Letters

I found your coverage of the over-year-long investigation at the Amagansett School of interest. Given the school instigated a $25,000 probe for a missing $25 gift card, it’s not surprising that national publications such as the Wall Street Journal or People magazine have mocked the local school for its unprofessionalism and apparent cronyism.

One staff member has already resigned due to this fiasco, but it would seem correct for both the school’s president of the School Board, as well as its highly paid superintendent, to do the same.

This saga though reminds me of how dysfunctional the town’s entire school setup is. Why does a town of perhaps 18,000 year-round residents with roughly 3,000 children in the public school system have five different school districts in the first place? Many may not realize that each of these districts requires a $250,000 superintendent along with other repetitive administrative positions.

More troublesome is the fact that this results in a wide discrepancy between the budgets of various elementary or middle schools within the same town. For instance, the Amagansett School has a budget that is twice as large per student as compared to the Springs School just four miles away. Why would any rational town allow that to happen?

The reason would seem to be about taxes. Many of the wealthiest don’t want to pay school taxes, and our Town Board representatives don’t want to change that situation. That has led to one hamlet, Wainscott, to pay the least school taxes per income of its residents in the entire state of New York, with Amagansett probably not far behind.

Obviously, a fairer system would combine all these districts into one. Not only would there be significant savings in terms of administrative costs, that could then actually go toward educating children, but most likely we wouldn’t see the petty favoritism either that we just needlessly witnessed.

Bancroft Brooks

East Hampton