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No cuts, yet, in state aid
But fearing the worst in '09, Middle Country schools are circling the wagons
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| | | By Gregory Zeller | | |
November 19, 2008 | 06:07 PM
It was high noon Tuesday in Albany, as Gov. David Paterson and state legislators squared off over Paterson's plan to trim $2 billion from the state budget.
But with public employee unions, human services agencies and other state organizations relying on Albany's support — especially Long Island schools — watching nervously, Tuesday's 12:30 pm special session went from showdown to no-show, as state officials pulled the plug without so much as a gavel smack.
The special session never took place — a development that was not entirely surprising, considering the state Senate's lame-duck Republican majority had promised to block Paterson's cuts, citing potential harm to local schools and other concerns.
State Assembly Democrats, who already hold sway over that body, were expected to caucus before Tuesday's session to decide how to vote on Paterson's proposals, but the governor had stated in numerous public reports that he wouldn't submit his plan for a vote unless there was agreement among the state's three legislative bodies — and with no agreement in sight, Paterson kept that promise.
Published reports stated late Tuesday that Paterson would not convene another special session before the end of 2008, but would revisit spending cuts in January — after Democrats assume the state Senate majority, giving them control of the Senate, the state Assembly and the governor's office.
The no-vote was a temporary reprieve for statewide agencies, particularly school districts, that feared the worst as the state and national economies falter.
On Nov. 12, Paterson announced in an online press conference his intentions to close a state spending gap engendered by the national financial crisis. His plan, in lieu of raising personal income taxes: cut roughly $2 billion in spending, in part by slashing funds for the arts, libraries and higher education, and by enacting SUNY and CUNY tuition hikes.
But Paterson's biggest targets were health care — higher taxes for medical insurers and lower-than-anticipated Medicaid reimbursements for hospitals and other care facilities — and local schools, with the governor intending to take back some $585 million in state aid promised to New York districts for the current academic year.
While the governor said the school cuts would hit the state's more affluent districts hardest, no district was spared the ax — and a quick glance at numbers provided by Paterson's office show sizeable cuts across the board.
Under Paterson's plan, the Middle Country School District — by no stretch of the imagination an "affluent" district — would have lost the third most of any Suffolk County district. Middle Country would have lost nearly $4.5 million, or more than 6 percent, of the state aid promised for the 2008-09 school year, trailing only the $7.2 million (or 7 percent) Paterson would have cut from the Sachem School District and the $5.9 million (or 3 percent) possibly cut from Brentwood schools, according to the governor's numbers.
"This is a slap in the face to the Middle Country School District," said Superintendent of Schools Roberta Gerold. "We have the lowest per-pupil spending on Long Island already, so we don't qualify for high tax aid. We've made the cuts already that folks are now thinking about doing. We've been really careful with our dollars, very frugal. We already don't have art and music in our kindergartens. And on the elementary level, we already have to share libraries."
In fact, if the midyear cuts had come to pass, Gerold said the district was considering some extremely desperate measures to keep afloat — including "closing one elementary school to consolidate resources."
While the specter of midyear cuts became less daunting with Tuesday's non-session, Middle Country is already casting a wary eye toward 2009-10, when the state aid bar is expected to be set much lower. Gerold, for one, is quite apprehensive about what Albany will do with school funding when the three-headed Democratic majority reconvenes in January — and what it will mean for her large, cash-strapped district.
"We may have to increase class size, and we already have [an average] class sizes of 27," Gerold said. "We want our kids to have four years of math in high school, but we may have to walk away from that and other programs."
Reporter Karen Foreman contributed to this story.
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