Most school district budgets were approved by New Yorkers voters Tuesday. But not all residents were ready to override the tax cap.
Preliminary results compiled by the New York State School Boards Association show voters on Tuesday approved 97% of school district budgets statewide.
But the Northville Central School budget was defeated 345 to 246. The $15.4 million budget marked a 5.24 percent increase over last year. The district says just 41 percent of voters approved it – well short of the 60 percent threshold needed to override the cap.
60% of voters need to support any budget trying to pierce the 3.25 percent tax levy cap set by the state. Other budgets that fell short of meeting that benchmark include Brunswick and Scotia-Glenville, where a $67 million dollar budget would have increased the Schenectady County school district’s tax levy by 5.09%. That garnered just 55% of the vote.
The Scotia-Glenville Board of Education is scheduled to meet Thursday night to determine the next steps. It could present a revised budget proposal for a revote by June 17 or adopt a contingency budget with steep cuts.
David Albert with the New York State School Boards Association says school districts budgeted very cautiously this year.
"I think there were some factors that affected school districts this year. One is the late state budget. Districts had to put together their spending plans without the benefit of knowing how much state aid they were going to get, so they had to guess that number. And in some cases it can be a pretty significant amount. So it's hard to estimate what that's going to be, and so as a result, we saw a lot of districts plan on using their rainy day funds," Albert said.
The Albany City School District's $342.4 budget easily passed, as did the Albany Public Library budget.
Schools superintendent Joseph Hochreiter says the vote shows widespread support for the district's academic program.
"The fiscal decisions that we've made over last number of years have been able to to really mitigate tax increases," said Hochreiter. "We're very, very proud of our fiscal responsibility and our use of reserves. In Albany, a unique community, where 63% of our property within the city is not eligible to be taxed, whether it's state, federal, religious buildings, universities. There is a really significant burden on the taxpayers to supplement state aid to support our school budget. Over the last number of years we've been really thoughtful around tax increases and how we can tighten our belt and be a little more creative and conservative with our spending. So this year, last night, we had 81% of our voters to approve the budget that includes a voter turnout increase of around 20 to 25% from the year previous."
Austin Wolfgang is newly-elected to the Board of Education. Wolfgang is looking forward to giving back to the community through service on the board.
"I was born and raised here in the city of Albany. I went to New Scotland Elementary, Hackett Middle School, and graduated from Albany High. Having somebody on the board who's going to center that student perspective and be able to speak to what it's actually like in our schools as a student, you know, not the parent perspective of hearing what your students are going through, but, you know, actually having been there. I think that our school is unfairly, you know, talked bad about and I want to show them that, no, we have great students, great teachers in Albany, great schools, and that our students are ready to go out in the world and do great things,” Wolfgang said.
Albert said "What we saw in this year's school budget votes was continued strong support on the whole for public schools. This is consistent with previous years, and this is especially true for budgets that needed only a simple majority to pass. So these would be budgets that were within their tax cap. Those budgets passed by a rate of about 99 %. So if you stayed within your tax cap, 90% of those budgets were passed."
