EdVANTAGE Blog

The State Education Department has posted projections of 2010-11 School Aid under the state budget as it stands today.

The projections include district allocations from the state’s $607 million share of the federal Education Jobs Fund approved by Congress and President Obama earlier this month.

To see district specific figures, go here:  https://stateaid.nysed.gov/output_reports.htm and enter the district name or six-digit “BEDS” code number.  Then click “View District Data,” then “Estimates of 2010-11 State Aid.”

The line “FED ED JOBS FUND RESTORATION” shows each district’s new allocation from the Education Jobs Fund.  It is distributed by reducing each district’s Net Gap Elimination Adjustment by 43.025989 percent.

At the bottom of the report for each district is the caution, “NOTE: BY PART A, CHAPTER 313 OF THE LAWS OF 2010, THE ABOVE STATE AID AMOUNTS (EXCL FEDERAL FUNDS) MAY BE REDUCED BY APPROX 1%.”

As I have written previously, because the state is scheduled to receive less than the full $1.085 billion in supplemental federal Medicaid support the enacted budget assumed, the provisions of a contingency plan approved by Governor Paterson and the Legislature kick-in.

That legislation calls for equal percentage reductions in most areas of local assistance spending to cover the federal Medicaid shortfall, now estimated at about $280 million.  Given its share of the affected spending, School Aid could face mid-year cuts of around $100 million, or about 1 percent.  Payments beginning on or after September 16 could be reduced by that percentage.

It is customary for School Aid projections to include figures for the “base year;” in this case that would be the 2009-10 school year.

Those figures are omitted from these reports because the Governor and Legislature still have not decided whether to enact a freeze on data used to calculate aid for 2009-10.

Consistent with a proposal by the Governor, the Legislature was prepared to freeze the data used to calculate 2009-10 aid based on what was on file at the time the Governor released his proposed budget back in January.

In some aid categories such as special education, accurate data is not available to districts until after January.

Adopting the data freeze would require some districts to repay aid they have already received, because the state changed the law after the fact — after paying districts according to the laws it had in place when the payments were due.