STOP Albany petition circulates via Scarsdale email
BY CARRIE GILPIN
The Scarsdale Middle School PTA sent an email to middle school parents last week urging them to learn more about the grassroots coalition STOP Albany, an effort to lobby for unfunded mandate relief and for more local control of education and taxes. The email included a link to a petition to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a state legislator (in Scarsdale’s case, Assemblywoman Amy Paulin), and outlined the PTA’s position. The email began circulating among residents at all levels of the schools and within the wider community via forwarded email.
STOP Albany is a united coalition of the Westchester County Association, County Executive Robert Astorino’s office, the Westchester-Putnam School Boards Association, the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents, Westchester-East Putnam Regional PTA and the Westchester Municipal Officials Association.
The group is against mandated costs that cause high local taxes and in many cases sharp cuts in services and educational resources, including teachers and programs. The service cuts and high taxes pay for the soaring costs of pensions, standardized tests and teacher assessment requirements that are not funded by the state. Scarsdale school administrators have said repeatedly at meetings and in interviews that the largest portion of the school budget is for mandated costs that are ever-rising. Seventy percent of this year’s budget