game on

Yesterday we were sent an email bearing the Village budget report by a member of the new "citizen's oversight committee."

Ed and I both suspect unauthorized use of an email list or two.

Here's the text:

please take particular note of the Police Budget on pages 12-15 as it is getting the most amount of press

<> I am sending this out as a citizen of Irvington--not as my role as a member of the CBC
my intent is not to advocate a viewpoint--but to disseminate this report --I know how busy people are and many will not access the link to retrieve

As far as the content--I believe the report speaks volumes and it is up to you THE TAXPAYERS OF IRVINGTON TO SEND A MESSAGE TO YOUR MAYOR AND BOARD OF TRUSTEES --IF YOU HAVE AN INTEREST IN YOUR TAXES AND HOW THEY CAN AFFECT YOUR QUALITY OF LIFE IN OUR VILLAGE

YOU NOW HAVE THE INFORMATION AND I HOPE THE INCLINATION TO COMMUNICATE YOUR VIEWS TO THE BOARD

HERE ARE THE EMAIL ADDRESSES TO VOICE YOUR OPINION to the mayor and board of trustees-I know many people cannot make the budget meetings in the evenings--

I haven't looked at the report (train wreck! train wreck!) but Ed did. Irvington, a village of roughly 6500 has, I believe, 77 full-time employees. Something like that. We have 27 policemen & women. Our crossing guards are policemen paid $80,000/yr; same deal with the people handing out parking tickets. The town is losing money on parking tickets, as a matter of fact, because we pay a policeman $80,000 to distribute them.

Village employees shovel snow and rake leaves, collecting overtime as needed. Which is particularly annoying to Ed and me, seeing as how we live on a "private road," meaning a road so private no one knows who owns it. Our road isn't maintained by the Village; it is called "the bumpy road" as a direct result. We pay for our own snowploughing & we rake our own leaves, etc. Sort of the same way parents in the school system pay for their own teachers.

There are a lot of private roads in Irvington, as it turns out -- and all of the folks who live on them are paying for town services privately.

People have been talking about the possibility of a tax revolt in Irvington.

After reading the budget report last night, Ed came upstairs and said, "It's already begun."

First the fields emails; now this one.



letter to the editor:

The local paper published this letter from me a day or two before the school board election & budget vote:

5-7-2007

To the editor:

The Irvington school district has the right mission statement – to create a challenging and supportive learning environment in which each student attains his or her highest potential for academic achievement – but too little sense of mission.

In math, the international standard for all students is algebra in the 8th grade. Yet here in Irvington, only 30% of students take algebra in 8th grade, and many of these students are being tutored or taught at home by parents.

Or compare IUFSD to the KIPP Academy, a charter school in the Bronx serving disadvantaged black and Hispanic children. Eighty percent of KIPP’s 8th graders take algebra and pass Regents Math A.

Per pupil spending at KIPP: roughly $10,000 per student

Per pupil spending at IUFSD: $21,000

One fourth of our eighth graders are invited to take Earth Science in the 8th grade; Pelham teaches Earth Science to all of its 8th grade students, including students in special ed.

The 7th grade ELA curriculum assigns books with measured reading levels of 5th and 6th grades; the social studies curriculum calls for students to make PowerPoint presentations; the Spanish class requires students to spend their weekends cutting out pictures of clothing from magazines and pasting them onto a piece of paper with labels in Spanish.

In K-5, Math TRAILBLAZERS takes more time to teach less content, and the district has deliberately slowed the progress of mathematically gifted children over the strenuous objections of their parents. Gifted children are to be “enriched,” not accelerated.

Enrichment means asking children to solve simple algebra problems without teaching them algebra.

Last but not least, I am still waiting for an explanation of last year’s bell curve exercise at the middle school. (Some) sixth grade teachers drew bell curves on their whiteboards, explained to students that they were average, and told them they should consider the Cs they would be receiving a good grade.

After the vote on May 15, Irvington’s school board will need to direct its immediate energies to getting a compromise fields project underway.

But I believe that, as work on “Plan B” proceeds, our elected representatives can also begin the process of holding administrators accountable for making our school mission statement a reality.

Catherine Johnson

From what I can see, the whole town - school & village - is a slide and glide operation.