As homeowners in Hudson face a possible 5.8 percent increase in school taxes, Hudson Common Sense takes a hard look at the cost to the taxpayer of a related Hudson institution: the Hudson Youth Department. The special report titled "Half the Kids. Twenty Times the Budget" can be read here.
This report is extremely messy and problematic. As a resident (with no kids) it saddens me to see disparate issues being jumbled together into a mis-leading infographic. Not only is the math incorrect, but adding cost based on non-profit orgs is not logical.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, the attack on the Friends of Hudson Youth makes no note of the fact that the City of Hudson does not have a Parks Department leaving the Hudson Youth Center to account for daily management of a 14-acre park with a public swimming beach, trails, and recreational areas.
Thank you for reading, continue reading until you hit the footnotes, Melly
DeleteRight now you have three objections, zero rebuttals. How is the math incorrect? Show us, please.
The math is sourced, rounded down, and a forensic accountant challenge stands open.
The nonprofits are counted because taxpayers fund all of them for the same 720 kids. And "we manage the park because there's no Parks Department" is our argument, not yours: that's mission creep with an MOU and no exit clause.
Besides - running a youth center that quietly became Hudson's parks department (without a democratic vote) is like hiring a babysitter who redecorates your house and then invoices you for interior design.
The job crept. The bill didn't.
I will say that melly mimmins does have a point when it comes to that infographic and I assume they are referring to the one that immediately struck me as problematic as well (youth percentage in Hudson versus Youth Center budget).
DeleteAny graph that plots two uncorrelated series against each other is suspect, and there can be no doubt that they are uncorrelated because the whole point of the graph is to show that the budget keeps ballooning as the number of kids is declining.
The problem with this type of graph is always the scaling of the y-axis. This graph, rather arbitrarily, scales the youth population percentage of Hudson to between 10% and 22%. If you were to use the full scale of 0% to 100%, it would suddenly look a lot less dramatic. Using percentage here in the first place was a bad idea. The y-axis should just be the absolute number of youth and not a percentage of the population. You still have to decide how to scale it but you could probably use zero to the max number of youth in that time window and it would still support your argument.
Hugo of course knows all of this already. 😃
That said, while I think the article could have been cleaned up a little bit, what it's trying to say is in my opinion a legitimate criticism. There is clearly something wrong here and what is currently going on isn't working - neither for the kids nor for those footing the bill.
I don't entirely agree with the premise that this is all one big mafiaesque scheme orchestrated to milk the city's coffers to the benefit of a few that subsequently have a rousing party at the Pocketbook Factory. I don't see that.
I largely believe that Peter Frank and his FOHY are acting in good faith. That doesn't mean I buy all of his arguments. The claim he made in his letter to the Common Council that every dollar spent on youth somehow leads to municipal savings of $8-$12 is one that needs far more support.
Assuming a $900k budget for the Youth Department and a conservative $8 saved per budget dollar, that would mean the city is saving $6.3M per year just on the back of the Youth Department alone. That is most certainly not what is happening.
Max -
Delete1. You can live in Hudson, yet you choose Greenport. You prove our thesis with your feet. ;-)
2. Footnote 6 is for you.
We acknowledged the dual Y-axis limitation explicitly, yes, an editorial blog is not an OMB briefing, and we traded the soothing beige for scary red on purpose.
The directional truth stands regardless: 50% fewer kids, 1,000% more spending.
You can frame the chart however you like, the slope doesn't change. Besides, who else in 12534 calculates inflation adjusted dollars so conservatively?
And bravo for reading all the way to the Africa footnote.
On Frank: good faith and bad outcomes are not mutually exclusive, that's actually the more troubling scenario. But the $8-$12 savings multiplier is the tell. $900k times $8 equals $6.3M in annual municipal savings. Where is it?
That number deserves a public answer, not a gala.
~
So who wants to split a forensic audit with us to figure out the real funding number for per kid spending in Hudson (public and private $)
We underestimated Kite's Nest, Operation Unite, Promise Neighborhood... how do the kids in other towns survive?
Blah, blah, blah. You have an agenda, great, and your own website to blather on and on about it.
