Where Megna sees progress, BOEs see pain |
On Board Online • March 26, 2012
By Cathy Woodruff
Senior writer
More than state budget details became clear when state Budget Director Robert Megna spoke at NYSSBA’s State Issues Conference.
School board members’ questions got testy, showing how the same financial landscape can look much different, depending on whether you see it from the high perch of the governor’s office or from the ground level walked by board members.
Megna stressed signs of a slowly improving financial climate and called the governor’s proposed new pension Tier VI “the most important thing for fiscal stability” in the long run.
He pointed to progress on controlling state costs, bringing back revenue and providing more sustainable and predictable growth in aid to schools.
At the same time, he acknowledged, “we don’t expect to get back to where we were for quite an amount of time, so that puts a lot of pressure on budget-making.”
But some skeptics among some 250 board members attending the conference challenged Megna’s view of what the governor’s proposals and initiatives mean to New Yorkers. Where Megna saw progress, board members saw pain.
They noted that pension reforms won’t help now as boards struggle to maintain educational programs in the face of a new property tax cap and teacher contract protections that they said offer no incentives for employees to make concessions.
Meanwhile, they said Cuomo’s proposal to move pre-school special education costs from counties to school districts – an idea rejected by legislators in their budget plans – would be a new unfunded mandate that would lead to more cuts to programs and staff.
“I don’t think there’s a board member in this room who would not agree that these are tough times for the state, just as it is tough times locally,” said Jennifer Hebert of the Huntington School Board.
“I think maybe what you might be failing to appreciate is that most of our budget is untouchable,” Hebert said. “I don’t know many communities that would try to pass more than the 2 percent tax cap at this point, so we need to find other ways to cut. But 70 to 80 percent of our budget is basically non-negotiable because it’s either pension, health care, special ed or state-mandated transportation.”
Hebert’s comments summed up frustration expressed by other local board members who came to Albany to lobby for fairer distribution of school aid, relief from costly mandates, pension reform and other support for education.
Megna struck a nerve when he suggested that the state’s success in securing new zero-pay-increase contracts and benefit concessions from its unions were evidence that districts can do the same if they get tough in negotiations.
“We have the same constraints you do,” Megna asserted.
Not so, said board members, who noted that they deal with hundreds of individual bargaining units and contracts with differing terms across the state. They also pointed to Triborough Amendment guarantees that extend expired contract benefits.
Megna parried with humor.
“All right, I give!” he said after audience members disputed his contention that schools could exercise more control over pre-school special education costs than counties, which now pay those bills. “I can tell you like this one,” he deadpanned, alluding to the governor’s proposal to shift the cost to school districts.
“You are all much closer to your local situations than I am,” he said when a board member asked for suggested cuts, “but I do understand where you’re coming from, and I think the governor does, as well.”
The sailing was smoother for state Senators John DeFrancisco of Syracuse and John Flanagan of Long Island, who brought word that the Legislature likely would move a $200 million pot of aid the governor wanted to distribute through competitive grants back into a formula that would direct the money to districts that need it most.
Flanagan, a Republican who chairs the Senate Education Committee, received NYSSBA’s State Leader of the Year award.
DeFrancisco, a Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, told board members the state needs a top-to-bottom overhaul of its school aid formula and that the new formula “has to be transparent as to why certain districts are getting more and it has to be understood by everybody.”