If they unload a couple of assistant superintendents, and your superintendent kicks in with a pay cut, maybe you would not need fundraisers to save the sports programs. They always say its "for the children", but then the cuts hurt the children rather than the top ones.

If the teachers had taken a pay freeze, the budget would of passed! But once again the kids get hurt and the teachers get their raises!! Good luck to the parents who are running it.

Now would be a good time for the United Teachers of Seaford to prove that they really are committed to the students and community, as they say they are, by making a significant contribution. Not just a few hundred, but a few tens of thousands. Most in the community believe that the Seaford UTS could not care in the least about either students or taxpayers. Memo to the union: here's your chance to prove that you're not as selfish and greedy as everyone thinks you are.

just wondering who chose the lovely rusty red paint for the school? It's beautiful!

I really do think that many of these teachers have been in the system for so long, and have not worked in the private sector, that they do not understand the realities of life ouside of their protected environment. Most people contribute toward their medical and retirement, and raises are an exception in the real world, not an entitlement. I deal with many of them, and this is the feeling that I have.

The SD is in a quandry: They have several action items that need attention which would require the Union to open their contract for negotion:
A) teacher & principal evaluations -
B) 2% cap
The union is VERY aware of these and can either stall and insist on waiting for the expiration of their current contract in 2013 hoping time will erase the communities anger or be proactive PRO community/Student a& address these issues head on now. MY guess is the union will NOT reopen the contract betting on the community forgiving and forgettingin 2013. As for the middle school sports program getting a substantial donation from the Union? HA! You have a better chance of seeing pigs fly over seaford. Find out what the actual costs are for the sport, break it down per child,ask the parents of participating students to contribute on a sliding scale, raise the balance through fundraisers and DO NOT pay a TEACHER to COACH. Ask for volunteers for coaching etc.These are NON school district funded activities so the Teachers Coaching Contract shouldnt apply .Contact the local college atheltic departments for students who will volunteer time . Save yourselves a heck of alot of monies. This IS a doable endevour, Just think out of the box. Corporate sponsorship might also now be allowed. Corporations have matching funds for donations if you establish a not for profit status. Also AGRESSIVELY bring your plight it to the Media ,Twitter, Facebook ,Social networking is KEY!

Instead of "poking the union in the eye" again and again with vitriolic posts presuming this or that or some other negative reaction by the union to un-made requests to/for the union to donate to the Seaford sports fundraising effors, why doesn't someone from the fundraising committee approach the UTS with the same decorum and good manners that they would approach perspective business owers in Seaford and Wantagh, and formally request a donation? Or ask permission to set-up those green donation boxes in the teachers' rooms in each school building?

Light that candle instead of continually cursing the darkness!

Nice thought Chris but I fear your naive. LOL. Lets not bother the Seaford Teachers and their union at this time. They are all much to busy being off for the past 6 weeks, and desperately needing that last three. They willnot donate one dollar. And why should they. We voted down the budget and stuck it to them hard.
Next years budget will also be a bloodbath. Just wit. The economy is gettin worse by the day and these spoiled people are heartless.

This statement, "We voted down the budget and stuck it to them hard" begs the question: you stuck what to whom, and how do you gauge that, the effects of that?

What does/did that "sticking it to them hard" do for the education of the children of Seaford, this year and next?

What did "sticking it to them hard" actually do for your tax situation? Anything at all? I don't think so, do you? Feel free to explain any fruits of victory that you feel you brought about for people hurting because of Seaford school taxes.

I made a suggestion about fund raising for Seaford sports...to ask the teachers/union for a contribution. You seem to want to shoot that idea down without even asking the question. Maybe I got you wrong on that account.

What are your ideas for making the Seaford sports fundraising a success?

It should be noted here that Mr. Wendt is a former member of the Wantagh School Board. Several years ago, Wantagh defeated its school budget by a narrow margin, and the Board figured that they could present the same budget and get it passed. Well, it went down by a larger margin than the first vote. I do not know if Mr. Wendt was on the Board during this time, but it is helpful to this discussion to have transparency. For what its worth, I live in the Levittown School District, which has its own issues.

For the record, I was not on the Board at the time of the re-submitted (identical) budget, which was defeated, as you noted, by a wider margin than the first vote.
During that time, I had urged the Board to reduce the budet significantly before re-submitting it. Due to what I considered was intransigence by the board at that time, I was active in the effort to defeat the re-submitted identical version of the Wantagh budget.

Personally, I despise what I refer to as "un-American 'Do-Over' voting" on defeated school budgets, and certainly believe there is at least a moral requirement, if not a legal one, for any school board to make meaningful reductions in any budget before re-submission to the voters. Seaford at least made an honest effort to reduce their budget before the second vote in June.

