From: leestoller@aol.com 
To: editor@goleader.com 
Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 4:59 PM
Subject: Fwd: Taxpayer Cost of Westfield Redistricting – over $2.8 Million; Alternative: Status Quo – Cost -- Zero


Dear Leader,

I submit the below e-mail sent to you earlier as a letter to the editor.  If you would, please place the attached documents on the public postings site, and add a link to the site on my letter to the editor.

Thank you.

Lee Stoller


Dear Mayor Skibitsky, Members of the Town Council, Members of the Board of Education, and Superintendent Dolan,


Taxpayer Cost of Westfield Redistricting – over $2.8 Million; Alternative:  Status Quo – Cost -- Zero


On behalf of fellow taxpayers, I hereby submit a Taxpayers White Paper on Redistricting, including excel spreadsheets to make this user-friendly for the general public, and to correct errors made by the Board of Education in its enrollment spreadsheet. Despite claims by the Board of Education and Superintendent to the contrary, we estimate the cost of this plan to be as much as $2.8 million dollars or more. The alternative, maintaining the status quo, we estimate will cost Zero, and will maintain reasonable class sizes at both Roosevelt (27) and Edison (25) on average over the next 5 years.  
 
This Taxpayer's Position Paper shows that the now approved intermediate school redistricting proposal will merely shift the increase in class sizes to Edison from Roosevelt over the next 5 years.  On average, Edison will go from 24 to 27 per class, and Roosevelt from 27 to 24. Significantly, Edison will have class sizes of 31 and 29 at Edison in Years 3 and 5 of the Plan, due to a surge in in-coming 6th grade students from McKinley, Tamaques and Jefferson in those years coupled with the redistricted students from Washington, unless the Board hires a new 5 teacher "team" for each of these years, at a cost of approximately $1 million per team.  Busing costs of over $250k will also be incurred due to this plan.
 
Will the board have the money to hire those teams?  Where will the money come from for previously unnecessary busing?  Given the huge cost involved, and the gap in state aid facing the Westfield School District ($3.5 million this year alone), as well as expected deficits going forward during this recession, it is far from clear whether the Board will be in a position to hire such new teachers – if it doesn’t hire them, it will merely have shifted the increase in class size from one school to the other. Hiring these teachers would be unnecessary if there was no redistricting – it’s unlikely the Board would hire new teachers with class sizes of 28 (year 3) and 26 (year 5) at Edison.
 
Based on current elementary school enrollment numbers, Roosevelt, unlike Edison, does not have a surge of students coming in future years. We are quite surprised that the Board did not consider this more seriously prior to approving the redistricting plan.  In fact, neither the Board nor the Superintendent has put forth any information on the cost of their redistricting plan, and we challenge the Board to respond to this Taxpayer’s White Paper with hard financial information on the full cost of this plan.  Given the dire fiscal situation, the taxpayers have the right to know as they consider the upcoming vote on the school budget.
 
Lee Stoller
Westfield