High Property Taxes

Parent Cafe
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<p>My uncle pays much more in property taxes in NJ for a house compared to what I’d pay if I had a similar sized house in my part of Metro NY. </p>

<p>Despite the grumbling, however, people are clamoring to move into his town as their public schools…especially high school is one of the best in the area and sends a respectable proportion of graduates to respectable/elite universities. Said uncle sent 3 kids through that school system and was happy with the educational results. </p>

<p>Also, real estate prices there have continued to rise during the recession into the present. Lion’s share of that is due to the high longstanding reputation of its public K-12 schools. Unfortunately, one side-effect of that is that one needs an upper-middle class income and/or a large amount saved up to even buy a small postage-stamp sized house/condo there.</p>

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<p>Anyone who believes that is either ignorant of the actual work demands of a teacher or has created a straw teacher for bashing purposes. Guess when grading homework/tests/papers/etc occurs? Hint: It’s almost never during school hours due to teaching/classroom management, on-call expectations to deal with student discipline on the spot, bureaucratic/administrative hoops, required meetings with admins, etc. </p>

<p>It also fails to take into account expectations to deal with parental calls/questions anytime, higher levels of scrutiny of teacher behavior even during off-hours, continuing ed requirements teachers must fulfill during the year and/or summer depending on the school district concerned. </p>

<p>And I’m not getting into greater levels of stress of dealing with classroom disciplinary issues which college instructors/professors rarely have to deal with to nearly the same degree.</p>

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<p>I have looked up the teacher salaries on seethroughny.net. Many, if not most of the teacher salaries are higher than the median family income in my area. </p>

<p>I do not think teachers work a 6.5 hr day but I bet over the course of a year averaged out it is not many hours. How about the exorbitant number of days off. I am not sympathetic to your assertion of job stress. We all experience job stress and many of us do not get paid for our overtime. </p>

<p>When it comes to coaching pay, I can not comment because there are too many variables. Such as number of practices, cola, number of games, etc. I do know you can higher a capable young adult to do the job. Remember there are plenty of unemployed college graduates looking for work.</p>

163

<p>It’s not just homework, it’s the endless paperwork for IEP and 504 plans and whatever else the state requires for NCLB, Race to the Top and now the Common Core. All I know is one of my best friends who started teaching in her 40s, now has far far less free time than she did when she had a normal job.</p>

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<p>I think the point is many steps can be taken to reduce the cost of educating our kids without sacrifice quality and still pay a teacher a good wage. As I have stated before, combining school districts will help to reduce costs significantly.</p>

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<p>Averaging the hours per day worked over the course of a year is the important figure.</p>

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<p>So if teachers have it so good, why didn’t you become one? Why don’t you encourage your kids to go into the profession? Again, this resentment seems so misdirected. We all COULD have gone into teaching after college, but we chose other things for other perceived benefits–higher income, better career prospects, more prestige, or whatever. To suddenly resent those who chose then what looks better today is ridiculous.</p>

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<p>Sally, why are you getting personal with me? The profession I chose has nothing to do with this discussion. We are discussing how we can reduce the cost of education. Take out some of the inefficiencies in the system. I do not blame you for the high cost of education. </p>

<p>I will repeat what I have said before. Combining school districts would help to reduce costs. I would rather pay a teacher a higher salary and do away with excess administration. If we could centralize purchasing, we could save money.</p>

<p>I would like to add I was responding to the claim that teachers are under a lot of stress. I did not say you do not have stress. I was simply making a statement that we all have job stress. Your job is no different in that respect.</p>

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<p>There are many, many efficiencies that have been implemented over the past decade in business and industry that could be applied to the public educational system but there is great resistance by members of the education industry. There currently is no mechanism to “force” change.</p>

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<p>^Well said.</p>

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<p>I am not a teacher, simplystated. But I know many people who are and sympathize with them–especially over the past couple of years in which they have been under attack in my state and nationally. </p>

<p>In any case, I completely agree with you about combining school districts. Where I live a number of the smaller districts already are combined. And they are also already looking at ways to economize. In my district (the largest, most urban district in the area) they shifted the start times of half the grade schools a few years ago so they could get by with fewer bus drivers. The middle and high school kids take city buses to school. My kids’ high school has no athletic facilities of its own (except a gym for basketball) so football, soccer, track, etc. take place at the high school in the next district over. And every year more and more costs are shifted onto parents (and sometimes teachers).</p>

<p>I am a strong advocate for pension reform starting when people are brought into the system, but I think it’s unfair to change the terms on people who have worked for decades under a set of assumptions about what their retirement would look like. I do agree that the loading up of overtime to get a higher pension amount is unethical.</p>

