Long Island schools get $205.6 million boost in state aid

Long Island’s school districts will get an additional $205.6 million in state aid for the 2024-25 academic year — up 4.24% from the current year — as part of a state budget pieced together amid continued debate over future funding.

The financial package for Nassau and Suffolk counties, totaling more than $5 billion, represents a $64.9 million increase from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget in January. Hochul and legislative leaders agreed on increases last week, after determining state tax revenues were running higher than expected.

Albany's spending agreement comes 19 days late. Lawmakers voted final approval Saturday. 

The 111 districts gaining money in the expanded budget include Port Jefferson, which initially faced a potential 28.38% loss in aid, but now gets a 1.95% increase. Also, Long Beach, where a potential 11.68% loss changed to a 4.74% gain and Sayville, where a 9.74% loss changed to a 2.16% gain. 

“All this will be of great benefit when schools form their own budgets,” Assemb. Fred Thiele (D-Sag Harbor) said. 

Bob Vecchio, executive director of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, voiced relief over the approval of an aid package, but said he remains concerned over what might happen in 2025-26 and beyond.

Lawmakers have agreed to a study, led by the Albany-based Rockefeller Institute, that could result in recalibration of the state's formula for distributing aid. 

“We are grateful that the governor and the legislature have finally come to an agreement,” Vecchio said Friday. “While many school districts avoided steep reductions in aid this year, we are very concerned with looking ahead to next year and what changes to the formula will be made in the near future.”

Late approval of a statewide aid package has created headaches for many local school officials who had been drafting district budgets without knowing how much financial support they could expect from Albany.

Some of those frustrations were summed up by Timothy Eagen, superintendent of Kings Park schools, who messaged Newsday Friday: “This system makes it nearly impossible to engage in long-range fiscal planning, because school districts don’t know from one year to the next the revenue package we can count on from the state.” 

For Long Island, as well as the rest of the state, the latest aid package from Albany marks the continuation of a protracted struggle to provide more equitable funding for low-income, middle-class and wealthy districts.

Between 2021-22 and 2023-24, public schools in Nassau and Suffolk counties gained record aid increases totaling more than $1.6 billion. Most of the extra money was in the form of “foundation aid” — the state’s major source of support.

Funding is driven by formulas that take into account such factors as the number of enrolled students who are economically disadvantaged, or who struggle with disabilities or limited English. Statewide, the increase in money over three years totaled $7 billion.

For 2024-25, the goal was more modest — essentially, to provide enough additional money to keep pace with inflation, while also complying with funding requirements in the state’s constitution. Those requirements were spelled out by a landmark 2003 court ruling that followed a decade of litigation. 

The constitution calls for funding sufficient to give all students a chance for a “sound basic” education. The Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, interpreted this to mean an education that prepares students for active citizenship as adults, including the ability to serve on juries. 

That minimum amount of extra aid for 2024-25 would have totaled about $1.3 billion under state guidelines based on cost-of-living increases and other factors. But in January, Hochul, a Democrat, reduced the increase to $825 million in her budget proposal, on grounds the state faced a potential budget deficit and needed to tighten its finances.

For Long Island, Hochul’s proposal translated into an outright loss of aid for 44 districts. Local opposition to the plan touched off letter-writing campaigns and other protests, as school board officials, superintendents and others warned of potential layoffs and cuts in student programs.

In contrast, only 10 Island districts would lose aid under the enhanced package approved Saturday.

Hochul described her work in allocating billions of extra school-aid dollars as “one of the proudest things I’ve done as governor for the last two and a half years.”

However, the latest agreement, as described by Hochul, would slow the growth of foundation aid. That has some advocates worried that poorer districts could get shortchanged.

David Little is chief operating officer of a school-district consortium known as Reform Educational Financing Inequities Today, or REFIT. The consortium includes districts such as Brentwood and Freeport that rely heavily on foundation aid.

“Those districts have many more magnitudes of need than they did before the pandemic,” Little said.