DeleteCorrect, but we call it a mission:
DeleteTo make Hudson more 1) Evenhanded, 2) Efficient and 3) Equal.
Are you, MS, not concerned that Hudson has some of the highest taxes in the nation and little to show for it?
https://www.hudsoncommonsense.com/aboutus
Yes I'm concerned, but you just flood this blog with your snarky commentary, acting like you are positively correct on every statement and issue. I just find it annoying.
DeleteMS, fair on tone, but tone isnt the argument.
DeleteThe piece is footnoted, the math is open, the audit offer stands.
Find an error and we'll correct it up top.
We call this a preference for shared facts, different opinions.
Hudson seems to prefer different facts, shared opinions.
Flip the order and the snark goes with it.
The town might also thrive.
This article really does feel like a case study in the dangers of AI-assisted argument making- when you take a bunch of loosely connected information, skew the framing to support your point, package it in a polished “data-driven” format, and hope nobody checks whether the math or comparisons actually make sense. I will say though, Hugo is prolific at producing this stuff! It makes one wonder what one earth he would do with all his time saved, if he had just moved to another town with lower taxes and less community resources. Imagine the possibilities!
ReplyDeleteThere’s honestly too much here to fully unpack, and I don’t have the time or interest to spend any more time inside the deep cynical Hudson Common Sense universe, but a few things jump out immediately:
The proposed HCSD budget is $59,171,704.
District enrollment is 1,474 students.
That comes out to roughly $40,143 per student, not the inflated numbers being tossed around here.
That budget pays for teacher salaries, pensions, transportation, buildings, maintenance, utilities, athletics, arts, special education mandates, food service, and the enormous amount of infrastructure required to run a public school district- this number is not much different from our neighboring districts- and we have a high population of kids with extra needs.
Also, HCSD serves students from Hudson, Greenport, Claverack, Livingston, Stockport, and parts of Ghent.
So I genuinely do not understand the logic of then switching to dividing separate youth organizations by only the 720 children living within Hudson city limits and stacking those numbers onto district spending, as though they are all serving the exact same population in the exact same way- unless your just trying to get as big enough number to enrage people to vote no!
And yes, taxes are frustrating. Everyone feels squeezed right now. But personally, I want to live in a community that invests in kids! I want our children to grow up surrounded by parks, programming, support systems, food access, teachers, mentors, and neighbors who actually care whether they thrive!
I did the math on my own proposed school tax increase: it comes out to about an extra $11 per month.
Thats one less latte, Hugo- we’ll survive!
Just to end VOTING NO ON THIS INCREASED SCHOOL TAX HURTS OUR KIDS!
The real number is closer to $60k, if you include state and federal spending.
DeleteWe rounded down, a lot. And we used HCSD's latest presentation btw;
https://gossipsofrivertown.blogspot.com/2026/02/some-intel-from-school-board-meeting.html
And don't worry... re: "too much here to fully unpack"... we will unpack all the details over the next week in daily drops.
Sign up on Instagram or for our HCS Briefing:
https://www.hudsoncommonsense.com/subscribe
Your math on HCSD is close to ours (we use actualized spend rather than the proposed budget) which gets you to $41,994, not $40,143. Round either way: it's still Manhattan private school money for bottom-quartile results.
Read Footnote 3, it will explain your denominator error.
Also... we can double the spending per student to $100k if you want, and double HCSD school taxes... it will just come with the trade-off of massive "displacement," of the working middle class.
Pick one.
This comment from Susan Troy was submitted by email:
DeleteOkay, so we're spending $40,143.00 per student. That's a big number. Is it a big enough number, per student, or should we spend more? And if we should spend more, how much more? Specific numbers, please. Enough to entirely wipe out the latte budget for the month or for the year?
I don't spend money on lattes, so no, that's not one less latte for me. It might be two less boxes of coffee on sale at CVS for me, though.
Where are the specific numbers on how many students, by grade, are reading at grade level, today? You know, the return-on-investment numbers.
How exactly would fewer $100K + administrators "hurt our kids"? I graduated from HHS, and never had a single interaction with a principal or an assistant principal. Ever.
