Dear Dr. Hynes [Port Washington school superintendent],
“Stakeholder.” Dictionaries define a stakeholder as 1. a person with an interest (usually, a financial interest), or a concern in something, especially a business, or as 2. a person who affects, or who can be affected by, an organization.
In your letter to our community dated July 2019, in which you outline your plans for your first 100 days with our school district, you say that you want to “begin to build relationships with stakeholders within the community” and that it is “important that I begin to immediately reach out to community stakeholders.”
Who are the stakeholders that you refer to? The Port Washington Times tells us in its July 26 story, “Hynes shares (his) 100-day plan,” that you hope to soon meet with over 300 Port Washington (school district) stakeholders, including students, parents, staff and members of Port Washington organizations.
If, by members of Port Washington organizations you mean those organizations associated with our school district, like the PTA, the HSAs, SEPTA, AGATE, the Parent’s Council and the Ed Foundation, then yes, all of the individuals that you’ve mentioned would meet the dictionary definition of a stakeholder.
However, I must take issue with your narrow view of who a stakeholder is in our school district and I also must hasten to tell you that such a view will not help you to heal the terrible rift that has existed in our community for many years now, over our school district. Of course, there is no reason why you should be aware of that rift.
You may read a real estate ad in one of our local newspapers that gives the figure, 15,847, as the population of Port Washington.
That is the population, according to the most recent census, of the unincorporated area of Port Washington, or the hamlet of Port Washington.
But, what is Port Washington?
It’s not a town, or a city, or a village. It’s the hamlet that I just mentioned and it’s also a school district and a postal zone. There are four incorporated villages, each entirely within the boundaries of the school district and the postal zone, and there is a portion of a fifth incorporated village, Flower Hill, that is also within the boundaries of the school district and the postal zone.
When you add the populations of those four incorporated villages and the population of that portion of Flower Hill just mentioned, to the population of the hamlet, then the population living within the boundaries of the school district becomes 33,000.
That’s how many stakeholders there are living within our school district, which figure excludes, of course, staff who don’t live within the district’s boundaries. I fervently hope that you will focus all of your efforts to benefit every one of those 33,000 resident stakeholders.
The stakeholders that you identified in your letter; the students, their parents, staff and members of organizations associated with the school district, may amount to 10,000 individuals, if that many.
Those 10,000 individuals are on one side of the rift. That leaves 23,000 residents who are on the other side of the rift. What is the major difference between those on each side of the rift? That’s easy to answer.
The 10,000 stakeholders that you’ve identified and who you are anxious to meet with, want more. They constantly want more of everything that the school district spends money on (except, they don’t want larger class sizes) and they’re not concerned about where the money comes from to buy more of everything, or who must pay the school taxes to fund our ever-increasing school budgets.
Many of the 23,000 stakeholders on the other side of the rift own residences, or commercial properties, within the boundaries of the school district. The value of that real estate rises and falls, influenced by the successes, or failures, of our school district.
Every one of those 23,000 stakeholders pays school taxes, either directly or indirectly, and since school taxes have been skyrocketing in recent years, and are expected to continue to skyrocket, many of those stakeholders are finding it more and more difficult to continue to live in Port Washington.
Our community has to hope that you will not just hear the calls from the 10,000, to spend more and more and more, without taking into account what the effect will be on our entire community, by all of that greatly increased spending.
And, of course, we are all hoping that you will be cautious about spending more and more and more on programs and services for the children, that are really not needed, or that actually will not be effective.
You’ve just begun the continuation of your career here, in Port Washington. I’m sure that all 33,000 community stakeholders mentioned above are cheering you on and that all are wishing you great success here. I know that you will not disappoint this community.
Joel Katz
Port Washington
