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Post by concerned on Sept 10, 2005 21:33:56 GMT -5
Yruokh-I should have been more clear. I was actually referring to what JustFacts had written in their response but I wasn't clear enough. As I did state, though, JustFacts is accurate in stating "there's no ADDITIONAL costs". Clearly the district is paying for this service. It actually sounds pretty useful. I wonder if this service is now down due to the web site being down as well.
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Post by techie on Sept 10, 2005 22:17:14 GMT -5
Hello "concerned"
The program should be up and running within the schools with no problem. Only the outside access would be in question. If this was set up the way it has been explained to me and the documentation that I have seen on their servers it should be running with no problems. This would mean that ALL the Administrative ends for the teachers and staff should still be functional. The only reason for the students and parents not to access from the outside would be a decision from the Administration. Shut one thing down to the outside and you hurt something else. Again, "poor planning". You should see price quotes from the Apple co. for the servers they sell! Boy, If I wasn't one of the taxpayers I would sure love to sell them!
The program should be running on it's own server, the same as you would have separate File servers, Print servers, etc,..
IMHO
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Post by techie on Sept 11, 2005 8:53:28 GMT -5
This is posted for those that do not read Newsday, or skip the Editorials.
At least the fundraisers are getting some well deserved recognition. We should all inquire with our Assemblymen as to what is being done.
Editorials --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LONG ISLAND TOPIC A crazy way to fund schools
BY LIZ KROLIK Liz Krolik is a coordinator for the Alliance for Quality Education, a statewide coalition of more than 230 organizations, and an organizer for the Long Island Progressive Coalition.
September 11, 2005
Parents from Hampton Bays to Plainedge have worked tirelessly to raise private funds for sports and extracurricular activities that fell victim to this year's round of school budget cuts. Patchogue-Medford, for example, has raised $364,000 of the $935,000 needed for sports.
These parents deserve credit for understanding how these programs enrich their children's lives and add to the communities' quality of life. But can they sustain this level of volunteer support year after year? Next year they may well find themselves in the same situation. It doesn't seem fair to the parents or their children. And then, not every community is fortunate enough to have smart fundraisers or the resources to tap for contributions. Many families on Long Island are lucky if they earn enough to pay for housing and rising property taxes. Communities operating on contingency budgets such as Amityville, where the median income is lower than that of Suffolk County, are at a disadvantage in raising private funds simply because of the local socioeconomic conditions.
It is terrific that our education system traditionally has set standards that have made enrichment programs like sports, art classes and extracurricular activities a definitive part of the public school experience. But are these programs now going to be available only to children who happen to live in the school districts with the deepest pockets and the best fundraising apparatus?
It's another example of the fundamental unfairness of New York State's broken system for funding schools.
This system, which is supposed to provide opportunity and social mobility for all children, is setting the stage for a rush to the bottom for those strapped for resources.
According to national reports, New York has one of the greatest funding gaps between the richest and poorest school districts and between predominantly white districts and minority districts. The competition to raise private funds will only widen those gaps and further economic, social and racial injustices.
The New York State Constitution states that every child has the right to a quality education, and the state government is mandated to give every child the opportunity for a sound basic education. The governor and State Legislature have been put on notice by the highest court in the state that the funding system fails to comply with that mandate.
But there are ways we can achieve this goal.
The state income tax, for instance, is a progressive tax based on ability to pay. Over the past 25 years the top state income tax rates have dramatically dropped. Simply by restoring these rates, the state would draw in the needed revenues to fund education. Calling on wealthier residents to pay their share would help close the gap and guarantee access to extracurricular activities for all kids.
Another option is to eliminate corporate income tax loopholes. It's time that the state reinstated these levies that would broaden the tax base, shift the regressive system from individual taxpayer to a more progressive corporate taxpayer system and raise needed revenues.
The Assembly has introduced the Schools for New York's Future Act, legislation designed to fix the school funding formula, increase public accountability and increase state school aid. The legislation uses a formula that determines state funding based on the needs of the students.
With this kind of tax reform, or some mix of all three ideas, parents won't have to be overburdened by raising private funds for sports and extracurricular activities, and no children will be denied their constitutional right to an education.
New York is ranked second in the nation in local property taxes by percentage of total taxes paid. But there are inherent problems with taxing people based on their home value, because the inflated prices of real estate do not reflect one's ability to pay; this is especially true for Long Island.
This regressive tax system disproportionately burdens middle- and lower-income citizens because home values represent a much higher share of their income than they do for the wealthy. It's time to end it, for the sake of the parents who have spent their summer fundraising, and for their children and our whole society.
