Now that our school board has caved in to all the pressure to keep our $100,000 nurse teachers when registered nurses would do just as well at half the cost, our school budget is up 8 percent and our tax increase even higher. The budget calls for spending more than $19,000 per pupil, and much of this has nothing to do with educational quality. In a prior letter I pointed out our 68 custodians and maintenance people cost us an average of $80,000 each in pay and benefits. By contracting out most of this work we could easily save $1 million per year. I also pointed out that we have four more administrators at $200,000 each and two more psychologists at $117,000 each than we need, costing us another $1 million per year.

There is another important cost factor involving a key ratio used to compare school districts. It's called the pupil to staff ratio (not class size, but total pupils/total professional staff). For many years teacher unions argued that the national average of 26 to 1 was too high. They've now reduced this to 17 to 1. While this greatly increased the cost of education, it did little to improve educational quality, based on numerous studies and test results. In New York State the ratio is down to 15 to 1, and here on Long Island we're at 13 to 1. The lower the ratio, the higher the cost. Here in Port we're at 10 1/2 to 1. Since teacher costs constitute the largest part of our budget, it is important to recognize the impact of having a ratio of 10 1/2 to 1 instead of the Nassau average of 13 to 1. If we operated at the Nassau average of 13 to 1, our budget would be $10 million lower! Our teachers - both the good ones and the poor ones - are amongst the highest paid in the county and the nation. In fact, come July 1, one quarter of our current teachers will earn over $100,000, not counting the extra pay for supervising after school detention ($48/hr), or assisting in homework ($65/hr), or other after school activities. Nor does this include fringe benefits at $20,000/teacher. In this budget, the average teacher cost is about $103,000, with the top 25 percent costing over $120,000 each. That's pretty neat pay for 36 weeks of work (or 34 weeks after sick and personal days) and, you're home by 4 p.m. Not bad! That's why we have 2,000 applicants for 20 openings. It also suggests we're paying far more than we have to, unlike New York City where they pay too little. But too many on the board are convinced more spending means better education, in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The biggest reason kids do well, studies show, is that they come from families that value education and encourage hard work, as most Port families do.

I recently examined Schreiber's class sizes. Far too many classes have fewer than 15 students, and far more fewer than 20. If we could get our pupil/staff ratio up to 13 to 1, the same ratio as other Nassau school districts, we could reduce our tax bill by 12 percent! Anyone who follows the educational reports in Newsday can see districts comparable to ours, spending far less and doing as well or better. Port's school budget is both unjust and very wasteful. For an analysis of employee costs, e-mail me at FJRussoJr@cs.com, with the subject "cost analysis."

Of all the candidates, Peter Wezenaar and Bob Ferro have done the best job at watching our budget. While Julie Meyers could have done better, she is still more budget conscious than Roy Nelson who served previously and distinguished himself as a classic big spender. I urge the re-election of Wezenaar, Ferro and Meyers and a no vote on the school budget on Tuesday, June 3.

Frank J. Russo, Jr.