A new post on our blog analyzing past school budget voting results and speculating on how the tax cap might affect the outcomes in next Tuesday’s votes.

The Albany Times Union explained some puzzling results in calculating tax levy limits for different school districts.

Education Week’s Politics K-12 blog wrote about a bill passed by the U.S. House of representatives designed to avoid the automatic cuts to education programs which would occur if Congress and the president fail to agree on a deficit reduction plan by January 1, 2013.

The Senate and President Obama will not agree to the House plan and advocates warn that it would not be much better than the automatic cuts.  The article gives a concise forecast of what could be in store for federal education programs.

Tom Precious of the Buffalo News interviewed State Senate Education Committee Chair John Flanagan.  The Senator delivers thoughtful observations on the controversy over releasing individual teacher evaluation results. The 10-minute audio interview is available here.

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch spoke at a business gathering on Wednesday in New York City. She made some headlines by not slamming the door on speculation she might be a candidate for New York City Mayor next year.  But she also offered comments on recent testing controversies, calling problems with the grades 3 through 8 state assessments “inexcusable.”

GothamSchools.org reported that the Chancellor said,

“The psychometricians have assured us that the reliability and validity of the exams … is not contaminated by these errors.  What does drive my anxiety is [test-maker Pearson's] ability to deliver on the contract. The mistakes that have been revealed are really disturbing. I don’t think children should sit in an exam and be confused about the exam. I think testing needs to be as straightforward as possible.”

She added,

“I would suggest to Pearson that they take this very seriously, because next year we are moving to the Common Core standards and those tests are going to be harder still.  What happens here as a result of these mistakes is that it makes the public at large question the efficacy of the state testing system.”

Last weekend, Time magazine posted a letter from a Pearson executive to the Education Department presenting its perspective on the 8^th grade English language arts test “pineapple-gate” controversy.

US News & World Report issued its ranking of the nation’s best high schools.  The digital magazine found some errors in the data behind the rankings, but in the initial list, 20 of the top 100  are New York state public high schools.  New York’s share of the top schools is way above its share of nationwide public school enrollment — 5.6 percent.

The battle over teacher evaluations which threatens to cost Buffalo schools over $5 million federal grants continues.  The Buffalo News reported on Monday that the local teacher union is winning support from counterparts around the state.

For example, the Yonkers teacher union president said, “Someone has to turn to the state Education Department and say, ‘Your tests are faulty, you’re not taking into account student attendance, you’re not giving us enough time.’”

Then on Tuesday, the News reported on a survey of local voter reactions to the controversy.  The survey found a slight majority of voters agreed with the union’s position on the issue of how student attendance should apply in teacher evaluations.  The pollster said, however, that there were no winners.  Voters hold the school board in low regard and support for the union dropped when respondents were apprised of the potential loss of federal aid.

Under the new evaluation requirements, all districts must negotiate new procedures with their unions and have a state approved plan in place by January 17, 2013 or risk losing state aid increases.  We are watching Buffalo for insights into how voters might react to impasses elsewhere.

The Education Speaks blog checked in on the State Mandate Relief Council.  I found it surprising how few districts have submitted specific mandate relief requests to the Council.

President Obama came to Albany on Tuesday to speak at the State University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.  State Education Commissioner John King used the occasion to author a column for the Times Union on a proposal to expand high school graduation options.

The Ithaca Journal reported on Southern Tier school districts feeling financial pressure to consolidate.

This was national “Teacher Appreciation Week,” and a New York Times column about one mother’s example as a teacher drew a lot of attention.

Finally, Diane Ravitch and others have speculated over whether Governor Cuomo’s Education Reform Commission is a threat to the State Board of Regents.

Up until this year, voters have been deciding whether to approve an authorized spending level for their school districts.

We will be looking to see if changing the question voters are asked to decide changes the outcomes and the turnout.

I imagine that many people think about elections as resembling giant board meetings, with more or less the same people showing up each time, sometimes voting one way, sometimes another.

But unlike board meetings, who turns out to vote can change dramatically from one election to the next.  That might be even more true in May school votes than November general elections.

The State Education Department has been compiling vote counts in school budget elections since 2003.  In the years since, total turnout has averaged just under 890,000 votes per year, with a low of 738,000 in 2009, and a high of 994,000 in 2005, a swing of almost 35 percent from low to high.

Here is a chart illustrating the change in yes and no votes and school budget passage rates between 2003 and 2011.

The chart shows that the “no” turnout has been especially volatile, ranging from a low of 261,000 in 2009 (the year in the period with the lowest statewide average proposed tax levy increase – 2.1 percent), to a high of 443,000 in 2005, a swing of 69 percent.

The range between the lowest and highest “yes” totals is much smaller — 28 percent, with a low of 462,000 in 2008 and a high of 591,500 in 2003.

