NY school payrolls jump, enrollment drops, private sector unemployment at level not seen in decades, tax payers bleed, fiscal crisis rocks nation and the state, Ny property/school taxes some of worst in the nation, Ny deficit at an all time high, Ny spending at all time high, but the teachers unions and administrators keep on bolstering their ranks and taking raises.
Don’t just read this article, read the next 2 entries we previously posted that make all this clear as day. This payroll issue isn’t just happening elsewhere in the state, it’s been happening right here in Chautauqua county!
Report: NY school payrolls jump, enrollment drops
By MICHAEL GORMLEY , 03.30.10, 04:15 PM EDT
ALBANY, N.Y. — A study released Tuesday reported that New York public schools have dramatically increased hiring during a period of historic increases in state aid and local property taxes even while enrollment declined.
The report by The Empire Center of the fiscally conservative Manhattan Institute comes as schools, protected by powerful lobbies, have so far avoided deep cuts during the state’s fiscal crisis while warning that a proposed cut of 5 percent would force layoffs that would devastate education……
“I’m not saying, `Go ahead and lay them off,’” said the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon. “But this is a system that has not been starved by any definition … let’s get some perspective.”
McMahon said large staff cuts at once would be too disruptive. But there are other ways to cut costs, he said, including freezing raises for a year that an assemblyman recently calculated would save $1 billion, almost all of the proposed cut in school aid.
Unlike other areas of state spending, including health care and social services for the poor, school aid protected by the state’s powerful teachers unions has escaped deep cuts in the state’s two years of fiscal crisis and is in line for a rare restoration of a proposed cut. McMahon called the New York State United Teachers union the most powerful lobbyist in Albany, spending millions on lobbying and campaign contributions each year.
Gov. David Paterson has pushed the 5 percent cut in state school aid, which now totals about $21 billion a year. After consecutive years of record aid and local tax increases, most schools have enough reserves to take the hit, he said.
