In alignment with the Garden City Board of Education’s Legislative Affairs Committee’s goal of enhancing communication with the community, the district continues its “Question of the Week” feature. If you have a question you’d like answered about public or board policy, school district operations, or budget preparation and voting, please email: knightc@gcufsd.net.
Q: What are unfunded mandates?
A: State mandates applicable to school districts are designed and approved by the legislature to address a perceived and/or demonstrated need. Many mandates are helpful in improving public schools, such as requiring defibrillators in school buildings. Mandates typically have little or no dollars in aid attached to them, however, so they cost school districts in actual dollars and in time spent. For example, the myriad of more-and-more detailed data reporting that has been required by the state in the past few years carries a heavy burden of time. Funding for additional personnel to comply with these data mandates has not been provided and must been covered by existing staff. District demographic data, in-district student data, such as attendance and grades, and out-of-district private school student data (including for district-of-residence and district-of-attendance students); teacher data required for the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR), course descriptions, and graduation statistics, all require the time of trained and certified personnel with the oversight of building and district administrators.
Q: Has the governor proposed any new mandates for school districts?
A: Yes. Deliberations by legislators are currently going on in Albany regarding a host of new education mandates proposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in his Jan. 21 state-of-the-state/budget presentation. Compliance with the governor’s new proposals are tied to increases in school state aid. If the legislature approves his 2015-16 proposals for education, the governor has promised a $1.1 billion (4.8 percent) increase to public schools. If all of his proposals are not enacted, the state aid for 2015-16 would drop to $377 million (1.7 percent). During a Feb. 5 appearance in on Long Island promoting his “2015 Opportunity Agenda,” the governor suggested school districts should plan for the lower increase.
Q: Can school districts “opt out” of mandates?
A: No. School districts cannot “opt-out” of federal or state mandates. Mandates are laws requiring compliance that carry a penalty of withholding state aid and/or legal action, such as a state takeover of the school district. For Garden City Public Schools, state aid amounts to approximately 4.86 percent of its annual operating budget or $5 million.
Q: How much federal and state aid does Garden City receive?
A: Revenues available to operate Garden City Public Schools are primarily limited to two sources: aid from the federal and state governments and property taxes. The overwhelming percentage of revenues for Garden City comes from property taxes. State aid to the school district has been cut by more than half since 1990 from 10.19 percent to 4.86 percent for 2014.
On the federal aid side, in September 2010, New York State received nearly $700 million of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top (RTTT) federal dollars to implement educational reform, Garden City has received $0. However, the district was required by law to comply will all of RTTT requirements (an unfunded mandate).
In terms of state aid, Garden City Public Schools receives 4.86 percent of its annual revenue from state aid. State aid changes year-to-year, based on the amount included in the governor’s annual budget and approved by the state legislature. Each district receives an amount calculated by the state aid formula. The formula relies heavily on a district’s Combined Wealth Ratio (CWR) to calculate the level of need.
It is important to note that, since 2010, the governor’s budget has also included a new aid-cutting program for school districts called the Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA). This program, seldom mentioned by the governor’s office, has taken away $4,683,574 in state aid from Garden City Public Schools since its inception under former Governor David Patterson.
