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Today's Poll: Do you support a property tax freeze even if it hurts schools?

By Howard B. Owens
tom hunt

With an ever shrinking student population and the shuttering of school buildings. Other than empire building and an ever increasing administration, why should school taxes increase? NYS spends more money per student and yet we rank not at the top of performance nation wide.

Feb 10, 2014, 8:25am Permalink
Bob Heininger

Yes.

What some call hurting schools I call a golden opportunity to teach students how to make the best with what they have when times are lean.

In todays blissfully wasteful throw away society here in the US, I fail to see how that would be a not good thing.

Feb 10, 2014, 11:41am Permalink
Mark Potwora

Charging a person school taxes on the value of their home is wrong in the first place..Education has to be paid for, it is just in the way you do it..You could divide it up equally..It can be based on your income..But basing it on the value of what a piece of property some assessor thinks its worth doesn't seem right.Some properties right now don't pay school tax because of a non profit status or some IDA pilot program..The whole school system is based on what a districts assessed value of all its property in that district is.Coumo's plan works out better for those school districts with higher property values..While those such as ours in Batavia will not see the savings because of lower property values..

Feb 10, 2014, 11:46am Permalink
Pat McGinnis

New York State spends $18,616 per student the highest in the country. The US average is per student cost was $10,834. The Average Teacher salary is also the highest at $73,398 compared to the average of $55,418. Yet we achieve mediocre results for our expenditures. Look at the NEA report for 2012 and 2103 est the source of my numbers

http://www.nea.org/assets/img/content/NEA_Rankings_And_Estimates-2013_(…

Feb 10, 2014, 12:41pm Permalink
Dave Olsen

It is long past time to eliminate the monopoly of public school education and open up more avenues for alternative educational structures. Unfortunately the public school teachers union wields far too much political power for any chance of that to happen. The educational aristocracy which permeates the SUNY system and the NY state education dept. believes the average every day working class, non-graduate degree holding parent is far too stupid to assess the educational needs and progress of their children.

So get back to work you miserable peasant serfs and pay your taxes without complaint and be grateful your betters are interested in your children at all.

Feb 10, 2014, 1:24pm Permalink
Dave Olsen

It is so very telling of the controlling and condescending nature of Governor Cuomo that he believes the proper way to address high property taxes is to implement first a cap and now maybe a freeze on each county's tax rate; instead of looking at waste, fraud, abuse and redundancies in the state government as a start towards reducing the overall cost of government. He, like his buddy the Pres. does everything he can to increase the power of the executive rather than reducing it. He also resists reducing the mandates placed on counties by the myriad of state agencies which choke each and every New Yorker's ability to thrive and create wealth. He is the bane of individual and economic liberty. It is very hard to have hope for our future in upstate NY

Feb 10, 2014, 1:48pm Permalink
Tim Miller

Removing options from those who have to make decisions is both ineffective and inefficient. I didn't vote "no" from a "who will think of the children?!?" viewpoint, but from the viewpoint that legislators (local, state, and federal) were elected to make the tough decisions. If they make the *easy* decision that means "raise taxes" rather than a more appropriate limit spending decision, en vote their butts out of office. But restricting their options haphazardly is not the best option.

Feb 10, 2014, 3:05pm Permalink
Mark Brudz

I really do not know where you people get your information from. First let me state for the record, we spend too much on education primarily because of State Mandate, it has little, very little to do with outcome either way.

But the FACT is that New York State ranks 3rd in education indicators behind Maryland and Massachusetts That does not necessarily mean that all is well. However saying that New York is not ranking near the top is patently false.

We are however right in the middle with over all K-12 comparisons we are not at the bottom in any category

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/10/16sos.h32.html?tkn=RLRF%2B… .

Feb 10, 2014, 8:39pm Permalink
terry paine

Monopolies typically fail to provide a good product at a reasonable cost. Competition in educating our children would certainly provide a better product at a greatly reduced cost.

Feb 11, 2014, 9:36am Permalink
Jeff Allen

A drill down through the websites of Education Week and Editorial Projects in Education shows that the study you cite is basically teachers evaluating teachers funded by the deepest pockets in philanthropic foundations. I have seen many charts on State rankings and have never seen New York in the top half let alone no. 3.

Feb 11, 2014, 10:31am Permalink
Mark Brudz

Graduation rates are but one aspect. and there is a certain transient population that lowers NY States graduation rate along with some other non educational factors.

For example in your graduation percentage chart, South Dakota ranks very high in graduation rates, however in terms of quality of education, they rank at dead bottom in many other areas. Graduating people just to keep the rate up does not mean the quality of what is learned is better, some states just ram people through high school with out regard to skill level.

Schools in general push college way too much over trade and technical schooling, and any way you cut it, the college graduation rate almost everywhere hovers at around 25%. Worse is that a majority of college graduates work in fields totally unrelated to their degrees.

To be clear, I am not saying that NY Schools are even good, even when you take all the factors combined we only rate a B- over all, in fact the top of the list only rates a B+ Simply saying that when ALL FACTORS are considered we are not at the bottom of the heap.

My belief is that the entire nations education system went to hell and a hand basket when Jimmy Carter tried to centralize it by forming the Department Of Education.

Incidentally, I voted no, I do not believe that funding is the issue with education, it is much deeper than that much of it has to do with a general lack of parental involvement either by mandated efforts from above or societal problems, more likely a combination of both.

The main reason why students do better in private schools is precisely because parental involvement tends to me much higher in private schools in general, in many private schools agenda, parental roles are actually factored in.

The real answer in my opinion is more local control of schools with more emphasis on the industrial and economic postures of the communities that they serve. The US is not and never will be a one size fits all society, for that matter, New York State from east to west is not one size fits all

Feb 11, 2014, 12:16pm Permalink

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