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Post by techie on Sept 11, 2005 9:27:18 GMT -5
The Schools for New York's Future Act can be looked at on the site; www.cfequity.org . In looking through the pdf. files about the payouts for the districts, look for Nassau Co. and you will notice only eight (8) districts get increased aid. We of course are not one of them. While these other districts may be economically challenged, they also have a tremendous amount of their tax funding coming in from the businesses in their districts and we do not. The taxpayers in our district shoulder a larger burden than others. This is not a fair way to distribute funds.
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Post by Go Plainedge! on Sept 11, 2005 9:36:27 GMT -5
I thought you were boycotting Newsday... ;D
I remember our two new board members stating that they would lobby vigorously to obtain more State Aid.
Guess what ladies....you're up at the plate!
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Post by techie on Sept 11, 2005 10:01:35 GMT -5
Oh yes you are right! I will not fund Newsday by buying their paper(thanks for remembering!) but online I don't help them that way. For those of you that haven't followed how we pay more in this district, this little "blurb" from NEWS12 might give you what you need to talk to your representatives.
School tax bills in Nassau may not reflect what residents actually pay (05/10/05) MERRICK - When it comes to school tax bills in Nassau County, some residents may find that the tax increase the district asks for is not what they actually pay.
Nassau County Tax Assessor Harvey Levinson says the county’s tax code includes a class shift, which breaks property into four categories. The property categories include residences, condos and co-ops, utilities and commercial. Levinson says because of the increase in value of residential homes, homeowners are paying a greater percentage of school taxes each year.
Levinson adds that Nassau is the only county that has this class shift problem in the state of New York.
Related Links: Estimated Residential School Taxes For 2005/06 and Average Tax Bill Increase
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Post by techie on Sept 14, 2005 9:10:29 GMT -5
Thought this might be of interest to some of you. Internet vandals take over company's site Columbia Financial Printing Corp. gets a shock when it learns hackers have defaced its Web site BY RICHARD J. DALTON JR STAFF WRITER September 14, 2005 Bernard McMahon, president of Hicksville-based Columbia Financial Printing Corp., which prints stock certificates, got a call last week from a customer relaying some unsettling news: Someone apparently hacked into Columbia's Web site. The site, www.stockinforma tion.com, normally touts the company's 25 years of experience on Wall Street as a printer of stock certificates. But the home page had been replaced with an anti-Bush diatribe in a foreign language and in broken English. While hackers are increasingly seeking to steal money online, the attack of the Columbia Web site shows that cybervandalism - as old as Web sites - continues unabated. Internet vandals even boast of their feats on www.zone-h .org. Zone-h, originally designed to track attacks, has become a means for online hooligans to brag about their exploits. The site lists the top attacker, chinahacker, as having 877 total defacements, with more than a quarter of them politically motivated. The three-paragraph message on Columbia's Web site began: "Bush and His Partizans This Is The Last Warning To You!!! With The Hope You Feel The Pain Before That You Have Not Realized Until The Teror Had Reached To You." The defaced home page had no links to legitimate parts of the company Web site. Not surprisingly, McMahon noticed he was getting few sales leads through ads in Google, given that there was no legitimate Web site to lure customers. "I said, 'Boy, things are very slow. I know the market's bad. But we're not getting anything at all from Google,'" McMahon said. Within a half hour of discovering the problem, McMahon's son restored the Web site from a backup version.The company that hosts their Web site, Powweb, blamed Microsoft FrontPage, a program to design Web pages, for the break-in. A representative of Powweb, who would only identify himself as Casey in the support department, wouldn't provide details on the break-in. He then hung up. A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the last FrontPage security vulnerability was in February and that the glitch has been fixed. Johannes Ullrich, chief technology officer of the Internet Storm Center, part of the SANS Institute technology training center, said basic Web sites such as Columbia's, which merely act as brochures, are generally breached because Web hosting companies don't adequately secure the computers hosting the site. The vandals run a scanner program that searches for security holes, he said. Once they break in, it's easy to replace the home page, Ullrich said. Web-hosting companies sometimes host multiple Web sites on one server, he said. If one customer has a weak password, all of the Web sites on that computer server are vulnerable to attack, Ullrich said. So companies with sensitive information should ensure that their Web site has its own server or servers, he said. Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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Post by techie on Oct 17, 2005 6:33:31 GMT -5
From Newsday's Editorial/Opinions pages.
Don't blame the assessor It was not reassessment that caused Nassau’s county taxes to rise
October 17, 2005
During the 2003 elections, you heard a lot of half-truths and even whole lies about Nassau's court-supervised reassessment of homes and business for tax purposes. This year, sadly, you're hearing more of the same.
