Morning Read: 24 months to fix state education mandates?
The Plattsburgh Press-Republican has a fascinating story in this morning’s paper, pointing to the fact that schools in Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties used about $24.7 million dollars in cash reserves to pay for next year’s budgets.
The problem is that those fund balances will be tapped out by the end of 2014 or, in the case of some schools, by 2015. The question, of course, is what happens then? This from Ashleigh Livingston’s article:
“If we continue to use $1.5 million in fund balance in 2013-14 and 2014-15, our unrestricted fund balance will be completely gone,” said Business Administrator Timothy Whipple.
“The question will become, ‘How do we deal with trying to find $1.5 million after the fund balance is all gone and you can only raise property taxes by 2 percent?’ Basically, we are looking at three years until we will be facing a huge budget gap,” he said.
The Press-Republican article makes an interesting point. Schools are already being squeezed — schools in Clinton County alone will cut roughly 100 staff positions next year — but these fund balances may be disguising the magnitude of the problem.
Once they’re tapped out, with the property tax cap in place, even bigger deficits could open up.
The bigger question, of course, is what New York state and local school boards will do in the meantime. Mandate reform? District mergers?
How do you think your district should plan for the next wave of austerity?
Unrestricted funds? Some might call them slush funds and it will be fine when they are no more. Unrestricted spending got us into this mess in the first place. Don’t blame it on state mandates, either. That’s just a mechanism for raising taxes without being accountable. When there’s no more money available, activism at the state level will send unfunded mandates to the same place as unrestricted funds. Bottom line: taxpayers may slowly regain control over spending instead of letting the education establishment run wild.
Just go over the cap’s, most school budgets passed by a super majority and most that went above the 2% cap did indeed pass.
The bottom line is that small schools are extremely expensive, if we want to keep them we should be ready to pay for them, that means even higher property taxes than we have now. I think that will be the likely outcome, plus some tougher stands on pensions and health care with the unions.
There seems to be no stomach for mergers. Mandate reform means one thing, cutting special ed and there is no stomach for that either. It will be easier to simply raise taxes.
The fund balances are meant for an emergency. They are similar to having some extra money in your checking and savings account.
The tax cap is a fraud and anti-democratic. But I said at the time that if it were going to be implemented, it had to be TWINNED with mandate relief; the cap should’ve occurred at the same time as mandate relief. I said at the time that the tax cap was going to be a disaster if mandate relief proceeded at the usual glacial speed of Albany and I was right.
I don’t think it is that hard to get 60%.
For the governor and our dearly elected representatives, the tax cap was mostly about them trying to prove how much they care for us. If they really cared for us, they would get rid of all the unfunded mandates or pay for them through the graduated income tax. But you see if all the mandates were paid for with the income tax, then they would be blamed for how high the income tax is. Instead of teachers being fired, they would be fired.
Fund balances are basically a rainy day fund. It is and has been raining. Someone may need to build an educational Ark. I’ll bet the student advocate Unc Cuomo doesn’t build it.
Brian,
How is the tax cap anti-democratic?
Its not a cap, it is just requiring that you get 60% instead of 50%, I think all of the budgets in the North Country obtained that.
If I was a school administrator in the North Country I would simply keep raising taxes. I mean you have two choices raise taxes or fire more people next year or consolidate and seek major changes in how we educate in NYS, which simply is not going to happen. Does anyone want to take any bets what is going to happen next year, come on we all know that school boards that are strapped will simply add more than a 2% increase and the budgets will pass.
Some points to remember. Most school districts had far too much money in reserve funds. This was major reason for the gov implementing the tax cap. Does a district in the north country really need a reserve fund of 5 million? Second, many positions have been ELIMINATED. This usually means that someone retired and the position was not filled. Union contracts dictate class size. Granted some electives may have been hurt but your core subjects are mandated by the state.
Larry asks “How is the tax cap anti-democratic?”
Uh, Larry, under the tax cap, if 59% of the voters want to increase school spending more than 2%, the budget fails.
