by Alex Brooks
The Hoosick Falls School District presented a first draft of its 2014-15 budget at its meeting on February 12. It shows an overall increase in spending of $1,047,809, which is a 4.8% increase.
[private]Spending for salaries for school personnel would increase under this budget by $402,913, which is a 4% increase in that category. The cost of benefits for the school’s personnel would rise under this budget by $593,783, which is an increase of 8.3% in that category; $370,000 of this is the projected increase for health insurance, which is an increase of 8.9%
State aid to the District is not rising at such a robust pace as these cost increases. While the Governor’s headline figure for State aid to school districts was a 4% increase, some of that was earmarked for specific projects and the rest is distributed through formulas that give different percentage increases to different districts. The increase to the Hoosick Falls District would be $185,000, which is 2.1% more than last year.
The tax cap for the Hoosick Falls District this year is 1.46% so the District can only increase the tax levy by $133,634 unless it seeks a vote of 60% of the voters to approve an increase higher than the tax cap. In order to keep the tax levy increase under the tax cap, the District would need some combination of spending cuts or improved State aid that totaled $752,000.
The administration is hoping that a good part of that will come from a more generous State aid increase once the final State budget is worked out.
Superintendent Ken Facin said he believes there is a wide disparity in public education opportunities in the state, and he believes it urgently needs to be addressed. He said he is not asking the Governor to add any more State aid overall. “I am asking him to distribute it more fairly. All I’m asking is that our kids have the same educational opportunities as other kids around the state,” he said.
The traditional disparities in State aid in New York were challenged by a lawsuit filed in 1993 by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) on behalf of students in underfunded New York City Schools. A dozen years later the suit was successful, and the court ordered the disparities to be redressed. An agreement was reached in 2007 with Governor Spitzer to put new money into education and to reform the distribution formula to be more generous not just to the New York City districts that were the subject of the lawsuit but to all of the poorer districts, both urban and rural. This new aid formula was to be phased in over a number of years, but after only two years of phasing it in, the State had a huge fiscal crisis. To deal with that Governor Patterson introduced something called Gap Elimination Adjustment which subtracted aid from school districts. The GEA attempted to do this equally from all school districts, but in practice it hurt the less wealthy districts more because they depend more on State aid than the wealthy districts do.
As a result, the Hoosick Falls District saw decreases in State aid for three straight years and, since then, very small increases for the last two years. Facin pointed out that if the State would just give the District the exact same amount in aid as what they gave it six years ago, in the 08-09 school year, the District would have no problem staying under the 1.46% cap on the local tax levy. Instead, the Governor’s proposed aid to Hoosick Falls is over $700,000 less than the aid the District received in 2008-09. Facin said, “The disparity has gotten greater – it’s worse than before the lawsuit.”
Many are asking why the Gap Elimination Adjustment, proposed as a temporary emergency measure, is still in effect at a time when the Governor is talking about surpluses and tax cuts.
Earlier this month a new lawsuit was filed over these issues which was promptly dubbed “Daughter of CFE.” But this, of course, will take years to wend its way through the courts.
In the meantime negotiations between the Governor and the NYS Legislature over the next month or so will determine how much aid the District will receive and how deeply it will have to cut to balance its budget.
Common Core
Facin also commented on recent developments concerning the statewide adoption of the Common Core standards. The Board of Regents has recently postponed the implementation of some aspects of the program for raising educational standards, and the testing and teacher evaluation programs that go with it, in response to well organized protests from school districts and parents across the state. Governor Cuomo immediately took issue with some of their actions and said a task force that he has appointed to study the issue will determine what is to be done. Facin said, “The Board of Regents is trying to listen to the public,” but the result so far has been confusion. Facin said, “The State is in flux right now in terms of educational leadership.” The Board of Regents, the Governor and his task force, the Education Commissioner and the Legislature are not all on the same page, and it remains to be seen where this controversy is going to end up. But the important thing to recognize, said Facin, is that raising educational standards and phasing in the Common Core is a good thing. “We must differentiate between the overall effort to raise standards and a poorly rolled out testing regimen that is giving it a bad name.” He added, “Our teachers are doing a wonderful job implementing the Common Core and it’s good for our school.”
A report on the rest of the February 12 meeting will appear next week.[/private]