Two years ago, some Democratic challengers bashed incumbent Republicans for their courageous support of the historic reforms that saved staggering sums for the county and for thousands of owners. Republican wannabes did the same against Democrats who also voted to erase a half-century of inequities. Distorters in both camps tried to exploit the anger of homeowners who believed - incorrectly - that their taxes rose mostly because of reassessment,
This year almost all the pandering is coming from Republicans, but the tactic is the same: they are trying to blame the new valuations - and the officials who approved them - for the huge increases in taxes that most homeowners have seen in the past few years. It's false. And no amount of cynical attack ads will make it true.
Ironically, two of the biggest targets of this disinformation campaign are County Executive Tom Suozzi, who is seeking re-election, and assessor Harvey Levinson, who is running for Hempstead supervisor. Two years ago these two played a similar game against Republican assessor Charles O'Shea. And it worked: O'Shea lost by a sliver. But just as this page defended him, we are defending Suozzi and Levinson, especially because both of them and Democratic lawmakers have been working to correct the relatively few and mostly small assessment errors that continue to plague the tax rolls.
The truth is the assessor only values property, based on market changes; he doesn't set tax rates. Higher assessments accounted for only a small portion of the tax hikes and only for a minority of owners. Blame school budgets, not controlled by the county, for most of the higher tax bill.
The truth is that an increase in assessment only means higher taxes if the property's value rises at a faster rate than the county or school district average. Most don't. The fact is that the county didn't take in more revenue during the past few years of rapidly rising prices and, thus, assessments.
County officials still have work to do to keep the rolls fair so everyone pays an equal percentage of value. But Nassau's rolls now are among the state's most accurate, after long being the least. Don't believe any hack who says otherwise. Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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Post by techie on Nov 18, 2005 6:43:03 GMT -5
School district overspent $600,000 BY KARLA SCHUSTER STAFF WRITER
November 18, 2005
The Southold school district's top business official resigned this week, after auditors recently discovered a budgeting error that led the district to overspend by $600,000 last year.
The mistake, which school officials say did not involve any fraud, stemmed from inaccurate budgeting for the 2004-05 school year that underestimated the money needed to cover additional staffing and a recently settled contract. The district plugged that budget hole by tapping into its reserve accounts.
But the problem also has long-term implications, including possible program cuts this year and double-digit tax increases next year because each year's budget is based, at least in part, on the previous year's spending levels, Superintendent Christopher Gallagher said.
For example, based on the inaccurate 2004-05 numbers, district officials put together a budget for the current year, 2005-06, that called for a 7.7 percent spending increase. But once the mistake was discovered, it turned out to be only enough to support a spending increase of just over 3 percent.
Already, the district has instituted a spending freeze on all but essential items, and is considering using midyear program cuts, spending more of its reserves or a combination of both to make ends meet this year.
"I do think that we're in for a very difficult budget season this coming year," Gallagher said yesterday.
The school board accepted the resignation of business administrator Douglas Kaye on Wednesday. Kaye, hired in Southold two years ago, could not be reached for comment yesterday.
"The budget process by its nature involves projections - that's a very basic part of it," said Vinnie Cullen, a partner in the auditing firm Coughlin, Foundatos, Cullen & Danowski of Port Jefferson Station, which discovered the error.
Over the past few weeks, the firm also has found auditing mistakes that led to a $2.8-million surplus in North Babylon and a $5-million deficit in South Country.
Gallagher said Southold has asked the state comptroller's office for a full-scale audit.
"A reasonable person would ask, 'Why didn't they know?' " Gallagher said. "And one of the reasons we went to the comptroller's office was to help restore the confidence of the public."
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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Post by techie on Nov 18, 2005 6:44:48 GMT -5
SCHOOL CORRUPTION PROBE
They're All Subpoenaed Grand jury demands records from Suffolk districts BY KARLA SCHUSTER STAFF WRITER
November 18, 2005
A Suffolk grand jury investigating school corruption has ordered every district in the county to turn over thousands of documents, including audits and budgets, administrator salaries and perks, and more than 100 annual state reports on spending and programs.
The county's 70 school districts earlier this week began receiving the grand jury subpoenas, which seek four years' worth of records detailing virtually every aspect of the districts' operations. The districts have until the end of the month to comply.
Robert Clifford, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota, declined to comment yesterday.
After a year of school financial scandals across Long Island that so far have resulted in the arrests of 16 people, Spota in September empaneled a special grand jury to investigate fiscal mismanagement in school districts. The panel is also probing Medicaid fraud.
