As someone who has advocated for a meaningful restructuring of our school system, I could not have asked for a more damning piece of supporting evidence than the March 4 article “Preliminary budget for Great Neck public schools shows $8 million increase.” This was gift-wrapped from the District itself.
According to the story, Great Neck Teachers Association President Jim Daszenski addressed the board. Daszenski touted the work of drafting the budget but said that the funding for staff and faculty had much to be desired.
“We have dire issues in this district, yet this board and this budget turn a blind eye to our highest needs,” Daszenski said. “Do not allow your legacy to be that the Great Neck Public Schools fell farther behind neighboring districts like Jericho, Roslyn, Syosset, and so on. Please do not allow anyone to ever say that this board did less to support its students and educators when they had the resources and opportunity to do more.”
This is a naked attempt at extortion using fear tactics. The inference that your children will be condemned to an inferior education compared to neighboring districts is an obscenity, and speaking for myself, anyone intimating such a thing has no place in our educational system. This is a disgraceful attempt to publicly shame you. “Dire issues?” What alarmist rubbish.
Parents, don’t be intimidated. At this stage of your child’s life, navigating the challenges of adolescence is as much a pre-occupation of their inner lives as their classes. Their schooling is only a fraction of their real education. They are as assaulted by news and data as much as you are in their daily lives. Their classroom experience will not help them in the things that matter in one’s life: family, career, relationships, financial choices, fiscal discipline, all of the factors that make for a happy life filled with meaning can’t be taught even if you double the cost of this bloated monstrosity.
I put two daughters through college. Absorb this: Believe me when I tell you than when it comes to shaping their futures, those four years will count for more influence and shape your child’s life tenfold over their K-12 experience. Why? Probably for no other reason than the development of their cerebral cortex. They’re no different than you were. This is where they realize rehearsal is over. Adulthood awaits.
You have to smash the fantasy that these riches you are lavishing on school personnel, and the kingdoms of bloat they’ve built for themselves contributes in any way to your child’s well being. We all love our children, and we sacrifice anything for them. That makes it very easy for you to get played by absurd claims of “dire issues.” Don’t fall for it.
Here’s what parents have to insist upon in the face of this extortion attempt:
1) Demand that your forced contributions to the NY State Teachers Retirement System cease at once. These are funded by your property tax. There is no need for you to fund $400,000 pensions.
2) Demand a phase-in of the reduction of health insurance subsidies for teachers. Right now, taxpayers cover 75-to-80 percent of health insurance premiums. This should be reduced to a more common 50 percent. This starts now.
Note that if the pension fund doesn’t meet a performance threshold, (i.e., the market swoons) you must make up the difference. This probably means that your own holdings have taken a hit, but the educators will be made whole. You will not. And they are made whole at your expense.
Likewise, with health insurance, if your premiums rise by 10 percent, so too, do that of the educators’. In both cases, you wind up paying double, for nothing.
Ask yourself what kind of chutzpah it takes, after all this, to claim that “funding for staff and faculty had much to be desired.” What else do they want? Their mortgages paid off?
Take this opportunity to blow apart the fantasy culture these people have created for themselves. This can be the point where the parents finally wise up to what these narcissistic princelings have pulled off. Don’t waste the opportunity. Get in their faces and start standing up for yourselves and your community. The grift ends now. That’s the legacy you want.
Donald Davret
Roslyn
