Question For the Board

It appears the Board of Education has adopted a practice of calling the monthly board meeting to order and then going into executive session for 90 minutes or more leaving citizens waiting for their return.  This practice shows utter disdain for the citizens who would like to participated in the process.  The board, in the past,  has complained about the apparent lack of interest the community has had in board meetings.  Leaving citizens waiting 90 minutes or more, with absolutely no indication when they will return does not foster an environment where citizens will want to participate. 

Is this just a lack of sensitivity by the board, or is it  by design to discourage public participation?     

Question For the Board

Has there been any consideration given to expanding the Northville Central School Board of Education from five board members to seven board members?  Expanding the board by two members would allow for greater expertise among the members, reduce the number of committees each board member is responsible and allow for greater diversity of thought among the board.     

School Board To Set Tax Levy

The Northville School Board will set the tax levy during the school board meeting scheduled for this Tuesday, 8/16, at 6:30, in the school auditorium.  It appears the board is poised to  pass a +20% increase, even though the voters soundly rejected such an increase and  HRBBRD has announced they will be paying more than  $600,000 in back taxes.

The school board has consistently stated the +20% increase is, in large, being driven by the loss of revenue from HRBBRD.  In light of HRBBRD announcement there should be no more than a 5% levy increase.  If the board  does other than a 5% increase, it is clear they are double dipping this year in order to circumvent the 2% cap on tax increases which will go into effect next year. 

Please encourage all of your neighbors to visit this site and to attend Tuesdays Board meeting.  Let your voices be heard.

Question For the Board

Now that HRBRRD has agreed to pay the Northville Central School District approximately $656,000 in back taxes, will the Board move to decrease the pending +20% tax increase?

Qusetion For the Board

On August 9, 2011  "The Daily Gazette" published the English and Math test results for the Capital Region school districts as reported by the state Education Department.  The result were for school districts in Albany, Fulton, Mongomery, Saratoga, Schenectady and Schoharie Counties.  There were only two school districts with poorer results than Northville.  They are Albany School District and Schenecady School District.  Only 27% of Northville 8th graders test proficient in English and 38% of Northville 8th graders tested proficient in Math.  So the question to the Northville Board of Education is; who is being held accountable for these results and what is being done to improve on these results? 

Questions for Northville School Board

This school board (as well as plenty of others ones) has a habit of hiding money from the public by padding the budget and rebalancing on paper through the use of reserve funds. The audited 09/10 budget shows no less than $571,744 of such funds – the equivalent of 10% in taxes! This year’s budget appears to also have a very substantial amount of padding, in anticipation of the State tax cap. In fact, it may have as much as 10% worth of padding. The District is providing the public intentionally with misleading numbers, For instance, the flyer states that State funding was reduced by 6.9% while NYS state aid web site page shows a far lesser decline (less than 2% = $66,316). The site also shows a $32,000 increase in transportation aid including summer. This is public information and these numbers were obtained a few days ago. How does the Board explain these differences?

Questions for Northville School Board

A school is an important community resource. One way the cost of school facilities can be justified, especially for older tax payers that have no (grand) children in the school - the most rapidly growing demographic - is by creating adult education programs within the school and promoting other creative ways of amortizing district expenses in ways that benefit the community residents. A deliberate policy to spread the use over the entire taxpaying population would help to make excessive tax burden more acceptable. Why are there no adult education programs and why does the school not make MUCH better effort to promote community use of its facilities as the local population is aging? Could the school profitably market some of its facilities and resources to create additional income from non-traditional sources?

Questions for Northville School Board

Is it true that the Board has discouraged teachers from agreeing to a salary freeze, for the specific purposes of padding the budget and making the fund balance (miraculously) increase at the end of the year? If this is true, then the Board should resign for misleading the public. If this is not true, then why did the salary/benefit freeze not happen? Many other districts either obtained freezes or reduced cost FAR MORE than the Northville District. In fact, one District in Pennsylvania is proposing a 4-Day school week.

