Tag: Education

What’s driving K-12 school costs?

  • by E.J. McMahon
  • January 28, 2014
  • Reports

The full extent of the continuing rise in school spending since the recession was not inevitable or unavoidable. It was the result of (a) increasing teacher compensation costs driven largely by automatic pay raises, and (b) continued relatively high levels of staffing, relative to enrollment, especially in non-teaching titles. Read More

Cuomo’s school bond would stall environmental measure

E.J. McMahon, executive director of the fiscally-conservative Empire Center, noted that statewide bond acts are often rejected by voters and he said the education bond proposed by Cuomo seems to rely on an arbitrary number and would pay for technology that will be outdated and useless before it's even paid off. “My concern is that it was pulled out of thin air and it was used to fill space in the State of the State that was thin on education stuff,” he said Sewer and infrastructure upgrades are a significant expense faced by many municipalities, including some that still directly discharge waste into the Hudson River during storms. Beaches in communities along Lake Erie are regularly closed during summer months because of sewer discharge into the water. Old pipes, decaying electrical systems and other infrastructure problems have stalled private development in many upstate cities, McMahon said. While McMahon said he didn't support the whole environmental bond, the $2 billion directed toward infrastructure is increasingly necessary, but gets little notice during an election year. “It's the non-sexy, really important thing that seems like it won't happen while we're paying for iPads and technology for schools,” he said. Read More