The Manhasset Board of Education has worked long and hard in attempting to produce a budget that will be acceptable to the community. Their work has been exceedingly difficult because they are faced with the unenviable task of having to propose reductions in educational programs at the same time that they are proposing increases in taxes. This combination in the same budget demonstrates how serious the education-funding problem has become in Manhasset. Unfortunately, it will get worse because the combination of budget cuts and tax increases does not address the underlying structural problem in the school budget. In future years the school board, and we as residents, will be faced with the same grueling hearings and a continued need to cut and tax. This will occur because recurring spending is growing faster than recurring revenues, and unless there is a structural change in the budget it will lead to a school-financing crisis.

The way to avoid such a crisis and deal with the structural imbalance in the budget is to craft a solution that equitably shares the pain. The Manhasset Board of Education can moderate the proposed reductions and tax increases by utilizing the funding set aside as a labor reserve for new collective bargaining agreements. Using the labor reserve to diminish the proposed educational program cuts would not eliminate the unions' ability to obtain raises when new contracts are negotiated. However, it would mean the dynamics of the negotiating process would have to be changed. The Manhasset Board of Education should instruct the superintendent of schools to negotiate contracts with the unions that are self-funded. This means all wage increases need to be paid for on a dollar-for-dollar basis with productivity savings, which will ensure employees work more efficiently to offset the cost to the community of new labor agreements.

The Manhasset School system is on the brink of a budget crisis and it can be averted only if the three groups that would be most impacted share the pain. The Manhasset Board of Education has penciled in contributions from the students and the taxpayers, and now they must bring their employees into the solution. Only by doing this will the current structural budget problem be resolved and the need to repeat this unpleasant exercise in future years be eliminated.

Michael Zino