Questions for Northville School Board

The teacher’s union salary and benefits package is a very significant driver of future cost. Why has the board completely failed to extract concessions from the union? This District can simply not afford to pay benefit packages that far exceed the benefit packages of its taxpayers. Why does the Board fail to understand this?

Questions for Northville School Board

The district is advertising its merger strategy as a cost-saving strategy. It is well-established that mergers do not save any money in the longer term and sometimes increase cost. The problem of this District is COST. Therefore, dangling the merger talks as a cost saver appears to be a mere a stalling strategy by the Board. It should instead focus on preserving the school (or whatever parts of it can be saved) by relentlessly addressing cost issues. This should include substantial give-backs by the faculty and administration. It also should include creative strategies of cost-sharing and off-loading to the private sector. Only that is likely to save the school as a local community resource – merging will not accomplish this. It is mostly a red herring. How does the Board justify this (misguided) emphasis on a merger?

Questions for Northville School Board

A School Board in a small community is likely to have some conflicts of interest – this is hard to avoid. However, this Board appears to be heavily stacked in favor of District beneficiaries, both at the personal level and in general. Why has the Board not pursued a more balanced representation of interests (on the Board)? At this point it appears to be advisable to either rebalance the board through resignations of members with a clear conflict of interest, or the Board should be expanded at the next election to create a better balance. Is it also advisable to add more technology and financial expertise to this board?

Questions for Northville School Board

The music department has extensive facilities and resources while multimedia and instructional services technologies are mediocre at best. Unlike neighboring districts such as Mayfield, few if any of the faculty have acquired a working knowledge of distance learning technology. How can this be justified while many small school districts in this country have successfully pursued distance learning as a means to improve cost-effectiveness and reduce cost? This appears to be a serious flaw in the vision of the District as it should have been preparing for the current difficult financial conditions.

Why has the District failed so dismally to address this in a timely manner? Is the union simply trying to protect its employees by dragging its feet and preventing state –of-the-art educational service delivery (as suggested by some pundits as a national trend)? New York State with its aggressive union practices is near the bottom nationally in terms of distance learning offerings in its school districts, with the exception of charter schools.

Questions for Northville School Board

The District’s special interest budget absorbs an ever increasing percentage of this budget. It now absorbs one third of that cost category. Are other districts off-loading special education students on this District? Has the District perhaps been padding its employment of special education teachers or is the program simply inefficient Has the District pursued alternative funding or put in place strategies to counter this trend?

Questions for Northville School Board

Academic  performance of the Northville District is well below that of comparable neighboring districts (the 2010 rankings show Northville as #61 while most of the neighboring ones score in the mid 30’s; Albany Business Review – “Back to School” issue). Assuming that the students in these other districts are not any smarter or poorer than our students, it appears that academic instructional efforts in this district are getting misdirected. Perhaps, classes and sections are scheduled more for the purpose of keeping faculty employed, than for improving academic performance. Does the Board have a more satisfactory explanation?

Questions for Northville School Board

The District offers a large amount of advanced placement and high school enrichment credits in the High School. This amounts to almost 2 years of college education (a total of 52 credits according to the District web site). It appears that for the benefit of a small percentage of students, the District ( and thus the taxpayers) pays for two years of college education at an exorbitant cost. Can this be justified based on some metric of overall academic performance? How do the District students rate on the Regents exam compared to other districts? Is it reasonable to ask tax payers to pay for two years of college education in a k-12 school?

Questions for Northville School Board

The current District budget continues to have a substantial percentage of cost in non-mandated enrichment services. Is there any strategy for off-loading these costs in the immediate future? What prevents the Board from doing so, other than insistent lobbying by teachers and parents?

Questions for Northville School Board

The financial analysis of the District budget by an independent consultant suggests large and unsustainable Shortfalls under the most likely and most reasonable future scenarios with respect to NYS funding, HRBRRD taxes, union contracts and demographics. The numbers suggest that the current fiscal management of the District is non-sustainable and irresponsible. What is the Board doing to address this in the proposed budget?How would these shortfalls be funded other than hitting up the tax payer year after year?