walrus51

An investment banker who lives in Bronxville is upset his taxes are way too high (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/business/09bronxville.html?ref=nyregion) Seems that Mr. Pulkkinen and his wife, Sarah, bought their 5 bedroom house on The High Road in late 2004 for $1.5 Million. Now, Bronxville is a place people move to because they have children and they want their children to attend the very best public schools in America. Great public schools need great teachers, and the teachers in Bronxville are both highly regarded and highly compensated. Yet, Mr. Pulkkinen believes the way to control ever rising property taxes which go to pay for the best schools in America is to reduce teacher compensation!

You would think a competent and (hopefully) well-informed investment banker would be able to figure out that teacher salaries are variable costs, and that the way to control overall expenses (whether in a school district or a private company) is to control fixed costs and to spread those fixed costs over as large an operation as possible.

Fact is, Bronxville is a very small village in the Town of Eastchester. The other village in Eastchester is Tuckahoe which was profiled in the Real Estate section of The Times on March 6, 2011.

The Town of Eastchester is just 5 square miles, with a total population of 32,000 people. Yet, the Town contains 3 independent K-12 public school districts, each with its own superintendent, school board, district headquarters, etc.

Where Mr. Pulkkinen seems to be focused on reducing teacher quality by reducing compensation, I would argue that the road to success is more likely to be in consolidation and sharing of services between the districts.