As I read my school district's annual budget newsletter, the one that always announces sharply higher spending and a rise of several hundred dollars in my school taxes, I pondered how wonderful it would be to receive a budget message from a public school superintendent such as the following:

"Dear Taxpayer:

In view of the depressed economy, I want to inform you that I have reduced spending, cut expenses and improved the efficiency of our schools. As a result, our district's budget, for the first time in recorded history, is actually lower than last year.

Briefly, these are the steps I am taking to reduce the school tax burden on homeowners:

The average class size is being raised by 0.5 and may go higher temporarily if illegal rentals are not brought under control. This means that we will not have to hire any new teachers as we did every year in the past. I want to remind you that most of the Nobel prize winners had more than 34 kids in their grade school classes. Our average class size is 19.8, yet our student test scores are below the county average.

We will freeze all salaries for a period of three years, or longer if the economy remains stagnant. When I look at the latest report on how much money the teachers union is spending on lobbying in Albany, I ask myself if we are paying our teachers too much. New York State's teachers unions spent $4.8 million on lobbying last year, making them the biggest special interest spender in the state capital.

High school teachers who now spend less than 4 hours a day in the classroom will be required to teach 25 hours a week. This will allow us to reduce the teaching staff and save millions of dollars.

We will eliminate dozens of non-teaching positions such as assistant superintendents, coordinators, directors, chairpersons, assistant principals, and deputy superintendents, many of whom are paid more than $120,000. Library teachers will be replaced with librarians, thus cutting these salaries by nearly half and nurse-teachers will be replaced with registered nurses, another big saving.

One of our teachers who has a base salary of $95,000 gets paid $3,100 to watch kids in the cafeteria plus $12,000 for coaching, giving him an annual paycheck of almost $110,000. From now on, teachers who are paid more than $80,000 will not get extra money for supervising club activities, coaching or being in the cafeteria.

The school district now pays practically the entire cost of the teachers' health insurance which surges each year. Teachers will now pay 25 percent of their health insurance cost and will be billed for any increase in rates.

Pay raises will be given on merit and only to teachers whose students get higher test scores. Now, the best and the worst teachers in our district receive the same pay. A private business would go bankrupt if it had to pay the salaries and benefits our school district shells out.

Many school superintendents are paid more than some top government officials and are given life-time health coverage. I will limit my salary to that of the vice president of the United States which is $145,395 when adjusted to the ten-month school-year. This will place me among the lowest paid superintendents on Long Island and I am prepared to take a ribbing from my colleagues for that.

We will educate kids without bankrupting homeowners. After all, if Catholic schools can provide quality education while paying their teachers half the salaries we pay, why can't we do the same?

Signed: Your Public School Superintendent"

Maybe some day when we open the school district newsletter we'll see a message such as the one above.

George Rand