A Piece of Port: Watchdogs or Cranks?

Now that the Port Washington Union Free School District and the Port Washington Teachers Association have agreed to a zero percent base salary raise, and with the budget increase looking like it may well come in under two percent, I wonder what the local "fiscal watchdogs" are thinking.

As regular as clockwork, each time a budget is proposed, the likes of the Port Washington Educational Assembly argue that whatever the school board and community have decided to spend is too much. They rail against the teachers use of sick days. They moan that the teachers spend too few hours in the classroom. Above all, they complain that the teachers do not share, or even comprehend, the economic difficulties that the people of Port Washington face. Well, what are they going to say now?

This is a wonderful opportunity for those that consistently urge us all to vote "no" on the budget to prove that theirs isn't just a knee-jerk reaction. They can recognize that this agreement is different and that it comes as close as possible to what they've asked for all along, one with no increase. Maybe they'll finally admit to themselves that local school boards have discretion over only a small percentage of the total budget due to mandated expenditures from New York State. And they can finally prove that they really have been judicious watchdogs all along and not just a bunch of nay saying cranks. They can come out, publicly, in favor of this budget and ask us to vote "yes."

Or maybe they really are just cranky. We'll see.

Full disclosure: The author, a 50-year Port Washington resident, has been a student in Port Washington schools, kindergarten through 12th grade (Schreiber class of  '76), an employee of the district as a teacher's assistant for one year back in the early 1980s, is the father of a recent Schreiber graduate as well as a current Schreiber sophomore, and is a member of a NYSUT higher education union.