And we seemed to have completely glossed over the piece of the $4 million hole the HCSD is in because staff wasn't correctly data entering new hires. Who dropped that ball, and have they been, I don't know, trained, corrected, chastised, fired? You know like, in the real world? In the real world where the hard working, non-unionized taxpayers work?
Lots of adjectives in the pro-tax increase arguments. My father, who was a newspaper editor, always maintained that the more adjectives a reporter had to use to write the story, the less of a story that reporter had.
Hannah - On the AI joke: the report took several months, draws on primary source Common Council minutes from 2005, IRS 990s, Census data, the MOU itself, and actualized budget figures. We consulted attorneys, board members of HCSD and the Boys Club, from the previous millennium. We pre-drafted anti-slapp filings to save time.
DeleteThe footnotes run longer than most local op-eds. We spoke to a dozen contributors across all five wards, gave City Hall and the Youth Center a full week to respond or rebut before publication, and several of our editors and contributors have spent years working inside these very NGOs. We edited out several incredible damning facts and records to keep this narrow and impersonal, and to not saddle the current well meaning administration with their predecessors' mistakes.
We spoke with past mayors and teachers. We spoke with residents' whose families built the physical school.
And we still do not know the inside of this machine and how many people make a living from "serving" the youth.
If that's AI, we'll take it, but the audit offer is very human, very public, and still unanswered. If you know the FOHY leadership, they have gone incommunicado, can you ask them to go 50/50 with us on a financial audit of total spending on Youth in Hudson (private and public, let's get to the truth, together)?
As for our editors moving to a lower-tax towns: we already have a foot on the ground in several, which informs this piece. The staggering contrast in lost potential and unfairness.
The report tries to explain exactly why that keeps happening, and who pays when it does.
Did you figure out your denominator error?
One less latte? Ha! That latte was cut out of the budget 10 years ago. There are no more lattes. 11 bucks is about 1/10th of my monthly Aldi shop. Makes that amount sound larger now, doesn't it? Speak for yourself when you say "we'll survive". Some taxpayers are more squeezed than others. Some assessments are more unfair than others, probably because there was an assumption made in this town that anyone with a 917 phone number must be well off, rather than surviving. As someone born fairly broke, I did the financially responsible thing in life by not having kids, and through scrappiness and frugality clawed my way, alone, into home ownership, only to have it all risked, and to get milked for more and more of my hard earned dollars, to overpay for other people's kids that I frankly don't have the luxury of caring about. So yeah... speak for yourself.
DeleteYeah, the $11 quote is cute as it is smug. The proposed school budget increase would raise my family’s taxes by about $40 a month. Which still may not sound like much for the daily latte class, but remember that this is compounded above all the annual increases… kinda like how your retirement savings is supposed to compound over time. Except this is the opposite and you just end up poor over time and have to move out of Hudson if you’re on a fixed income in your golden years. Don’t worry though, the “Associate Assistant Deputy to the Under-superintendent of Academic Success” will still be making 6x the area median income.
DeleteNotice who shows up to defend the status quo, and who doesn't.
DeleteThe defenders tend to draw income, grants, status, or clients from the same civic ecosystem they're defending.
The critics tend to be the people writing the checks.
The defenders want this to be about identity. It isn't. It's about arithmetic, outcomes, and whether $45,000+ per student is buying Hudson's youth an education worth the price.
Reasonable people can disagree on the budget. They cannot disagree on who pays and who collects.
The money is being spent. The children are not being saved.
Melly Mimms - exactly. A full summer program that employs counselors, life guards , field trips, buses , the supplies to run the camp. I’m sure I’m leaving something out. These children are our most vulnerable population . As a community, we should all help to insure they have what they need.
ReplyDeleteIf they are the most vulnerable, why are their reading scores in the bottom quartile of New York State after twenty years and a twentyfold budget increase?
DeleteThe moral case for spending more is also the moral case for demanding results.
Chatham gets better outcomes for a fraction the cost. The children (and their parents) deserve both.
I don't get the hate for this report. It is stating the obvious. I am all for paying my fair share of taxes if the money is effectively being used, and it does not seem to be. Embrace reality, folks, and stop being stuck in your ways. We all need highly educated critical thinkers, old and young. Else Democracy dies. Thank you HCS for bringing this to light.
