From: Democrat and Chronicle, Sunday, December 18th.
Writer: Meaghan M. McDermott

Imagine a public school district that doesn’t offer kindergarten or athletics and has so few elective classes that high school juniors and seniors only attend school for half a day.

Meanwhile, in a different district in the same state, elementary school students learn six foreign languages and high-schoolers have their pick of more than 200 elective courses — including 30 Advanced Placement courses — and can get in-school training from voice coaches for the Metropolitan Opera.

The scenario isn’t far-fetched, and it’s one New York school officials say inches closer every day that the state Legislature doesn’t remedy disparities in education aid that hurt poorer school districts and their students in favor of their wealthier counterparts.

“I’m not arguing that we have to be able to offer all that wealthier districts can,” said Mike Ford, superintendent of the Phelps Clifton-Springs Central School District in Ontario County. “But the state can’t allow districts like mine to face the prospect next year of not having kindergarten, or not having electives or having our juniors and seniors going to school a half-day and only getting 22 credits for graduation and that’s all.”

Phelps-Clifton Springs, with 1,800 students, is one of the state’s less-wealthy school systems highlighted in a recent Alliance for Quality Education report that shows underfunded, and often rural, school districts were disproportionately affected by recent state aid cuts.

Recognizing the problem, the state Board of Regents last week recommended the bulk of a proposed 4 percent increase in overall school aid next year be earmarked for poorer districts.

Those districts took funding cuts three times as large as those in wealthy districts on a per-pupil basis, according to AQE. That’s largely because less-wealthy districts depend more heavily on state aid and districts with high property values and high resident incomes rely more on property taxes. Locally, that means districts such as Brockport lost more than $2,000 in funding per student while Pittsford schools lost about $700.

And the tax cap makes the funding disparity worse because 2 percent of a wealthy district’s big tax levy is a lot more money than 2 percent of a poor district’s small tax levy.

It’s a problem some school advocates say spells a “death spiral” for public education in less-wealthy communities.

“Unless the Board of Education has some miracle come through, we’re going to have to look at making cuts in every single non-mandated program we have,” said Gene Mahaney, school business official with the Holley Central School District in Orleans County.

He and others say that without changes to either the aid formulas or the promised mandate relief that never came when legislators imposed the tax cap, some school districts could soon be reduced to offering only the bare minimum classes required for graduation.

“This isn’t just about losing kindergartens and losing reading teachers,” said Rick Timbs, executive director of the Statewide School Finance Consortium. “We are talking about having kids start graduating from high school with a diploma, but a transcript so thin they’re not going to be good college or upper-level education candidates. These kids won’t be getting the same educational experience as their competitors in other schools in New York state.”

Inequity

To calculate the relative wealth of a school system, the state Education Department applies a formula that uses income and property wealth within a district to generate what’s called the combined wealth ratio. A district with “average wealth” has a value of 1. Across the state, the values range from a low of 0.165 in impoverished Salmon River Central School District in Franklin County to a high of 43.325 in the Fire Island Union Free School District in Suffolk County, which spends $5.4 million to educate 43 students.

In the Finger Lakes region — which includes Monroe, Genesee, Ontario, Livingston, Seneca, Wayne and Wyoming counties, according to AQE — only the Brighton and Pittsford school districts have greater than average wealth.

The region’s least-wealthy district, with a CWR value of 0.356, is 1,800-student Medina Central in Orleans County. The wealthiest is Pittsford, with a CWR of 1.233 — which still falls within AQE’s state-wide quintile ranking as an “average wealth” district. High-wealth schools are those with CWRs over 1.348.

The poorest of Monroe County’s suburban districts, by the ratio formula, is Brockport. The Rochester School District is the most impoverished in the county, with a CWR of 0.288, but unlike in suburban school districts, city schools do not rely as heavily on a direct levy of property tax. And, the city schools lost about $630 in state aid per pupil in the 2010 and 2011 cuts.

Under state aid cuts enacted by Govs. David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo, Brockport has lost $2,218 per student, according to AQE. That’s more than $55,000 per classroom of 25 students.

