Is the tide turning for schools? |
On Board Online • June 9 2014
By Lynne L. Lenhardt
NYSSBA President
If school budgeting has felt more painful in recent years, it’s not your imagination. Schools state-wide shed more than 20,000 teaching positions from 2008 to 2011, according to the State Education Department. A high percentage of districts (97 percent in 2014-15) has dipped into fund balances. Meanwhile, dozens of schools are still operating under fiscal (and educational) stress.
Yet, there are reasons to be optimistic about the state of education budgeting in New York.
For instance, community support for schools is as high as it has ever been. That was evidenced by the results of this year’s budget votes. You probably know by now that more than 98 percent of school district budgets statewide passed this year. That’s the highest passage rate since NYSSBA started keeping data on budget votes in 1969. The state Council of School Superintendents says this may be an all-time high passage rate. For school districts that kept their tax levy for 2014-15 within the cap, the passage rate was nearly 100 percent.
Another positive sign: The percentage of districts that successfully overrode the tax cap jumped to 63 percent, up from a dismal 25 percent last year. This year’s override success rate was slightly higher than the first year under the cap in 2012, when the passage rate for overrides was 60 percent. I know that there is still a wide gulf between passage rates for districts that seek an override versus those that stay within their cap. But the percentage of successful overrides this year still represents a dramatic increase over last year.
And for the most part, voters did not just pass school budgets, they passed them convincingly: 95 percent of school budgets received at least 60 percent support this year from voters in their community when, in most cases, only 50 percent was required for passage.
One could attribute the high percentage of yes voters – and the high percentage of successful budget votes – to the fact that schools kept tax levy increases very low (buoyed by state aid) and that the property tax rebate program enacted by state lawmakers made voting for the budget a no-brainer in many communities.
But even with the tax rebate program, taxpayers in 15 of 24 districts willingly gave up their rebate checks in order to see to it that the schools had adequate resources to fund educational programs. And if the nine districts that busted the tax cap and suffered budget defeats had only needed simple majorities, all but one of them would have passed.
Beyond strong community support for budgets, I see another reason for optimism: schools, by and large, expect to lay off fewer employees next year compared to previous years. NYSSBA recently surveyed school business officials and found that 80 percent of the 283 who responded said they do not expect to lay off employees based on their budgets for next year. In fact, nearly half (49 percent) said their district could see an increase in teaching staff next year. That’s good news for students who have been shut out of elective advanced placement, art or music courses, as well as for families looking to send their children to a full-day kindergarten program. Those are the main areas in which we expect schools to expand in the coming year.
A final bright sign worth noting is that state aid to schools is on the upswing. Yes, I know that the Gap Elimination Adjustment has robbed schools of billions of dollars through the years, but the last three years have brought incrementally larger state aid increases.
Sen. John Flanagan, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, recently told Newsday that he has “not an ounce of doubt” that state lawmakers would maintain their support for schools going forward. While the fate of the GEA is anyone’s guess, NYSSBA continues to forcefully advocate for elimination of the GEA.
I know that for every argument that things are looking better, there can be a counter argument. But for the sake of the students, parents and employees in my district, I choose to be an optimist. As Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “Pessimism never won any battle.”