DeleteAnd pay for a PORTA JOHN at $250 per month 12 months of the year?
ReplyDeleteBill - is this a Youth Center expense? Or a City of Hudson (DPW) expense? Or a FOHY expense? Where is this porta potty/john?
DeleteEntrance to Oakdale, first thing everyone sees. I think it's closer to $225; I saw an invoice. Youth dept pays for it, as far as I could tell.
DeleteThe Youth Department maintains the park? Any park? I believe that's Public Works, not Youth.
ReplyDeleteHannah Black: Excellent points -- but our kids can't read, write, do basic arithmetic or graduate in a timely fashion. Consequently, the HCSD is a failed organization by any measure. Voting "no" on the budget sends the message that the HCSD is already hurting our kids and our families, that it's time to stop pretending it's not, and that more money won't fix this bloated, broken-down and sad excuse for a public school system.
And Nick: It's nice to provide for the Hudson youth, so long as I'm only paying for Hudson youth. But I'm not -- I'm paying for plenty of out-of-town kids.
DPW does absolutely no regular maintenance of Oakdale unless they are needed to do a big project like moving the dock on and off the beach or plowing the parking lot. It's all done by, essentially, one youth dept employee, including mowing.
DeleteIt’s a death by a thousand cuts; a little bit more every year, with diminished returns and a declining youth population. Many of us are at the breaking point. A major reason for the dwindling youth population is that working families are being priced out. Taxes are a major factor in that. And those high taxes combined with an abysmal ranked school district keeps people with children from wanting to move here. There will be no kids left to serve, and few taxpayers to foot the bill. The numbers aren’t hard to understand and the receipts are in the article. But if that’s too much to read, and it is a lot, just ask yourself which way have things been trending. These issues are worthy of debate, and whenever someone dares to ask questions they get laughed off dismissively by those who are friends of and connected to the few who benefit from the status quo. I’m sure the many high salaried school district administrators and directors of the numerous “nonprofits” are nice people. It takes a lot to change the momentum of an overweight ship that’s off course. I think the taxpayers have a right to ask questions when so much is being asked of them. It must be nice to have the income or an undervalued property assessment to be able to laugh it off. My family’s taxes are more than our mortgage. Hardly a few lattes; but what do I know, I get my coffee at Stewart’s.
ReplyDelete🎯 Also - wasn't there another area nonprofit that received a building from the City of Hudson... which one could it be... where did former Mayor Kamal end up after his term...
DeleteAs a 24 year resident of Stockport, I would like to clarify, for those that don't seem to understand the HCSD property tax system, we pay (are penalized?) at the same rate as you big city folks. The proposed new budget will add another $500/year to the $8400.00 in school taxes that we already pay for the children we do not have, and the ridiculously low graduation rate of the HCSD.
ReplyDeleteExactly.
DeleteAnd the kids in Stockport do not have the dozen plus nonprofits that the kids have in Hudson.
Please see the Table in Footnote 2.
18 groups and counting...
Thank you Susan Troy. Spot on.
ReplyDeleteQuestion for Hugo or anyone who read this “report”: is there ever a definition given for the made-up phrase “working middle-class”?
ReplyDeleteWorking class means people whose income is derived from their (often manual, often service-oriented) labor. Middle class generally means a household that earns between two-thirds to double the US median. At the low end that’s about $55k. Spoiler alert: you can be middle class AND qualify for subsidized housing. This division between the “subsidized class” and “working middle-class” doesn’t exist.
Previously, HCS suggested that those workers not being paid enough to afford to live where they worked should use their capital to start their own businesses. I hope the recommendations here are a little less risible.
Your comment proves the entire piece, and specifically that some in Hudson wants to think it is a Tale of 2 Cities, when it is really a Tale of 3 Cities.
DeleteFor you, everyone is either very rich or very deserving of aid. The working middle is invisible to you. That is the problem.
This "division between the subsidized class and working middle-class doesn't exist" is economically illiterate.
No federal agency, Census or BLS, has an official definition of "middle class." Pew uses two-thirds to double the median. The SSA uses the middle three quintiles. The Fed uses a different framework. Pick one, they all disagree. "Working middle-class" is no more "made up" than "middle class" itself, a term economists have argued about for fifty years.
