Op-Ed: Lindy’s 2012-13 Budget Is a Failure

The proposed by the Lindenhurst Board of Education is horrible.

It’s a failure educationally, cutting valuable programs, and financially, relying on one-shot revenues (use of the reserve fund) to keep the tax increase from looking as bad as it really should be.

Superintendent Richard Nathan and the members of the board could say whatever they want in an attempt to get the residents and voters of the to approve this next year’s proposed .

But making something a slogan doesn’t make it true.

We don’t have great schools. Never did. Probably never will. We have good schools.

Lindenhurst kids get as good an education as kids in any other working-class community (think Plainedge or West Babylon), and can get a great education if they go beyond just the required course offerings and the standard school day.

However, we’ll never have the resources or programs to offer our students that Jericho or Half Hollow Hills has to offer their students because we cannot afford them.

It’s highly unlikely that we’ll hire a teacher to just serve as the mentor/coach/teacher for a science research program to create projects for competitions like Intel, the way Plainview or Harborfields have done, or to push all students into AP courses.

We don’t have the money.

That said, it’s an entirely different situation when we’re forced to choose between cutting long-standing, worthwhile educational programs or athletic/extracurricular programs or elective courses in order to balance a budget.

Constant cuts to educational offerings destroy good schools. (And anyone who thinks athletics/extracurriculars aren’t educational doesn’t understand the concept of a complete education any more than those who argue for curricula focusing on math and science to the detriment of English, social studies and foreign languages.)

They prevent students from obtaining an education that’ll make them better citizens, (which is supposed to be the purpose of public education), and, potentially, more accomplished adults.

So it’s very disturbing to see the Alternative Learning Center () become an after-school program (meaning no one has to use it), and the program for the gifted and talented become an after-school club. How do these cuts say “Home of Great Schools?”

These were valuable educational programs that benefited kids from different ends of the educational spectrum who weren’t otherwise well served. What’ll happen now? Will we find our dropout rate increasing? Will we have fewer college acceptances?

And what about next year? What will the administration recommend the board cut when increases by two percent or less, but expenses increase by four to five percent?

Will we, the and voters of the Lindenhurst School District, approve a budget that cuts all interscholastic athletics, all extracurricular activities and most electives?

What about the year after that, when all athletics, extracurricular programs and electives are cut, when you've used all of your reserves and further cuts are still needed?

Since class size is contractual (from contracts so far in the past you cannot even try to place blame), how do you eliminate teaching positions without triggering a contract action to PERB? But salaries are also contractual; so how do you pay them if you don’t have the money?

When will TAL agree to settle their , not with just a no increase to their salary schedule, but with their steps frozen, as well - a real pay freeze? When will they agree to pay 25 to 33 percent of their premium like so many of the residents of this community?

In other words when will they share in the sacrifice this requires to allow the district to continue to provide the kind of complete educational program that makes good schools?

I believe most of the teachers in the district would agree to these things in order to avoid lost teaching positions and jettisoned educational programs, but the TAL leadership won’t present that choice to them.

So, I guess the real question is: When will the teachers of this district take the leadership of their union away from those who care more for themselves than for their members or the students?

If it really is all about the kids, as the TAL leadership keeps saying, then when does the TAL leadership stop being selfish and make sure there’s enough money to provide the complete educational program our kids need and deserve?

Richard J. Burke is a Lindenhurst resident who practices law in Farmingdale. He’s also served 12 years on the Lindenhurst BOE - seven of those years as president - and four years on the Board of Education.

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