Readers Write: Manhasset budget backers ignore seniors, the poor

The Island Now

The “town hall” forum about the school budget last Friday night was not so much “question and answer” as it was an opportunity for angry “yes” voters to make speeches. 

An alum of my era joked about how many old people with walkers she saw voting, eliciting a hearty laugh from the largely pro-budget crowd. Ironically, it was the elderly of this community- also known as “our parents”- who paid for the speaker’s education.

Who speaks for them? They are human beings, not a punch line. Yet they are treated as the speed bump in the way of getting today’s student into Georgetown or one of the Ivies. 

Following that snarky speaker was a young mother who warned about the “psychological impact” on a child if the school went to a contingency budget. What twaddle. 

Let’s talk about the mental anguish of the senior citizens hanging on by their fingernails, to the home where they raised a family. The sickening part is hearing these same young parents preach about “diversity,” but when it means tolerating the poor in their little slice of affluent heaven, suddenly it’s a curse word.

What’s been overlooked in this discussion is that we have a school district that spends well more than the norm, but yet can’t make ends meet. One hundred and twenty other Long Island school districts that also live with the state’s mandates managed to come in under the tax cap, but this one could not. Yet the school board (and some parents) still want the senior citizens to pay more, more, more. 

For what, so the school can continue to pay lunchroom monitors $55 an hour?

The bottom line, as one of my classmates said, is whether we put a band-aid on the problem now instead of taking the tougher course. But the “band-aid” solution encourages “education tourism,” where people move here from the city to educate their kids, and then leave. 

So there are two sides to the story, despite the attempt to portray “No” voters as child-hating degenerates. What the 47 percent of this community want, reasonably, is the kind of fiscal management of a school district that prevents Manhasset from becoming the next “Roslyn.”

 

Martin Dekom

Manhasset

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