Here is an email that went to the various Hoboken media outlets from citizen activist Donna Antonucci. She speaks up on the Hoboken School Budget for 2009 that she was able to get a copy of. I helped her put it up in sections on SlideShare:
I picked up the final School Budget and scanned it in for easy distribution. You can find it at http://www.slideshare.net/kgardiner67 .
Tuesday is the School Budget hearing. I encourage the public to come. The public can approve or vote down the budget by voting on April 21st. Jack Raslowsky owes the public answers to their budget questions at this meeting. If he doesn't answer, the only thing to do is to vote the budget down in April.
I have looked at the budget itself and not so surprisingly, the budget is top heavy. Yet again, we seem to have too many Chiefs and not enough Indians. Jack projected an increase in enrollment as he has done year over year. This not so reliable increase in enrollment artificially reduces the per pupil cost to $21K. The school not only does not have a program to ferret out students from other districts who are in our schools illegally, the school has turned a blind eye to students who don't even try to hide that they don't live here. The administration has even chastised some parents for bringing to the attention of the administration specific students who blatantly were not living in Hoboken. Is this all to substantiate fat, administrative, 6 figure jobs?
I think the cost per pupil could be around $15K per student if we cut non added value management roles such as the principal for the Brandt school by consolidating and reducing the number of buildings we have to operate. (With a building, you have to have a principal). We also have an army of custodial staff. According the latest records we could get our hands on, the district employs 29 FT custodians, 19 PT custodians, and 19 maintenance workers. Plus the director of facilities, Tim Calligy, who is little more than head janitor and made $110K last year. All this for 6 buildings. We have teachers that were so bad, they were pulled out of the classroom into administrative role in lieu of documenting their poor performance and firing them, i.e., we promoted someone to do nothing. We have transportation budget that costs over a $1MM when Hoboken is only 1.5 miles at its widest point. Obesity is rampant in this country. We could cut that budget tremendously if we cut transportation for all except our disabled kids.
There are many more examples of wasteful spending that doesn't go into the classroom.
Additionally, a recent proposal from Corzine could pull our Abbott funding which can shoot up the tax payer burden. I urge the public to show up, vote and stay involved.
- Donna ◦
