If the school board members agree NOT to hire ANY family members - whether or not they abstain!
And what are the hours of the school attorney? A lot of money for one meeting a month.
You clearly do NOT know or understand Education Law. What you are quoting represents only a PIECE of a law that means if a new student comes into the district (as a special needs with an IEP) or one in the district is identified as needing special education where they need a teacher/aide because the other ones have the number of students permitted in a classroom then and only then can a teacher/aide be hired......I am not going to squabble with you....
Bottom line....if Lackawanna's budget fails a second time, they CANNOT hire new employees. They are already in EXCESS with employees and administrators!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I suggest you get out of the books.....and watch what happens. Lackawanna has had a contingency budget before.........
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If the school board members agree NOT to hire ANY family members - whether or not they abstain!
And what are the hours of the school attorney? A lot of money for one meeting a month.
I believe you are reading Ed.L 2023 too narrowly and it is not limited to, but may include, the fact pattern you have stated. See: http://www.counsel.nysed.gov/Decisio...e33/d13158.htm
Petitioner incorrectly contends that respondent is not authorized to hire additional teaching staff while operating under an austerity budget. It is within the authority of a board of education "to prescribe the course of study" to be followed in the schools of the district (Education law §1709[3]). That authority includes the discretion to determine, within the bounds set by statute and regulation, which courses are to be offered (Appeal of Feller, 28 Ed Dept Rep 321; Application of Mennella, 21 id. 721 Appeal of Raffone, 13 id. 245). Likewise, Education law §1709(16) specifically authorizes a board of education: "to contract with and employ such persons as by the provisions of this chapter are qualified teachers (and) to determine the number of teachers to be employed in the several departments of instruction…" The record indicates that the board carefully reviewed its needs and determined that two additional teachers were necessary to ensure the provision of an appropriate education to the students of the district. Petitioner presents no evidence to indicate that respondent’s determination as to staffing needs is arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable. Moreover, the costs of teacher salaries are clearly ordinary contingent expenses (Education law §2023; Appeal of Feller, supra; Appeal of Moore, 18 Ed Dept Rep 375).
“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.” ― Thomas Jefferson
“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.” ― Thomas Jefferson
April 14, 2011 Board minutes
However, the Lackawanna Board of Education is also concerned about the education, welfare and safety
of our students. The proposed 2011-2012 General Fund Budget calls for a modest increase in the tax levy of
only 4.88% which equates to an increase in the tax rate on an average $70,000 home/residence, after applying
the STAR Exemption, of $18.15 annually.
In consideration of the above and in order for the Board to have a balanced budget as required by statute,
the 2011/2012 proposed General Fund Budget for adoption calls for the following staff reduction and/or
realignment and other cuts in spending as follows:
• Eliminate 11.2 regular teaching positions (1 elementary teacher, 1 english teacher, 1 math teacher, 1
science teacher, 1 social studies teacher, 1 art teacher, 1 physical ed. teacher, 1 guidance counselor, 1
special education teacher, 1 business teacher, a .8 teaching position and a .4 teaching position)
• Eliminate eight (8) preferred substitute teaching positions.
• Eliminate Teacher Center Funding
• 25% reduction in Sports Programs
• 25% reduction in Extra-classroom Activities
• Eliminate one (1) vacant Teacher Aide Position
• Eliminate the Part-Time Inventory Clerk Position
• Eliminate the Part-Time Records Management Positionl 14 Board Minutes....
Notice NO TEACHER AIDE CUTS????????
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" Eliminate the Part-Time Inventory Clerk Position
• Eliminate the Part-Time Records Management Positionl 14 Board Minutes...."
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Which are Mindy Leonetti's current job"s"! BTW I found it amusing that when she works as a School Board Election Inspector she goes by Mindy Harvey--must be her other name.
Word has it that they are promised the Lackawanna City Clerk job OR the School will find the money somehow and rig her up again with them. Does anyone realize that promising jobs for any political paybacks is ILLEGAL? Does anyone care about all the illegal things they do in Lackawanna? I know it goes on everywhere BUT, if we stop the corruption in Lackawanna once and for all, maybe other local politicians will think twice about it, once someone goes to jail from Lackawanna! The poster child for corruption.