Now, on the topic of this thread, which is fundraising to restore Seaford MS winter and spring sports, do you have any positive suggestions contribute?

The only people who were hurt in the failing of the budget were the kids. It is sad that adults would put their misguided fears on the backs of children. The teachers of Seaford, which I am not, are amongst the lowest paid on the island. They are not the problem. Maybe Seaford has too many administrators who are paid substantially more than teachers. More importantly, the cuts in education from the state and federal government are more to blame in our tax increases than anything else. I hope the sports are reintroduced. When they cut taxes, regular people pay more in the long run. As far as having regular people coach for no salary, it is laughable and ignorant. Good coaches make nothing compared to the time they put in. State rules require that teachers are FIRST considered because of the educational nature of the positions. There are many hurdles that non-teachers must get though to become coaches as per state mandate including classes, CPR and First Aid, fingerprinting, and the politics that goes along with the job. Not to mention that teachers make the best coaches because they are involved with the students during the school day. All of that aside, how much is really spent on coaching? Certainly not nearly enough to CUT the budget. People who propose such things simply do not understand the complexity of the regular school day and the realities of the job.

People of Seaford should be angry that the rest of the country has decided to hurt children, the elderly and the poor to balance the budgets.

Bankruptcy punishes all. Get real.

P.R. you do not know how the inner workings of school districts work if you think the teaches and the administrators are on the same side or if you believe that teachers control the school board. The tax cap has the potential to damage our public schools and turn them into the public system that exists in California. Sports cut, classrooms of 35 kids, and an increase of fees to any outside group looking to use school grounds are potential issues. In my district where I work, we took a freeze to keep the standard of education for the kids. The governor could have raise taxes on millionaires in NY and not made the cuts to education that he did. However, he decided to put it on the backs of the average taxpayer conflicted about keeping good standards for the kids and their tax dollars. This splits the middle class against itself. There is a lot of money in NYS and the US but it rests in the hands of a few.

SSteacher: Spoken like a true product (and beneficiary) of the system. The inner workings of school districts are in need of an overhaul, as is the way that education is financed. Taxing "millionaires" is not the answer. How many millionaires live in your school district? What exacgtly is a "millionaire" anyway? He or she could be a middle class person who saved in 401k plan for years to have a decent retirement. Teachers do not have to worry about this because they have generous pensions and social security.

Frankly I'm a lot less concerned about the "inner workings" of school districts than I am about the external impact schools have on the economy. In the middle of an historically adverse economy - indeed, a period of time that will be compared with the Great Depression - Seaford property owners have experienced a 14% increase in their school levies in the last two years. Given the travails many families are experiencing right now, that's simply unconscionable. Imagine if your congressman or your state representative advocated that kind of increase in your state or federal taxes. Yes, we now have a property tax cap, but that cap is subject to a number of carve-outs, most notably mandated increases in pension contributions in excess of 2%, an event that is more than likely. I certainly wouldn't want to take the bet that increases in school tax levies will now be limited to 2%.

The fact is schools have become an economic burden on communities and taxpayers. A tax cap has limited impact in a situation in which costs have already become excessive. For all our talk about what we do "for the kids" there will be no jobs "for the kids" nor will there be much of a housing market "for the kids" now will we be ensuring much in the way of a standard of living "for the kids" if we don't focus a lot more on the economic strain schools are putting on their communities.

Rob, first off we are all products of the system. Secondly, taxing millionaires is the answer. NYS cut millions from school aid and then allowed a millionaires tax, those who make a million in a year, to expire. That money could have easily saved part if not all of the cuts. Wayne, I could not agree with you more. Schools should not be an overwhelming burden on a community. However, as you know when they make cuts at the state level the locals are forced to cover for the lost in aid. Seaford did get slammed because they cut the money they would have gotten. Again, had they extended the tax on those making millions each and every year, those cuts would not have had to been made. In many districts, their budget offices alloted any excess monies into a fund for times like these. Where I work they spent this money the last two years to keep the tax rate down. Seaford did not have this money so we got slammed. I really do worry for all the kids graduating college who are unable to find a job. I believe that the worst is still to come, which is frightening. Still, I find it hard to blame those running the district for the perfect storm of the failing economy, cuts from both the Federal and State aid to education, and for the state not maintaining taxes on those who can actually afford to pay them, unlike the rest of us trying to make ends meet.

The people running the districts allowed this system to perpetuate itself and did nothing to curb spending. The people who run the districts agreed to these excessive contracts.

