FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The Hamden PTA Council will host a town-wide forum with Connecticut state legislators to discuss educational funding and tax reform, January 17, 2008, 7 PM in the Hamden Middle School cafeteria. The Hamden Middle School is located at 2623 Dixwell Ave, at Sanford Street.
State Representatives Brendan Sharkey, Peter Villano, Cameron Staples, Alfred Adinolfi and State Senators Martin Looney and Joseph Crisco will be in attendance. The forum will be moderated by past Hamden PTA Council Co-President, Joan Neckameyer.
“The Hamden PTA Council is hosting this forum because we want to ensure that our school system is adequately funded. Educational funding and property taxes are part of a three-dimensional puzzle of how to attract and keep Hamden residents, while providing the quality of education that current and prospective residents expect,” said Hamden PTA Council President, Marjorie Clark. “We need to have a conversation with our state representatives about how to find a sustainable solution to this puzzle.”
This forum is open to the general public and is in place of the regularly schedule Council meeting, which would have taken place on Thursday, January 3rd.
2 comments:
I was very glad to see Reps Sharkey and Looney are working for fundamental tax reform. They struck out last session. If we are to truly remove the "bulls-eye" from the Education budget in Hamden, we will need a complete shift and redefintion of the CT tax system, which may well need to include abolishing "home rule" duplications for Boards of Ed's and other Town and city consolidations. This could save us ten of millions of dollars and produce better schools. Wait until the entrenched interests hear that!
While I agree that there needs to be fundamental change with how our revenue is generated, I don't agree that school consolidation would be a cost saving proposition. Here's an exerpt from an article in the October edition of Emerical Research:
"In studies from 1960 through 2004, there has not been evidence that consolidation of small districts into larger districts has necessarily reduced fiscal expenditures per pupil (Hirsch, 1960; Sher and Tompkins, 1977; Valencia, 1984; Jewell, 1989; Kennedy et al., 1989; Eyre and Scott, 2002; Reeves, 200?). The Rural School and Community Trust concluded:
“School consolidation produces less fiscal benefit and greater fiscal cost than it promises. While some costs, particularly administrative costs may decline in the short run, they are replaced by other expenditures, especially transportation and more specialized staff. The loss of a school also negatively affects the tax base and fiscal capacity of the district. These costs are often borne disproportionately by low-income and minority communities.”
http://www.academicleadership.org/emprical_research/Rural_School_District_Consolidation.shtml
We were very fortunate that we could re-use Alice Peck and keep it in our school system.
When I was petitioning for building the new Middle School, a number of my neighbors told me they had gone to Sleeping Giant Middle School. I don't know what happened to that school, but when the old middle school was getting run down and over crowded, the one we closed twenty years earlier could have come in handy.
Whatever we do has to address our current needs and those of our grand children.
Post a Comment