As is usual at budget time in New Britain, the NB Board Of Education (BOE) is pitted in a budget controversy with the Mayor/ Common Council. BOE budget demands threaten to drive the mill rate/taxes up for taxpayers for the first time in seven years. NB School Superintendent Kurtz threatens 135 teacher layoffs if that happens. “Battle lines” are drawn between tax and spend Common Council liberal Democrat leadership (Sherwood and Trueworthy) and Mayor Stewart.
On 6/8/10, at a meeting between the BOE, Sherwood pledges to vote NO on any budget that doesn’t add millions to the BOE budget. In addition, a decision by the State to allow a controversial move by the BOE has done two things; reduced NB revenue projections by $1.5 million (creating a hole in the City General Fund Budget) and at the same time raising the City mill rate by 1. 5 mills ($1.5 million). All this will be decided Monday, 6/14/10 when the Council makes its final vote on the City Budget.
Between 700& 800 NB School students have opted to go to Hartford & CREC Magnet schools. There are almost about 600+ from NB High School alone. Even though the City must pay about $4000/student in tuition, etc. for these students plus transportation costs for “SOME”, the BOE still wants millions of dollars more. WHY? TO SAVE MORE THAN 135 TEACHING POSITIONS IN NB!
Why do students leave NB Schools? It’s not because they wish to achieve racial balance in our schools – they want a “BETTER EDUCATION!” NB students - and those from other towns - go to Hartford magnet schools and the Hartford school s score s go up significantly. NB creates Specialty Schools: DiLoreto Dual Language, La Pense, HALS, etc., and yet NB scores at the bottom in CT on standardized tests. In the meantime, Hartford scores go up. Dr. Kurtz will give an extra long winded explanation for this. Let the readers of this letter decide what is real.
For nine years under Dr. Kurtz our schools have continued to fail miserably. Yes, some programs have produced great results, e.g., robotics, culinary arts. Some of our students go on to prestigious schools, great! But all the new programs have done little to, increase test scores and to curb the flight of NB students and their families from town. Every year, Dr. Kurtz has asked for more money. Result! Many new programs but little progress.
Teacher Union President, Rhonda Barker has only interest in protecting the union and the same is true of others. This is to be expected – it is their job. What is not expected is that Dr. Kurtz and our administrative leadership go along. Our State Legislators, DeFronzo, O’Brien, Tercyak, Geragosian, Boukus have been absolutely NO HELP.
NB Taxpayers should say NO to all this nonsense and demand a NO BUDGET INCREASE for the BOE.
Lou Salvio, Alderman
City of New Britain
One plan to save money and improve test scores would be simply to:
ReplyDeleteSpeak English in New Britain.
Thanks to Lou Salvio for a very clear understanding of the mess we are in, once again.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, he is being diplomatic for not mentioning the role of the school board members who are in a position to ask questions and make changes. The ball has always been in their court.
We all know that the finance manager who writes the budget does the bidding of Kurtz. We all know that Kurtz milked the budget for every dime she could get for her food, traveling and what ever she brought home with her! Thankfully, they are both leaving.
Unless there has been a change, the state dictates that there can be no line item vetoes. The power lies only in the hands of the BOE members and they have failed to fight the budget. They are very naive to believe Kurtz.
The ultimate disgrace is that hundreds of our students, at great expense, head to Hartford. The "cream of the crop" leaves
town for a better education, despite the fact that we have more than thirty administrators making well into six figure salaries with all the benefits.
The more taxes we pay, the worse the education becomes!
As Lou said, some students get into prestigious colleges. There is a direct correlation between their success and their home life. They managed to survive the less than adequate education that they received in our school district.
Speaking of the students that leave to go to Hartford, the board has yet to reveal how much of our tax dollars they spent on the advertising to try and keep the students here. Why are they afraid to tell us?
ReplyDeleteFrank:
ReplyDeleteI need to crrect a mistake in my letter to the Herald Editor:
I made an unintentional error in my figures. Currently in New Britain, $1.5 million dollars is equal to approximately .5 mills not 1.5mills as I stated in the letter.. I apologize to you and the readers. The mistake does not affect any of the other issues of my letter.
40 students per class?
ReplyDelete10,000 students
820 teachers
12.81 students per teacher
33% absent rate
Math is not their forte, but then again English does not seem to be the forte of the $165,000 a year superintendent from the number of made up words and misused words the other night!
" Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete40 students per class?
