Support Others

The NY Property Tax Reform Coalition has information you may find helpful.  The Hudson Valley Property Tax Reform folks also have some information you may find of interest.  More can be found at The Tax Nightmare site.  The New York Tax Reform Organization can be seen here.  The National Taxpayers Union site also has lots of great information.  Care to take a look at other state's taxes?  Try this retirement site for a state by state listing.  Another site with good, but dated, information can be seen here. 

Property Tax Report Card Data for the 2007-2008 School Year

Districts are required to report on school property tax data each year.  The N.Y. State Education Department has usually posted it where you may query for your district.  This year they have just placed it all together or in an Excel file you may download.  You can get the entire report here.  Below is the data for all Orange County districts that have reported.

Misconception:  The School Board doesn't have a say in rising costs!

Fact is that the school board has a say in almost all costs in the school district!  Let me illustrate with a budget item that makes up most (about 70%) of our school budget...the personnel costs.  Every employee in the district is represented by a union except for the top four administrators.  Each union has a contact (as do each of the four administrators) that is negotiated (look that one up!) between the school board and the union (or administrator.)  In more simple words:  The school board is completely responsible for these costs.

Let's take a quick look at some personnel costs that cover the six years starting with School Year (SY) 01-02.  We'll also take a took at the largest employee group in the district which accounts for the most of the personnel costs, our teachers.  NOTE:  Figures cover a five year period because we don't know the salary each type person had under the contract prior to SY 00-01.

Keep in mind that during this period of time our school tax increased 63.2% while inflation ran just 16.2%!  And the biggest outcry for more money...more kids had an 11.29% growth!  That's right, we average a student growth rate of about 1.8% a year!

A teacher (with a Bachelors degree) starting out in Monroe-Woodbury just prior to the SY 01-02 received $33,444 and will end up next year with a salary of $45,941.  That is a $12,497 total increase (37.37% total increase) or about 6.56% a year!

A teacher (with a Masters degree) already working for the district about five years had a salary of $46,941 going into SY 01-02 and will end up next year with a salary of $63,749.  That is a $16,808 total increase (35.81%) or about 6.31% a year!

A teacher (with a Doctorate degree) already working for the district about nine years had a salary of $60,194 going into SY 01-02 and will end up next year with a salary of $98,347.  That is a $38,019 total increase (63.38%) or about 10.32% a year!

Editor's note:  One of our members did the math on the above figures and found some errors.  I apologize for the discrepancy.  It has been fixed and the numbers above are correct.

These figures are only for teachers who do nothing but teach during the regular school year.  They can make a little extra by coaching or advising a club.  Those stipends run anywhere from $900 to $8,000 per year.  Additionally if they teach summer school there is additional money.

Additionally the district pays the lion's share of the employee's health insurance.  Although we might commend the district for starting to require teachers to pay into their health plan the exorbitant raises they gave negate the effect.  Our district's health care plan is among the most costly in the area.  We have long advocated they change to the CSEA's plan which would save us from $1.5M to over  $2 million dollars in the first year.  And if employee's made plan contributions like you and I do (the working stiffs who fund this district) that savings to tax payers would be much more significant!

The following table shows exactly what we mean.  The school board has the authority to change the district health care plan.  By simply changing to the CSEA plan that insures most New York civil servants large savings could be seen.  Although we applaud the board for finally requiring certain employee groups to make a contribution to their health care premium you can easily see that had they switched plans that the taxpayer would have gained $1,726 more in savings!  Combined with and employee payment of $750 the savings to the taxpayer for each family insured is now almost $2,500!!  YES the board of education has every say in how our tax dollars are spent.

The Monroe-Woodbury figures used represent the budget being voted on May 16th.  Note that these figures won't change if the budget is defeated because it is already under contract.  All contracts continue to be paid in a contingency (austerity) budget...which means everyone get's paid all their raises that the BOE negotiated. 

You can see some of the administrator salaries below.  The district is not required to report employees other than administrators whose salary exceeds $104K so we don't know how many of those exist.  We suspect a few.

So there you have it.  Next time someone say's they don't control these costs show them this.  We will reveal more items they have complete control over in the near future.

Don't forget that each of the incumbent school board members running for reelection have never voted No to any spending proposal...it's the record they run on!

Local Property Taxes Increased By Three Times
The Rate Of Inflation in Last Five Years

New York State’s Property Taxes Among Highest in Nation 
But you already knew that!  Click the link above to see the NY Comptroller's Report.

My View Facts and Figures

To go along with the My View article (if it doesn't come up see a PDF version here.) we provide the following facts and figures.  All of the data was gathered from the school district either directly or through third party sources. 

The original My View article can be seen here.

More than 26 employees make more than six figures in salary alone!  Well we only know of 26 currently but suspect that more are lurking.  That is because NY law requires them to report only salaries of $104,000 and higher...and even then these are only administrators.  It's possible (likely) that some teachers may be making that much.  We are working to find that out to bring to you.  Surely there are teachers whose total compensation (salary and benefits) is more than $100K.

Here are the 26:

This data can be somewhat misleading.  For instance none, except the four superintendents, show any "benefits" yet under their union contract all the administrators pay only 10% of their health insurance premium.  That would mean that the benefits column for these positions should have another $12,600 added to them.  That alone could add another $277,200 to the grand total.  Since those folks don't show the district portion of health insurance premium paid on their behalf then we wonder if that same $12K is included in the top four administrators benefits above?  Maybe someone at the district would like to write to us and clear that up?  Do you wonder what "other" means too?  You're not alone.