Given that this year’s statewide average proposed tax increase of 2.2 percent approaches 2009’s low of 2.1 percent, we might anticipate a low turnout of negative voters, as occurred in 2009.

Here is a chart showing the statewide change in proposed school spending and tax levy and state aid over the same period as our voting statistics.

But it has occurred to us that the shift to tax cap voting could bring new voters to the polls – people who imagine that it means that for the first time they will have a chance to affect their school tax bills.

Voters could do so under the old rules as well, since permissible spending was capped if voters did not approve a school budget.  But the tax cap makes the connection more direct.

It is striking that the highest yes vote turnouts came in years when districts faced some of their toughest budgeting choices – in 2003, when state aid was cuts and districts asked voters to approve budgets with tax increases averaging 8.2 percent, and in 2010, when state aid was cut for the first time since 2003 and many districts proposed budgets with cuts to spending other than pensions and health insurance.

It seems that in the toughest financial times, voters determined that it was most important to support their school district budget proposals.

Of course, the tax cap does not only change the question voters are asked to decide – from authorizing a spending level to approving a tax levy increase.  It also changes the rules for the percentage of votes required for approval, and the consequences if voter approval is not forthcoming.

The tax cap law prescribes a complex set of calculations for establishing a “tax levy limit” for each district.  A short-hand explanation is that the tax levy limit is the lesser of 2 percent or inflation (2 percent for the coming year), plus or minus certain items such as the local share of capital costs, certain large legal expenses, increases in pension costs above a threshold, and a few other items.  These items vary from district to district.

If a district proposes a tax levy increase above its limit, approval by 60 percent of voters is required.

If the proposed tax levy increase is at or below the limit for the district, a simple majority of voters is enough for approval – 50 percent plus one vote.

Districts have two chances to win voter approval, with the opportunity for a second vote on the third Tuesday in June.

Of crucial importance, if a district cannot gain voter approval, it is not permitted any increase in tax levy over the prior year.

This year, 51 districts – only 8 percent of the total – are proposing increases above their tax levy limit and therefore will need approval by 60 percent of voters.

We cannot go back in time and calculate tax levy limits for each individual district for the last round of budget voting a year ago.  Also, as stressed above, had the rules been different a year ago, some voters would have responded differently to proposed budgets seeking higher tax increases.

But we can look at how many districts proposing larger tax increases a year ago were able to gain support from 60 percent or more of their voters.

This year, the average tax levy limit is 2.7 percent.  Last year, 90 percent of the 366 districts which proposed tax levy increases greater than that benchmark won voter approval for their budgets.  But only 61 percent passed with 6o percent of the vote or better.

High need small city and suburban districts had the hardest time reaching the 60 percent threshold last year.  Only 41 percent of those high need districts passed their budgets by that margin.

In contrast, 72 percent of the low need districts seeking tax increases greater than 2.7 percent were able to get approval by at least 60 percent of their voters.

It is also the case that if this year’s rules had been in place last year, districts would have made different choices – especially because of the severe penalty for failure to gain voter approval and the elevated risk of failure with coming from the super-majority requirement for cap over-rides.

The average proposed tax increase is down more than one percentage point from a year ago – from 3.4 percent to 2.2 percent.  There are multiple factors at work – state was cut last year and increased this year, for example.  But there is no doubt that the tax cap is a huge consideration, almost certainly the most important change from a year ago.

Among the pool of districts attempting over-rides this year, higher need districts are somewhat under-represented in comparison to their share of all districts.  That is not surprising, given their difficulty in getting to 60 percent a year ago.  But for this year at least, that under-representation is not striking.

Another concern is that the cap has been widely described as a “2 percent cap.”  Will voters apply that as a benchmark in evaluating their district’s proposal?

As explained above, allowable exemptions can result in districts having tax levy limits greater or less than 2 percent.  More than half the districts proposing budgets within their limit are seeking tax increases greater than 2 percent.  Their proposals will need only a simple majority of voters for approval.  But getting to that mark could be a challenge, if their voters apply 2 percent as the standard for judging what is a reasonable tax increase.

A frequently requested item:  The State Education Department’s compilation of state special education laws, regulations and policies not required by federal law.

Writing in Newsday, E.J. McMahon of the conservative Manhattan Institute suggested that Governor Cuomo’s new education reform commission,

“would be wise to steer clear of district reorganization, rather than touch off a big political fight over relatively small potential savings. Instead, it should attack state mandates — especially in the areas of collective bargaining (for example, the Triborough Amendment) and special education — that do the most to drive up school head counts and compensation costs.”

Mr. McMahon notes that, “…when it comes to [school district] administrative overhead, New York doesn’t look far out of line from the national norm.”

