Letters to the Malverne/West Hempstead Herald July 12, 2012

Cheers for DiMiceli

To the Editor:

Hooray for West Hempstead Board of Education Trustees Cynthia DiMiceli and Rudolf Schindler for their courageous opposition to the recent business-as-usual annual increase to West Hempstead’s school budget.

Special kudos to DiMiceli for going the extra mile and sending out mailers — at her own expense — encouraging voters to reject another dictated budget hike that hurts kids and fleeces taxpayers.

Mandatory annual teacher salary increases, health insurance premiums and even taxpayer-funded life insurance policies for school employees now eat up most of the West Hempstead school budget. These so-called “fixed” costs drive all annual tax increases. Meanwhile, while some want to punish DiMiceli “in the interest of our educational system,” they do so in support of a transparent lie: Bigger budgets have brought nothing for kids or parents but years of cutbacks to educational and extracurricular activities to make up for the mandates that increase salaries, with or without a contract, and shift teacher retirement burdens on taxpayers struggling to fund their own 401(k)--and who face a Social Security system that will be broke before many of us finish paying our mortgages.

Some allies of vested interests want to silence DiMiceli, and force her off the Board of Ed for having the audacity to say this old way of doing things cannot continue. What hypocrisy! The same First Amendment that guarantees unions the right to exist also guarantees DiMiceli and others the right to speak up when they see injustice and stupidity being rammed down our throats.  

Silencing won’t work. West Hempstead taxpayers are sick of the unsustainable burden put upon us, and ought to unite around DiMiceli and Schindler. Flood the next board policy meeting on Oct. 9!

It’s time to reform a broken school financing system that is making home ownership impossible. It’s time to reform budgets that suck money out of our classrooms and pour them into the pockets of a few who seem unwilling to recognize that they bear a responsibility of citizenship.

It’s especially time to stand up to those who presume to speak for the “educational system” but who forget that they work for, or enjoy generous pensions thanks to, us — taxpayers, citizens and voters of West Hempstead, who will not take it any longer. Because, simply, this unfairly funded “educational system” is dying.  

It will only be saved and reformed through the courageous free speech of DiMiceli, Schindler and many others who say: Enough is enough!

Jim Miskiewicz

West Hempstead resident