To the Editor:

Kudos to Steve Greenberg for his recent letter identifying the need to do something about the high cost of public schools in New York. This is a problem that has been superficially addressed by creating a property tax rebate program.

The STAR [School Tax Relief] program provides a very small rebate of a portion of the taxes paid by a targeted demographic of New York voters. It was implemented by Governor George Pataki almost 20 years ago. Today, the former governor has been appointed by Governor Andrew Cuomo to lead a commission to tweak the STAR program to make it work better.

I think Mr. Pataki and Governor Cuomo have done as much as they can to address the high cost of public schools given the political constraints they are saddled with. I would say the same for any governor who might also endeavor to implement Mr. Greenberg’s consolidation ideas as well.

The thing is, these solutions do not get to the source of the problem. We have been putting bandages on a chronic disease. The problem is not a lack of revenue or that the rich are not paying their illusive “fair share.” It’s not that the schools would be more efficient if they were consolidated and managed by another government body.

The problem is that these are government schools. They are structured by a long history of politically driven laws that force their budgets to increase beyond the public’s financial capability.

Layering new laws on top of old laws puts even higher administrative costs on these schools. We must get the politics out of education. The only way to do that and to reform both the curricular and fiscal aspects of public education is to make public schools non-government schools.

President Ronald Reagan so very wisely once said that government can’t solve the problem because government is the problem. That applies to our public schools more than anywhere else I can imagine.

Charter schools (non-union) are a small step in the right direction toward unfettered freedom of choice in education but political realities hamper even their modest expansion. We need old-fashion statesmen, who will put doing what is right before political expediency. Doing the right thing always leads to success.

Political machinations have only kicked the can down the road — and that road is a dead end. I wish our politicians and unelected bureaucrats would realize that. Maybe it’s a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. Could it be that the forest is freedom and the trees are the laws meant to secure that freedom?

School choice would get rid of all the dead wood and let the natural sunshine of freedom restore the forest of public education.

David Crawmer

North Greenbush