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032303 In a Budget Fury, School Officials Seek New Ways to Save
"This is the toughest budget I've seen," said Dr. Bruce Dennis, the school superintendent for 11 years. "Of all years, I think this is the one to be cautious. It strikes me that there's little hope on the horizon of an increase."
chool
officials routinely pack the marble hallways of the State Capitol to lobby for
more money, but things are looking so bleak this year that they flocked to an
economy hotel near the Albany airport this month for an altogether different
reason: a workshop on how to budget in bad times.
The daylong event was a hit, bringing together 340 school superintendents, administrators and board members from across the state. The ones who were around in 1991 for the last major financial crisis wore name tags with the label "survivor."
Surviving the current crisis in the schools, however, will take more than just a few tactics picked up at a workshop. School districts are facing a proposed $1.2 billion reduction in state aid next fiscal year, the largest in state history, while incurring sharply rising costs in their day-to-day operations, from health insurance and utility bills to expenses required by higher education standards.
If that was not bad enough, many school officials say that the problem have been compounded by the state budget process. School districts secure state aid through an intricate dance that begins in January with Gov. George E. Pataki's proposed budget, which always includes education numbers that are lower than the districts would like. The districts and their lobbyists then court the Legislature, and in the end they almost always walk away with more.
The process usually drags past the April 1 budget deadline, forcing nearly all school districts to adopt their budgets without knowing how much state aid to count on and how much they will have to make up by raising property taxes.
Many districts say they will be forced to propose double-digit increases this year if they get no more than the governor has proposed in aid from the state, which is itself facing a $11.5 billion budget gap over the next two years.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno have promised educators in recent weeks that they will restore at least some of the $1.2 billion in cuts proposed by Governor Pataki, but at this point it is unclear how much and when. There is some fear that the state may run out of money if the budget is not in place by May, a fear that may work in the schools' favor by pressing the governor, the speaker and the majority leader to reach a budget agreement earlier than usual.
This year, nearly all school districts must put their budgets before voters on May 20. Under state law, if a budget does not pass, a district can try one more time before having to adopt a contingency budget that limits spending at 1.9 percent more than the current year. Once districts adopt their budgets, they cannot increase spending even if they get a last-minute infusion of state aid. (That money can be used only to offset property tax increases or as surplus for the following year.)
Spending for schools in the state's five largest cities — New York, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers — is included in the cities' overall budgets and does not have to be approved by the voters. Therefore, it is easier for those cities to incorporate additional state aid, if it becomes available. But the stakes are also much greater for those cities because state aid typically makes up 45 percent to 75 percent of their school spending. This year, more than 43 percent of the proposed $1.2 billion reduction in state education spending would come from those five districts.
"It's quite grim out there," said Steven Van Hoesen, deputy director of the New York State Association of School Business Officials, which was a co-sponsor of the budget workshop at the Albany hotel. "Districts are trying to budget right now, not knowing what the final numbers will be. What are you going to do? The only choice is to look at your education programs — and figure out where to make cuts."
Rochester and Buffalo schools have discussed adopting a four-day week, and the Buffalo Board of Education has decided to close at least two elementary schools and an alternative high school in June. Syracuse officials said that they were planning to eliminate more than 200 teaching and other staff jobs, nearly 5 percent of their work force, and that they were considering options like lowering the thermostat and holding fewer class days in winter to cut down on heating costs.
Even wealthier suburban districts like Bedford, in Westchester County, are feeling the pinch even though they receive far less state aid than the cities. To offset a $500,000 cut in state aid and higher operating costs, officials of the 4,200-student Bedford district say they are considering laying off seven teaching aides, scaling back a summer academy for struggling students, disbanding five homework clubs and limiting the leasing of technology equipment for classrooms.
"This is the toughest budget I've seen," said Dr. Bruce Dennis, the school superintendent for 11 years. "Of all years, I think this is the one to be cautious. It strikes me that there's little hope on the horizon of an increase."
In the 3,200-student Scotia-Glenville district, about 15 miles northwest of Albany, state aid is expected to drop by $1 million next year. School officials have proposed a 19.5 percent increase in property taxes to maintain existing programs, and as an alternative have outlined a contingency budget that would include laying off 25 teachers and 2 librarians, increasing class sizes and eliminating some athletic teams and bus routes.
The school district has been forced to adopt contingency budgets 3 times in the last 10 years after residents voted against its proposals.
This year, school officials say, they are expecting opposition not only because of the large increase but also because the local town and county just raised their property taxes.
"It's really hard to sell a budget when they're still reeling from those huge increases," a district spokesman, Robert Hanlon, said. "It all comes out of the same pocket to them. They can take out their frustrations on the schools."
By now, most seasoned school administrators have come up with strategies for coping with the chronic uncertainty of state education money. Dr. Raymond Gerson, executive director of the Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents, said many districts had learned to build their budgets around a "calculated guesstimate" that assumes more state aid than the governor proposes.
Dr. Gerson said many of his districts were counting on the Legislature to restore enough money for them to get what they did this year. "I think it's safe to predict that what the governor has proposed will not happen," he said, "and districts want to come up with as realistic a figure as possible."
Increasingly, some districts are unwilling to take that gamble. Many of them were left short-handed when the Legislature adopted a bare-bones budget in 2001 that did not include the increases that they were counting on. "That changed the pattern, so now districts are very skittish about budgeting anything above what the governor proposed," said Mr. Van Hoesen, of the school business association.
The chief financial officer for the Syracuse city schools, Robert Peters, said school officials who were banking on more state aid were "living in la-la land," adding, "There's no silver bullet, there's going to be cuts. We're using the governor's budget number right to the penny, and anything more than that would be fiscally irresponsible."
During the budget workshop this month, Samuel Sanfratello, an assistant
superintendent in the 5,600-student
"They're all so bad that we're still grappling with what we're going to do," he said.
"There's still going to be some dancing in Albany, but there just isn't
the money to restore all the cuts, so we'll just have to wait and see what
happens."