and the school administration did not put into their original budget, the one that got voted down, since they expect no such surge in the number of students. It is just lard. That’s how the back-up budget gets to be $165.5 million, as opposed to the $160.1 million that was rejected by the voters on May 19 or the $160.6 million that will be up for a vote on June 16 (in case you voted against the first one, with its 4.8 percent tax increase, because you thought it wasn’t big enough.) This interesting little fact emerged the other day in a meeting here at the Gazette of Superintendent Eric Ely, two of his staff people and several of us writers and editors, and it was quite a stunner, at least for me. I had been trying to understand how the contingency budget could be greater than the regular budget, since the reverse is usually the case, and in studying the sketchy information posted by the school district on its Web site, I had identified enrollment increase as the crucial factor. Without it, the contingency budget would have been only $159 million, which is about what you would expect, a slight decrease. So I asked Ely about it, and he freely acknowledged that he had plugged in a number he didn’t believe. “We anticipate the enrollment growing by about 2 percent a year, about 200 some-odd students,” he said, and what’s more, “We build that in,” meaning it was already allowed for in the proposed $160 million budget, the one that was defeated at the polls. Those anticipated extra students would simply have been absorbed. So there is no need for an extra $6 million or even an extra $3 million to provide for an additional 200 students. Why would the superintendent do such a thing? Why would he use an enrollment number that he doesn’t believe and that he knows full well is going to generate an outrageously expensive back-up budget? “The enrollment projection you’re required to use has to have some sort of basis in research,” he said, and the school had in hand a study that it commissioned from a company that specializes in such things, Information Management Systems, based in Rockford, Minn. It’s a 34-page document dense with numbers, and the gist of it, using the historically most accurate method of measurement, is that Schenectady schools can anticipate the aforesaid 471 new students next year. At an average cost per pupil of $13,475, if you do the math, you get another $6,346,725 in hypothetical spending, not subject to the 4 percent limitation imposed on other spending increases in a contingency budget. Like magic. (Hypothetical, because you don’t actually spend an additional $13,475 for each new student who arrives.) Now, just between us thieves, the New York State Department of Education does not have a history of riding herd on local school districts as regards their contingency budgets but rather passively allows them to do what they want unless ...........>>>>.................>>>>.............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....0&Continuation=1
On Sch’dy school budget, Gazette was doing the bullying
Re May 30 editorial, “Schenectady’s school bullies ride again”: As one who attended the May 24 board meeting, I certainly saw no bullies in the room. Every member of our school board struggled with the implications of a situation in which no option solved every aspect of the problem, and they weighed carefully all the possibilities. They considered going straight to a contingency budget, with a whole host of problems that would impose and over which the board has no statutory control. The law is what it is on that one. They considered sending back the exact same budget, but that seemed a slap in the face of the voters. They decided to restore the elementary librarians because that issue had garnered significant feedback from voters. (As a school librarian, I was grateful to learn this mattered to so many, and thank those who took the time to let the board know.) Deciding how to fund this restoration led to more earnest discussion, with no easy answers, and with the competing needs of students and taxpayers always in mind. No, there were no bullies at that meeting. There were certainly none at the board table. And since the Gazette editorial writer was apparently not in the audience, I don’t think there was a single bully there at all.
"struggled" def. Refusing to listen to the will of the people and increasing spending, giving administrators huge raises and contract extensions, and the middle finger to the taxpayers.
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com. Is inflated back-up budget legal?
