walrus51

We have some 700 public school districts across New York State, and as Governor Cuomo pointed out recently in an interview, “It’s not about more money gets us more results.  Because if that was the case, our students would be doing better than any students in the country, because we are spending more than anyone else.”

No one could successfully argue that the K-12 public education system in New York State is either (a) effective, or (b) efficient.

Designed and governed under assumptions which were likely correct in the 19^th century, we continue to operate our schools as though we live in a world where the horse is the primary means of transportation; where oil lamps and candles are used for illumination after dusk; and where young people are needed early and late each day to do chores on the farm.

An article published on February 7, 2014 in The Journal News (http://www.lohud.com/article/20140207/NEWS/302070065/City-rural-schools-say-they-re-underfunded) helps to illustrate some of the complexities in state funding formulas which seem to have disparate negative impact on small city and rural school districts which are more likely to be both ‘high need’ and ‘low resource’.

Digging further into the mystery of school funding in New York State led me to the NYS Association of Small City School Districts, and the December 2013 newsletter, http://scsd.neric.org/newsletters/2013/2013%20SCSD%20Newsletter%20december%202013%20FINAL.pdf.

One of the outcomes of ‘The Campaign for Fiscal Equity’ was a promise made in 2007 by our elected officials in Albany that state funding would be adjusted to take into account both the availability of local resources and the relative “need” of students in each district.

As Governor Cuomo pointed out, we are already spending the most of any state on education, and our overall results are mediocre.

Indeed, it is not how much we are spending, but how the money gets spent.  If our elected officials want to constrain education spending, they need to pass legislation which removes costs from the system.  One way to accomplish that would be through school district consolidation to remove redundancies and spread fixed costs over a broader base.

Another way to accomplish holding the line on spending would be to divert aid from wealthy, high-performing districts and re-direct that aid to low-resource, under-performing districts.

When it comes to educating our young people, there really doesn’t seem to be any “starve the beast” solution on the horizon.

Let’s pay attention to this issue now, because if we don’t fix it now, it will only continue to fester and act as a drag on the economic and fiscal viability of New York State.