At last night's meeting of the Hudson City School District Board of Education, interim superintendent Brian Bailey presented some ideas for cutting the budget proposed for 2026-2027 school year. Earlier this evening, the Register-Star published this report on the meeting: "Hudson schools proposed budget cuts 33 positions." According to the article, the positions are: "one central office administrative position, one building administration position, 14 classroom teacher or student support positions, 15 aides, one clerical role and one custodian position for a savings of more than $2.4 million." Other possible cuts were mentioned in the article as well.
To review, the proposed budget for 2026-2027, before any cuts, is $63.1 million--$4.6 million more than the budget for the current school year. Even if taxes are increased by 5.8 percent--the maximum allowable--and maximum allowable amount is taken from the unassigned fund balance, the district would still be $2.58 million short if no cuts are made to the budget.
The video of the school board meeting can be viewed here.
It’s clear that the HCSD isn’t serious about either balancing its budget or removing redundancies and inefficiencies from its bloated, incompetent central office workforce. Fire 14 actual educators and only 1 central office paper pusher in a district that can’t teach our kids to read?! You don’t need an MBA or a Ph.D in pedagogy to realize this makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteA real leader would literally decimate the central office — 10% immediate headcount reduction. At the very least, every budget analyst and planner should be cashiered ASAP. Anything less — like what’s proposed — is merely politics and innumeracy.
And, speaking of politics, where are our elected “leaders” — Didi Barrett, the 5 supervisors and mayor, our state senator — when our kids (and their tax paying parents and neighbors) need them? Why aren’t any of them making any noise? I guess kids aren’t as important as just about anything else.
Thanks John for laying it out as it is and should be. Our elected leaders should be tossed out for allowing such education negligence of OUR children.
DeleteLet's not forget all the money that HCSD spends -- needlessly, as the academic record proves -- on public relations and other assorted outside consultants.
DeleteWhile our "leaders" silence is deafening there has been a voice sounding the alarm regarding our failures in educating our children for years.
ReplyDeleteKen Sheffer has detailed every misstep and predicted this budget fiasco years ago. I am sure he could clear up this budget deficit.
Clearly cutting teachers is an attempt at leverage and not a serious proposal. Our kids deserve better and perhaps that opportunity for better exists with Charter Schools.
This comment from Susan Troy was submitted by email:
ReplyDeleteI went to the Budget Workshop meeting and was surprised, maybe stunned is a better word, by the number of HCSD staff there, because when I've attended other "regular" School Board Meetings I've never seen twenty-five or fifty or more HCSD staff in attendance in their HTA and CSEA T-Shirts.
Do we think that the pricey Public Relations firm the taxpayers didn't get to directly interview or hire, think that those optics would be helpful? It appeared to be a union rally; I don't know, does that messaging scream "We're 100% here for the kids!", or does that messaging scream "We're 100% here to save our jobs!"?
Interestingly, I didn't see anyone from the Chamber of Commerce or any other economic development organization in attendance, although I could be wrong, and am happy to be corrected. Again, I, apparently incorrectly, figured developing a local workforce that can read at grade level and do grade level math might be a priority for those organizations that tout themselves as representatives of, and advocates for, more local economic development opportunities.
Didn't see the equivalent of a bleacher full of dedicated Bluehawk Nation sports parents in attendance, but again I could be wrong, and happy to be corrected. I understand that both Minor and Major League, semi-pro and pro-athletes all hire attorneys to represent them in contract negotiations, but it seems to me that again, Bluehawk Nation sports parents would want their kids, and their kids' teammates to be able to read at grade level. Oh, and the kids who aren't part of the Bluehawk Nation sports community should be able to read at grade level, too. A bonus.
Four million bucks is a big number for taxpayers to cover if no one in your specific household works for the school district that isn't succeeding in doing their collective job.
Susan makes clear the real problem here: HCSD has become an employment agency not an education institution.
DeleteOf course they want to save their jobs. The real question is where was the community, parents and non-parents, sports related or not?
ReplyDeleteOk so let's take a step back:
ReplyDeleteA state-enforced monopoly ran out of other people's money. This $2.5 million deficit is not a moral tragedy, it is the mathematical certainty of a broken system.
The district executed a highly predictable playbook:
- Lobby for a rigid local monopoly.
- Overcharge taxpayers for a product that works for some but fails most.
- Protect underperformers with lifelong tenure.
- Execute layoffs based on seniority or politics, ignoring merit entirely.
When you build an organization without market feedback, the money eventually disappears.
Leadership and labor unions framing bad math and terrible incentives as a crisis of compassion is just a distraction from economic reality.
Imagine two coffee shop models in Hudson:
> Model A operates in a free market. It fires baristas who burn the espresso and rewards excellent baristas with great pay and flexibility. If it fails, it closes.
> Model B is a state monopoly. By law, competitors must close or match its exact pay scale and labor laws. Every resident is forced to pay for a daily espresso, at a very high price, whether they drink coffee or not. Tea is not an option.
While some baristas at model B are also genuinely excellent, the shop grants lifetime employment to those who routinely ruin drinks. When budgets tighten, they fire their brightest young talent first.
When Model B inevitably bankrupts itself, management weeps to the press about a moral failure to fund the coffee supply. And no one gets coffee until a new system is introduced or they have to travel to neighboring towns.
And this is why Hudson has excellent coffee, and mediocre public schools.
It is time to stop subsidizing a failing monopoly and start letting parents choose where to buy their coffee.
Legally we can't touch HCSD (which is a slap in the face of every tax payer) but we can do something about the almost $1m City of Hudson Youth Center.
Let's not get distracted by the Youth Center, as a City stand-in for HCSD, even though it has many of HCSD's problems: it takes care of the adults before it takes care of the kids. Let's start making the Youth Center a transparent City agency to take care of Hudson's kids -- and visitors from elsewhere -- by opening the books and the building to the community. The City, for example, can run literacy programs there that HCSD won't run; it can and should start a Task Force for literacy, meeting in the Youth Center, to tackle the challenges that HCSD won't tackle.
DeleteIt seems to me that the primary focus of HCSD is a jobs program… but for administrators, not students and their future careers. It’s basically a mafia extortion racket, making residents pay with little in return. And people wonder why the average age of the local population keeps going up. The high taxes make it too expensive for younger people and families to stay here and the terrible school rankings keep new families from moving in.
ReplyDeleteSad but true, Jack.
DeleteIf only someone had the time to map all the unionized employees of HCSD, and the City of Hudson Youth Center, and then tally up the 501c3 funding claimed by all the youth focussed groups (Neighborhood Promise, Kite's Nest, Spark, Friends of Hudson Youth etc.).
- What would the tax+donations be per resident?
- Which families double dip in this funding pool?
By our back of the envelope math it is over $50k per 6 to 18 year old.
And that is why we will write more about the groups harvesting "grief for grants".
Jefferson said it best when he said that if he had to choose between newspapers and a democracy, he would choose newspapers. This little town has too many secret societies pulling too many secret strings. Why hasn't anyone released the books of the Youth Center. We need facts not histrionics.
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