What do you think about the gig that a full-time Lackawanna Police Dispatcher for appr. $ 35,000+Cadillac bennes has, also working 20 hours/wk at the School for appr. $18.00/hr which= a 60 hour work week!
More to the story.......
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Ouch!---I obviously hit a nerve, and your opening statement of attempt to cause defamation of my character, proved to me that you are directly connected to the School---probably a " preferred family and friends club member ".
And your point is?
What? That you are perfect and you live a fairy-tale life in your glass house?
Please do not think that you can bait me into your immature, junior high, cry baby, control nonsense.
youMUSTgohome and cry wee wee wee all the way home, " Word has it " that you need your diaper changed!
Why don't you get your head out from someone's ass and take a look at the way the city looks already? I guess if you would do that once in a while you wouldn't be so positve now would you? I guess you love the increasing blight,crazies walking down Ridge Road, bums sleeping on benches across from the Basilica,for sale signs popping up on buisnesses all over the city? Figures. BTW that's why iI called you what I did. Get it?
NYSUT loses clout on key issues
Giant teachers union takes it on the chin in Albany arenaBy Tom Precious
NEWS ALBANY BUREAU
Published:
June 6, 2011, 12:25 AM
The News' education pageUpdated: June 6, 2011, 7:27 AM
ALBANY -- Year after year for the past couple of decades, no special-interest group arguably has been more influential in the State Capitol than the union New York State United Teachers.
Backed by its sheer numbers of members, large campaign donations and the ability to help -- or hurt -- politicians with campaign foot soldiers and state-of-the-art phone bank operations, NYSUT has gotten its way for a long time in Albany.
Not so this year.
The union -- despite its army of lobbyists, advertising campaigns and support of protests that even shut down portions of the Capitol the night the budget was passed -- came up on the losing end in its bid to stop deep state aid cuts for schools.
After local school votes last month, hundreds, potentially thousands, of NYSUT members will get pink slips and be told not to return in the fall.
NYSUT also lost its push to extend an additional income tax on wealthy New Yorkers to provide more state money for schools.
Some local unions lost when, in the past year, they broke into their contracts to make concessions that would lower the number of teachers laid off.
NYSUT also lost last month when the Board of Regents, whose members in essence are picked by Democrats controlling the Assembly, pushed through rules putting greater emphasis on student performance in a new teacher evaluation system.
NYSUT has all but lost its attempt to halt a plan -- on which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders tentatively have agreed -- to limit property tax increases by local governments, including schools.
On the lobbying front, it remains engaged in hand-to-hand combat with forces -- from mayors to school boards -- trying to relax such costly state-
imposed mandates as teacher pensions and union-friendly contract protections.
All of this so far this year.
"There's no question there's a train coming down a track. It's a reckless train going in the wrong direction. Eventually, it will be derailed," Richard C. Iannuzzi, NYSUT president, said of efforts to thwart the union.
Lawmakers say NYSUT got too accustomed over the years to getting its way and was unable to accept the tough fiscal times and the vows by both Cuomo and the Legislature to cut spending.
But Iannuzzi said the way teachers have taken it on the chin this year will not be easily forgotten. "They're going to be angry, and they're going to be angry at the polls, and they're going to be angry with the level of support to those who turned their backs on them," said Iannuzzi, a former Long Island elementary school teacher who has run the teachers union since 2005.
Iannuzzi acknowledged that Albany this year has been moving "in the wrong direction" from how NYSUT sees matters.
"But NYSUT will be celebrating its 40th year next year, and I don't know a lot of terms of office that run 40 years, so we were here before most, and we'll be here after most," he said.
This year, NYSUT ran into forces it could not -- unlike the past -- so easily control. For starters, Cuomo, riding into office with high approval ratings, was unamused when NYSUT began attacking his proposed budget. He dug in harder and pushed back strongly against those efforts to undo his budget-balancing effort.
Legislators said that once the tax-on-the-wealthy plan was declared dead, NYSUT did nothing to face the reality of a stressed-out state budget losing revenue after two years of federal bailout money for schools.
"They just don't get it," one lawmaker said.
Tensions with NYSUT are high in both houses. Lawmakers talk of nasty run-ins with NYSUT members or representatives in the Capitol. In private talks, they said, NYSUT clearly was pushing an agenda that, in the end, focused on teachers' finances and not classroom programs.
Cuomo declined to comment on NYSUT.