On the other hand, New York State United Teachers General Counsel Richard Casagrande made the argument for the Triborough Law in a letter to the Albany Times Union.

The State Senate had a heated debate over “bullet aid” to school districts on Tuesday, when it took up a resolution to allocate a nearly $10 million lump sum appropriation included in the new state budget enacted last month. The link includes the text of the resolution, with the amounts allocated to benefiting districts.

There have been advances in transparency:  up until a few years ago, the allocations were made by unpublished memoranda of understanding.

Some Assembly bullet aid was allocated to districts through direct appropriations to individual districts as detailed in the state budget, and some remains to be allocated by a resolution like the Senate’s.

As we reported in a separate blog post, Governor Cuomo announced the members of the Education Reform Commission he called for in his State of the State address last January.  The Middletown Times Herald Record cautioned that the commission was “put together from the top down, when the problem is best viewed and analyzed from the bottom up.”

I missed doing a Friday wrap-up for last week, so here are a few items from that period:

The State Board of Regents met on April 23^rd and 24^th.  They received a briefing on issues with the grades 3 through 8 English language arts assessment (e.g., “pineapple-gate”).  You can watch the Regents discussion here.

The Regents also considered a proposal to create additional pathways to high school graduation for students, by allowing them to substitute an approved career and technical education assessment or second math or science exam for the current Global History and Geography Regents Exam.

The proposal drew some criticism as misguided at a time when students need greater global awareness.  It is important to note that students would still be required to take and pass the global course and that passing the exam would still be an option for meeting graduation requirements.

In its regulatory relief white paper, the Council called allowed students to substitute a CTE assessment for one of the five required Regents, excluding those in English and math.

The pathways proposal will now be circulated for field and public reaction.

The Regents also approved the outline for a legislative proposal to authorize regional high schools, an idea supported by superintendents in several rural areas as I explained to the Albany Times Union.

The state’s highest court heard oral arguments in a challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s school finance system in lawsuit brought by small city residents.

In its defense the state cites the Foundation Aid formula and other reforms enacted in 2007, although those initiatives have essentially been on hold since 2009. The Albany Times Union followed up with an editorial criticizing “legal gamesmanship” by the state.

The state’s attempts have the case dismissed have been rejected by two lower courts.  The Court of Appeals will issue the final ruling.  A win for the small cities would allow the case to go to trial a process which entail years of arguments and appeals.

Finally, New York State United Teachers held its annual Representative Assembly in Buffalo last week.  The union approved a resolution calling the state system of standardized testing “broken,” and heard from an assortment of public officials and union leaders.

As expected, Buffalo teachers walked out when State Education Commissioner John King arrived to speak.  The State Education Department has refused to approve teacher evaluation plans required as for federal School Improvement Grant funding for Buffalo.

More on the NYSUT RA is available here

Some of the key findings:

• Statewide average proposed tax increases are down from a year ago (from 3.4% to 2.2%).

• Proposed spending increases are up from a year ago (1.7% vs. 1.3%), but still well-below inflation (2.7% in latest CPI).

• School districts were holding down tax and spending increases even before the tax cap became law.

51 districts are seeking to over-ride the tax levy limit for their districts. About half of districts are proposing levy increases within 20% of the maximum increase allowed by their limit.

• Unlike some past years, there do not appear to be clear wealth-related patterns in proposed spending and tax increases, at least looking at the state as a whole.

• There is widespread concern about the year after next (2013-14). Looking at reserves helps identify why.

• Some state aid data:

− The overall pattern of state aid increases appears somewhat random due to the mix of (1) expense-based aids funded by current law, and (2) new general aid increases directed by the Governor and Legislature.

− Distribution of new general aid this year is more progressive than in some past years, but additions remain small in comparison to past cuts.

Some additional observations and conclusions:

• Despite an improved fiscal outlook for state government, the position of many school districts remains grim.

• The state aid increase for many districts is offset by the end of federal Education Jobs Funds.

• For the third straight year, proposed school spending increases average under 2% — probably less than what pensions and health insurance alone would drive, requiring districts to cut other spending on balance.

• After three difficult prior state budget cycles, many districts have exhausted easier budget cutting options.

•The tax cap does appear to be pushing down the tax increases which school districts are proposing.

It will be chaired by Richard Parsons, a retired chair of Citigroup, who was once an assistant counsel to Governor Nelson Rockefeller, among other roles.

The members include State Education Commissioner John King, the Chancellors of the State and City University systems, the Chairs of the Assembly and Senate Education Committees, and many accomplished and impressive people from the non-profit and higher education sectors.

More than a few leaders in public education have remarked, however, on the absence of anyone currently working in a public school or serving on a school board in the state.

