More Lawrence School District

An editorial in the local paper, the Five Towns Jewish Times, has an update on the Lawrence School Board conflict (previously posted about here I, II, III, IV, V, VII, VIII). The editor, Larry Gordon, writes that he was anonymously mailed a newsletter, apparently put out by the Lawrence Teachers' Association, called Bits and Pieces. One of the columns, titled The Elephant In The Room, written by President of the LTA Samuel Clements, addresses the trouble he has been having getting the community to approve generous pay increases or new contracts for his teachers. As Gordon quotes Clements:

As I look back at my 33 years of teaching here in Lawrence, I am trying to understand what has changed in that time which has caused much of this community to have so much venom towards its teachers and our union. (In case you haven't noticed, read the local newspapers.)

First of all, the complete mischaracterization of the simple and democratic act of voting down a proposed budget as stemming from "venom towards teachers" totally poisons the debate. Clements seems to willfully ignore the fact that many members of this community - both Orthodox and not - have raised grave concerns over the Lawrence School District's shrinking student body and yet ever-growing budgets.

Clements then talks about the economic hardships that would have a community voting to lower taxes, but he says that:

...here in Lawrence, if you drive down most streets all you see is Dumpsters with people renovating their homes and making them larger. Hardly a sign that people are suffering...

I'm sorry, but who is Clements to decide that the residents of Lawrence should be
apportioning a larger piece of their pie to education because they are doing home improvement? If someone were to get a raise, would they then be required to tithe a certain amount of that money to the Lawrence School District? Or should, instead, the district come up with a plan
that has them educating their students in a fiscally responsible manner? Obviously, the latter.

Mr. Clements lets slip a very interesting tidbit in the piece:

The district was always committed to paying its teachers well. Our first contract at the inception of the Taylor Law in the late 1960's includes a provision that the teachers in Lawrence have to be in the top 10 percent of the county. Our salary, for the most part, is in that tenth percentile.

Excuse me? Clements is complaining that he cannot get a budget approved to pay his teachers competitively, and in the next breath, he admits that they are presently paid in the top ten percent of the county, and that they have a contract that stipulates that they continue to be paid at that level?

He then goes on to question the high number that has been thrown about of $22,000 that the district spends to educate each child. Clements claims that the number is inflated due to the cost of transportation and textbooks for private school students that are included in every budget. Except that Larry Gordon completely debunks that theory, pointing out that even with the $10 million of the private school students' portion of the budget subtracted from the $88 million budget, Lawrence is still spending $78 million to educate 3,400 enrolled students. The per-student cost of public education in Lawrence still comes to $22,941. Pretty high, especially compared to the US Nassau County median per-student cost of $8019 $16,800.

Bottom line, someone who is in a leadership position like Clements should ostensibly be acting responsibly to bridge the divide in the community - not sending out poorly-argued diatribes against the segment of the community that happens to be standing in the way of his goals to enrich the members of his association. No one is denying him the right to advocate for his members - but he shouldn't at the same time disingenuously claim to be looking out for the taxpayers' best interests.