Layoffs, Charter Schools take Center Stage (NY)

October 18, 2010

Buffalo School Superintendent James A. Williams has been telling television reporters that the district may be forced to lay off as many as 900 district employees during this school year because of state decisions regarding pensions and charter school funding.

But a written report Williams delivered to the school board last week counters that assessment, as a school financial officer sought to clarify what Williams meant.

“We’re looking at pretty close to 900 individuals we would have to lay off,” Williams told WGRZ in response to a question about how many layoffs the district could be looking at this school year.

Williams told YNN of Buffalo the same.

But Williams informed the school board in a memo earlier in the week that a mid-year layoff of 912 people “is not possible, not recommended or being considered by the administration at this time.”

Barbara J. Smith, chief f inancial officer for the Buffalo Public Schools, said in an interview with The Buffalo News that she wanted to clarify what Williams meant in his comments to TV reporters. The district has no intention of laying off hundreds of people mid-year, she said.

“Nine hundred layoffs? We could never do that. That’s not good for anybody,“ Smith said.

There is no question that the district faces possible financial problems.

The district is looking at a $22.8 million budget gap, Williams told the school board last week, and he urged the governor to call the Legislature back in session to address those issues.

Smith said Williams’ comments to television reporters did not contradict his earlier memo to the board. What the superintendent meant was that the size of the $22.8 million shortfall facing the district is the equivalent of 900 jobs mid-year, she said, and he was trying to put the dollar figure in terms people can understand.

“He by no means was saying we would lay off 900 people,” Smith said. “He was saying that is what [the shortfall] would equate to.”

The shortfall equates to 456 jobs at $50,000 each — assuming a salary of about $35,000, plus benefits — for a full year, she said, noting the year is already under way. So halfway through the year, that dollar amount would equate to twice as many positions — 912.

Williams’ comments about the layoffs and additional comments connecting the layoffs to funding for charter schools, which were cited in reports by radio stations WBEN and WNED, sparked outrage among local charter schools officials.

About half of the $22.8 million shortfall involves a question over how much the district is supp osed to reimburse the charter schools for each Buffalo student who attends a charter school.

Charter schools receive about two-thirds of the per pupil aid that the state provides to each charter school student’s home school district. But this state funding first passes through the home district, and then the charter bills the home district at a state-determined rate per student, in six payments per year. The state each year publishes new reimbursement rates, which are based in part on each district’s own spending per student.

In 2009-10, the Legislature froze the reimbursement to charter schools at the previous year’s level.Gov. David Paterson this summer vetoed a continuation of the freeze as part of the thousands of vetoes he signed, but he has said he supports the funding freeze. Public schools have been waiting for the Legislature to take action to reinstate the funding freeze, but that still hasn’t happened.

Local charters have been billing school districts at a higher rate for this year. Buffalo is the only district in the region that has refused to pay that rate, charter officials say. Buffalo has been paying $10,429 per student to the charters, rather than the $12,005 that the charters say they are entitled to from the district.

Charter school leaders say it sounded to them that Williams was blaming charters for the potential layoffs, and they fumed.

“The district gambled that the funding freeze would stay in place. It didn’t, and now they want to take it out on the charter schools,” said Greg Norton, business manager for Niagara Charter School.

Efrain Martinez, superintendent of the Charter School for Applied Technologies, called Williams’ mention of 900 layoffs an “Armageddon” scare tactic designed to cast the c harters as the villains.

“I feel this is a pattern of blaming the charter schools for everything that goes wrong in the [Buffalo] school system,” he said.

The Buffalo Board of Education voted unanimously last week to hire an outside attorney for a legal opinion on whether the district is violating the law by not paying charter schools the higher amount.

Christopher Jacobs and Ralph Hernandez were the board members who spearheaded it.

“I just wanted to know if it’s legal to wait [to pay the higher rate] until the Legislature maybe comes back and maybe changes something,” Jacobs said. “ My belief is that you have to operate within the law as it is right now.”

Smith said she and Williams went to Albany in July and received assurances from state officials that the Legislature would reinstate the funding freeze for charters.

“It was the top staff,” she said, referring to budget director Robert L. Megna and others. “They clearly indicated to us it was just an oversight, that the governor felt he had to veto the entire thing, that it was by no means intentional, and they would have it corrected.”

All written indications from the Senate, the Assembly and the governor regarding the Article VII legislation involving the charter funding and many other issues pointed to the freeze remaining in place for this year, she said. So Smith felt confident when she budgeted in the lower amount, she said.

“I would never adopt a budget that I felt had a really big gap in it, ever. That would be really irresponsible,” she said.

Syracuse, Rochester, Albany and Yonkers also are paying their charters at the lo wer rate. In at least some of those cases, though, the charters are billing at the lower rate. New York City is paying its charters the higher amount.

Charter schools can file paperwork with the state if they believe they are being underpaid by a local district, said Jonathan Burman, a spokesman for the state Education Department. If the state determines a charter’s assertion is correct, the state has the option of withholding a district’s state aid payments and paying that money directly to the charter.