The old joke is that every American thinks they're middle class.
For this piece, the cohort is specific: Hudson households who pay property taxes directly or through rent, don't qualify for means-tested assistance, can't self-fund private school, and are watching the U-Hauls leave for Greenport.
Quibble with the cut. You can't pretend the cohort doesn't exist.
As for finding it "risible" that workers might use their own capital to start a business: that's how every small and large business in America got started.
If betting on yourself strikes you as absurd, that says more about your risk tolerance and capabilities, than our recommendation.
America was founded by people who staked their own capital on themselves.
That instinct built Warren Street.
Mocking it is how you lose a city, and ruin a local economy.
I don’t know how someone with clear eyes reads my previous comment and comes to thar conclusion. I’m telling you that the people you’re claiming to be speaking for—working middle class—often qualify for the very same means-tested aid you believe places them in the “subsidized class”. That the working class gets paid wages that require some parts of their lives to be subsidized. That the middle class includes educated professionals who nonetheless cannot afford “market rate” housing. You want to cherry-pick some portion of an extant cohort? That’s fine. Please use Census and ACS data to identify about how many people you’re talking about.
DeleteYour “start a business” solution is inane on its face. People who are housing cost burdened *by definition* don’t have extra capital sitting around to start a business with. Your suggestion is Paris Hilton wearing a Stop Being Poor jacket. “What if every income-constrained person used imaginary money to start a business” isn’t a serious strategy.
It’s interesting that you find it natural and normal that households be economically displaced by a sudden influx of wealthier residents, but capricious and calculated when taxes rather than rents motivate the same kind of exodus.
Anyway, I doubt anyone will remember a month from now that this thing exists.
What difference does the label make? Folks of all educational backgrounds can be either wealthy, poor or somewhere on the endless gradation of gray between those polar positions. And using one’s own capital to fund a business is eminently doable if one’s sights are scaled to their carrying capacity. What’s it cost to start a mobile auto detailing business? A lawn care company? These are reachable, doable start ups for one or two with limited capital but lots of drive. Got more capital, you can start higher on the value chain. Frankly, I often find fault with HCS’ logic or conclusions. But at least they are not dogmatic. Can’t say that for most of those who gainsay their work.
DeleteMichael, you're confusing flow with stock.
DeleteBeing cost-burdened means 30%+ of income goes to housing. It says nothing about savings, (sweat) equity, or family capital.
That's why baristas in Brooklyn fund LLCs and teachers in Hudson own rental units. "No extra capital" is your assumption, not a definition.
The Paris Hilton line is cute. It's also the tell: when you can't beat the argument, you cosplay the strawwoman.
- Alexander Hamilton arrived in New York an orphaned immigrant and built the Treasury.
- Cornelius Vanderbilt started with a $100 loan and a single Staten Island ferry.
- Madam C.J. Walker, born to formerly enslaved parents and orphaned at seven, built a cosmetics empire from a laundress's wages and retired to a Hudson Valley estate as America's first self-made female millionaire.
- Jan Koum, a Ukrainian immigrant, was on food stamps before selling WhatsApp for $19 billion.
Betting on yourself isn't a Hilton heiress punchline. It's the American template.
Your hot takes, like "Your 'start a business' solution is inane on its face," should cause locals to shudder.
That an American would have such a fixed mindset, so static, so allergic to growth, is the real tragedy. You must not have been to a BRICS country in the last decade.
Honestly, we just feel sad for you.
It's disappointing to watch a fellow resident argue so hard against his own agency and capacity, and that of our residents.
You and other complacent people might forget about this piece, sure. You've forgoten more common sense than you realize.
But the smart residents with kids (who can) have already left, or bus their kids to Hawthorne, knowing they can get more value elsewhere.
p.s. existing residents sell because.... they can't afford the rapid tax hikes. For every buyer, there is a seller.
If Hudson's taxes stayed flat, the resident population would have looked very different.
But for that to happen we can't 20X the Youth Center budget in 20 years.
John nails it.
DeleteAnd the proof isn't Hamilton or Vanderbilt.
It's Hudson itself mostly, certainly earlier versions of Hudson.
