Is More Money The Answer?
When the Great Recession hit and New York slashed education spending, Bob Libby began to regret his decision to become a school administrator. As the schools superintendent for the small city of Cohoes in Albany County, Libby was forced to cut staff while scraping together enough money to keep the city’s public schools open. Federal stimulus dollars helped the district squeeze by during the 2008–09 school year. Then, the following year, “it just fell off.”
Apart from affecting the civic role schools play in providing an educated citizenry, the budget cuts made it harder to prepare graduates for good-paying middle class jobs, Libby said. Just 12 miles from Cohoes is the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, and 15 miles away is GlobalFoundries’ local semiconductor plant. “We need to be able to provide a labor force for the kind of industries that those two entities represent,” he said. “That will be the new middle class, and the way things are going, we won’t be able to do that.”
Six years on, with New York’s economy recovering and surpluses projected in the state budget, the public school system in Cohoes is still struggling. Nearly $7 million in promised state aid over the years never materialized, and while costs have increased, the district reports receiving less aid now from Albany than it did four years ago. Another large portion of the district’s funding comes from local property taxes, but even if Cohoes were to pass a 1 percent hike, according to local officials, it would only generate about $144,000 for the upcoming school year. Meanwhile, enrollment has held fairly steady at 1,900 to 2,000 students, however one in five staff positions have been eliminated, from teachers and teacher aides to administrators, secretaries and janitors. Even Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed introduction of universal prekindergarten could cause the district difficulties, compelling it to shift scarce dollars away from existing kindergarten classes to satisfy the requirement, Libby said.
“We’re at the point now where academic intervention services have been reduced to the extent where it’s going to be a challenge,” Libby said. “The state’s got this magic number of 80 percent walking across the stage every summer—that’s the cohort that entered as freshmen. Four years later they need to walk across the stage in numbers that equal 80 percent of that cohort. We’ve been able to do that three of the last four years. But it’s getting increasingly more difficult to provide the services that will help those last five or six students get across the stage and make the 80 percent magic number.”
The situation in Cohoes is not unique. Statewide, nearly $6 billion in anticipated state aid to schools has been withheld since the start of the recession. In his first year in office, when he faced a $10 billion budget deficit, Gov. Cuomo slashed education funding. He has restored some school aid each year since, most recently proposing an $807 million increase—a 3.8 percent bump—in his latest executive budget. Yet for many, that amount is simply not enough. The New York State Board of Regents called for $1.3 billion in new spending this year. Some education advocates, who are lobbying for a $1.9 billion increase, note that even as funding levels rise they are still far below what was required by a 2007 law that was passed to comply with the landmark Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling. While battles over Common Core standards, prekindergarten expansion and charter schools dominate the headlines this legislative session, an underlying funding fight simmers between the governor and the school districts and their allies. Several new lawsuits—including one set to go to trial in the fall—argue that the state is failing to meet its constitutional obligation to provide a sound education to New York’s public school students.
“The problem is that the foundation isn’t there,” said David Sciarra, the executive director of the Education Law Center, which has taken on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity initiative. “The foundation of having the resources that would give [school superintendents] the ability to get their kids to achieve those [Common Core] standards isn’t there. So this is a fundamental, foundational problem, on which the success of standards-based education— whether it’s in terms of how the Common Core plays out or otherwise—is at risk. So the connection here is deep, it’s interrelated. If we don’t get the financing system straightened out, and get it connected to delivering the resources that these high-needs districts need to give their kids the chance to achieve state standards, Common Core standards, or the next iteration of standards, we’re simply going to be continuing to tread water and not making any real progress.”
The concerns voiced by Sciarra, Libby and many other education advocates are predicated upon the assumption that the more money invested in schools, the better they will be. Though for many people this arithmetic may seem intuitive, not everyone agrees. With the state finally finding its financial footing, the governor demanding continued fiscal restraint and advocates insisting that schools are underfunded, government officials at all levels and across the branches—the judiciary, the Legislature, the executive chamber—are once again confronted with a critical question: Is more money the answer?
Although it is just a short drive from Cohoes to the State Capitol, the rhetoric about school funding in Albany makes it feels like a completely different world. At a massive demonstration of charter school supporters on the Capitol steps earlier this month, Cuomo took aim at those calling for more money for education. School districts, unions, lobbyists and public relations specialists run the “education industry,” the governor asserted, which they use to benefit themselves, not students.
“The education industry has said the same thing for decades: more money, and more money, and more money, and it will change,” he told the cheering crowd. “We spend more money per pupil than any state in the nation; we’re number 32 in results. It’s not just about putting more money in the public school system, it’s trying something new and that’s what charter schools are all about.”
New York has consistently been at or near the top among the 50 states when it comes to education spending. In the fall of 2011 the state allocated an average of $19,513 for each public school student, according to the National Education Association, lagging behind only Vermont. The national average, by contrast, was $11,946 per pupil. The governor’s office now puts the state’s outlay at $19,076, the highest in the nation.
At the same time, one in four New York public school students does not graduate in four years, and only 35 percent of high school graduates are ready for college or a career, according to the governor’s office.
Faced with middling test scores and graduation rates, Cuomo has taken on the mantle of reformer. In 2012 he tied state funding to the adoption of teacher evaluations by local districts. Although he has distanced himself from assuming responsibility for the controversial Common Core, he defends the new national standards. In this year’s budget he announced a $2 billion “Smart Schools” bond act that, if approved by lawmakers and voters, would pay for innovative technology such as faster Internet connections and tablet computers. He has pushed to expand prekindergarten, albeit funded by less money than a rival proposal backed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. And in what was widely seen as an attempt to upstage de Blasio, Cuomo has positioned himself as a champion of charter schools, touting them as laboratories for innovation and experimentation just days after the mayor rejected several charter co-locations in New York City.
