JAMESTOWN – City school officials will continue to look for ways to dig the district out of a multimillion dollar budget hole when the school board meets Thursday night for its regular board meeting.
According to Superintendent Tim Mains, who was a guest last month on WRFA’s Community Matters program, Jamestown is facing a more than $5 million budget gap as it works to prepare a budget for the 2015-16 school year. Unless the state can deliver some serious financial relief for the district, Mains said its likely Jamestown will have to resort to cutting programs and positions to close the gap.
During the past several weeks, both Mains and members of the Jamestown Teachers Association have been lobbying state education and legislative leaders for more funding (their case for a significant increase is provided below). They say that as a high-needs district, Jamestown is getting far less funding compared to other similar districts across the state – to the tune of nearly $25 million a year. Because of that discrepancy, they say it’s only fair that the state deliver on the request of $5 to 7 million more in state aid for the 2015-16 school year.
The exact amount Jamestown is projected to receive in the tentative state budget is not yet known due to Governor Andrew Cuomo instructing the state education department to not release state funding runs until after the legislature acts on his education reform measures. However, the legislature and teacher unions across the state are against the governor’s plan, which means its unlikely any action on the reforms will take place prior to the April 1 state budget deadline.
For the current 2014-15 school year, Jamestown received $56.77 million in state funding. That’s out of $22.15 billion that was earmarked for education spending in the 2014-15 state budget. This year, the state assembly want to increase state funding by at least another $1.8 billion and the senate wants a $1.9 billion increase. Without his reform package being approved, the governor has said education funding should go up by just $377 million.
Despite not having all the information needed due to the holdup in Albany, Thursday’s school board meeting is expected to focus on several options the district currently has to consider while finalizing next year’s spending plan.
Thursday’s board meeting begins at 7 p.m. the board’s finance committee also meets at 6 p.m. to specifically discuss the budget. Both meetings are in the school board room in the administration building and are open to the public.
JAMESTOWN’S CASE FOR SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN STATE AID
(provided by the Jamestown Teachers Association)
1. Jamestown has been cheated for years:
- Even before the Foundation Aid Formula was created, JPS was spending $4,000 to $5,000 less per student than comparable districts. With 5,000 students we have gotten by with $20 to $25 million less than comparable districts each year!
- JPS spent less, because they got less from the state due to NY state’s highly inequitable school funding plans.
- Since the Foundation Aid was created, but then frozen, (about 6 years) JPS has lost over $118 million
- The Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA) has taken another $13 million+ away from JPS over the past 5 years.
- So we should be getting about $25 million more per year than we do.
2. Jamestown has done all it can to balance its poorly funded budgets.
- We cut jobs – over 100 spread across all categories
- We cut programs – eliminating some altogether, reducing others (For example, Art and Music are each something that elementary children only get once every 8 days. In MS, they only get art and music two trimesters out of the twelve trimesters they have in middle school – once every two years)
- We closed a school – Rogers
- We drained our reserves hoping that the state would return to owning its responsibility to fund education. Now there is less than $200,000 in unrestricted fund balance (for a district that spends $80 million a year).
- We are out of options. Without a substantial increase in state aid, more massive cuts will be made to programs and personnel.
- To avoid financial insolvency, we have to risk academic insolvency.
3. As one of the poorest districts in the state, we need/deserve state intervention – this is about fairness and equity.
- We don’t have sufficient property wealth to support ourselves with property taxes and the income wealth is so low that folks can barely afford to pay their taxes.
- With a combined wealth ratio (CWR) of .266, we sit eighth from the bottom of the 676 school districts in NY state.
- We are in the poorest 1% of all school districts in NYS
- We currently get about 70% of our revenue from State Aid, but we should be getting 80-90%
4. Our representatives in the state legislature must secure $5 to $7 million more in funding for JPS this year to avert disaster.
- We’re not asking for the $25 million we deserve, but $5-7 million needed to keep going.
- Elimination of the GEA will actually put more $ in the budgets of Southwestern and Chautauqua Lake than in ours. While we endorse the complete elimination of GEA, that will not provide enough additional revenue for JPS (only about $500,000).
- The Foundation Aid Formula provides greater support to poor districts and districts with poor students. We need to see some of the Foundation Aid flowing back our way.
- Because we used $2.1 million from reserves last year, and because the reserves are now dry, we already start with a $2 mill whole in our budget.
- Add another $1.8 needed for contractual salary increases and we’re already up to a nearly $4 mill deficit. That doesn’t account for the 4% increase in health care costs or the added expense of covering additional employees with health care because of the Affordable Care Act.
- To protect a district with a great reputation, we need the state to finally do what it has not done for years – provide enough equity to help us continue our work.
- Without substantial additional funding from the state ($5-7 mill) the Jamestown Schools and Jamestown community will suffer.
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