Walker’s point above is valid. The super majority has screwed up Congress.
Is anyone in favor of requiring a super majority (+60%) to win an election?
Imagine the mess that would create.
Give me a break, please! If it’s really democracy you’re after, a simple majority would be able to defeat a budget without the possibility of override. Pure democracy is one person, one vote and majority rule. You get an extra 10% and still cry about democracy? Always the liberal way, to cry when things don’t go your way and to fall back on snide remarks when challenged.
Walker, I may have misunderstood your comment. I apologize for the confusion as it seems after another reading that we are on the same side in this debate.
Super majorities are democratic, they protect us and ensure that most people agree. What is so great about 51 people getting together and deciding to rob the other 49?
If you really wanted to be fair on school elections you would only allow those who are paying school taxes to vote, in some ways it is taxation without representation to allow people to vote on a tax bill who will never have to pay that tax.
Maybe we should go with a sales tax to fund our schools it would be more democratic.
Mervel: I believe we should abolish property taxes as a means to fund schools… or at least limit it to fund optional programs (sports, activites, AP courses) and make the state/feds fund mandated programs at 100%. As such, the mandated programs would be funded via the general fund, which is (state anyways) contributed to by the sales tax.
“If you really wanted to be fair on school elections you would only allow those who are paying school taxes to vote…”
How do you define this? I do not pay school taxes directly, but I guarantee you my landlord factors this into what he charges me in rent. Would I be disenfranchised in your system?
Why not expand it further? Make all voting subject to the paying of tax. (In reality, this would expand eligible voters since there probably isn’t an American above the age of 10 who doesn’t pay at least sales tax).
Frankly, children *are* subject to taxation without representation. They pay sales tax. They pay the same income tax as adults making the same level of income (ex: a kid inheriting $100,000 would have to pay the same tax as an adult inheriting $100,000). And they are subjected to decisions of the school boards and venal legislators without having a say… most boards don’t even grant students a non-voting seat! It’s ridiculous.
Well the bottom line is, there is only one future in the North Country, higher property taxes for schools forever, it has never gone done and it never will. As people leave and as schools shrink and get more expensive the cycle can’t stop. Just ask the 20 some people that got the boot from Canton this last year and you can ask those who get the boot next year. This is even realizing that we in the North Country have one of the highest property tax rates in the NATION. Not just in NYS but in the whole country. But we have the best schools in the nation right?
So, Mervel, what’s your proposed solution?
I don’t have a solution that has a realistic chance of being voluntarily adopted.
But the solution is large scale consolidation of school districts. St. Lawrence county for example should be one school district with one superintendent. You would have five high schools in the county, Massena, Ogdensburg, Canton, Potsdam & Gouveneur all others should close, you would keep most all of the grade schools where they are now and probably the middle schools also.
But that is not going to happen.
Right now given the recent votes the door is open to simply keep increasing tax burdens beyond the 2% and that is what will likely happen.
What is your solution Walker?
Mervel, your approach sounds reasonable, though as you note, it would be a mighty tough sell. With 17 school districts some of them must be really small. Nobody wants to give up the precious Local Control, though.
I guess if I had an alternate “solution” it would be to just grin and bear it. Education is expensive, but an uneducated populace is worse.
I asked because it sounded like you had some kind of radical, starve-the-beast notion in mind.
No I really do believe in a strong public educational system. It is the wrong place to starve the beast that is for sure. I think what you said above is what is going to happen. We will have to continue to raise taxes and I honestly think given the results of this last round of voting, people will vote to go above the 2% cap. The issue that I see is an unsustainable system as it currently stands in some districts in the north country. If we could stand up and say ok we have to raise taxes the next couple of years, but after that given our enrollment projections given a realistic view of what the state is going to give us and given our projected expenses over the next 5 years we will be stable. Stable meaning not large tax increases if any and no more teacher cuts.
But I don’t see that, unfortunetly it looks like we will have a “crisis” every year for the near term future. Expense going up faster than revenues and continued teacher cuts AND increased taxes.