With a few weeks left in the current session, NYSUT's chief goal is killing limits on property tax increases, which it says will cut local school funding. Friday, it began a $1.3 million TV ad campaign against the idea.
According to its most recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service, NYSUT raised $109 million from member dues and had total revenue of $123 million in 2009. It has 600,000 members, mostly teachers and school-related professionals, and 175,000 retirees.
For 14 of the years in the period from 1993 through last year, NYSUT ranked first or second out of the thousands of special interests that disclose such activities in total contributions and lobbying expenses, with a total of $42 million, according to an analysis of data compiled by the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Data was missing for two of those years and did not include a number of expenditures, such as NYSUT's large phone bank operation -- activated just last week with calls to teachers' homes to get them to contact legislators to complain about the limit on property tax increases. The data also does not include spending by the 140,000-member New York City-based United Federation of Teachers, which is NYSUT's biggest local, or other locals such as the Buffalo Teachers Federation.
NYSUT's spending over the years -- with donations spread among Republicans and Democrats -- exceeds that of some of Albany's best-known, deep-pocketed special interests, including groups representing potent health care unions and hospitals, trial lawyers, physicians, insurers and New York City landlords. The union also has outspent some big corporate names with business in the Capitol, ranging from the New York Yankees and Verizon to Philip Morris and Donald Trump's casino empire.
But this year, NYSUT met its match and could not pump out the kind of advertising campaigns to match one of its new chief opponents. The Committee to Save New York, a Cuomo-leaning group with ties to business and some private-sector unions, spent $7.4 million in just the first four months backing Cuomo's budget and property tax limit plans.
Not including the other public-sector unions, NYSUT spent $1.7 million during the four months, according to its disclosure filing with the New York State Commission on Public Integrity.
"We have lots of money, but we can't compare with [to] the Wall Street brokers and others who do these independent campaigns. There is no way any union can match the combined wealth of corporations and millionaires," said Philip Rumore, president of the Buffalo Teachers Federation, one of NYSUT's 1,200 local unions.
Rumore said NYSUT's problems in the Capitol are not unique. "All of the unions are under attack throughout the country," he said, pointing to such states as Wisconsin.
Observers in the Capitol say NYSUT grew so big and had enough allies -- from school boards to parents who all wanted more state money for their local schools -- that getting its way became easy. Internal union rifts, meanwhile, were growing, insiders said. This year, NYSUT often was on its own without its biggest local, the United Federation of Teachers, which was engaged in its own battles with New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
NYSUT leaders also angered lawmakers with what officials said was a heated, in-your-face style that played out in their Albany offices or back home. One NYSUT team, according to sources, was tossed out of the offices of a top Assembly staffer after one such session. Even a NYSUT success -- helping to defeat the bid by Frank Padavan, a Republican, for re-election as a state senator from Queens -- has not helped, lawmakers noted. Republicans still took back control of the Senate, where NYSUT's anti-Padavan efforts have not been forgotten.
NYSUT also did not make an endorsement in last year's governor's race and kept its wallets closed in a number of legislative races.
But a key lawmaker sees a worrisome shift. "Some of it is a real walking away from a commitment to labor unions," said Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, a Queens Democrat who heads the Assembly Education Committee. She said she didn't agree with decisions this year, such as cutting education while providing a tax break for wealthy New Yorkers.
Nolan said NYSUT -- a union that, she noted, consists mostly of women and promotes more spending in one of the state biggest cost centers -- "became an easy target ... for people who want to cut costs."
But State Sen. John J. Flanagan, a Republican from East Northport on Long Island and chairman of the Senate Education Committee, sees the situation differently.
"I have great respect for teachers, and there is nothing more important than having a good, effective teacher in the classroom," he said. "At the same time, NYSUT and all the other public employees at all levels of government have to deal with the fiscal realities and challenges affecting everyone.
"I think it's a big challenge for NYSUT to recognize that everything is changing."
But Iannuzzi, NYSUT's president, said the union will look at new strategies and tactics once the legislative session ends.
"When you add up all that's happened this year, there is no question NYSUT has to re-evaluate its relationship with both parties and with all three branches of government, and it has to recalculate and recalibrate the way it interacts in terms of what it expects and what it defines as consequences," he said.
tprecious@buffnews.comnull
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