The 2024-2025 New York State budget has finally been approved, three weeks late, and one might think that with three extra weeks somebody in Albany would have looked at the education aid package and recognized that what it does to kids is criminal.
The Governor is quick to point out that the foundation aid formula is broken – and she is right, but not for the reason she thinks. One of the reasons the formula is broken is because it is old and has not been updated in over twenty years. It fails to take into account an increasing special education and ELL population, new costly state mandates, true inflation, and the cost of doing business. She, instead, continues to say that education aid continues to rise while enrollment in our public schools continues to decrease while at the same time schools are “stockpiling” reserves.
In the case of the Westmoreland Central School District, if she were to look at the real numbers she would see that, yes, our enrollment is down 28%, a little over 300 students, in the past 20 twenty years. However, she would also see that our teaching staff is also down 17% and our non-instructional staff is down 22%,for a total of 29 staff members in all. That equates to about one staff member lost for every ten students lost. More importantly, however, she would see that during that same period we hired one additional special education teacher, one teacher for our English Language Learners, one additional reading intervention teacher, an additional speech teacher, four behavioral/mental health specialists and an additional social worker. All positions necessary to meet the changing needs of our students.
Just as important, if the Governor and her staff were to look at the costs of doing business today as opposed to twenty years ago, she would recognize that it is significantly more expensive today. In 2004, a starting teacher made $26,000, exceptionally low even in 2004. Today our teachers start at $50,500, still exceptionally low for individuals with master’s degrees in today’s world (is there any reason fewer people are entering into this profession). Our non-instructional staff, that being the clerical staff, maintenance personnel, bus drivers and mechanics, teacher assistants and aides are today starting out anywhere between $16.24/hour and $20.30/hour up from between $9.72 and $10.83 in 2004. Is there any wonder schools are struggling to fill these positions?
It also does not take somebody with a PhD in economics to recognize that as salaries increase so do any benefits that are percentages of wages like social security, Medicare and retirement. In the past twenty years our FICA and Medicare increase has been 37%, teacher’s retirement has increased 175%, and employee retirement has increased 112%. In addition, although health insurance is not a factor of wages, it continues to increase exponentially. Each time we negotiate collective bargaining agreements we negotiate increases in employee contributions and even with increases in employee contributions, our rates are up 104% in the past 20 years.
So, the people advising on and building this NYS budget are correct, enrollment is down In Westmoreland, there is no denying that. But, they fail to tell the entire story. The number of general education teachers and non-instructional staff are also down by a ratio of 1 to 10, but the number of support staff are up by about the same ratio and expenses have more than doubled. Education is a people intensive business and it costs money to employee people, and rightly so! If there is one thing we learned from the government imposed COVID lockdowns, kids need to be in school and it takes people to staff and run schools.
In what world can people look solely at enrollment and come to the conclusion that because districts have lost kids then they should be cheaper to operate? I guess if a district were to lose 80 kids and 40 were in first grade and 40 were in third grade then maybe they can cut a section of first and third grade. This isn’t the case in Westmoreland and I doubt in any other district. Our loss of students has occurred evenly across all 13-grade levels – making it difficult to cut many more sections than we already have. Somebody in Albany also believes that professional staff, staff with a 5-year Master’s Degree, should make less than the starting salary of $50,500. Could this be the reason people are leaving this state in record numbers? This logic and reasoning is frightening, and causing our kids to suffer. Our kids deserve better, New York State’s constitutional responsibility is to provide kids, all kids, with a sound education. The 2024-2025 New York State budget falls woefully short on that promise. All those responsible for helping to create this budget, those who actually built it and then those who approved it have done a disservice to the kids of this state. In addition, if we listen to the warnings from the Governor and her team, we have not seen the end to this. While next year we will be held to a zero percent increase in operating aid as recently approved in the 2024-25 NYS budget (at a time when inflation is about 4%), we have reason to believe the following year will be even worse. The Governor has set the table for even more dramatic cuts in districts that have lost enrollment, which incidentally is much of this state. In addition, this is under the backdrop of what some estimate to be a $40 billion NYS fund balance.
I invite the Governor to visit Westmoreland, to look at the real data, to have conversations with us about rural education and to discuss why it costs money to educate our youth. At least then, when she proposes a state budget she might recognize that a loss of enrollment does not always correlate to a decrease in cost. Until then, I guess the burden of funding education will be borne by our supportive community and its property tax payers at a disproportionate rate. They won’t turn their backs on our kids as the State of New York has.