Of course, the governor’s budgets have included substantial funding increases for education, an indication that he agrees, at least tacitly, that more money is in fact part of the solution for improving schools. Even as Cuomo made painful cuts during his first year in office, he prioritized healthcare and education by allowing for higher rates of spending growth moving forward while holding down other state costs, such as spending by state agencies. State officials also note that most school districts that have not reached their pre-recession peak in state aid have also had significant declines in enrollment, with 88 percent of these districts seeing enrollment decline by 7 percent, on average.
“In terms of where the money is going, what we enacted in statute a couple years ago specifically says that health and education are going to get the largest component share of growth,” said state Sen. John Flanagan, a Republican who chairs the Senate Education Committee. “Environment doesn’t get it, transportation doesn’t get it, parks doesn’t get it. People with disabilities don’t get it. So it’s clear earmarking for driving more money to education.”
Education advocates insist that money is a big part of the answer when it comes to the problems facing New York’s schools, and there is a legal precedent to back up their claim. In 1993 the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a coalition of public school parents, sued the state over what it said was an underfunding of poor schools in New York City. The lawsuit hinged on the statistic that at the time New York City schools received only $10,469 per student, compared to $13,760 in nearby suburbs.
CFE v. State of New York wended its way through the courts until 2006, when the New York State Court of Appeals sided with the advocates, ruling that the state is constitutionally required to provide students with a “sound basic education.” Determining how to implement a fairer funding formula was left to state lawmakers, and in 2007 they approved Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s $7 billion multi-year spending boost for schools, most of it benefiting New York City. The legislation also established the Foundation Aid Formula with the aim of making funding decisions more equitable. But during the Great Recession, revenues dried up and lawmakers froze spending levels. The so-called Gap Elimination Adjustment was put into place in 2010, which reduced school aid to balance the state budget. Under Cuomo, the state also put a cap on aid to schools.
This year, the governor is already taking claim for a projected $2 billion in extra revenue, and a wide range of special interest groups want a share of it. Cuomo has earmarked the surplus to pay for his election-year tax cut package, but advocates are demanding that some of that extra cash be spent on schools—and they are again turning to the courts to make their case. The advocacy group New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights announced last month that it was filing a lawsuit against the state for failing to comply with the 2006 CFE ruling. The lawsuit seeks $1.6 billion for local school districts. Meanwhile, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and the nonprofit Alliance for Quality Education coalition are gathering information for a second potential lawsuit. And yet another case, brought in 2008 to expand the CFE ruling to small city school districts, is set to go to trial in late September.
“The governor says that money doesn’t matter in education. We, as AQE, fundamentally disagree with that,” said Chad Radock, the Alliance for Quality Education’s campaign coordinator. “We think it’s an absurd notion that money doesn’t matter in education. Otherwise, people would live in Schenectady and send their kids to Schenectady schools instead of sending them to Niskayuna schools. Additionally, if you look at areas where they have different course offerings—such as 29 AP courses, Mandarin Chinese in elementary, and all kinds of different courses— those kids are in wealthier districts that spend more money on education. ... Money does matter in education. The more money you spend on a student’s education, the better education they get.”
At a press conference in Albany earlier this month, a group of state lawmakers gathered with eight school superintendents and several education advocates to make the case for more money in this year’s state budget. Over the previous week, the Alliance for Quality Education and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity went on a fact-finding tour of 14 school districts to document the impact of budget cuts. Overcrowding was a common problem, said Billy Easton, AQE’s executive director, with average class size often exceeding 25 students, and in some cases more than 30. Districts had reduced their staffs by 20 percent or more, and each district on the tour had flat or growing enrollment. Summer school programs were cut, libraries were closed, and fewer arts and music classes offered. Preschool programs, a hot topic in Albany this year, have also been scaled back in some districts.
“Everyone understood that in 2008 we had a downturn in the state’s economy. We have to be realistic, we can’t spend more than we have,” said Democratic Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, the chair of the Assembly Education Committee and the host of the press conference. “Having said that, as the economy comes back, we’re not seeing the attention paid to these kinds of real setbacks for kids.”
Libby, the Cohoes superintendent, said that the governor’s emphasis on the state’s per-pupil spending is misleading, since the cost of living is so high in the downstate region.
“The long and the short if it is, we have very high cost [areas like] Westchester, New York City and Long Island,” Libby said. “So of course when you start talking about, ‘Well, we’re the highest cost state in the union,’ or however he phrases it, well, there’s a reason for that. I look at the home I bought in upstate New York at $168,000 and compare it to the one my daughter bought in Port Washington in Nassau County, at about $750,000. [That’s] a big difference. It’s a higher cost of living, and you need higher salaries.”
Even if the state is unlikely to immediately restore the full $6 billion withheld through the Gap Elimination Adjustment, Nolan said that more should be done to divert resources to districts that are struggling the most.
“It’s never a perfect world, but we’re trying to work very carefully to do things: make sure the funding formula is fair, that it goes to the neediest districts,” the assemblywoman said. “We’ve made a lot of progress on that. When I got here 30 years ago it was sort of like if you were a powerful member, you could get some extra money for your district. We’re trying to have a formula that has some objectivity to it, that uses things like reduced price lunch to be the driving force. We’re also trying to put more money generally in the pot. … You keep pushing, you keep pushing—that’s what we’re here to do.”