The volume of records being sought stunned some local school officials yesterday, particularly coming only a few months after the federal Department of Education and the Justice Department asked every Long Island school district for computerized spending records dating back five years.
"I think people are, at this point, sort of feeling 'what's next?'" said Gary Bixhorn, the chief operating officer of Eastern Suffolk BOCES, the regional cooperative serving local school districts.
The grand jury's subpoena is staggering in scope: Besides budget and audit reports from 2001-02 to 2004-05, the panel seeks enrollment figures and every report that districts must file under Section 2117 of the state Education Law for the same period.
That state law covers more than 100 different annual reports that detail everything from construction spending and transportation costs to drop-out prevention programs and bilingual services.
"We'll be more than happy to supply what they've asked for ... and after that, it's in their hands," James Sullivan, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction in South Huntington, said in a phone message he left for a reporter yesterday.
Christopher Gallagher, chairman of the Suffolk County School Superintendents Association, said he and his colleagues understand they are under increased scrutiny.
"They are interested in the information and we have nothing to hide," said Gallagher, also superintendent in Southold.
State, local and federal officials have been intensely focusing on Long Island school spending since an $11.2-million embezzlement scandal exploded in the Roslyn district in February 2004. The state comptroller's office is auditing more than 20 local districts, and a new state law requires all school board members to undergo financial training.
"Everything is like, 'let's turn it up a notch,' " said Vinnie Cullen, partner in the auditing firm of Coughlin, Foundatos, Cullen & Danowski of Port Jefferson Station, which works for more than 70 Long Island districts. "You get a letter from the external auditor, that's no good. Then, you get a letter from the state comptroller, that's worse. Then you get a letter from a grand jury - and that's an even bigger deal.
"It seems like every time you turn the corner, here it is again," Cullen said. "But ultimately, all these people watching, it's a good thing."
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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Post by techie on Dec 5, 2005 23:08:27 GMT -5
Time for disgruntled Long Islanders to act
Our taxes will grow ever more burdensome unless we build a consensus for major change
BY MARTIN R. CANTOR Martin R. Cantor is an economic development and planning consultant, and served as Suffolk County economic development commissioner.
December 5, 2005
The Long Island Index released by the Rauch Foundation, in its annual portrait of how we feel about where we live, showed that we Long Islanders are an unhappy lot.
Although some of the results need to be analyzed in more detail to get a clearer picture of where the angst is, what is very clear is that the responses tell us what a dysfunctional bunch we Long Islanders are - hating where we live, but not having the guts to do anything about it.
Take, for instance, how we finance our schools. The property tax, once considered a progressive tax because the tax is based on a home's value, rests on the idea that if you can afford a more expensive home you have the income to pay the tax. But the wage stagnation and the exponential increase in housing values over the past decade have made the tax regressive. That is, many of us living in homes we bought years ago, although still working at the same jobs, can no longer afford to buy the same homes today. The regressive aspect is that the market value of homes and related taxes have grown at a proportionately greater rate than the wages to pay the taxes.
The pain of high taxes was so clear that 95 percent of those surveyed said that taxes are a serious problem. But when it came to galvanizing their voices in the last election voters returned incumbents to office. Only one candidate, Nassau County Assessor Harvey Levinson, in his race for Hempstead town supervisor, raised the idea of studying the benefits of a regional income tax - and he was vilified. His courage in opening up the dialogue was one of the factors that cost him the election. The majority complaining about the tax burden stayed silent at the polls, despite 55 percent of the survey respondents saying an income tax is a good idea.
Going beyond the survey, another example of Long Islanders' disposition to complain but do little about a problem is July's re-election of the sanitation commissioners in the Town of Hempstead. Voters missed a golden opportunity by not supporting candidates who favored cost cutting.
Further proof of whether we Long Islanders are really serious about change will be the next round of fire district budget votes. If these budgets pass without a hitch, voters will not have paid attention to the recent Newsday series raising serious questions about how the fire districts manage their finances. A very small portion of the voters encumbers the rest of us with the taxes to pay for these districts. Although we all have great appreciation for the volunteer firefighters, there has to be a level where costs begin to exceed benefits.
The issue for Long Island's leaders is how and when to lead when there is nobody to lead. Political careers have been prematurely cut short when officials took on an issue without a clear constituency for change. Long Islanders have yet to form a consensus for change, whether it is about how we tax ourselves or what services to cut.
The reality is that we want it both ways, great services at lower taxes. But the sentiments of even those who say that they are willing to cut services or share services seem hollow when 54 percent of respondents opposed consolidation of school districts, with another 29 percent indicating tepid support. History has shown that Long Islanders abhor consolidating school districts.
