In an ideal world the business of the Roslyn School Board would be largely confined to educational concerns and financial matters would be irrelevant to educational ones. Unfortunately, there is no mistaking Roslyn for an idyllic 19th century community with little red schoolhouses supported by bake and quilt sales. The reality of 21st century educational supervision is that a significant amount of the school board's business is of necessity focused on the business of funding a quality education. In place of a sleepy backwater is an approximately $90 million per year and rapidly rising educational behemoth employing hundreds interfacing with a myriad of regulatory agencies, governed by a seemingly infinite number of complex laws and negotiating with several well-prepared and professionally counseled bargaining units.
Our society, for better or worse, places a far higher premium on financial rather than educational expertise. The district can easily afford the $250,000/year salary that we are offering the new superintendent and there is no doubt that salary requirements will not be an impediment to filling the position with an outstanding first-tier educator. To the contrary, no equivalent caliber chief financial, human resources/benefits regulatory or legal officer will accept the $160,000/year that we paid the district's last chief financial officer. Consequently, the board is far more dependent on voluntary trustee expertise in financial matters than it is for educational expertise. We have less need of trustee/educators micromanaging the education decisions of our pending superintendent and excellent assistant superintendent for curriculum, as much as we have need for trustees with financial, legal and/or benefits expertise to closely and competently supervise the district's financial affairs in order to ensure that adequate economic resources are available to pay for the quality educational services that we demand. Dr. Tassone, despite his criminal lapses, was a product of Columbia University Teacher's College, a premier institution, while the best we could do in the financial area was Pamela Gluckin, a product of Suffolk Community College, which hardly can be confused with the Wharton School of Business. It is curious and perplexing that many in the community who would not negotiate the contracts on their homes or invest the equivalent of the $20,000 year or more that many of us pay in school taxes without legal and accounting council, are willing to turn over a $90/million year enterprise to trustees totally devoid of legal or accounting expertise, while excluding others on the basis of that very expertise. In the past, this very lack of expertise led to the board's overdependance on and inability to challenge people with third-rate financial backgrounds like Gluckin's.
One of the major challenges facing the district is the staggering rate of the rise of health insurance costs. Nationally, over the last several years, health costs have risen over 70 percent and there is no reason to believe that the district's costs have not paralleled that rise. This huge increase is especially challenging because the district is already beset with rapidly rising mandated costs for a small minority of its students and an inability to raise taxes at commensurate rate without destroying the economic viability and social diversity of the district.
School taxes and budgets rising at double digit rates far above inflation or student body growth, are simply not economically sustainable except by a small minority of the district for whom money is not a concern and cost-efficient usage of resources not a consideration. The concept held by some in the district that more is never less stifles creativity, ingenuity and productivity. In the past, we have seen that this leads to waste and more than few dollars left over for corruption. The well-regarded Half Hollow Hills School District #5 in Dix Hills ($15,000/year) and Rockville Centre School District ($16,000/year) seem to be able to offer a comparable education for less, while the poorly regarded Lawrence School District ($21,000/year) offers a case study in failure for about the same resource level as we supply. Perhaps a good quality education is not simply a matter of dollars spent, but requires some common sense in the cost-efficient application of those dollars. I am not proposing that we drop spending per student, but I am questioning whether we are getting full value for every dollar spent per student.
In May, there will be four candidates for three board seats. One of the two incumbents running for re-election is Jeff Borowick, a CPA with a unique expertise in health care insurance and costs. Only Mr. Borowick of all the candidates, let alone any of the current trustees, has the expertise to help the board address this critical area. The traditional approach of the educational establishment has been to extract more tax dollars per taxpayer, while Mr. Borowick has the expertise to help us obtain more health benefits per tax dollars. I do not deny the critical need and importance of educational expertise on the board, but to propose that there is no room among the three available seats for Mr. Borowick's health care cost expertise is to ignore economic reality and to risk a further diversion of critical resources needed for education to pay for out-of-control health care costs.
The final lesson of the scandal is that board members must be willing to devote countless hours to arcane non-glamorous matters and have the confidence that comes only from true expertise along with the healthy skepticism born of moral self-assurance to challenge all concerned to function at the highest levels. I can think of no other person standing for election who better fulfills these attributes than Jeff Borowick and, therefore, strongly urge my fellow voters to return Mr. Borowick to office.
If you believe that the district can offer a quality education at affordable tax rate, vote for Jeff Borowick.
If you believe that you should not have to be rich to live in Roslyn, vote for Jeff Borowick.
If you believe that that you should not have to be rich to be able to afford to retire in Roslyn, vote for Jeff Borowick.
If you believe that controlled growth in the budget demands openness, financial transparency, a healthy skepticism and expertise to question the educational establishment, vote for Jeff Borowick.
If you feel that the board should be open to the views of the community and not be a rubber stamp for the educational establishment, vote for Jeff Borowick.
If you don't believe the educational establishment's formula of tax without constraint and spend without restraint, vote for Jeff Borowick.
If you believe that the choice of a new superintendent and chief financial officer is too important to be given to the same educational establishment that brought us praise and excessively rewarded Tassone Gluckin and Stoler, vote for Jeff Borowick.
If you believe in a tax rate that allows for an economically, socially and ethnically diverse community, vote for Jeff Borowick.
If you believe that a trustee must have the dedication to devote countless hours and the expertise needed to ensure that our dollars work as hard as most of us work to earn them, vote for Jeff Borowick.
If you believe the real issue is whether or not we have the controlled budgetary growth and rational tax increases that all of us are willing to sacrifice for, as opposed to uncontrolled spending and skyrocketing tax rates that only a few do not have to sacrifice for, vote for Jeff Borowick.
L. R. Heisler
