Cuomo, Schools Battle Over School Aid Numbers (NY)
February 10, 2011
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is arguing that most schools have enough money in their reserve accounts to cover his proposed $1.5 billion aid cut and that the reductions make up less than 3 percent of schools’ overall spending.
As Cuomo faces increasing criticism from education groups over his proposed school cuts, he’s battling back by releasing data that shows 75 percent of schools could cope with the aid reduction by using reserve funds.
The cut to schools, meanwhile, makes up 2.9 percent of their overall expenditures, according to data compiled by the administration and obtained by Gannett’s Albany Bureau.
Cuomo stressed Wednesday that schools and governments need to cope with less state money. He said he’s cutting state agencies by 10 percent.
"We are going to have to find efficiencies and we’re going to have to find economies of scale," Cuomo said after an appearance on Long Island Wednesday. "The answer can’t always be more money, more money, more money. There is no more money and raising taxes is not an opt ion."
He has also taken aim at the salaries of school superintendents, with data that shows as of last May nearly 40 percent made more than statewide average of $165,000 — with salaries as high as $300,000 in some parts of Long Island.
But schools have responded that Cuomo is using his own math to try to mask that schools statewide face an aid cut of 7.5 percent in his budget proposal. Reserve accounts can’t simply be exhausted in one year, schools said. Also, if 75 percent of schools have money in reserve, that means 25 percent don’t — mainly poor districts and ones in rural areas.
"The districts that do have reserves are looking at this as a multi-year problem," said Lawrence Cummings, coordinator of the Statewide School Finance Consortium based in East Syracuse. "So is the solution that they should use all their reserves this year? Then what do they do next year?"
School districts said that they plan to dip into their reserve accounts, as they have in recent years, but it can’t be a one-year solution.
The aid cut would come as schools are grappling with higher costs for pensions, health care and special education. Also, Cuomo is seeking to cap the growth in property taxes to 2 percent a year starting next year, which would also limit schools ability to raise revenue.
The budget and the cap would need approval of the state Legislature. The state’s fiscal year starts April 1.
"It’s not just the governor’s issue in terms of what his state aid proposal is," said Michael Jumper, assistant superintendent at Katonah-Lewisboro School District in Westchester County.
� A; "It’s all of the other revenue streams we have as well, which are at best holding their own. I wouldn’t say any of them are going up."
But Cuomo suggests that schools are inflating their woes.
His data, compiled from reports from the state Education Department, shows that in Westchester County, 97 percent of schools had money in their reserves and in federal stimulus money secured last year to cover his cuts.
In Dutchess County, it was 85 percent, and all six of the school districts in Tompkins County had enough reserve funding to cover the cuts, Cuomo’s data showed.
Westchester schools would see state aid cut by $58 million, a drop of nearly 10 percent from the current year. But the cut to the county’s schools’ overall spending this year would be just 1.6 percent when their total budgets are counted in, the data shows.
For less wealthy areas, the cuts would be more drastic because they rely more on state aid and less on property taxes. In Wayne County, for example, Cuomo’s proposed cut would mean an 11.4 percent decrease in aid — which accounted for nearly 7 percent of the county schools’ total spending this year.
And in Elmira, the school district wouldn’t have enough in its reserves and in federal stimulus aid — which is to retain or hire new teachers and expires next year — to cover Cuomo’s proposed cut of $5 million to the district, a 6 percent funding decrease.
In Broome County, districts face a state aid cut of 8.3 percent from the current fiscal year, or 4 percent of overall spending.
"Some districts will be able to absorb the cuts, but others won’t," said David Albert, sp okesman for the state School Boards Association.
The Batavia, Genesee County, school district would lose 8.54 percent — $2.1 million — of its state funding. As a percentage of overall expenditures, it would lose 5.2 percent.
For taxpayers, the different numbers don’t mean much, said schools Superintendent Margaret Puzio, explaining that voters ultimately had to adopt schools’ spending each year.
"We don’t get any revenue unless the public votes," she said.
She said the district has reserve money, but it has been set aside for specific things, such as unemployment costs and is not a savings account, Puzio said.
Cuomo said schools and local governments need to cut waste out of their budgets, which he contended exists and he found during his investigations into schools as the former state attorney general.
"No one is going to look at me and say these school systems can’t find any waste whatsoever and the only answer is more taxes. I don’t believe it," he said.