I’ll go back to what I said and wrote when the Governor first unveiled the plan, after declaring himself, “the students’ lobbyist.”

Speaking to the New York Times, I said,

“There are a lot of people who would disagree with the governor’s rhetoric and parts of his analysis, but would agree with the big picture:   how do we produce more learning for students with the resources our taxpayers can provide?”

I added that a commission could provide the focus for an extended statewide conversation aimed at answering that question.

As I explained in an earlier blog post, I made some additional points about a commission on a statewide cable news program back in January:

Capitol Tonight’s Liz Benjamin said she had the sense the Governor would look to fill the commission with people from outside the state’s education system.

I said I hoped it would include insiders as well, because they could speak to what is working well now, and what isn’t.

I also said that it would be a mistake to assume that everyone working in schools now is wedded to the status quo.  Again, they entered education to positively affect the lives of young people.

I went on to add that even if some are wedded to the status quo, the status quo is changing – we have had three years of state aid cuts or freezes [again, this was before the latest state budget was approved, with an aid increase], now the tax cap, and continuing cost pressures from pensions and health insurance.  Schools have to change.

A commission can’t just point to what schools are doing wrong, however.  A corollary question for it must be what does the state need to change, in order to help schools produce more learning for students with the resources the taxpayers can provide.

Now we know.  The commission includes no one currently working in or helping to lead a public school district in New York State.  The membership is also skewed towards New York City.

The points I made back in January remain valid – people working in schools today can speak authoritatively to what is and isn’t working now.

But I’ll add one more point:  The morale in many schools now is very poor.

Some of this derives from the difficult budgeting choices districts are going through as they head toward May 15 tax levy votes.

Some of it comes from fears – warranted or not – over what new evaluation procedures will mean for teachers and principals.

Some comes from the overall pace of change thrust on schools with the implementation of new evaluations, new standards, new assessments, and so on, much of it coming with murky guidance from the state and generating deep doubts about whether any returns will ever justify the effort expended.

And some of it arises from a prevailing atmosphere of skepticism and hostility toward government and public employees.

Any education reform agenda emerging from any source will be carried out chiefly by people working in public schools today.

So, with or without direct participation by practitioners, the commission must be attentive to the demands schools are grappling with every day.

Asking New York’s public schools to take on added assignments conceived without appreciation for the demands they are already straining to meet would be a recipe for frustration and failure.

Superintendents are leaders.  One of the first duties of a leader is to provide hope — a plausible vision of a better future with a route to reach it.  So part of the Council’s response to the commission — and to prevailing circumstances — should be to define our own vision for leading schools beyond present challenges on to a more promising future.

• How the new property tax cap is affecting school district budgeting  is getting more focused attention in the media.
• A report on the recently enacted state budget projects a small overall deficit and a 3.5 percent School Aid increase for next year.
• The state’s English Language Arts assessment was given to 3rd through 8th graders this week.  The Wall Street Journal reports that the Board of Regents will consider giving high school students alternatives to the Global History and Geography Exam as a requirement for graduation.
• Plus pieces on teacher evaluations and mandate relief.

Tax cap
Several stories about how the new tax cap is affecting school budget decision-making…

Last Sunday, the Journal News reported that school districts in its territory (the lower Hudson Valley) had sharply reduced proposed spending and tax increases over the past four years compared with the preceding four years.

For example, school spending increases for the region averaged 7.6 percent per year between 2003-04 and 2007-08, but only 1.6 percent annually for the four years since.

This occurred before the tax cap was enacted.

The paper followed up with an editorial, “School districts learn their lesson,” and ascribed the shift in budgeting chiefly to an influx of more fiscally conservative board members.

I wrote a blog post about the Journal News pieces explaining that the new restraint occurred statewide, because “democracy works,”

the change happened because superintendents and board members – veteran as well as new – concluded it had to:  following the “Great Recession,” taxpayers either could not or would not support a continuation of increases that had been common.

I included a chart showing statewide changes in school spending, tax levy, and state aid since 2003-04. I pointed out the contrast between the last two years with 2003-04: state aid was cut and pension costs surged in all three years, but tax increases averaged about five percentage points lower in the two more recent years than in 2003-04.

I concluded,

School district leaders responded to voter concerns over property taxes.  In a month we will see how voters respond to the choices presented to them for 2012-13 school budgets, and eventually, to the consequences of the choices for their schools.

Writing in Newsday, E.J. McMahon, a key figure in the movement to enact the tax cap, wrote that,

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wisely modeled New York’s tax cap law on Proposition 2½, the 1980 Massachusetts initiative limiting annual growth in local property tax levies to 2.5 percent.

Well, not exactly.

In Massachusetts, communities may increase their tax levy by up to 2.5 percent without voter approval and require approval by only a simple majority of voters to over-ride the cap.

