Schools
Elwood Community To Pressure Albany For More Home Control of Schools
Community members and Board volunteers form new committee seeking mandate relief, additional sources of revenue, and more local control over budgets.
In his first act as Board President, Joe Fusaro urged the Elwood School District community to put pressure on local and state legislators to create structural changes that would allow school boards more control over their own budgets.
At the July 5 Board meeting, Fusaro thanked the community for passing the budget with its 7.98% tax increase, but said that Board members recognized that such increases were unsustainable.
However, he pointed out that factors such as mandated expenses and loss of state aid give the Elwood district little control over its own budget.
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"Unfortunately, as many of you know, local boards of education do not have much say in the majority of their budget expenditures," Fusaro said, reading from a prepared statement. "Laws that foster entitlements, 'Last In First Out' legislation over merit, one-sided bargaining rules, and the growth of state legislated mandated expenses, in combination with the reduction of state aid, are crippling our ability to provide the full breadth of education that all children deserve. This is something that must change. We will not and cannot wait until December or January to see the cards we have been dealt by Albany and hope that we can deliver a reasonably low percentage [tax levy] increase next year."
"We need to pressure Albany and our local legislators that represent us in Albany now to legislate structural changes that will improve education, not diminish it, while helping us lower expenses and find revenues from sources outside of the tax base. We must rise up as a community and demand progressive thinking and action in NY State that is long overdue. Moreover, we must keep that pressure applied until we accomplish our goals." Click here to read the full statement.
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Fusaro urged the community to join a new group, headed by residents Melissa Maher and Nikki Crowley, to begin working on those goals immediately.
“I think a lot of people aren’t aware of how little control we have,” Crowley said after the meeting. She and Maher are interested in bringing local legislators and the community together in the fall to discuss various issues and possible solutions.
“There’s strength in numbers,” Maher said, adding that the group would like to reach out to other districts as well. The two are currently setting up a Gmail account so that interested members in the community can sign up and receive more information.
