ENOUGH is ENOUGH
CITIZENS FOR FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
January 20, 2009
Hamilton-Wenham Regional
School Committee
5 School Street
Wenham, MA 01984
To: Laurie Wilson, Chair,
Hamilton-Wenham Regional School Committee
The time to act is now!
As taxpayers of Hamilton and
Wenham concerned with the current dire fiscal reality, we ask that the Regional
School Committee suspend its traditional budgeting process and engage in
emergency planning to preserve educational excellence for our children.
The school committee and administration cannot live in denial of the pending
budget crunch, nor “pass the buck” to the selectmen or to the taxpayers.
While other towns like Ipswich, Beverly, Salem, Peabody and Manchester-Essex
are publicly engaging in emergency preparation to meet cutbacks in local and
state funding, the Hamilton-Wenham School Committee operates in a “business as
usual” fashion. The time has come for the School Committee members to
decide whether their true priority is the children of our towns or maintaining
a school structure that expects the taxpayers to fund a ten percent increase
every school year.
The School Committee and SOS
mantra of “its just a cup of coffee”, resulting in ten overrides that has
burdened our homeowners with real estate taxes that are the highest in the
area, has come to an end. School committee members who state, “we create
the budget, then let the voters decide” are failing to take responsibility for
fiscal restraint that the taxpayers rightfully deserve. If this
out-of-touch attitude prevails, we are destined for a crisis situation later
this year. The time to act is NOW. You cannot continue with the
strategy of talk and no action nor deferring any serious look at cuts until
sometime in the future.
The members of Enough is
Enough expect the School Committee and school administration to step up to the
challenge. It’s easy to run schools with overrides every year. The
proof of whether we have the right people in charge is how they act to preserve
quality education in times of budgetary cuts. EIE members are not experts
in running schools; this is your responsibility. This is why we called
for an operational audit, something that is dismissed by school committee
members and SOS as unnecessary or too expensive. The School Committee’s recent
challenge to well-meaning citizens to come up with cost savings is a smug and
elitist response to the people who pay the taxes that fund the schools and not helpful
in finding solutions. You need to throw
out your four pages of rules that are designed to stifle a real two-way
conversation. EIE welcomes an open and respectful dialogue where all ideas are
considered fully and are not dismissed out of hand. With that being said, we
offer an approach that should be used forthwith:
1) Take a look at all non-state mandated spending
starting with those that have the least impact on educational services.
Some examples; There are no mandates for Assistant Principals at schools, no
mandates for highly paid Athletic Directors and Assistant Athletic
Directors. There are no mandates for secretarial staff. Contracting
out for maintenance is also allowed. EIE has a long list of ideas to
further this discussion.
2) No real fiscal reform can be achieved without dealing
with the largest budgetary item, namely salaries. A discussion must start
with the unions for ten percent pay cuts in order to preserve teacher
jobs. For administrators, the pay cuts should be fifteen percent and
include elimination of positions not required by state mandate. Our citizens
have supported our administrators, secretaries, teachers and maintenance
workers for years with regular raises from overrides. It is time that
they step up and work for the benefit of our children and share in the pain
across the board to give taxpayers relief.
Many young families are struggling to meet mortgage payments. Some are facing foreclosure. Many retired
taxpayers are experiencing income that is half of what they were making before
they retired. With fixed incomes, they cannot cope with increasing taxes.
3) There needs to be less talk and more action to
control the cost of employee benefits. Five-dollar health insurance
co-pays do not exist anywhere else but in municipal health plans. If GIC is not agreed upon by the unions, then
a negotiation should begin to go to $25 co-pays, cut medication coverage and
insist that the plan have parity with those offered to non-government workers.
The
goal of the school committee, school administration, selectmen, FinCom, SOS and
EIE should be one and the same, namely the best educational system we can
afford given the fiscal realities of a rapidly deteriorating economy. This means that we need to make difficult
decisions, before inaction results in teacher cuts and disintegration of our
children’s excellent record of academic achievement.
Enough is Enough requests a written response
to this letter by February 15, 2009.
Thank you,
Enough is Enough
Robert F. Sica Edwin
Howard
339 Essex St, Hamilton
Robert
Gray
James Kent
34 Hamilton Ave, Hamilton Bruce
Wadleigh
Elizabeth Dunbar George
LaMontagne
Jay Burnham