Carmel Central School District's "Community Open Forum"

As KFW members have discussed many times, the biggest slice of local taxes, by far, goes to fund the Carmel Central School District. I note that on the District's web site is a newly posted invitation to the annual Community Open Forum at which the Board of Education and the Superintendent "would like to get your feedback on several priority areas including Curriculum and Instruction, Communications, Budget and Finance, and Facilities and Transportation. Your input is valuable in assisting us in our planning, especially as we begin to prepare our 2010-2011 budget." The District will hold the forum on December 8 at 8:00 PM at the George Fischer Middle school. If you'd like to go, you have to register before December 2.

Sadly, the invitation fails to say what, if anything, will be done with the input the forum generates, and some of my cynical friends who have been to previous editions of this event claim its sole purpose is to let the District fill in a check box on some state form without having to lie about it. Still, it is a forum to talk to those who spend the bulk of our local taxes about what they're doing with all that money. And maybe the cynics have it all wrong. We can only hope so.

The 2009-2010 budget for the school district is here. The fiscal accountability supplement to the New York State School Report Card is here. And there's lots more on the District's budget page. So let 'em know you're coming, read up on where your money's going, and ask questions.