Remember when the New York Times said that the Tea Party was just a branch of the Republican Party?
Remember when channels 2, 4, and 7 said that The Tea Party never supports any Democrat.
Remember hearing Chris Matthews tell everyone that the Tea Party was comparable to the Occupy Wall Street gang?
Last year, I, along with 150 other Long Island Tea Party enthusiasts, traveled to Albany to support Gov. Cuomo (last time I looked, he was a Democrat) and his 2 percent tax cap. When this monumental piece of legislation passed, we opposed several of our local Republican State Senators and Assemblymen, who succumbed to the teacher’s union’s pressure, and allowed numerous cut-outs or exemptions, allowing school boards, in some cases, to bypass and override that 2 percent limit.
Even with those obviously blatant concessions to the teacher’s union, this was the first time in my 42 years living on Long Island, that school boards can not now automatically produce a rubber-stamp increase, every time they request anything.
Great going, Gov. Cuomo.
But the media never reported the following:
1- The Tea Party members obeyed every law and regulation.
2- There were no arrests.
3- We made sure to clean-up before we returned to Long Island.
4- There was no damage to any private or state property. And
5- we had all the required permits and obeyed every rule.
However, there are some very serious educational issues still remaining:
1- Salaries and benefit packages must be high enough to attract the best educators for our kids.
2- Totally inappropriate and unsustainsble compensation-packages must be re-evaluated as more and more residents are suffering in this economic downturn.
3- And methods must be immediately put in place to evaluate and weed-out incompetent teachers.
Keeping that in mind, the following situations may really interest you :
1- In Nassau County’s Floral Park-Bellrose School District, consisting of only two schools, with a total of 1,600 students, there is one superintendent and two assistant superintendents, who make a combined salary package of well over $530,000.
2- The entire town of Mount Sinai, in Suffolk County, has less than 10,000 residents , ( I lived in a New York City apartment-house complex with more people) yet 134 of their district employees earned more than $100,000 last year. I guess the unions never heard about our 14 percent underemployment rate, the highest taxes in the nation, and those thousands of foreclosures.
3- Last year, The Comsewogue School District, also in Suffolk Country, was forced to completely restructure their middle school to help solve their financial mess. This tiny district has one superintendent and three deputies for only six schools.
One last question ? What is their total compensation? Answer: more than $700,000 a year!
(Thanks go to reporter Selim Algar at the New York Post for exposing these situations)
So , what can you do about it ? It’s easy. When your kid’s programs are cut, when class-size is increased , when your school taxes go up more than the 2 percent you were promised, when incompetent teachers are protected by a nobsolete tenure system :
Call your local state senators and assemblymen and ask them if they voted to allow exemptions from Gov. Cuomo’s 2 percent tax cap bill? And, why. But most important, vote for school board candidates who will provide the best education for our kids, not just those who rubber-stamp every request from the teacher’s union
“The Taxpayer: that’s someone who works for the government but doesn’t have to take a Civil Service examination.”
Ronald Reagan 1985
Dr. Stephen Morris
North Hills
Co-founder,
Nassau-Queens County Tea Party
