TI school budget is a community concern

Important notice for everyone in the Thousand Islands Central School District (Cape Vincent, Clayton, Fishers Landing and Depauville): On Tuesday and March 27 at 6 p.m. in the high school library there will be meetings open to everyone in the TI school district regarding the financial crisis that our school board is trying to address. These meetings are open to everyone and should be attended by everyone.

Based on the upcoming state budget figures, our district will be at a $1.2 million shortfall for the 2012-13 school year. This is a very difficult time for all of us. This problem will dramatically impact each and every one of us in a very negative way. This is not a school board issue, a teacher and staff issue or just a taxpayer issue. It is a districtwide community issue, and we all need to be informed and educated on what we can do to come together as an entire school community and work to get through this extremely difficult time.

Based on these figures, there will be many more jobs cut, which will increase class sizes and decrease the benefits of a quality education. We have cut 27-plus positions and have not replaced many others in the last two years. There is no more room to cut without gutting our educational process. In addition to the teaching positions that we will lose, there will be no athletics, music, art and possibly no kindergarten.

We, as part of our school community, need to get informed on what the impact will be on our students and our properties. Our quality school is an investment in your own personal property. It doesn’t matter if you work for the district, have children who go to school there or just own property and live within the district.

This is an issue that we all need to be aware of and informed, so we can help our school board make decisions that we will all support. Please attend these meetings and hear an explanation of how the state 2 percent property tax cap will impact our school and our children.

If we can all band together and give the board some direction on what tax percent increase we as taxpayers will support and then get the entire staff to join us and have them discuss salary concessions, together we may be able to get through this and still offer our children, staff and taxpayers a quality education at a price we can all live with.

Daniel Wiley

Cape Vincent