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Health & Fitness

Facing Issues

Let's not lose sight of the real serious issues our schools and our community will need to face together.

We tend to live in the moment, which can generate lots of heat (but little light) about the most current issue(s) in the news or active on the blogshpere.  Often, once an issue moves off the front page, or off the six o'clock news, or drops from the home page of Patch, little note is taken of the issue, and little or no heed taken of the advice or direction elicited from the public during those few brief moments when that issue had been a hot topic.  Yet, many once-topical issues do not simply go away, as issues, simply because the reporters lose interest, or the next hot item rolls off the presses; some issues, although out of sight and mind, fester and worsen over time, eventually invoking the immortal words of Winston Churchill:

"When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure.

There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline Books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong -these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history."

Trimming school budgets around the edges; over-reaction against the Common Core Curriculum (opting-out); controversial school plays...these are NOT those kinds of deep-rooted issues that will ever amount to game-changers for your children.  So what are some examples of festering educational issues that have gone begging for want of foresight and clear thinking?

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First among these issues is declining enrollment, which itself is, in part, a manifestation of the aging of the population, particularly the Baby Boom Generation, a group of which I am a member, and part of its vanguard or leading edge.  'We' turn 68 this year, while the rear echelon of Boomers will turn 50!  We are becoming eligible for retirement at the rate of 10,000 per day, a phenomenon that will continue for the next 18 years.  How does this impact education?

The answer is both elementary and cruel-sounding.  There are fewer and fewer students enrolled in our public schools (a trend forecast to continue in Wantagh through 2020, or for the next 7 years), while at the same time the pool of potential advocates and (financial) supporters of public schools is aging-out and shrinking.  Consider that the percentage of registered voters aged 55 or older in Wantagh and generally across Nassau County is fast approaching 50%, or majority status.  This does not mean that people over 55 do not support public schools, but the inescapable inference is that more and more people have priorities competing with public education for both their votes and their disposable income.  These competing interests include financing college; helping their grown children start their own families; planning and actuating their own retirements; and, increasing personal and spousal health care needs and costs reflective of their advancing age.

Find out what's happening in Wantagh-Seafordwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Another Patch contributor recently noted that Wantagh's last tax increase came in well under the technical limit of the tax cap.  True, but that tax increase came very much closer to the nominal "two percent" advertised by the politicians who sold us all on the "tax cap".  I strongly believe there is a firm reliance on the part of ascending middle aged and older residents to expect the "two percent" sales pitch to be honored by taxing authorities, especially school boards, if those boards expect continued voter support for their budgets and re-election to office. 

Hand-in-glove with the declining enrollment/aging population paradigm is the fact that, regardless of the tax cap, school taxes are simply too high to begin with.  The governor is proposing a tax freeze (with state supplemental revenue) for districts that (a) stay under the tax cap, and (b) do some form of consolidation to save money. Here is an opportunity desperate for clear-thinking and planning.  But I think the governor's proposal, while a bold step for the political leader of our state, does not go far enough, because it still retains taxes which are simply too high to begin with.

My friends on the school board could rightfully complain at this point that I know full well that the Board of Education does not control most of the factors generating high school taxes.  No argument, except the Board of Education can or could control enough of its own destiny to change the trajectory of school taxes to a negative slope over several years.  If they really wanted to.  Perhaps they will.  Or maybe they turn a blind eye toward our collective tax problem and spend their time and effort on more topical issues, salacious issues like opting-out and fighting the Common Core, issues that won't amount to a hill of beans in three years time...while our high tax problem just continues to fester, waiting for that "jarring gong" to sound once again.

I can be contacted for additional information at chriswendt117@gmail.com

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