School Merger: It's Time To Vote

Last week, the Southampton Board of Education (“BOE”) held an informational meeting at the Roger's Memorial Library, which I attended along with my neighbors.

The subject: Whether taxpayers will allow the Southampton School District to acquire the insolvent Tuckahoe School operations and be responsible for its expenses now and forever. What I discovered was the appearance of a lack of information that worried attending taxpayers to the point of frustration and hand wringing.

The questions in many taxpayer's minds seemed to be: How did so many dollars go down the drain?  Why did Tuckahoe wait until they were involvent to merge?  Why isn't the BOE being more transparent?

Throughout the BOE's 90-minute meeting, I noticed that members of the BOE were not fully able to answer the many questions and concerns of Southampton's taxpayers. Such an exhaustive level of frustration grew in the room that order had to be called to keep taxpayers from jumping out of their own skins.

After the meeting, I spoke privately to a person who is very knowledgeable on the school merger subject. (Let’s call that person “Sam”.)  I said to Sam that the Board gave the impression to me that they knew surprisingly little about the merger. And I asked Sam if the Board was really prepared to educate the public before Tuesday's vote.

Sam admitted that the information about the merger is very difficult to understand and that the board's member may not have a full grasp of all the details. In fact, one of the CAC members who spoke that night and who was chosen to work with the Board over the past 6 months, confessed publicly to taking that much time to get his head around the financials; and he is an advance financial professional.  That said a lot to me.

With this scene as the backdrop, I couldn’t help but wonder if the public is sufficiently educated to vote on this merger on Tuesday, and so I asked, "Is this vote premature if the public is not fully informed?"

Sam agreed with me and confessed that taxpayers should vote 'no' this Tuesday and then the proposal would be defeated and revisited in another year.  The students would continue to get their education.  The community would be given time to fully understand all the options and go to the polls confident that all the pathways had been investigated.   If the BOE hired a firm to effectively handle this process, we’d all be better off.

One point made clear to me by a person close to the potential effects of a failed vote, is that the Southampton football team would not have sufficient kids in next year's season to make up a qualifying team. In other words there would be no football in the 2014 season if the measure fails. If that is as important to you as it is to this young buck and others, then you'll be voting with a purpose that I can appreciate and respect.

Like most of you reading this blog, I’ve faithfully supported the budgets put forth to fund our children's education. But I question whether Southampton's BOE has provided full disclosure AND a full explanation of the potential options and their upside or downside to taxpayers. They admitted to only having received information from the State of New York in the past week or two and that worries me. Have they effectively gotten the word out to the community and have they answered everybody's questions?

Are you ready to vote?

PLEASE...read what you can, absorb everything on the subject – we don’t have six months unfortunately, but we have another day - and then vote...above all VOTE this Tuesday. You'll be paying the bill either way, so get yourselves to the polls and make your voice heard. 

If this proposal fails, we'll have a full year to hear all the details, examine the full financial comparisons and ask our BOE and the State to lay out all the possible options.  We deserve as much.  If the proposal passes, like everything else democratic, we’ll support it fully.  Either way, our community will come together to help one another. 

Patience, perseverance, intelligence and the democratic process will bring us there together.  Let’s all vote TODAY.