M-W ranks about 131^st of over 687 districts in New York for performance according to http://schoolmatters.com .  This ranking is based on Reading and Math proficiency combined.  This is the No Child Left Behind kind of stuff.  The article's statistic, a B-, is the rank our district holds when compared against all NY districts outside of NY city.  It's not a bad score but for the money we pay we might expect better.  This statistic is also for only one year.  If we go back two years our district is beat by 112 districts, and going back three years 97 district out performed us.  This trend seems to be the reverse of our taxes!  As our taxes keep going up the districts performance keeps going down!   

Looking at just Orange County data.  At the one year interval M-W is beat by both Warwick and Tuxedo districts!  At the two year data interval only Tuxedo does better.  And at the three year mark again Tuxedo comes out on top again.  The trend continues...

Let’s start with performance compared with lower per student instructional and operational costs.  This is where the rubber meets the road!  Performance for less money!  A taxpayers dream, eh!  These facts don't need any explanation.  These charts just show districts that do better than M-W and do it cheaper, period.  You can see the one year stats here.  And the two year stats...  And for three years.  The trend of doing worse with more money continues as well when we look at it from this point of view.

The Denver City School District, a place whose cost of living is not much different than here, recently hired a superintendent.  He presides over 13,000+ employees who teach 72,000+ students in 154 schools.  Although offered $200K he tuned it down, instead accepting a salary of $160K with incentives of $40K if he does what he said he’d do to turn around the district.  We need to hire someone like this.  Read the article here.  By the way.  Denver runs it's district with only seven board members.  Anyone know why we need nine?

School Matters dot COM

Standard & Poor's has put together an awesome website that allows you to look at schools and/or districts to see how they are doing in relation to the No Child Left Behind legislation.  The site offers a plethora of information.  An examination of Orange County's larger school districts shows that Monroe-Woodbury spends a significantly higher amount of money on Transportation as well as Operations and Maintenance.  We'll provide more data later... 

District Report Cards (SY 03-04)

New York State Education Department has issued this year's school report cards.  A closer and more in-depth analysis will be forthcoming later this week.  In the mean time you may view the report cards at the state's site here.  Interesting that the M-W home page has report cards for two years ago!  What's up with that?  The School District Accountability Report is where you can see the three area's where we received ratings of "No" for Adequate Yearly Progress in three areas.

Also later this week we will be updating our comparison of similar school districts as we did last year.  The Education Department has revised their list of similar districts as well as it is a lot of work to digest this.  We hope to make the chart easier to read. 

We will also be detailing how the district is doing regarding the No Child Left Behind Act.  Standard & Poor's has produced a great website at http://schoolmatters.com and we will explore the information they have collected there. 

We will have more information later this week.  Please check back or visit some previous home page articles below.

Previous Home Page Articles

Article that previously appeared on our home page can be found here.  Some of the articles there are:

Recent Teacher/Teachers Aide Contract Signed
Newsweek Publishes List of Top 1,000 High Schools
Middle School Recognized as a "High Performing/Gap Closing School" But the District is Not
Proposition #2 -- The bus vote (May 2005)
Fiscal Performance and Academic Performance...
Where do we stand today?
We Make Some Specific Recommendations to the Board
What will the 5.7% Tax Increase Really Mean? (May 2005)
What's the Law Say about Contingency Budgets?
We Compare Teacher's Contracts
Are we getting the most bang for our buck?
State Comptroller Issues First of a Series of Reports
BOE and Administration Seemingly Ignore Comptroller's Recommendation
April 14th Budget Decision (April 2004)
NY State Has Released School Report Cards -- Lets Examine How M-W Is Doing (March 2004 for SY 03-04)
Some Of The Things We've Looked At

Our Point of View

We want you to understand that in almost everything there are different points of view.  If you and I were in a waiting room, sitting with a coffee table between us.  If I pick up a magazine and hold it up and ask you what you're looking at, you might say; "I'm looking at the March issue of National Geographic, it has a Harp Seal on the cover, and lists articles about the Rain Forest, Armenia, China, and Talladega.  It has a yellow border."  I would say, "I'm looking at a small size magazine with a print ad of an advertisement for a Toyota 4Runner that I've seen on TV."  We both are looking at the same thing...but with a different point of view.  Please try to see ours. 

Questions You Have Asked Us

Concerned about the high cost of taxes?  Don't understand why 'no new programs' budgets result in double digit tax hikes?  Ever wonder how the whole process works?  (Or is supposed to work?)  Would you like to learn more?  This is the place.  See our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for more questions and answers.  Our FAQ has been updated as of March 17, 2004.

Please use our site to better understand these and other important issues.  Give us feedback on how we are doing or not doing.  Join us with your special talents.  Get involved, stay informed, be involved.

Our Mission

Is to encourage and provide a forum for the residents of the Monroe Woodbury School District to voice concerns related to the quality, effectiveness, and cost of education provided to our children.  Our goal is to expand representation at the school board meetings, effect positive changes, ask pertinent questions, inform residents of current issues, and ensure fiscal responsibility and accountability.

Site Map and Table of Contents

You can view our site's contents by going to this page.

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Last modified: 10/21/07