What the state budget's school aid increase means to you |
On Board Online • April 23, 2018
By Brian Fessler
Deputy Director of Governmental Relations
The 2018-19 enacted state budget serves as a continuation of trends when it comes to school aid, in more ways than one. First, despite the state facing a projected $4.4 billion deficit, school aid increased nearly 3.5 percent over the current year. Second, the majority of that school aid increase came in the form of foundation aid, using a one-time formula instead of the statutory foundation aid formula that was enacted in 2007.
NYSSBA and allied advocacy groups were successful in pushing back against a cap on expense-based aids proposed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, which would have begun in 2019-20. Those aids increase by $240 million over 2017-18.
Shortly after the budget passed, political and press reports noted an education funding increase of nearly $1 billion. While technically true, that figure includes funding for charter schools, nonpublic schools and specific grant programs only available to districts that meet certain conditions. After examining the school aid runs produced in conjunction with the budget, NYSSBA calculated an increase of $859 million in traditional formula-based school aid for PK-12 public schools. Statewide, public schools will receive a total just over $26 billion.
The bulk of that increase, about $618 million, is provided through foundation aid. This form of aid serves as the main operating aid for school districts and now totals nearly $17.8 billion - more than 10 percent of the entire state budget.
It is worth noting that $50 million of this year's increase will be restricted, or "set aside," for community school programs. The total community school set-aside now stands at $200 million.
The funding methodology used in the enacted state budget guaranteed that all districts will receive some level of foundation aid increase in 2018-19. This assumes that two state agencies will be satisfied with newly required building-level spending reports and decline to invoke new powers to withhold individual districts' aid increases.
About a fifth of the state's nearly 700 school districts will receive the minimum allocated foundation aid increase - 1.9 percent. Nearly the same number of districts will receive an increase of 4 percent or more.
The median increase is 2.96 percent. Half of districts had increases above that figure and half were below.
While failing to follow the original foundation aid formula for the seventh consecutive year - after three years of being frozen - this year's increase does use a number of key factors of the formula. These include the percentage of children receiving free and reduced price lunch and counts of English language learners. Also, the aid amounts were based in part on enrollment data and a measure of district wealth called the combined wealth ratio. The distribution also looked at what percentage of a district's foundation aid full phase-in amount is being received in 2017-18.
The $618 million foundation aid increase represents nearly double what the governor proposed in his executive budget in January ($338 million) and the 1.9 percent minimum district increase was boosted significantly from the executive's proposed minimum increase of 0.25 percent. But even with those increases, more than 400 districts remain $3.5 billion below full-funding of foundation aid. Nearly 60 percent of that amount is attributable to districts outside of the Big 5 (Buffalo, New York City, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers).
Districts can review a detailed breakdown of their 2018-19 foundation aid here: goo.gl/GRq1aA