New York’s law requires 60 percent of voters to approve.

Those points aside, Mr. McMahon is fair in explaining why the actual “tax levy limit” for individual districts will not always equal the widely referenced 2 percent figure (because of exemptions), why individual taxpayers may see larger increases (because of changes in property value) and why the law’s cap on tax levy increases is sounder than a cap on tax rates.

Mr. McMahon concludes,

The real game-changing element of the tax cap law is a two-strikes-and-you’re-out provision for school boards: If any proposed budget, even one holding taxes under the cap, is rejected in two submissions to voters, or withdrawn after failing to pass on first submission, the allowable tax increase is zero — no exceptions.

That two strikes and out provision is why the Poughkeepsie Journal observed “Schools face ‘dire’ risk in vote on budget.”

In a separate editorial, the Poughkeepsie paper concludes, School districts have their work cut out for them.  The piece explains why districts still face tough budgeting choices despite getting an increase in state aid and calling on districts to explore consolidation and sharing opportunities and negotiate harder with employee unions.

A Newsday editorial (LI schools feel tax cap pressure) concludes that the cap has already been, “groundbreaking in its effect on contracts,” and adds,

Officials on both sides of the bargaining tables agree things have truly changed, perhaps permanently.

Our sense from exchanges with superintendents is that the perception that the tax cap has increased the likelihood of gaining cost-saving measures in union negotiations is more common on Long Island than in other regions of the state.

State Budget Outlook for 2013-14 and beyond
By law, the Governor’s Budget Division is required to publish quarterly reports on the state’s financial plan – the implementation of the current year’s budget and the outlook for the next few years following.

This is one area where the performance of state government has improved over the past decade or so – the volume of information now disclosed in these reports is impressive.

The first report on the recently enacted 2012-13 state budget was released yesterday.  As one would expect (or hope), it concludes that budget is balanced.

Looking to the future, it projects a small structural deficit for 2013-14, and a $712 (3.5 percent increase in School Aid).

In a separate blog post, I provide more details and stress that how the planned increase is to be allocated remains to be determined, so no individual district can count on a specific increase.

State Tests
Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting,

The Board of Regents next week will consider state Education Department recommendations to make the global history and geography exam optional. Instead, students could take an additional math, science or vocational exam, starting with freshmen who enter high school in 2013.

This was the week students in grades 3 through 8 took the state’s required English Language Arts assessment.

News coverage reported on families boycotting the tests, questioning the fairness of testing right after a break, and complaining about the length of the tests, especially for young children.

One reason for the extended length of this year’s tests is the inclusion of field-test questions in the actual tests, as opposed to annually recruiting rotating groups of schools to subject their students to stand-alone field-tests.

The new approach is thought to produce a better representation of students and more reliable results, since all students participate and they do not know which questions are being field-tested and which count.

Finally, one question on the 8^th grade assessment has drawn puzzled attention throughout the state and beyond — Talking pineapple question on state exam stumps … everyone!

The author of the story on which the question is based — acclaimed children’s author Daniel Pinkwater — weighed-in too.

Teacher Evaluations
Debates over teacher evaluations continue to make news.

New York State United Teachers President Richard Iannuzzi authored two pieces on publishing individual teacher evaluations — “Drawing the Line on Teacher Privacy” and “Shameful tabloids sully evaluation process.”

Both begin by describing the treatment of a teacher of immigrant students unfairly tagged by the New York City tabloids as the City’s worst teacher after individual evaluation results were released.

Mr. Iannuzzi concludes by answering yes to two questions:

Can a balance that addresses the appropriate needs and concerns of parents, teachers, principals and school officials — not to mention students — be achieved? Can we maximize the value of the teacher evaluation process without the public shaming of teachers

Meeting with the editorial board of the Staten Island Advance, State Education Commissioner John King shared some thoughts on the evaluation disclosure controversy:

There’s a tension now, King said, over how much information ought to be available to parents.

“I don’t think it’s helpful to have the newspapers publish ratings by name,” King said.

But he said the aggregate information ought to be available – and it often shows poor teachers concentrated in single schools, he said.

Commissioner King also said he thinks it is inevitable that New York City and its teacher union will agree on new evaluation procedures.

The Commissioner said,

I think a lot of it is about trust-building, on the (state education) department’s part, and on the city’s part, to have people believe that the evaluation isn’t just about firing people – it’s actually about helping people get better.

Meanwhile the ordeal in Buffalo over agreeing on new teacher evaluation procedures continues – the State Education Department is withholding $5.6 million in federal School Improvement Grants because of the impasse over evaluations.

One day after the Buffalo News said, Teachers must step up and compromise, the city’s teacher union voted to reject the district’s latest proposal.