With 85 percent saying that their current property taxes are too high, you have to show me the 76 percent who said they would be willing to pay more in their districts for school property taxes so poorer districts without commercial property could save on their taxes. The same can be said for the 55 percent surveyed who said they would reduce revenues to their school districts by sanctioning revenue sharing between the wealthier districts and the poorer ones.
The reality is that the views expressed in the survey have been discussed for years, yet the problems remain. For anything to change, there must be leadership among all of us - politicians, civic associations, business groups and just your everyday taxpayer. Unless we change, the Long Island of tomorrow will be even worse than today's.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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Post by techie on Dec 6, 2005 8:26:15 GMT -5
THE SHAME OF THE SUBURBS
Road map to good schools It'll take leadership to control costs and help troubled schools catch up
December 6, 2005
It's everybody's problem; it must be everybody's solution.
That was the message at a recent conference, sponsored by Adelphi University, aimed at highlighting the plight of what this page calls The Shame of the Suburbs - the handful of poor, mostly minority schools whose students lag far behind Long Island's far wealthier and whiter districts.
The need for collective solutions also should be the theme tomorrow night at an educational summit, organized by Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, that will bring school board officials together in the search for savings.
Before there can be any useful action, there has to be serious talk aimed at achieving a consensus, not just on the need for change, but a roadmap to get there.
Exceptions to Long Island's educational excellence, about a dozen of Long Island's 124 districts have chronically struggled to find the money and manpower - and sometimes even the motivation - to succeed. What became clear at the Adelphi conference, which featured State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, is that there is more than just a moral case against allowing this academic apartheid to continue. It's a matter of economic self-interest.
In a high-tech region increasingly reliant on a well-educated workforce, it's self-defeating to turn out young adults with difficulties reading, writing and computing. But it will take a combination of better leadership and more money - in the schools and the community - to reverse a culture of low expectations.
At present, any talk of spending more - particularly of shifting resources from one district to another - is being met with resistance. Many middle-class and even well-off districts have seen their budgets go down to defeat in the wake of double-digit tax hikes over the last few years. What's needed in those, as well as the poor districts, is greater accountability to taxpayers. Not a dollar can be wasted.
We hope Suozzi is sincere in his willingness to use his bullypulpit for helping school districts reduce spending and still maintain the high quality that is key to this region's prosperity. This can't simply be a publicity stunt to help his gubernatorial ambitions. And while the focus should be on helping all districts save, the summit should not lose sight of the sad fact that some districts are in far worse trouble - and need far more help - from everybody.
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
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Post by Go Plainedge! on Dec 6, 2005 12:20:55 GMT -5
THE SHAME OF THE SUBURBSAt present, any talk of spending more - particularly of shifting resources from one district to another - is being met with resistance. Many middle-class and even well-off districts have seen their budgets go down to defeat in the wake of double-digit tax hikes over the last few years. What's needed in those, as well as the poor districts, is greater accountability to taxpayers. Not a dollar can be wasted. "Not a dollar can be wasted"? Keyspan penalty Fuel Oil Lock-in rate Previous Super's scam pay-down Digital Picture Frames in every school
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Post by justfacts on Dec 6, 2005 17:11:11 GMT -5
Go Plainedge! You might also add; The $20,000 of "meals & refreshments" for meetings found to be not properly documented by the Hevisie audit ~ ~ ~ and a slightly larger amount for the same refreshments & meals in this year's "Contingency Budget"! Then how about this; MINUTES OF MEETING OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION BUSINESS MEETING October 20, 2005 9. Contract Agreements: RESOLVED, that the Plainedge Board of Education approve the Intermunicipal Agreement between Plainedge UFSD and Nassau County for a capital projects grant established by the Community Revitalization Program. RESOLVED, that the Plainedge Board of Education approve a salary increase and an extension of the Superintendent’s contract for an additional year, said contract will expire on June 30, 2008. Notice: The complete lack of Dollar amounts ~ ~ ~ and no comment about the cash-up-front performance bonus amount. And an aside: If you go back to the School site and to the notice about the new Board member - look at the corrections to the June 2005 date.
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Post by rinx on Dec 6, 2005 22:40:23 GMT -5
Go Plainedge! RESOLVED, that the Plainedge Board of Education approve a salary increase and an extension of the Superintendent’s contract for an additional year, said contract will expire on June 30, 2008.
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson....DOH! Yeah, this BOE sure speaks for the community. Which community? We'd sure like to know because it certainly isn't this one. I've yet to meet or speak to anyone in this district that wants him here another year.
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