The following article about the Kiryas Joel School District was written by Matt Schaertl, and appears in the Webster Post.
Canandaigua, NY – There is a need for serious review of school funding, but if you think there is waste in the Finger Lakes, take a look downstate.
In Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt’s district, just northwest of New York City, is the Kiryas Joel School District. The district was founded by the ultra-orthodox Jewish community to educate special-needs children. On their website, they say they provide a “broad array of services in an efficient, professional and expeditious manner” and that the school “has truly been an exemplary partnership, which has made this such a successful American experiment.” Yes, it is a very successful experiment — in showing how not to run a school district.
Kiryas Joel collects $15,000 less from the local residents, per student, than the average school district. Why? They don’t need it. They collect $19,000 per student in state aid — which is 700 percent more than New York’s average school district receives. Worse, they collect $39,000 per student from the federal government every year. Blood boiling yet?
With Victor at $13 and Canandaigua hovering around $50 for “unclassified employee benefits” per pupil, KJSD is spending a whopping $11,543 per year, per student.
I am only speculating, but perhaps teacher benefits there include free mortgage payments. On the plus side, they do have only one-quarter the debt per student as the average district. Hey — kudos to KJSD for almost balancing your checkbook!
In total, America spends $110,884 per student per year for every public school student in that school district. That equates to $1,441,492 of taxes to produce ONE high school diploma. It would be less expensive to pay every student what an enlisted soldier earns from the time they enter kindergarten until they turn 75. It would be cheaper to educate those students by providing each their own individual teacher, plus allow that teacher to spend twice the state’s average cost.
Three miles from that district is the Monroe-Woodbury school system. They too spend more per pupil than any of our local districts, but at $19,088 per student I’d take it. The average home in that district is valued at $250,000 with an average family income 60 percent higher than the state average. Yet the residents pay $2,000 less per student locally than the typical school district. As far as “unclassified employee benefits,” they are similar to Red Jacket and Victor at $9 per student and have the normal amount of debt.
So while Assemblywoman Annie Rabbitt (Conservative by party affiliation, not by action) is, according to her website, trying to save the $8.2 million in funding for the Lake Placid Olympic facility, my question for her is why a school district that is smaller than DeSales is spending $10,000,000 more annually than Red Jacket, has 21 staff members with salaries above $100,000 (as compared to three at Red Jacket, four at Midlakes, five at Bloomfield and 18 at Canandaigua) and why the lowest-paid bus drivers, janitors, aides, office assistants, and cafeteria workers are all making more than $52,000 per year? (Source: www.seethruny.net.)
And by the way, for people like Annie Rabbitt, the Winter Olympics have not been here in three decades — and the committee lets you know eight years in advance if they are coming back. That’s another $240 million we could have saved since 1982. Lease it; take the cash.
(Source: Webster Post)
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11 Responses
watch out for th eanti semites!!!!!!!
he forgets to mention that there are only special needs children. in a district 10x th esize of his , only a few hundred are in public school, all of them needing specialized services!
I have no idea how well or how poorly KJSD is run, but since the district’s students all have special needs (and presumably mostly severe ones), the numbers are naturally skewed. The most disabled students in any district require a lot of teachers, assistants, and therapists. Unclassified employee benefits per pupil has got to be one of the strangest statistics ever invented — how about employee benefits per employee?
The author is an ignoramus; he has no clue as to how unbelievable expensive it can be to educate special needs children.
What the articel fails to mention is that EVERY student in KJSD is a mentely disabled students since 100% of the reguler kids go to privat school so thats why the cost per student is so high. If you facture in the privat school kids in the district then america is saving money in KJSD not the other way around.
This is a disgusting article badmouthing the frum community.
Another journalist who is in fact a biased columnist. The media in America is way past reproach and ridicule. It is sadly comical, if it wasn’t so dangerous, in a most detrimental way.
Has anyone looked at District #75 in NYC? Someone should….
Where is the appreciation for the countless tax dollars saved due to frum parents sending their children to private schools (not only in Kiryas Yoel, but nationwide)?
Is there a greater than average incidence of special needs? Is anyone addressing the risks of an often closed gene pool?
Where is the appreciation for the countless tax dollars saved due to frum parents sending their children to private schools (not only in Kiryas Yoel, but nationwide)?
To be fair, we’re not doing it to save the taxpayers money.
If you’re not going to give the Romans credit for roads and bridges because they built them for themselves (even though Jews use them), then you can’t claim credit for saving taxpayers money, since you did it for yourself and not for them.
That being said, I agree with everyone above that the writer of the article is either ignorant or purposely misinterpreting the nature of the KJSD.
The Wolf
A local reporter from Canandaigua, NY (somewhere near the Canadian border) is upset at assemblywoman Annie Rabitt (who is actually not in best terms with KJ), he runs to Google & tries to dig dirt on her, he thinks he found it, a school district in her assembly boundaries spends a lot per student.
He doesn’t even know or bother to check that KJSD has 117 special needs students, but provides services for hundreds more, and busing and other limited services for thousands, but when you divide their whole budget over 117 students, you get a crazy big number.
Ironically, if you divide the amount of government aid per private school child in KJ, it comes out to some $300 per child, compare that to the $23,000 the state spends for every child in Newburgh another school district in the area.
To be exact, with a similar number of (public & privately schooled) children, Newburgh gets $226m, while KJ gets some $16m
http://www.nysed.gov/stateaid/dist/exec11/441600.html
http://www.nysed.gov/stateaid/dist/exec11/441202.html