10,000 students
820 teachers
12.81 students per teacher
33% absent rate
Math is not their forte, but then again English does not seem to be the forte of the $165,000 a year superintendent from the number of made up words and misused words the other night!
June 12, 2010 12:46 PM"
Your math is excellent but the concept is faulty or not complete. Your statement of 12.81 students per teacher might be construed as meaning each teacher is charge with teaching only 12.81 students. you nedd to restate your point.
Your math is excellent but the concept is faulty or not complete. Your statement of 12.81 students per teacher might be construed as meaning each teacher is charge with teaching only 12.81 students. you nedd to restate your point.
ReplyDeleteI think the point was that they are outright lying to the public with these "sky is falling" claims of 30 to 40 students in a class room. With 10,000 students and 820 teachers there are only 12 students per room before you figure in the present 33% absentee rate, but then again you probably are aware of all this because from all your misspellings, you must be from the school administration!
Oh chae; enuff wif the mispelling stough; oops Eye mispelled misspell. Reedd the mesaje-thatss allthatt kownts. Dan kwale cuddent spel pottaytoe. Maeyore Eddy Perrez haz dis-lechhseeya and cuddent reed his eeemales. Wutts yore poynt???
ReplyDeleteGettitt?
Milton Freidman was right, school vouchers are what we need!
ReplyDelete"Free To Choose 1980 - Vol. 06 What's Wrong with our Schools"
Parental choice and parental responsibility in the education of children is the U.S. tradition and is consistent with a free society. Centralized government control has eroded freedom and adversely affected the quality of education. The poor help pay for education for the future rich. Friedman has long advocated using vouchers to solve the problem. He explains why. Friedman visits U.S. and Britain.
School vouchers are the perfect solution. The parents can send their children to the school of their choice and the city can eliminate more teacher positions and not even miss them!
ReplyDeleteThe system they had in Washington DC was a model for the nation, until Obama ended it in payback to the teacher's unions. Now those DC students, mostly poor black children, are being denied the choices Obama's children have and instead are being forced by Obama to attend inner city under performing schools, all so that Obama can pay back a debt to the unions. He used the children as nothing but pawns, so it is the Democrats once again that are keeping these minority children down, all for the benefit of a radical union!
Programs in Milwaukee and New York City give low-income parents vouchers to pay for tuition at the school they choose for their children. The success of those programs, coupled with a shift in public opinion in favor of vouchers, bodes well for the voucher concept.
ReplyDeleteThe public-private school voucher program is getting straight A’s this term. Communities around the nation interested in school choice received a flashing green light when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a Milwaukee case, thereby finessing the acrimonious church-state issue, at least for now. New evidence, particularly from New York City, is showing that vouchers work well. And, as important as anything else, the politics of the issue are tilting steadily toward the proponents, much to the dismay of schizophrenic Democrats.
Milwaukee and Its Mayor
ReplyDeleteNo one senses the political situation better than John Norquist, the hard-driving mayor of Milwaukee. The city is Ground Zero of the voucher movement, starting with 1,500 publicly funded private school scholarships made available for low-income inner-city children in 1991. Milwaukee now has about 7,000 students on vouchers, with more than 10,000 expected next year, and 15,000 slots authorized.
Mr. Norquist, who has a sense of humor, thinks that elementary and high school vouchers are a valid and valuable program, just as the G.I. Bill is for college education: "Under the G.I. Bill right now . . . you could go to any public, private, or parochial school you want. You could go to Yeshiva University and become a rabbi. You could go to a theological seminary and become a Catholic priest. Or you could go to the University of Wisconsin and become a communist."
Several points about the outspoken Norquist are of political relevance:
(1) although vouchers have become a talisman for Republicans, he is a Democrat; (2) he’d like to be governor of Wisconsin one day; and (3) he has received 65 percent and 60 percent of the vote in a heavily Democratic city in his last two runs for mayor.
Mr. Norquist believes that other Democrats ought to get with the program, even though usually friendly teachers unions and the liberal People for the American Way vigorously oppose the idea. He gets particularly vehement with one argument coming from antivoucher forces, who claim that vouchers will "cream" the best students to private schools, leaving the inner-city public schools in worse shape than they are now. Mr. Norquist replies: "The creaming has already occurred under the public school choice system that we’ve had in America for the last 35 to 40 years. . . . If you have money and kids and you’re white, you leave town. And that’s school choice that you never hear the defenders of the public school monopoly bring up. Creaming? Anyone care about creaming? No. Because they’re still in a government-run school."