Reader Joel Katz, in his letter in the issue of Jan. 28, addresses at length the matter of the pending 2021/22 school district budget, specifying several spending items that he evidently considers excessive or wasteful. The degree of detail suggests that he is a highly knowledgeable accountant or otherwise a practitioner of financial forensics.
I cannot claim any such expertise and thus wouldn’t even think of challenging his numbers. However, with all due respect for his analysis, I believe he misses the forest for the trees.
Sigrid and I have lived in Port long enough to have seen our three children and two of our grandchilden complete 12 years of school through graduation from Schreiber High.
During those decades, we have often heard– and seen letters to editors of local papers– protests raised about school spending and the resultant high property taxes.
Are art classes really necessary, or are they a frivolous indulgence? How far from school must a student live in order to justify the cost of a bus ride to and from home? How much could be saved in teacher salaries if average class sizes were to be increased? Should teachers and administrators really be paid that much?
And of course there were the implied, albeit rarely openly expressed, feelings of some who felt that, since their own children had long since grown up and graduated and were thus no longer in the Port system, they shouldn’t have to be burdened with such high tax rates.
Such issues elevate matters of dollars and cents above those of academic excellence in the educational process.
In my opinion, that avoids the most essential element of a public school system: ensuring that all of our children have the opportunity of access to the very best education consistent with their individual capabilities and personal interests.
Our kids are, in effect, the seed capital of our community and, indeed, of our nation; every new generation in our school system is the equivalent of a new crop that, if well-tended and nourished, will further enhance the prosperity of the entire society.
I hope no readers of this letter interpret my remarks as an apology for wasteful spending. I’m not a professional educator; I don’t claim to know the ideal ratio of student numbers to teachers per classroom, or the most effective level of budgetary outlays per student, in order to achieve the educational excellence we all wish (or at least should wish) for our children.
I recognize it as among the responsibilities of the school board, as well as of the administration’s financial managers, to monitor carefully the cash flows in and out of the system, to prevent lax spending practices, and to ensure that Port Washington does not fall victim to scams, frauds, or scandals of the kind that caused such serious damage to the Roslyn school system some years ago.
But it is, in my opinion, also the board’s obligation– presumably, the reason they were elected to the school board in the first place– to devote their efforts to making the Port Washington schools the very best they can possibly be in terms of the caliber of the education they provide.
And I’d add the hope that no Port Washington parents will ever have to be concerned that their children could gain a better education (however that’s measured) if they were to attend the school system in some other Nassau County district.
Robert Adler
Port Washington,
