Garden City Public Schools’ 'Question of the Week'

In alignment with the Board of Education’s goal to enhance communications with the community, Garden City Public Schools continues its “Question of the Week” feature to provide information and address concerns of Village residents. The initial questions will be devoted to examining aspects of the new tax levy cap that have been posed to the Board and administration over the past several weeks. A complete listing of questions and answers to date is posted on the district’s website.

Below is this week’s question and answer:
          
Question of the Week: Exactly how much has state aid to Garden City Public Schools declined in the past few years?

Garden City relies extensively (90 percent) on property taxes for the funds that allow it to operate its programs. State aid adds to the school district’s revenues, helping to reduce the property tax levy. However, unlike in Massachusetts – the tax cap “model” for New York’s legislation – state aid for Garden City Public Schools has declined in recent years, shifting more of the funding burden to taxpayers.

Below is a breakdown of state aid received by Garden City Public Schools for the past five years:

* The school district must submit expenditures to the state before receiving aid

It is easy to see the multi-year percentage reduction in state aid in the right-hand column. For the upcoming 2012-13 school year, the projected state aid figure is $4,621,037, a slight increase from the anticipated 2011-12 amount.
Over the six-year span that includes the 2012-13 school year, the total decrease since 2007-08 is over 21 percent, a reduction of $ 1,249,453. To make up this loss in state aid, the district can cut personnel and/or programs, increase the tax levy, dip into reserve funds or implement a combination of all three.

School districts are highly regulated and cannot cost-shift or create new fees to cover a loss of revenue the way other government agencies can.

For a comparison of state aid figures, we can look at aid under the “model” Massachusetts’ 2.5 percent tax levy cap. There, the state significantly increased aid by the annual CPI (Consumer Price Index), plus 8.6 percent per year to minimize the impact to taxpayers and school districts at the local level.

Albany has offered no such support to its state’s public schools. On the contrary, the state has implemented new and costly mandates, programs a school district must, by law, implement, since the passage of the “2% tax levy cap” last June.