Out come the obligatory “the sky has now officially fallen” stories for the poor, deprived children of the Chenango Valley Central School District. I can see it now, these poor kids will become waifs by this time next year. (Violins please.) The cause of this calamity? Those greedy taxpayers who voted down the CV budget last week.

It seems CV taxpayers are tired of being an endless pocketbook for the thieves on the school board and overwhelmingly voted down the originally proposed school budget. As you may recall, there was a teeny-tiny, little “error” in the board’s planning and they underestimated last year’s budget by $3M and now need to make it up. Of course, cutting and scaling back is abhorrence for the teacher unions who stir up the little kiddies to appear on camera and cry about how their lives will be shattered by cutting a single dime from the budget. It makes me want to vomit when I see it.

The Press & Sun-Bulletin will now start running regular stories of how CV is hurting kids. It started today with the article CV looks to cut school costs - Field trips, equipment examined:

FENTON - Students in the Chenango Valley Central School District could be without field trips, enrichment activities and some clubs during the 2008-09 term under a contingency plan approved by the school board Tuesday.

That was the opening paragraph. Later in the article, we get this:

The board is considering a list of recommended cuts from Superintendent Carmen A. Ciullo, including:

* One unidentified teaching position. The district was already eliminating seven teaching positions.

* Field trips, including trips to Roberson Museum and Science Center, Binghamton Zoo at Ross Park, field trips to plays and other artistic performances.

* Enrichment programs, including Kopernik Space Education Center and Star Lab.

*A long list of equipment, including video cameras, Smart Boards and musical instruments.

The horror! The shock! Little Johnny or Suzie won’t get a brand new trumpet this year and will have to (gasp!) use one from last year. We may need to call child welfare services–it’s borderline abuse!

The CV school board adopted a contingency budget Tuesday night. According to state law, a school district can adopt a contingency budget based on the previous year’s budget PLUS an increase. (Never mind that last year’s budget was $3M too high. We won’t focus on these minor details.) Conveniently, contingency budgets don’t require a new vote by the people. The new CV contingency budget goes UP by 8.47 percent! It will raise property taxes 12.15 percent!! The previously proposed budget would have raised property taxes 14.4 percent.

Hey, it’s nice when people are dumb enough to approve having money stolen from their pockets, but if they won’t vote for it, New York State just takes it anyway–without a vote. Welcome comrades, to the People’s Republic of New York.

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