Thoughts on the March 2 Miller Place Board of Ed meeting

Went to the board meeting on Wednesday and it was pure theater.  Parents and kids lined up to tell the board how terrible it is that they want to cut clubs, sports, etc.  Some crying.  But, if the entire assembly was a choir, then we were all singing from the same hymnal -- nobody wants to cut drama, or AP, or varsity club, et al -- students, faculty, parents and administration.  And, for what?  A savings of a few hundred thousand dollars -- about 1/2% of the entire $60+million budget.  Peanuts!  This is practically rounding error.

What took place on Wednesday was the ritual that has taken place at almost every school board meeting at budget time, and not just in Miller Place.  It is the time-worn, yet effective, strategy of getting the students and their parents very worked up at the prospect of losing all of the extra-curricular activities and enrichment classes and soften them up to accept a large tax increase -- "for the children".  Even a casual observer of the school budgeting process knows that what the residents actually vote on is maybe 20% of the budget.  We vote on busing, and clubs and sports and stuff, but the real meat and potatoes -- the personnel costs that comprise about 75% of the budget -- are off the table.

We have arrived at a crossroads.  The United States is broke.  We are a debtor nation.  New York State is broke, and solvency is not even on the horizon.  Local governments are broke, even if they are still (successfully) using bookkeeping tricks that would have made an Enron finance guy blush to keep up the illusion of fiscal fitness.  That brings us to the school districts, which used to be largely funded by their residents, but are now dependent on a alms from the feds and the state pols (which -- surprise -- are not coming).  Panic time!  The kids are gonna suffer!  They won't get into college! They will get into trouble!  Our houses are gonna be worthless!

Allow me to step back and look at who is responsible (or to blame, however you like your linguistic semantics).  

First, who is not responsible?  The parents and residents of the district.  Parents here support the district in myriad ways.  The PTO fundraisers are packed.  The wrapping paper is bought.  The concerts, awards nights, fashion shows, sporting events, etc are all well attended and financially supported.  No one can say that the people of Miller Place are cheap.

Who is not totally responsible, but shares some of it?  That would be the rank-and-file teachers.  I cannot blame someone who, when presented with an opportunity (be it a contract, a deal, whatever) that is financially advantageous, takes it. Whether it is a good salary, generous medical and retirement benefits, good working conditions and/or high job security, who among us would turn that down? And yet.  These are all smart people.  Didn't any of them have a nagging feeling in the back of their brains that said "Maybe this is too good to be true?  Maybe this can't work out indefinitely?" 

Going up the blame chain we have the school boards, past and present, and the administrations that ostensibly serve at their pleasure.  Maybe we have reached a point where the structure and economics of modern school district operations are beyond the capacities of volunteer school boards.  That is a debate for another time -- we gotta dance with the one we brought to the party. However, we have to believe that they are advised, or at least informed, by the professional managers whom they hire -- the superintendents, the business managers, etc.  Somewhere in all of those PhDs, MAs and EdDs there must be someone who can look at a balance sheet, read the papers and do a little forward thinking  and arrive at the conclusion that there are (certainly were) storm clouds ahead. 

The financial crisis of the past few years has been unfolding with painful obviousness, but here we seem to be left with the same old plans -- beg the state for more money, whine about "unfunded mandates", and keep on keepin' on with labor contracts that seem to have been negotiated in a vacuum (that is a nicer way of saying "smoke filled room").

Who bears the most responsibility?  Well, it is a tie.  The union leadership, along with their "honest" politician allies in the legislature.  And by honest, I define it the same way that Abraham Lincoln cabinet member  Simon Cameron did:  "An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought".  Again, the union folks are doing what they are supposed to do -- get the best deal for their membership.  Can't fault them for that.  But, they have gone about it in a way that flouts democracy and perverts the collective bargaining process.  They have bought and paid for the "other side of the table".  Where a Teamster rep sits across from the table of the trucking company CEO and hammers out a contract , both want the best deal for the ones they represent.  The union rep wants the most money for the least amount of work, while the CEO wants the opposite.  But, both of them realize that they are not involved in a zero-sum game.  If the CEO gives away the store to the union, then another business will see that and compete for his business by offering a better price.  The company can go out of business and then the great contract that the union rep won would be worthless.  This is a pretty effective check and balance in a free economy.  

However, the teacher's union, as well as all of the other public employee unions, do not negotiate the same way -- they don't have to.  There is no CEO sitting across the table from the union rep.  Oh, school board members, city managers, etc. will all argue that they are fulfilling the CEO role -- they say that they are looking out for the "little guy" (that would be us).  But, this is baloney.  The CEO has his job, and maybe his company, on the line.  Negotiate a good contract (in his view) and he has made himself more valuable to the company, and possibly made the company more valuable and efficient (which is his job).  If he fails, he can pay with his job, or even the failure of the company (GM and Chrysler execs -- you know you can disregard this last section).  

The public employee union rep sits across the table from a person who has no real skin in the game.  Someone else is ultimately paying the bill, so there is no real urgency to fight for a contract that really benefits the organization he works for.  If he negotiates a lousy deal it might be years before it becomes apparent, and even if it is known early on there is no shareholders or board of directors to hold him responsible and possibly kick him out of the job.  To make it even worse -- incestuous, even -- the person sitting across the table from the union rep might even owe his job to the union.  After all, the largest political contributors in the US are not the evil oil companies, or the evil Wall Street tycoons, or the evil (fill in whatever robber baron stand-in you wish) but the unions, and the public employee unions are on the top of that heap.  Money being the mother's milk and all that of politics, what politician -- from the school board member all the way up to the President) is going to resist  the sweet, sweet sound of all those dead presidents chatting in his or her campaign bank account?  Not many.  

But it goes much higher than that.  I am not suggesting that local school board members are "bought" by the unions.  But, the state and federal politicians?  What do you think?   Millions of dollars flow from the coffers of the unions (extracted from the union members, like it or not) into the campaign war chests of politicians, and they expect results from those payments.  Laws are passed that are union-friendly, and the costs of complying with those laws are borne by the taxpayer.  The individual tax payer has no clout -- what is my one crummy vote worth?  But, the unions deliver oodles of votes to their chosen pols, and those votes have plenty of clout.  

It all boils down to this:  who represents me?  I am not in the teacher's union, nor am I a politician.  I am supposed to be represented by the school board, but how does that really work out?  The boards are often made up of teachers, or people married to teachers, or people represented by other unions.  All of them have skin in the game, but the skin they have is mine!

So, back to the packed board meeting.  It is a show, and it is dishonest, and we, the people, are being played for dupes (sadly, again).  We plead and cry about the things that are important to us, but, financially, are practically meaningless in a budgetary sense.  We cannot do anything about anything, folks, in the short run.  This is a union/government created problem -- all of it, every bit of it (am I clear on that).  The unions and their political accomplices have to fix it.  The game of hot potato is over and the current "leaders" are stuck with it.  There is NO MORE MONEY.  Raising the taxes higher and higher will not make more money come in.  It will force people out of their houses and chase the business that are left away.  The solution is painfully simple.  The union members are going to have to make major concessions -- pay their fair share of their medical, pony up for their pensions and forgo raises -- and probably take a pay cut -- if they all still want to have jobs.  That is the reality -- it HAS been the reality, but they have be refusing to accept it.   Accept it.  Taxes across the board are already way too high, and the stone is bled dry.  We, the residents, have given all we can.  It is time for the union to fix this mess.