New York voters go to the polls Tuesday to decide on school and library budgets and school board members.
Last year, New York voters approved 99 percent of school district budgets. New York State School Boards Association spokesman Dave Albert foresees a similar outcome Tuesday.
"One of the things that's unique about this year for school budgets is that schools have been able to use the state funding that they receive to continue to provide important educational programs to students," Albert said. "For example, state funding is helping schools fund extended day programs, academic intervention services to kind of overcome the learning loss that we saw from the pandemic, as well as student mental health services. So we're seeing schools, investing in social workers and psychologists. So schools are really beefing up the services that they're providing to students, especially as we hopefully pull out of this pandemic."
Albert says school budgets that don’t carry a big tax increase usually pass.
"What we see is that budgets that stay within their tax cap, generally pass at about a 99% rate," said Albert. "If you exceed your cap, it becomes much more difficult, it's more in the 60% range. Because you have to get 60% supermajority passage. So you can get 55-56% of voters approving your budget. But still, the budget fails because you didn't hit that magical 60% mark. But as long as you keep your budget within the tax cap, chances are pretty high it will do well. Because it generally translates to low tax increases."
Albert says about the same number of candidates are running for school board seats statewide as in previous years.
“But there are, you know, kind of outliers within that group," said Albert. "So for example, we know some of the districts locally in the Capital Region, there are many people running, you know, sometimes as many as 10 people running for a couple of seats on a board, but if you look across the state, you know, there are also districts where there might be one person running for, and there's four open seats.”
Alliance for Quality Education Executive Director Jasmine Gripper urges district residents to vote carefully.
"Be mindful of the candidates who are running, you know, look for candidates who are committed to teaching truth, who are committed to preserving our democracy, pay close attention to candidates, to their platform, and choose candidates that are definitely going to be committed to our children, and to teach them truth in our schools, because we've seen so many attacks on critical race theory, and other things," said Gripper. "But in this moment, we want to, we want a commitment in New York State to racial diversity, to equity, and to inclusion. And then the other thing is that there might be some ballot proposals. So you should always look over your ballot and see if there's any propositions or proposal on there, and that you don't miss anything when you go to cast your vote."
Albert notes it is not unusual to see political parties or cause-oriented groups supporting candidates, but it remains to be seen if that translates into higher voter turnout this year.
“I think the key thing to remember is that when you get on a school board, whatever issue may have motivated you to run, you are going to be faced with making a lot of decisions and across a variety of disciplines, you know, finance, legal, governance, there's a lot involved in being a member of a school board," Albert said. "So one of the things we always say to newly elected members is, understand that you're going to be making policy granting tenure. You're doing a lot of things that may be above and beyond that one issue that motivated you to run for board.”
Some school board voting locations may be different from where you usually cast your ballot, so check ahead. Voting hours may vary by district, but in general, polls are open 7 a.m. until 9 p.m.
