To the Editor:

Regarding cuts to education, why educate our children anyway? There’s no viable work. Cut budgets to the core. Teachers can leave, trying to find a job doing what they love.

Yes, for the most part teachers teach because that’s who they are. They don’t teach for the pay. It’s no easy job spending seven hours a day with 30 five-year-olds, 185 days each year.  And it’s not for the thanks from parents of those children they spend 13 years with.

Could they contribute more to health care? Yes. Should tenure be done away with? Yes. But when the teachers leave, the schools close and the families leave. Those who remain pay less taxes, right?

After the teachers and families leave, those empty houses, no matter what their assessment, will always sell for 12 percent more than they’re assessed for, right?

Graduates will leave to find a way to make a living and not be taxed to near poverty by the state, county, town or school district. So why bother having a county or town entity that costs the remaining a single penny?

New county clerk Gavin Regan, who earns a living setting up teacher retirements, has hit the nail on the head. Fire “Republican” county workers. They cost too much. Being such a magnanimous, intelligent individual he can take on three or more jobs saving tax dollars. No need to do a revaluation of property or raise the cost /thousand, right?

It’s laughable how “democracy” and the electoral process worked in this case! Regan ran for a legislative position, lost, then played “the good’ ole boy political grab, claimed to be a “hands on” guy and got ahead in New York State. Odd, I thought the voters indicated their choice.

A solution: Tell Albany to stuff unfunded mandates back into their peon brains, then fire them. Saving every township and school district millions. Cut mandates, Cut administration.

Quit “labeling” children. Labeling promotes the expectation that someone will always be there to “fix” issues. Drop “special education budget lines” bankrupting districts. Go with regional and regents diplomas. Keep BOCES a technical/trade school where students learn in the modality that best fits. Do not allow BOCES to become the titular head of educational processes. As student populations decline and dollars shrink, maybe regional high schools are best, but elementary education is the foundation.

An hour or two hour bus ride for an elementary child is not sound.

Freeze salaries and pensions of employees drawing a paycheck generated from taxes. Drop multiple levels of government. Share services, equipment and employees. Freeze land/property values; hold all budgets lines.

The North Country has a commodity that down state cannot live without. The power we generate on the St. Lawrence River is ours, not theirs. Demand what we are due. Albany’s treated us like “rubes.” Once the power generation infrastructure was in place they took most of the power and expected us to accept it.

We can‘t afford submissiveness, or political games. We can’t outspend tax revenues in school districts or government. We need to garner our resources and move in a better direction, instead being led down this dead-end path.

Step up, accept the fact. We are all going to experience some “discomforts” economically. If equitably shared we can get through this. Some have been here for generations, and intend to stay and see the day when our children, and their children, can and want to live here.

Camrin Moore

Potsdam