It's Back to School for Students—And Tax Collection Time for School Districts

September means it's back to school for local students, something they may dread. But for some of their parents and other residents, September signals that something far more painful has passed—paying school taxes.

Rye's 2010-11 school budget totals nearly $70 million, and on Aug. 31, the school district began collecting that sum when residents had to pay their latest installment of taxes. While some argue that taxes are well worth the education students receive in Rye, others are wondering whether they are getting the biggest bang for their educational buck.

Among the doubters are those hanging on by their fingernails—hear the scratch on the blackboard—at a time when jobs are scarce, unemployment is on the rise and retirees living on a fixed income are having a hard time affording to live in Rye.

But some residents say the school taxes are the price you pay for living here, and that's just the way it is because Rye kids deserve the best education money can buy.

So the responses vary, from enthusiastic support for Rye education as ranking with the best in the nation to negative reactions about wasteful spending in a budget allegedly chock full of unnecessary frills during an economic downturn.

So like the chalk writing on a blackboard, it isn't simply a matter of black-and-white, because the answers depend on the viewpoint of who is doing the answering.

School Board President Josh Nathan said this year's school taxes in Rye aren't exorbitant at all.

"We have controlled spending and cut costs in a manner that has enabled us to provide our top k-12 education to a growing enrollment without cutting vital programs or new initiatives or classroom teachers, and we have done so with tax increases that consistently have been the lowest or among the very lowest in the County," Nathan said.

"In fact, recently the rate of enrollment increase has been exceeding the rate of tax increase. So in the context of what Rye achieves with its students and how efficiently we manage to achieve it, and in the confines of how school finances work, I am comfortable with the school taxes I pay," Nathan added. "Our taxes would be lower if the state did not impose mandates that the state refuses to fund."

But Rye Board of Education gadfly Bertrand de Frondeville isn't so sure about that.

He argues that there is between $3 million to $4 million in easily trimmed fat in the 2010-11 school budget, says the unionized teachers are grossly overpaid and wants a return to academic basics—without such frills as Mandarin and Spanish in the grammar and middle schools and sports like crew and squash now being funded as varsity sports. He would prefer a contingency budget as a last resort.

His school taxes are around $20,000 a year.

"We've worked hard, retired, are thrifty, but the way things are going tax-wise we'd move if our grandchildren didn't love coming to Rye," he said.

In Rye Brook, where school taxes for the Blind Brook-Rye Union Free School District are due to the Town of Rye in September, school board critic Sam Marcus said the district's taxes are the driving force behind the high cost of living in the area.

"It is well known that our RE [real estate] taxes are close to being the highest in the country. School taxes create this 'honor,'" Marcus said.

"My taxes were about $3,000 when I moved into Rye Brook in 1979. They have almost doubled every 12 years - now about $20,000," he said. "Up 700 percent! So, do the math. If nothing changes, then my taxes, which are pretty close to the norm, will be $40,000 in about 11 years; $80,000 in 22 years and $160,000 in 30 years. Give these numbers to a prospective buyer of a house [in the area] and see what happens."

Marcus and his fellow school board critic, Dick Hubert, have consistently argued that Blind Brook's $25,000 per student price tag is way too much. This year, the district passed a nearly $40 million budget, a figure that is inflated because of high salaries and benefits, Marcus argues.

"There is no correlation between paying more per student and the quality of education," he said.

Rye City's Arlene Leiter respectfully disagrees.

"Churchill said there is no such thing as good taxes," she said. "I say there is. It costs money to provide a good education in a good community, and Rye is a great community and provides a great education."

"The quality of education it provides is part of the package that makes Rye great," she added. "I feel that way, and I don't even have any children in the schools."

Rye resident Anye Weiner feels she is getting her money's worth for her taxes, as does Ms. Leiter, who both pay in the $11,000 range.

"I have two children in the Rye schools," Anye said. "And I feel they are getting the equivalent of a private school education. If I was living in New York City, a comparable education would cost about $25,000 apiece."

But that's precisely the problem, according to Rye Brook's Dick Hubert, whose taxes are more than $20,000 a year.

"There's no reason why a Rye [Brook] education should cost that much, $25,000 or so per student is ridiculous, more than twice as much as it costs in neighboring Connecticut communities such as New Canaan and Darien, and their education is every bit as good as ours," he said. "The teachers are grossly overpaid with salaries in the $100,000 range, principals earning around $150,000, and on and on and up and up. It's ridiculous."

But for some school officials, taxes, salaries, benefits and the like are necessary parts of a bigger end goal.

"This is really about the children," Blind Brook Board of Education Vice President Sheri Zarkower said in April when the district approved its school budget.

"We are in the business of educating our children and sometimes that gets lost in all the rhetoric."