School Board Discusses Proposing Defeated Bond In May

The School Board’s referendum bond proposal was defeated by a wide margin of Greenburgh School District voters during Tuesday’s vote. The final tally was 1,257 (35.5%) in favor and 2,284 (64.5%) against the proposal, with a difference of 1,027 votes against. The taxpaying public, including some students’ parents, voted overwhelmingly to stop this project. There are roughly 1800 kids in our district’s schools. Assuming that there is a variety of dual and single-parent households, some with one child, some with more, there could be an equal number of parents that would have voted. It’s apparent that while many student parents favored this, some of those parents did not. 

This was a record setting turnout vote for the Greenburgh School District. In our previous article we mentioned that the Board and Dr Chase poked a sleeping giant. People who usually don’t bother coming out to vote for school board events obviously had had enough. 

The various Greenburgh Civic Associations within the School District were invited by Dr Chase on November 7, 2018 to join her on November 14, 2018, “... for delectable treats at my Superintendent’s Dessert... The Superintendent’s Dessert will be a combined gathering with the Community Engagement Committee.” The meeting was to discuss the progress of the schools and status of the facilities. See below:

The back side of the letter was a flyer asking to please join them for Dessert & Discussion. The key point was conversations about our latest initiatives, which one would have to go there to learn about. See below:

So an effort was made back in November to feed dessert to community leaders without actually revealing much if anything about the gist of the meeting. Those we discussed this with felt at the time it would be a waste of time as having dessert with the Superintendent, while pleasant, was imposing on their already busy schedules with no fruitful reason to do so. Little would they know.

Having just been handed a humiliating defeat at the hands of the sleeping giant, the School Board refuses to take “No!” for an answer and we’re told at their Board meeting they contemplate proposing a reintroduction of the Referendum Bond yet again in May when the school budget vote comes around! They’ve done this before when their budgets were voted down. They would state that they would have to adopt an austerity budget  “to get by” cutting busing and sports. They are well practiced with the “austerity argument”, having learned and provide a response claiming their hands were tied and they would have to rework the budget. Then what they did was reintroduce the same budget that would not get much exposure and usually passes. Is that the ploy here?

Several other issues relating to this failed proposal need clarification , such as Trustee Terry Williams’  apparent illegal blast email from his official School Board email account to the residents to vote for this proposal as well as his robo call. School Board members are prohibited from actively promoting certain things, such as this type of proposal. Honest mistake? Perhaps if this were a new Board member we might believe so, but Mr Williams has been on the Board as well as been President during a fifteen year tenure.

Then there’s the offer to bus people to the Woodlands High School from the Theodore Young Community Center on the Royal Coach buses. See below. Royal Coach is the bus company that is used by the School District to bus our students. We’re all for helping people get to the polls but if someone “put the arm” on the bus company or requested it with payment coming from the District funds, we deserve to know as well as know by whom.

The mantra the School Board members used every time they were challenged about past performance was, “That was the old Board, not us. This is the new Board.” Dr Chase also repeatedly stated, “We’re moving forward. That was a previous administration. we’re moving forward.” True, it was an old administration and a partially new School Board. But it’s still the same old taxpayers being disrespectfully treated. Old Board indeed! 

If you want to work with us, we’re willing to have an open an honest dialog. And just because “your side” disagrees with the “other side” doesn’t mean you try to shut them down. There’s no rush here if we are going to do things correctly, which means ALL of the facts and figures should be transparently presented to all of the School District’s residents. Let’s all stop the phony arguments and plan something that we all can get behind. It’s the only way we’ll get A Better Greenburgh School District.