The whalers who built Warren Street, the Quakers who financed it, the immigrant families who stacked Fairview Avenue with small businesses, the GCs and cleaning crews already on the clock every morning before the latte class opens its eyes.
Every one of them bet on themselves.
Thats not survivorship bias. That's the neighborhood.
And their high taxes and rent make it harder.
“You know why they call it the American Dream? Because you’d have to be asleep to believe in it.”
Delete-Carlin
Holding up outliers and saying “see, these people are billionaires, why aren’t you?” isn’t the argument you think it is.
John Friedman - of course it’s dogmatic. It’s always dogmatic. Their dogma is right there in the About Us section: American exceptionalism + the “free market”; it’s a belief system.
DeleteMichael, we pre-empted your predictable response. You must be a NYT reader.
DeleteNot Hamilton, not Vanderbilt. The whalers, the Quakers, the Fairview Avenue families, the GC up at 5am.
Hudson built itself that way before anyone called it a brand. Maybe you've given up on that version of America. The hundreds of thousands streaming across the border every year clearly have not. They didn't get the memo that betting on yourself never works.
One genuine question though: what is your solution to $45,000 per kid, bottom-quartile results, and a 5.8% ask for more of the same?
Nobody has answered that yet.
We're listening.
It’s one of the most consistent parts of the HCS “brand” that everything is considered only as a binary and/or devoid of any nuance. Obviously, people have bet on themselves and won. The fact that you can rattle off famous examples doesn’t mean it’s a viable strategy for most people; it means those people are *noteworthy outliers*. They are literally famous because they succeeded against the odds.
DeleteAbout 10% of Americans own businesses. Telling people who can’t make rent* that what they should do is try to be a business owner is absurd.
*I’m sure that there are examples of baristas with trust funds who are nonetheless housing cost burdened; does anyone actually think that’s the norm when talking about income constrained folks? How far can you move goalposts before you’re playing an entirely different game?
Lack of nuance? Pot, meet kettle.
DeleteI like that because it’s just another cliche piled on an argument built on cliches — from both sides.
Frankly, Michael B., I have to admit that I find aggressive posters who refuse to identify themselves as “likely bots.” Your use of British punctuation may or may not belay that conclusion. Does ChatGPT draft that way?
Michael, you’ve spent eight comments on class theory and George Carlin and zero on the actual question of high taxes hurting the working middle class and not helping students.
ReplyDeleteMost immigrants arrive with nothing and build businesses daily. Most Hudson kids arrive at school and leave unable to read.
One of these problems has a $45,000-per-year solution that isn’t working.
Still no number. Still no answer.
We just want you to know: in America, you can do anything. And the free markets you so fear will provide you with a great meal and national defense. But you know that, which is why you are in America / New York / Hudson, and not Cuba, Canada or China 😉
John - I think you don’t know what bots are.
ReplyDeleteHCS - it would be amazing if a majority of immigrants became business owners, but it’s closer to half of that. Non-citizen immigrants are more likely to live in poverty.
The fallback of “you must actually like it here or else you’d leave” works both ways. No Hudson resident—aside from maybe BILL—spends a greater portion of their personal time complaining about this city. Perhaps you should heed your own advice and vote with your feet. Or perhaps you’ll realize that loving a place means working to make it better, for everyone (not just home and business owners).
Gooooolllly Michael B. I do know what a bit is. And what a propagandist is, too. Wink wink.
Delete"When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear." - Thomas Sowell
Delete1. As immigrants we can't run for office or vote. (Maybe you can?)
2. More money clearly makes it worse.
3. See Section 7 of the piece for how we propose to "make it better".
4. Here is today's slide-show for you, if reading long-form is hard for you:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DYE6QRaAuNU/
What are you doing to make it better other than validating our own main finding, that $45k is a low estimate. And that everyone earning a living off of this boondoggle is not engaging with the truth and acting like ostriches with their heads in the sand.
Cripes John, I would hope so. The Charter Reform Committee and its/HDC’s mouthpiece spent the better part of a year trying to convince voters that City Managers are infallible.