Further to the Schenectady’s schools’ back-up budget being $5 million higher than the regular version, I cannot tell you if it’s legal but it sure looks like an affront to the spirit of the law. The whole idea of a back-up, or “contingency,” budget, as it’s called is to provide for the bare necessities when the voters turn down a budget offered by a school administration as Schenectady voters recently did Nobody wants schools to shut. So the idea is to keep paying teachers heating buildings, running buses and so forth, but eliminate nonessentials like sports or music. That the fall-back budget would be higher than the administration’s own proposed budget is pretty clearly a joke, if an expensive one I asked Ray Colucciello, longtime Schenectady superintendent who retired in 2000 and is now interim superintendent in Voorheersville, if he was familiar with other cases of a fall-back budget exceeding the regular budget, and he said, “I think it’s brand new … it’s an anomoly for me.” Schenectady’s current superintendent, Eric Ely, achieved the feat, as I noted the other day, by plugging into a state formula an infl ated number for increased enrollment, having in mind that increased enrollment is one category that state law exempts from the spending limitation imposed on the rest of the budget. Ely says he anticipates 200-some new students next year, even though he did not specifically provide for them in the budget that voters rejected last month. But when it came time to calculate the fall-back budget he plugged in an increase of 471 new students, generating a requirement for another $6 million, to be paid for with a 15.8 percent take hike. I have tried to determine if he can legally do that, but I can’t get an answer from the state Education Department. Jay Worona, general counsel of the state School Boards Association, would not commit himself beyond saying, “Based on what you say, it doesn’t sound like this played out correctly, but there may be a whole bunch of other things we haven’t heard of.” .................>>>>.........>>>>..........http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00900
Public hearing tonight on Schenectady budget re-vote
By BOB GARDINIER, Staff writer Last updated: 5:47 p.m., Tuesday, June 9, 2009
SCHENECTADY -- Voters will get a last chance tonight to comment before a second vote next week on city school budget that was defeated last month.
A public hearing on the second attempt to try to pass the $160 million spending plan will take place at 8 p.m. in the Mont Pleasant Middle School, 1121 Forest Road, in the Mont Pleasant section of the city.
Voters May 19 rejected the proposed $160 million budget that carried a 4,8 percent tax increase for the 2009-10 school year by a vote of 1,007 to 889.
That defeat, residents and officials have said, was more likely the result of controversy over a proposal to move the popular Howe Magnet school from its Baker Avenue building, and the arrest of former facililties supervisor and union head Steven Raucci. Voters were also upset over the budget's slashing of six elementary school librarian positions.
The second budget restores the librarians at a cost of $480,000, which boosts the levy increase to 5.8 percent.
If the second vote June 16 fails, the district would be forced into contingency budget that would tack on about $5 million more to the schools' $160 million plan, Superintendent Eric Ely has said. That would be an unusual occurrence as contingency budgets usually come in lower than a proposed plan.
Ely said the higher contingency cap is the result of the district's high-need and dependency on state aid as well as the fact they have not raised taxes in the last four years. The district's overall enrollment is also increasing.
Many school board members believe the budget failure reflected a lack of confidence in district leadership rather than anything based on the actual budget, which would cut 71 staff jobs.
Officials are also hoping for a bigger turnout than the first vote when fewer than 2,000 people voting out of about 30,000 eligible voters.
The vote on the revised budget will be noon to 9 p.m. Tuesday, June 16, at regular polling sites.
Don't worry clueless administrators-your arrogance and stupidity in failing to cut the bloated School budget will bring out a bigger turnout-of Hell NO! voters. We have nothing more to give and want you to resign in disgrace. Tonight would be a good night to resign.
By BOB GARDINIER, Staff writer Last updated: 10:01 p.m., Tuesday, June 9, 2009
SCHENECTADY -- Fewer than two dozen people showed up for a public hearing on a school budget re-vote taking place next week.
The controversial $160 million budget goes up for a second vote Tuesday after being defeated 1,007 to 889 last month.
Looking out at the gathering, Board of Education President Jeff Janiszewski offered a reason for the very low turnout.
''It's an odd situation because this is held after the board voted on the final budget and it is too late to change anything now,'' Janiszewski said at the meeting in a small room at the Mont Pleasant Middle School. ''I guess this is just a formality.''
Voters May 19 rejected the proposed $160 million budget that carried a 4,8 percent tax increase for the 2009-10 school year.
The budget revision restores six elementary school librarians cut from the first plan, which increases the budget by $480,000 and the tax levy to 5.8 percent.
If the second vote fails, the district would be forced into a contingency budget that would tack on about $5 million more to the spending plan, Superintendent Eric Ely has said.
The only two people speaking Tuesday called that ''coercion'' to get the second budget passed.
''The reason the first budget voted down was because it was too large, so you increased the second and then threaten a contingency that is even larger,'' said resident Henry Lampman. ''Some people have lost their jobs some are in danger of losing a job. This just baffles the imagination.''
Janiszewski countered saying the first defeat was not because of the tax rate but because of library staff cuts.
''We had a room full of people all saying we should not cut library services in our elementary schools and not one person complained about the tax increase,'' he said.
Another resident said the library cuts were needed.
Logged
An information director who refuses to give out any information? Only in Schenectady. Either schools, assessor's office or County? All the same disgrace run by the same idiots.