In a video message recorded earlier this month to raise awareness of the issue, Brockport Superintendent Garry Stone compared his schools to 6,300-student Northport-East Northport in Suffolk County.

Brockport, with 4,100 students, has a CWR value of 0.456. Northport’s is 1.787.

Over the last two years, Brockport lost 17.3 percent of its state aid; Northport lost 14.5 percent.

Brockport spends $16,372 per student while Northport spends $23,474.

And Northport offers its students more than Brockport does: Northport has International Baccalaureate, four more Advanced Placement classes, 11 more college-level courses; specialized academies in finance and information technology; and offers five languages.

“Are you starting to see the inequity?” said Stone in his message.

Assemblyman Stephen Hawley, R-Batavia, Genesee County, has blasted the state for the inequality in funding cuts.

“Here in western New York and the rural counties, we don’t have the property tax base to offset the loss of school aid,” he said. “In my letter to the governor about this, I wrote that our children are defenseless, and they deserve the same education regardless of their geographic location in this state.”

Hawley has asked school superintendents in his district to offer suggestions for reforming the aid formulas.

Other state legislators are also working to make changes. Assemblywoman Addie J. Russell, D-Theresa, Franklin County, this month introduced a bill to shift more state aid toward less-wealthy school systems.

Opportunities denied

According to AQE, the differences in funding loss between wealthy and less-wealthy districts are striking: Long Island’s Syosset Central School District — where kindergarteners learn Russian and Mandarin Chinese as part of the first-grade curriculum and Metropolitan Opera voice coaches give students vocal training — got a cumulative $382 more in state aid per pupil in 2010 and 2011; at the same time, Phelps-Clifton Springs lost $2,325 in aid per student in state aid.

“This is not some surface situation, or just whining for more money,” said Phelps Superintendent Ford. “I’m a graduate of a Long Island school district, and just think about the opportunities that I had in West Islip: We had seven languages to choose from, theater classes, film study and Shakespeare classes. We produced eight plays a year, and two major musicals. … What we really had was opportunity.”

And every additional cut districts like Ford’s will make for the 2012-13 school year will mean another set of opportunities students are denied.

The future likewise looks grim for the 1,100-student Byron-Bergen schools in Genesee County, where school business official William Snyder predicts the district will be insolvent within two years if it doesn’t get additional revenue.

Over the past two years, his district laid off 28 employees — mostly teachers — cut bus runs, eliminated some athletic programs, cut back on buying new textbooks, equipment and classroom materials, and still had to raise taxes nearly 4 percent to make ends meet.

“I am watching public education being destroyed systematically,” he wrote in an Oct. 20 letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo warning of the impending “collapse of rural school districts.”

Children in less wealthy communities “deserve the same chance as the more affluent communities,” said Snyder.

Brockport schools could be insolvent in three years, said Stone.

“We are in the fight of our lives for a meaningful education for our children,” he said.

Holley’s Mahaney said his 1,200-student district — which has lost $2,038 in per pupil state funding — could also be insolvent within three years.

“We can raise approximately $150,000 in real property taxes this year with the tax cap,” he said. “And our health insurance is up about 9 percent, so that’s $300,000 and then (pension system contributions) are up by $179,000.

“That really emphasizes to me that we’ve got no place left to cut but staff and programs.”

Stone said he wants to get the community fired up about the inequalities and encourages his residents to call or write their legislators and demand more equity throughout the state’s schools.

“The whole state needs to get the word out — every parent, every district that is less wealthy needs to have people writing to their representatives,” he said. “Unless things change, we are just not going to be able to offer the same kinds of programs as other districts.”

Ford agreed.

“This is a civil rights issue and a doing-what’s-right issue,” he said. His district cut costs last year by shuttering a middle school it’s still making mortgage payments on, laying off teachers and cutting some athletics and other enrichment programs.

“My valedictorian (from Midlakes High School) a couple of years ago was denied admittance to SUNY Geneseo and the reason was that they didn’t have ‘depth of transcript,’” he said. “That’s the issue. There’s a lot my district doesn’t have. I don’t have International Baccalaureate, and only have six Advance Placement classes. So how is that child supposed to compete in a global economy with kids who have so many other options?”