DeleteNo one associated with the Charter Reform effort ever claimed that CMs are infallible. Just specifically educated, more experienced in the actual work of administration and dedicated to the actual work of governance. Unlike our last few mayors . . . let's see, in my tenure here, Scalera (nice enough as long as you're not working with him, ooof), Hallenbeck (fun to drink with, but double oof), Martin Hamilton (nice woman, cried a lot, accomplished little), Rector (a friend but a disappointment in essentially every metric) and Johnson (must I? even a propaganda bot must have some memory beyond its master's instructions). And our current mayor? Four months, no legislative agenda yet. Not an enviable track record of effective leadership anywhere.
DeleteThat's what the Charter Reform group advocated: good, effective government. But you just keep on advocating for the status quo since you must have some interest in its continuation when its outcomes have been nothing but contrary to the public interest.
This comment from Susan Troy was submitted by email:
ReplyDeletePerhaps our HCSD employees require an invitation, an actual ask, to provide their employers with answers, so here we go:
Dr. Brian Bailey; Derek Reardon; Philip Campbell; Kenneth Baer; Dr. Lauren Pupecki; Mark Brenneman; Carrie Patch; Jill Hanley; Daniel Connor:
Please provide the current literacy rates, by grade. Please provide today's specific plans to acknowledge, address, and improve those literacy rates. And then please provide next month's, and September of 2026's specific plans to acknowledge, address, and improve those literacy rates.
Finally, elections are akin to job performance reviews in the private sector: you sit across from your boss(es), and together, take a hard look at the past year: the good, the bad, the ugly. The profit makers, and the losses. The successful innovations and the major screw ups. And then you either get a raise or a bonus, or both; you get a written warning with specifics; or you get fired. But as an employee, you're required to explain yourself; to plead your case. You don't get to hide behind, say, a Board of Seven Random People, who apparently, legally, are only required to look at you for three minutes and pretend to listen, but never verbally respond. (They don't respond in writing, either.)
So while the other conversations under these two posts about economics and whatever else, have been entertaining reading - and a shoutout to the poster who used the term "latte class" - I think we all are looking for the same thing: very specific data points that the HCSD is holding hostage. Data points we all need prior to the Performance Review on Tuesday, May 19th.
Can they collectively stonewall us until then? Will one or two or three people break ranks and respond? THAT will be interesting to watch.
Susan Troy - are you available to run for School Board?
Delete"A Time-Stamped Prediction, and a Note on Civic Culture (May 5, 2026)"
ReplyDeleteAnd 3 days later, like clockwork, and exactly as Hudson Common Sense predicted in our editorial and Footnote 13 of "Half the Kids. Twenty Times the Budget": FOHY chose door 3 of 4.
The four doors:
1. Engage the math.
2. Ignore.
3. Literary rebuttal.
4. Ad hominem.
Commenters in this thread did a bit of #2 and #4. Ms. Black tried #1 but backed off when reading the footnotes.
And as we predicted, before the FOHY piece existed: "Twelve hundred soft-focus words on light through the trees at Oakdale, a child on a swing, a remembered conversation with a neighbor... no mention of the budget. No mention of the lake. No mention of the eleventh-hour $135,000 match."
Now scan the substack (one of our readers shared it this morning with a chuckle). Down to the photos. Down to the cadence. Its very existence makes our point for us.
This is indeed why Hudson can't have nice things (like good schools and reasonable taxes): ask where the money went, get called cynical; ask again, get sold a wellness retreat.
One reminder: HCS has offered to split 50/50 the cost of an independent forensic audit of every dollar spent per Hudson youth, public and private, and every job in the chain.
A week on, no takers.
FOHY can fund a $1 million Oakdale renovation, and the City spends $30k a year on micro-event grants from a circus to a mini-parade, but neither can find $2-3k for an independent auditor to build a simple shared table:
- money spent,
- unique and overlapping youth served,
- headcount and payroll of every job that lives off this system.
Are they worried an independent look will confirm the per-kid number is higher than $45,000? Higher than $55k?
Or that the headcount of residents serving 720 youth is worse than even our report suggests?
The offer stands. Editors@HudsonCommonSense.com.
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More perspectives are good.
And for reference, the Third Door, as predicted:
https://deadandlivingthings.substack.com/p/the-reason-we-can-have-nice-things