The Buffalo impasse may foreshadow problems more schools could confront, due to the new state budget’s requirement that districts have an evaluation in order to receive their enacted state aid increases.

Perhaps anticipating difficulties, the Utica school board this week adopted a budget which will defer spending $3.8 million in increased state aid until teachers agree to new evaluation procedures.  The Utica union voted to reject a proposal earlier in the week.

Mandate Relief
Finally, a few items on mandate relief…

I did a short blog post about the white paper our Executive Director Robert Reidy did on  regulatory relief the Board of regents could adopt to support raining student achievement – Time for learning.

The Atlantic Monthly asks, “Are Lawmakers Asking Too Much of Our Schools?”

The article quotes a survey finding:  “86 percent of public school superintendents and 84 percent of principals say that ‘keeping up with all the local, state and federal mandates handed down to the schools takes up way too much time.’”

Unshackle Upstate, one our partners in the Let New York Work Coalition, had a column calling for mandate relief for schools in the Albany Times Union.

The Education Speaks blog did a clear and  concise post explaining the state’s Wicks Law which requires multiple prime contractors for construction projects above a specified cost threshold.

And last, the Glens Falls Post-Star wrote about efforts by school districts in its region to reduce health insurance costs by joining consortia.

This is one area where the performance of state government has improved over the past decade or so – the volume of information now disclosed in these reports is impressive.

The first report on the recently enacted 2012-13 state budget was released yesterday.  As one would expect (or hope), it concludes that budget is balanced.

Looking to the future, it projects a small structural deficit for 2013-14, and a $712 (3.5 percent) increase in School Aid.

A structural deficit of $950 million is projected for next year (2013-14).  This is equivalent to 1.5 percent of expected expenditures – lower than anything we have seen in years.

The financial outlook for schools in many communities remains grim, but the outlook for the state government has improved dramatically over its last two budget cycles.

When Governor Cuomo took office, projected deficits for 2012-13 through 2014-15 totaled over $53 billion; the new report pegs them at $4.4 billion.

The projections require making assumptions about every component of the state budget, including School Aid.  The report notes,

The FY 2013 Enacted Budget includes a two-year appropriation and continues the change to tie future increases in School Aid to the rate of growth in New York State personal income. School Aid funding will increase by $805 million (4.1 percent) in the 2012-13 school year, and by an estimated $712 million (3.5 percent) in the 2013-14 school year (p. 59).

It also explains,

Over the multi-year financial plan, School Aid funding is expected to be a function of both a personal income growth index used to determine allowable growth and future legislation to allocate the allowable increases.

The report goes on to explain that “allowable growth” in School Aid may include increases in competitive grants, as well as increases for expense-based aids, and that

Any remaining amount of allowable growth can be allocated pursuant to a chapter of law for purposes including, but not limited to, additional spending for competitive grants, phase-in increases in Foundation Aid or restoration of the GEA.

Accordingly, while this year’s state budget provides for an overall School Aid increase for next year of 3.5 percent, no individual district can count on a specific percentage increase next year.

Also, the state constitution requires the Governor to propose a balanced budget.  So the Governor will be required to recommend actions to eliminate any projected deficit for the next fiscal year.  That duty could lead to changes in School Aid funding from the projections in the new budget report.

Finally, the report cites risks to the financial plan, most notably possible federal government efforts at deficit reduction.

If Congress and the President fail to enact a plan to reduce the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years by January 2013, some automatic cuts are to take effect.  The Governor’s Budget Division estimates that these could cost New York state and local governments over $5 billion over nine years.

This weekend, the Journal News published a comprehensive article analyzing school spending and taxing trends since 2003-04 in its readership area, the lower Hudson Valley.

The Journal News notes that average annual spending increases dropped by six percentage points between two four-year periods –  7.6. percent a year between 2003-04 and 2007-08 and 1.6 percent annually over the four years since.

Today, the paper has a follow-up editorial, “School districts learn their lesson,” and ascribes the change chiefly to an influx of more fiscally conservative school board members.

The shift in school spending and taxing occurred statewide.  My own sense, looking at the state as a whole, is that the change happened because superintendents and board members – veteran as well as new – recognized it had to:  following the “Great Recession,” taxpayers either could not or would not support a continuation of increases that had been common.

One of the local taxpayer leaders quoted by the Journal News makes a similar point, “The change shows that school boards and administrators have heard from taxpayers, the people who pay for the schools, that the spending couldn’t continue.”

Here is a chart I have used in many presentations, showing changes in school spending, tax levy, and state aid between 2003-04 and 2011-12.

The chart reveals that school tax increases were slowing even before the recession first affected school budget adoption decisions, in 2009-10.  With state aid increases growing and pension costs moderating, districts slowed the rate of increase in local taxes.