I am not a product of the system. I was educated in Brooklyn, in a parochial scool, with 50 kids in the class, one teacher, no aides. I realize that was a long time ago, but i went on to earn a Master's degree, so I must have received a good foundation. My point is that the importance parents attach to education determines success. The best teachers in the world will not overcome parents who do not focus their children on school. Throwing money at the problem will not solve it. Unfortunately, today, the focus is on sports, electronics, etc. These things are good in moderation, but academics are what count.

Part of the problem is that for years, as we all know, property values kept going up, which in turn means assessments kept going up, which in turn means that tax revenues kept going up even when tax rates stayed the same. For school districts and other local entities it was comparatively easy to keep increasing expenditures, most notably on labor. Now the bubble has burst, people are having a hard time, and there needs to be a serious ratcheting down of labor costs. Some districts have recognized and acted on this; some haven't.

Wayne, you stated "Frankly I'm a lot less concerned about the "inner workings" of school districts than I am about the external impact schools have on the economy"
Which is basically a contradiction. The "inner workings" as you call has a DIRECT effect on the external impact on the economy. If a business or school is fiscally irresponsible , does not following best practice or business management then it has a direct effect on the COSTS to educate students. Thereby causing taxes to increase. Fiscal mismangement can be attributed to the existing contracts , limited Cost containment measures,excessive budget line item overides, disparity in allotments, poor or non -adherence to hiring practices and procedures ,We have not spent or managed cost effectively.. By not managing the inner workings judciously we have seen increases in taxes and bond repayments that if they had would not have contributed as significantly nor have as costly an effect as they currently do. Granted we got screwed by the state but we also got screwed by the Previous board. Each is EQUALY complicite . Perhaps more so the previous board for not taking their fiscal responsibility to the community seriously and negotiating away the baby with the bathwater. where we are today is a direct result of the inner workings and impacts the future not only of the taxpayers but the students.

Kudos to the Middle School parents for graciously accepting the defeat of the budget and realizing the effect its passage would have had on the community. While you were one group that was most obviously affected, rather then be defeated you have taken the bull by the horns and are working to insure the MS kids have the opportunities that we simply could not afford at this time. Is it fair no, could we have sought other areas for reductions, yes, but your efforts are example to the community , to the students and to the employees, The sacrifices YOU are making by organizing, leading and contributing to MS sports is what Seaford PRIDE is all about. Thank you for your time effort and commitment to your own kids and others. Seaford PRIDE is shining not only on its students but has a spotlight on MS parents and their community supporters.

Lorraine - I don't disagree with you but what I really had in mind when I made those comments is similar to the point I tried to make to the board at the second budget meeting, specifically, decisions about expenditure levels should be assessed not just on the basis of the district's priorities but also on the economic impact those decisions have in the community. Having sat through x number of budget meetings, my basic criticism was that there was next to no discussion about what the net impact of a 14% increase in property tax levies would be on the community, particularly as this relates to people on fixed income, or who have suffered employment setbacks. Similarly, no discussion relative to the impact this might have on real estate, commercial development, etc.

I'm not suggesting that there isn't a relationship between management and costs. I am suggesting that there needs to be greater emphasis placed on the board's role as a taxing authority and the need to gauge the impact on the community of decisions to raise property taxes.

Schoo

On that I can totaly agree with you. The need for the board to be cognizant of the IMPACT their decisions have on the community as a whole is crucial.

STeacher mustbe nice to be off for three months??
As a tax payer Im disgusted with the old school mentality be carried forward by the teachers of today. Everyone in the white and blue collar world has been hammered into submission, and glad to still have a job. You folks live in the past. Furthermore a bowling fundraiser is not raising enough money to restore the middle school sports programs. Some of these parents should have their children spend the time studying so they can compete against the braniacs out there in other school districts. Fire one of our unneeded assistant principals and restore the entire program. JUST WAIT until next year, more people will be crying when the axe is swung even deeper. We are tired of being taxed to death to support an archaic system!!!

What happened is Seaford will be coming to more school districts in the future. The current model is not sustainable. These teachers have been in the system for so long, and so shielded and protected from the real world that they do not know or care what goes on outside their bubble. Clueless school boards are going to be forced to make some difficult decisions in the next few years. None of the largess doled out is "for the children"; it supports a system that is past its time.

yes the parents trying to raise the funds should be applauded..does anyone realize that we will have NO sports at any level next year never the less Any clubs and activities Do the math people 8.2%-2%= 6.2% where is that money gonna come from ???

Thanks for recognizing us Mark! Middle School Sports are just the beginning! Hopefully we can make a difference for the kids!