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Last night, I went to the Common Council’s public hearing on the city’s proposed 2008-09 budget. Unlike some hearings in past years, there were few people in attendance (perhaps a dozen) and the whole thing wrapped up in about a half hour.
However, the tenor of the meeting remains the same. People from the school district and various groups affiliated with teachers and parents of schoolchildren came to ask the city to spend more money on the school district.
The appeals came in two forms. The more savvy or connected speakers hewed to the school district’s party line and asked for a specific amount–$1.2 million. The less discriminating came and asked the city to fund the school district “fully.” Both groups alluded to the undeniable truth about the students in the city school district–students in abject poverty, many with little fluency in English, cost the district more to educate than do affluent children from the suburbs. When you start from so far behind, it takes more effort and more investment to catch up.
Unfortunately, no one speaking up for the school district has even an elementary grasp of the city’s economic structure and many speakers hold a thinly-veiled contempt for the city. The speakers constantly allude to the historic underfunding of the school district by Albany, lumping the city into the mix as an unindicted co-conspirator, questioning the Mayor and the Council’s commitment to our children.
Syracuse is a city where twice the amount of the local tax levy goes to the school district than to all other city services combined. Yet speakers for the school district seem to believe that the city is holding out on the schools, withholding money. The reality is that the city’s tax levy is now a small percentage of the both the city’s budget and the school district’s budget. The city and schools rely on transfer payments from Albany to survive. In fact, the structural deficits faced by both bodies–in the form of contracts with their unionized work forces–and the pensions, health care and other benefits that go along with those contracts–are insoluble without massive infusions of state aid.
Therefore, it is rather unseemly to go before the Council to beg for an additional $1 million, threatening to cut jobs if your budget isn’t increased by less than half a percentage point–particularly given the very large increase of state aid received this budget year. Is the school district so mismanaged that over 70 jobs are left to dangle in the wind unless an additional 0.3 % is added to the school budget? (An addition that was added at the very last meeting of the school board’s discussion of their budget?)
At least no one got up and asked the Council to please raise my taxes and give the money to the school district. Do these people even understand basic economics? Do they think that these costs are only born by those with the ability to pay? If the city raises its property taxes, it will fall disproportionally on the poorest neighborhoods and those least able to afford increases. The elderly on fixed incomes. Poor tenants paying higher rents. The poor students that you claim to care so much for will just have another stone thrown into their sinking boat.
OK, despite the non-stop, breathless coverage in the paper and on the TV news, the F-M astroturf sports stadium issue isn’t exactly the most earthshaking issue in C.N.Y. Even though I am an alumnus of F-M, the only time I ever think about the school is on the rare occasions that the Hornets may have a chance to knock off West Genny in lacrosse (and that usually turns out to be a pipe dream.)
The district has gotten much larger and much more affluent since I graduated in the late 1970’s. The building boom in the eastern suburbs has turned F-M from the smallest participant in the “big schools” athletic conference, to a school that is solidly competitive with behemoths like C-NS and Liverpool.
The F-M I went to was only competitive in soccer and tennis–the rich kid sports. Now F-M is even competitive in football, basketball and lacrosse, the big ticket sports. So parents of interscholastic sports athletes want the district to spring for the modern facilities found at all the other big sports schools. I knew that this vote was going to go against the sports families as F-M has a history of voting down special tax elections. In the early 1980’s, F-M attempted to pass a tax levy to build a district swimming pool, open for community use. The pool was shot down in roughly the same 2-1 against fashion as the stadium.
The New York State Department of Education categorizes F-M as one of only two school districts with low financial needs in Onondaga County–the other being Skaneateles. Other communities considered affluent, such as Jamesville-Dewitt and Cazenovia, are listed as districts with average financial needs, as are most districts in the County.
The popular conception of F-M as a community that lavishes money on its school district is false. F-M residents are cautious spenders. According to the New York State Education Department’s Fiscal Accountability and Special Education Information Supplement – May 2007, low financial need public school districts, located in the most affluent communities in the state, spend an average of $9,936 per pupil. F-M spends $7,613 per pupil.
Many schools categorized as average financial need districts in Onondaga County spend more per pupil than wealthy F-M: Lafayette ($10,657), East Syracuse-Minoa ($9,008), Liverpool ($7,994) and Jamesville-Dewitt ($7,768). These districts either exceed or come close to the statewide average for per pupil expenditures in districts with average financial needs: $8,006. Other average need districts don’t come close to the statewide per pupil expenditure for districts in their need category, but still spend almost as much as F-M: Baldwinsville ($7,397), Westhill ($7,267), Onondaga Central ($7,110) and West Genesee ($7,101).
It’s also interesting to note that Cicero-North Syracuse, the largest school district in the county, and the proud owners of a brand spanking new turf stadium, spends the least per pupil of any school district in the area at $6,762. It’s also the only suburban school district in the county with a school on the state’s non-performing list for abysmal test scores.
I haven’t verified the figures, but F-M must have a very stiff residential tax levy given its small amount of commercial and industrial properties. This probably leads to the tax rebellions and no votes on “add-ons” to the budget like sports facilities. However, it also makes F-M the best buy in Onondaga County in terms of academic value per dollar spent. The student’s test scores and performance in extracurricular activities such as Science Olympiads, Model U.N. and music and art competitions clearly put F-M at the top of any survey of academic accomplishment.
Of course, none of this is going to change the one thing that this alumnus cares about: when the heck are we going to beat West Genny in lacrosse?
