It is a sacred trust we place on the Owego Apalachin CSD Board of Education. They are obligated to lawfully operate OACSD solely for the benefit of students and taxpayers. It is the BOE’s prerogative to manage OACSD as they see fit. There must be transparency, diligence, and accurate public records.
Prior to the election of new BOE members beginning with the school year 2023 – 2024, both OACSD’s governance charter was changed and contracts enacted (not signed) without the legally required BOE approval. COVID was a crisis not to be wasted. If OACSD’s students are so addle-headed and obstreperous as to require exceptional compensation (salaries, healthcare insurance, and pensions) and/or combat pay to acquire and hold the best and brightest employees, that would be the business case for such.
In one special case, approval of the OA Administrators and Supervisors Union contract was made by putting part of the contract before the BOE for a vote. Would you sign a contract, only after being allowed to read part of it? When parts A and B are added together, an incomprehensible Rube Goldberg contraption wrapped in a Gordian Knot was the result. It is so complex and confusing as to disguise its true intent. This contract was signed before the BOE voted to approve it!
This partial contract was found in the “Personnel Items for Action,” not the “Business or Financial Consent Actions.” The “Personnel Items for Action” is specifically for personnel matters, NOT CONTRACTS. As contained in the meeting records of Dec. 22, 2022 this partial OAASA contract is referred to as 1) OAASA Tentative Agreement, 2) OAASA Contract Proposal, and 3) OAASA Contract Tentative Agreement. Never is never referred to as the OAASA contract.
The OACSD Teachers and Employee contracts were never signed and remain so. It is a conjecture that had these contracts been contained in the public record and been read by a member of the public, the question might have arisen as to, “What does this mean?”
These contracts are about $160,000,000 and that is the present cost only; students and taxpayers will be paying for the consequences of these for decades to come. Within the OA Teachers Union contract, there are Appendices C and D, which are blank, and a missing Appendix F? This is a red flag to anyone who reads the contract!
There is an unnamed attachment citing the 2007-2010 OATA contract, which is so vague, ambiguous, and devoid of any meaning that it screams, “Why is this here?” This isn’t by accident.
One purpose of an attorney is to ensure contracts are clear and concise. Any attorney who let this incomprehensible mess pass would be finding a new line of work. There has apparently been a 20-year moratorium on securing legal review.
It must be quite a task for our five new members, elected since the school year 2024, to sort through this mess as they are new and must act with all prudence in doing so. If a false or out of context statement or half-truth is made regarding past BOE operations, there will be no correction or comment by the Superintendent, as that would open a trail of omissions, among other things, detrimental to taxpayers and students. Like the illegal morning BOE meetings, this was never addressed by the BOE or Superintendent. For added emphasis, why would a good BOE hold meetings when neither parents, taxpayers, nor OACSD faculty attend? The NYS court system defined morning meetings as illegal in 1999. It only stopped after being called out in local media.
While video recordings were made of all BOE meetings, even the illegal morning meetings, no longer can any video prior to Oct. 16, 2023 be located on the OACSD YouTube channel or attached to BOE meeting records. Written minutes are devoid of all value except to record voting. See OACSD District Docs for the Dec. 22, 2022 BOE meeting at https://go.boarddocs.com/ny/oacsd/Board.nsf/Public for verification.
If business and financial matters have been managed like this, how are other aspects of OACSD being managed?
OACSD will probably add another $3,000,000 to its retained profits of $13,000,000, totaling $16,000,000. The BOE approved a property tax increase of 2% or $356,000, which is equivalent to a rounding error or 6/10 of 1%. The increase in state funding was huge. Not reported in the budget was at least $644,000 in interest earned this year on the stash of retained profits.
Let’s hope that some of the $3,600,000 of wrongfully withheld, since 2007, scholarship money will be awarded to our graduating class of about 140. That is $27,000 per graduate! No other school district in NYS has anything like this problem because they use it for the intended purpose.
This is in no way meant to reflect negatively on our teachers and good staff. We have a lot to be pleased with.
Sincerely,
Haig McNamee
Owego, N.Y.
Be the first to comment on "Letter: Sacred Trust"