<p>ETA: I don’t think it’s so much that there is no mechanism to force change, but that education is not made up of business-minded people.</p>

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<p>No, certain jobs are more stressful than others. Whether or not teaching is on the higher end than others, I can’t speak to. But it’s not accurate to say all jobs are stressful therefore no one job is different than another in that respect.</p>

<p><a href=“Most Stressful Jobs in America”>Most Stressful Jobs in America;

<p>Or this:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/01/03/the-most-stressful-jobs-of-2013/[/url]”>http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/01/03/the-most-stressful-jobs-of-2013/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Then there are less stressful jobs:</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/10-least-stressful-jobs-2013[/url]”>http://www.careercast.com/jobs-rated/10-least-stressful-jobs-2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Looking at all the links for most stressful job, the lists are different, but there are some common ones. Active military, airline pilots, air traffic controllers, taxi drivers come up frequently.</p>

172

<p>Simplystated…why don’t you become a coach? The money sounds mighty lucrative in your area. My bet is not ALL the coaches are teachers. </p>

<p>Or you could become a teacher. Most states have an alternate route for earning certification for those with degrees in other fields. </p>

<p>You too could have the benefit of these high salaries for teaching, high coaching stipends, and high retirement pensions.</p>

<p>P.S. regarding regionalization…in this state, and in the previous one where I worked (NH), regionalization was THE wave of the future in the early 70’s. Many small towns combined efforts to create regional school districts, especially regional high schools. It is interesting to see that SOME of these smaller towns are building their own high schools, and are withdrawing from the regional school systems. There must be some good reasons for that.</p>

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<p>Sally that is a good point about the “business mindedness”. Also as someone who entered the workforce in the late 70s I have seen many, many, many “changes” in compensation arrangement, in how work hours are determined (who remembers the movie 9-5…that would now be 8-5 even for non-salaried, hourly folk), the demise of the pension, the increased co-pays, for expectations about technological competency for the olders and the newly minted, the implementation (and demise of departments) in favor of shared services, salary increase compression and the removal of automatic cost of living increases… so many things that escaped the educational system for decades. I was awestruck through the 80s and 90s how immune my teacher friends were. Now that some of those pressures are coming from the community - from business minded folk - as the schools ask for millage increases, etc. we will see some of those things that were implemented several decades ago come to fruition in the public educational system. It occurred in the past 10 years in other union industries but eventually the equilibrium settles. The eye opener for me came from my mother who was compensated (by choice) over 12 months, but worked during the summer. Most of her male teacher associates also did this. What industry allows a salaried employee to work a second full time job while being compensated by the first job? I don’t know if they “do this” anymore so perhaps that was “old school”. Teaching should have always been an hourly pay scale like clinical people in healthcare settings, which would reflect "office hours for grading, bookwork, night meetings and coaching duties. Hourly pay scales in this day and age have absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing to do with educational attainment. It would have been a much “cleaner” system and pay would be based closer to performance.</p>

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<p>When I speak with my friends living in Long Island NY I am simply astounded at how high are the real estate taxes. I see people living in modest houses of 2000 to 3000 square feet paying real estate taxes equaling the annual salary of many people living in other states. Many of the schools in the suburbs seem pretty good but everything costs a lot there when it comes to teachers and anyone else in unions.</p>

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<p>Momofthree…your mom chose to spread her salary over the 12 months instead of the 10 months of the school year. She wasn’t being compensated for work she did in the summer. She spread her September to June payments out over 12 months. Many teachers did that for budget reasons. </p>

<p>My school district no longer allows this. All money earned must be disbursed before the end of the fiscal year…July 1.</p>

<p>And yes, many teachers work during the summer to supplement their income.</p>

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<p>Anyone who doubts how bruising school board politics can be should just look at the comments posted here in response to opinions and suggestions on how to economize school budgets. Accusations of teacher-bashing, exhortations to move out of town, and personal attacks about one’s choice of occupation are bad enough on a message board. But when it’s your neighbors, school staff, and the parents of your kids’ friends who engage in this type of behavior, it’s many times worse.</p>

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<p>Agreed, thumper. It is not “double-dipping” to be paid out over 12 months instead of 9. Some universities allow faculty to be compensated the same way.</p>

<p>razorsharp, I am guessing the cost of everything is high in LI because of demand for real estate in close proximity to NYC. Yes, NY state has higher taxes overall than many others, but LI is not typical of the rest of the country (or less desirable parts of the state) in terms of housing costs or anything else.</p>