But it is most striking to contrast the last two years with 2003-04.  In all three years districts absorbed reductions in state aid and steep increases in pension costs.

In 2003, districts proposed budgets with tax increases averaging 8.2 percent, while in each of the last two years, the increases have averaged roughly five points lower – 3.2 percent in 2010-11 and 3.4 percent in 2011-12.

Districts absorbed larger state aid cuts with smaller tax increases than in 2003-04 partly through greater spending restraint.  In the last two years, statewide school spending increases averaged under 1.5 percent.

Our estimate is that pension cost increases alone roughly matched the overall spending growth.  Add in health insurance cost  increases and the conclusion emerges that schools must have cut all other spending on balance in order to  absorb growth in those benefit costs while holding down their overall spending and tax increases.

The Journal News article includes expressions from local leaders of special concern for the plight of poorer districts.  The concern is warranted.  This past year, for example, the poorest 20 percent of school districts (measured by property wealth), held their total spending flat, while absorbing pension and health care increases proportionately similar to those of their better-off peers.

The article concludes,

Districts that learned quickly to run on the cheap, at least compared with before the recession, now say things are out of their hands. Officials insist they need the state to kill some of its many expensive mandates, which account for 15 percent to 20 percent of districts’ overall budgets.

The Journal News suggests that the change in approach to school budgeting is more or less permanent.

Our sense is that the turn-around in state finances this year has not translated into upswing in outlook for local leaders engaged in school budget decision-making.

The enacted state budget provides the first increase in state aid after three years of cuts and freezes.  But it is offset in many districts by the loss of federal Education Jobs Funds.

Also, while a district may take in more state aid, they are likely to ask for even smaller tax increases than those favorably cited by the Journal News.  With the new tax cap, proposed local tax increases appear likely to average about one percentage point below those presented by districts a year ago.

Finally, as many local leaders quoted in the article explain, after three tough years, easier budget reduction options have been exhausted.

School district leaders responded to voter concerns over property taxes.  In a month we will see how voters respond to the choices presented to them for 2012-13 school budgets, and eventually, to the consequences of the choices for their schools.

The paper was drafted by the Council’s Executive Director, Robert Reidy, with input from Council leaders, former superintendents, and Council staff.

The thrust of the recommendations is to give schools more flexibility in the use of their most finite resource – time with students.

Examples of recommendations include:

…Substituting demonstration of competence by students for completion of seat time requirements.

…Allowing schools more flexibility to construct middle level programs around student needs, rather than specific course unit requirements.

…Giving schools greater opportunity to integrate instruction, allowing students to earn credit in multiple content areas at once, while maintaining requirements for total units and instructional time.

… Allowing students to participate in Career and Technical Education programs offered by Boards of Cooperative Educational Services for all four years of high school, and to substitute passage of an approved CTE assessment for one of the five regents Exams now required for a high school diploma (but not English or Math).

…Studying the flexibility now granted to charter schools to decide what aspects should be extended to district schools.

…Realigning some teacher certification areas.

…Allowing professional development days conducted during the last two weeks in August to count toward the 180 “session days” required for state aid purposes (Note:  under current law, schools make count up to four superintendent’s conference days toward the 180 day requirement, but all must be done within the regular school year).

…Tying some of the new flexibility to satisfying accountability requirements consistent with New York’s No Child Left Behind Act flexibility request to Washington.

Also, it was “Kids Speak Week” at the Education Speaks blog – students supplied essays and videos on how budgeting decisions were affecting their schools.

Teacher issues
Several newspapers ran editorials on whether individual teacher evaluations should be released, either only to parents, or to the public at large.

The Auburn Citizen concludes, “Public has the right to see teacher evaluations” but cites an erroneous understanding of how current state law applies to other public employee evaluations.

Several commentators have blithely asserted the public has a right to see teacher evaluations, without offering any thoughts why or considering any possible detrimental trade-offs for students from doing so, such as those Bill Gates has identified.

The Kingston Freeman does suggest one possible benefit from disclosing evaluations:

Only by making evaluations public will there be continued pressure to improve both the reliability of the measures and the most important thing of all being measured, which is the learning of our children.

But there are other means to improve evaluations, including State Education Department reviews, as called for in the new state law, or publishing aggregate school or district counts of teachers by performance levels to spotlight suspicious outliers.

Newsday argues the state has been having, “Wrong debate on teacher evals,”arguing over whether to publish the evaluations, rather than how to make them as effective as possible.

Newsday concludes,

One key to the success of teacher evaluations is making certain the standardized testing we’re soon supposed to be applying to teachers doesn’t have a miserably high margin of error. Agreeing to publicize those scores may convince the teachers unions to protect their members by helping develop a great system, rather than fighting implementation.

