LI schools slammed with $200M in aid cuts
Christi Murphy teaches a writing workshop to her second grade class at Holbrook Road Elementary School in Centereach. The Middle Country School District is among those on Long Island that will be hard hit by state aid cuts. (March 31, 2011) Credit: Newsday / John Paraskevas
Public schools across Nassau and Suffolk counties are getting slammed next year with a record $200-million-plus cut in operating aid as part of statewide reductions approved by Albany lawmakers.
As local educators surveyed the damage Thursday, some of the loudest howls arose from a wide swath of low-wealth districts in the towns of Brookhaven, Islip and Babylon. Because such districts are among the most dependent on state financial assistance, they're also among the hardest hit by aid reductions.
Comsewogue and Islip each are losing the equivalent of more than 3 percent of their total budgets. Sachem, Middle Country and Wyandanch are losing more than 4 percent. In contrast, high-wealth districts such as Westhampton Beach, Fire Island and Manhasset are losing less than 1 percent.
In both the Middle Country and William Floyd districts, school leaders warned that tax hikes next year could potentially top 6 percent -- nearly triple the inflation rate. Elsewhere, districts are weighing cuts in student services ranging from full-day kindergartens to seventh-grade sports teams.
"You're widening the gap between the haves and have-nots," said Joe Bond, superintendent of Brentwood schools. The district is the Island's largest and one of its poorest, with taxable wealth barely half the state's average.
For the next school year, Brentwood stands to lose $9.4 million in aid. Consequently, the district is considering a reduction in its high school schedule from nine daily periods to eight, along with layoffs of more than 85 teachers.
In Albany, legislators who represent the Island said they did their best to restore part of the aid cuts proposed two months ago by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Lawmakers also note that this region's aid losses include $89 million in federal jobs money not renewed by Congress.
In addition, Cuomo and lawmakers were under pressure to close a state budget gap pegged as high as $10 billion.
"We made some very strong modifications to the governor's proposal that makes it more fair," said state Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport). He is chairman of the Senate's education committee, and one of the Island's bloc of nine Republican senators who negotiated restorations of aid.
Those restorations are substantial. Initially, Cuomo had called for cutting 11 percent of the Island's operating aid, compared with 7.8 percent in cuts to New York City schools' operating aid and 9.3 percent for the state as a whole. The package approved Wednesday by the legislature shrinks those reductions to 9.1 percent on the Island, 7.1 percent in the city and 8.2 percent statewide.
Figures do not include aid for school construction and renovation, which are reimbursements and cannot be applied to daily operations.
Even so, Island schools will receive $207 million less next year than they got this year, including the discontinued federal jobs money. And the biggest blows are falling on low-wealth systems.
"We have a large number of districts that enroll a lot of kids that are below the state average in wealth," said Gary Bixhorn, chief operating officer of the regional Eastern Suffolk BOCES. "Cuts in state aid tend to shortchange those districts and treat them as if they're wealthier than they really are, because property values down here are higher than they are upstate."