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<p>It’s not as easy to consolidate school systems as the above posters suggest. For every taxpayer who wants the efficiencies of bundled purchasing, fewer administrators, more intense use of school buses and facilities, there are probably 5 who insist on local control, schools within walking distance (even if they drop their kids at school every day), and have a hissy fit when the natural consequences of consolidation come into play (if you want to combine three high schools into one, your special snowflake is going to get less playing time on the basketball court, may not get the lead in the school play, and may not make the cut for AP Physics if there’s only one AP Physics teacher where there used to be three.)</p>

<p>I’ve seen this dynamic play out. Everyone wants more efficiency and lower costs except for the things that benefit THEIR family.</p>

<p>The biggest loudmouth in my town who has been shrieking about efficiency, being more business like in how we run the schools, cutting administrators, being cost sensitive, etc. actually has van service (paid for by the taxpayers) because his son has asthma and is allegedly too frail to ride a school bus which would pick him up at the corner, and not in his driveway.</p>

<p>This is a kid who made the traveling soccer team… but is too disabled to walk a block.</p>

<p>So yes, I agree that schools should be run more efficiently. I think it’s absurd that special interests (unions, the special ed industrial complex, aided by lawyers who ■■■■■ for lawsuits demanding that the taxpayers pay for private schooling, etc.) are chewing up so much of the budget in most municipalities. But I’ve observed that every proposed cut is someone else’s sacred cow.</p>

<p>My heart goes out to the parents of a kid with a spectrum disorder. But state at a school board meeting that it is more efficient, and likely to lead to better learning outcomes, to take the 8 second graders in a school with these needs and put them in a classroom with one teacher, vs. paying for a full time aide for each of these 8 kids so they can be in a regular classroom- well, watch out that someone doesn’t picket your house the next morning or threaten you in the grocery store parking lot.</p>

<p>And the para’s are taxpayers too- with their OWN special interests. Ours threatened to strike last year when someone discovered that nobody was enforcing a licensing rule. So the school board informed the aides that they’d need to take a written test to keep their jobs and it was bedlam. The parents of the kids who had aides were ballistic (you’d think they’d have a vested interest in somehow ascertaining the competence of the aides who are with their kids 7 hours a day, but no.) The local paper was outraged that someone was questioning the qualifications of people who are allegedly educators (even ones with no license, and no verification of a HS diploma or college degree.)</p>

<p>So the noise went away.</p>

<p>Like I said- hard to change the system, even just to enforce a rule that’s been on the books (but ignored) for 30 years.</p>

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<p>I think you would see a lot less of the bashing if the education industry would have moved lock step with the rest of the industries in our country. It’s difficult for many people, who are in effect paying for public education through taxes to have SEEN and I purposely use the past tense the reluctance of the industry to give up perks like free insurance and zero copays for prescriptions, inflated school administration payrolls and the like and to have to pay for play for their kids sports but recalcitrance on the part of schools to use existing community facilities preferring to build “their own” and to only see abject resistance in general to change on the part of K-12 education. Strides are being made, but it will hit the colleges next. I value education, but through the decades my stomach has churned at times. My district which has almost never turned down a bond increase just rejected one. There was just not enough detail about how the money was going to be spent and no detail about the return on the requested funding to institute a tax increase. We’re a wealthy community and it had zero to do with the increased cost and everything to do with the “business” of education. I voted no for the first time ever, it was so very frustrating not to get detailed information. It’s only going to get tougher in the short term “the teachers” are just a small piece of the whole pie.</p>

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<p>Depending on the county in Long Island, a large part of that is the combination of the high valuation of the house in question along with the majority of residents’ demands for high levels of county provided services….including public schools while insisting on taxes so low they’re unable to pay for such levels of locally public provided services. </p>

<p>It’s the main reason why one such county has had its budget under state control for around 2 decades until a few years ago and why the state has regained control over the county’s budget after the change to the current county government resulted in policies which meant they’re having a 23% budget shortfall because of pandering to residents mathematically mismatched expectations of high levels of county services and exceedingly low taxes to pay for them.</p>

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<p>Larger schools are also harder to control, more possibilities of inefficiencies/waste, more bureaucratic BS*, and more students tend to get lost through the cracks. This is a key factor in why the trend in NYC public schools has been towards smaller schools. Sometimes 4 smaller schools are housed in the building once reserved for the larger comprehensive school as is the case for my old neighborhood’s former zoned high school.</p>

<ul>
<li>There’s a reason why some parents/students prefer going to smaller universities/LACs as opposed to larger state universities or private universities like NYU or BU.</li>
</ul>