Whatever our disagreements with New York State United Teachers over the years, they have demonstrated a long-running interest in the soundness of state testing practices.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg supports full release.  The Wall Street Journal explains,

Mr. Bloomberg, whose schools policies are grounded in competition, said making teacher rankings public as the city did earlier this year will “provide pressure to constantly upgrade.”

Meanwhile legislative discussions reportedly have focused on how to make evaluation results available to parents but not the public at large.

Newsday explained,

Autopsies are the only public document for which access is limited to a subset of society, but Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and state legislative leaders are trying to walk a tricky legal line in trying to create similar limitations on who can have teacher evaluations, experts said Wednesday…

Even if lawmakers devise a way to allow parents alone to see the records — the same way only the next of kin has a right to an autopsy — there’s seemingly no way they can prohibit parents from disseminating them to other parents or PTA groups, or from posting them on the Internet, said Robert Freeman, head of the state Committee on Open Government and a specialist on the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

Newsday added,

Cuomo himself seems to have yet to reach a conclusion. “I understand the initial, knee-jerk, ‘reveal everything, just put it on a website’ view,” Cuomo said in a radio interview Wednesday. “But this is a relatively new topic: What should the disclosure policy be for public employees?”

The governor indicated no solution was at hand, saying, “It’s a conversation we’ll have over the next few months.”

Cuomo said the notion of making it a criminal offense for parents to disseminate the teacher evaluations was “absurd,” but speculated whether there was a way to supply the “data in a way that doesn’t reveal the names.”

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) has said he wants no restrictions on the public release of teachers’ evaluations. But Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) said last week that he favored a “method by which parents can know how a particular teacher or a particular grade performs” and added “that doesn’t mean that some newspaper can have a picture of a teacher with their evaluation.”

In other news…

Finance items
It was “Kids Speak Week” at the Education Speaks blog launched by Capital Region BOCES.  Each day, the blog posted compelling essays and videos prepared by students on their schools, their lives, and how local budgeting decisions are affecting both.

An editorial in the Albany Times Union warned about the “The hidden cost of school budgets,” and said, “The state needs to watch upcoming school budget votes to see if a new tax cap is widening the disparity between rich and poor districts.”

The New York Times explained management and labor perspectives on the Triborough law and how it allows public employees to continue to receive “step increases” for additional years of service while working under an expired collective bargaining agreement.

In an editorial, the Journal News (serving the lower Hudson Valley) commended the Governor and legislature for approving a new lower cost tier in state retirement systems last month.  But the paper also warned that retirement security for private sector workers demands attention.

Citing Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, the Journal News wrote,

The center’s new National Retirement Risk Index found that the post-employment landscape is “shifting dramatically, making the outlook for retiring Baby Boomers and Generation Xers far less sanguine than for current retirees.”

Miscellaneous
Writing in Bloomberg Business Week, a Duke University professor argues, “U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead.”

He contends, “The independence and social skills American children develop give them a huge advantage when they join the workforce. They learn to experiment, challenge norms, and take risks. They can think for themselves, and they can innovate. This is why America remains the world leader in innovation.”

Politics
Governor Cuomo made news this week by:

…receiving an all-time performance rating in a new Siena Research Institute poll; 63 percent of voters gave him a positive job performance rating;

…issuing a news release announcing the request for proposals for the new School District Management Efficiency Grants

…vetoing 122 items in the state budget totaling $640,000, as well as several reappropriations of unspent education funding items from past state budgets.

The Governor said the vetoed items were reprogrammed funds from past budgets and thus amounted to new legislative member items, something he said would not be included in this year’s state budget.

Here is a Buffalo News article on the vetoes.

Following-up on an item we covered last week, the New York Post reports,

Groups backing charter schools, vouchers, merit pay for teachers and limits on teacher tenure plan to unite under a new, statewide supergroup, The Post has learned.

The New York State Education Reform Council will include the new StudentsFirstNY — which has hired away Mayor Bloomberg’s Albany lobbyist — Democrats for Education Reform, and charter-school-advocacy and upstate organizations.

In a television interview today, New York State United Teachers president Richard Iannuzzi said his union is withholding all campaign contributions as it reassesses its endorsement decisions.

State of Politics blog explains that Mr. Iannuzzi said,

 …we are hearing – from our leaders and our members that the level of anger and distrust is at the highest point it’s certainly ever been in my seven years here as NYSUT president. So, with that in mind we have said let’s stop business as usual and let’s be sure we can take their pulse before we make any decisions…Unquestionably starting with the governor.”

Finally, this week State Assembly Majority Leader Ron Canestrari (D-Cohoes) announced he will not seek re-election.

Mr. Canestrari has been the highest ranking upstate in the Assembly’s Democratic leadership.  He has been a friend to schools and the Council.  We thank him for his years of dedicated service.