I'm not sure how many of the 200-plus people who packed our cafeteria last night had read Rick Hess' How Supes and Principals Should Not Respond to Tight Budgets, but it was as if Hess were channeling (a new power of his) the room as our supes and principals and teachers and board of ed were taken to the proverbial woodshed by a crowd of angry taxpayers, who said, in no uncertain terms, Get Real! The district (i.e. the administration and board of ed) had tried to pull a fast one last week, hiding behind the skirts of the state's ?contingency? law (the phrase ?this is not the USSR!? was used several times last night, though, unfortunately, in this matter I'm sorry to say the resemblance is a little scary) to impose a property tax levy increase of 9.8 percent, just minutes after voters had rejected that notion by a whopping 3 to 1 margin.? ?This is a democracy!? was shouted numerous times during the hour-long public tongue-lashing. And at some point in the haze of hoorahs and cheers as the board voted to rescind its decision from last week and go back to the drawing board, I felt a whoosh of air behind me and turned to see ? no lie -- Mssr. de Tocqueville, notebook in hand, scurrying from the room?.
--Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
