To: Small City School Legislators                                                                       March 28, 2006

 

·         Did you know that while we talk about our educational system, we really have two systems, one for wealthier schools and one for poorer schools? This is a situation which has existed for many years. The 1996 Comptroller’s report entitled “An Agenda for Equitable and Cost-Effective School Finance Reform” found that “property wealth varies between the wealthiest tenth and poorest tenth by a ration of 16 to 1. State aid attempts to compensate for this difference and is equalized, but only by a ratio of 5 to 1. As a result, spending varies by more than 2 to 1. The wealthiest tenth is able to spend on average more than twice what the poorest tenth spends.”

 

 

·         Did you know that only 35 districts graduate less than 70% of their students with regular diplomas after five years in high school but that these 35 educate nearly half of the students in the State?  Moreover, these same districts educate most (73.1%) of the state’s children from poor families.

 

·         Did you know that, on the other hand, 42.4% of the New York’s public school children attend the 475 school districts that graduate more than 80% of their students with regular diplomas in five years? These districts educate more than two thirds (67.9%) of the students who are not poor. 

 

·         Did you know that, when school districts are sorted according to the average percentage of their students who are passing state tests, 78.1% of students from poverty attend school districts in the bottom half of the state and 77.5% of students who are not poor attend districts in the top half of the state?

 

·         Did you know that, while most people seem to think that school property taxes are too high for most New Yorkers, few people are aware that some districts spend large amounts per pupil, but tax at a very low rate due to huge tax base?  For example, there are 46 school districts with property wealth more than three times the state average.  These districts educate only 2% of the state’s enrollment, but have access to 9.5% of the state’s taxable property.  Despite very high educational spending, this property is only taxed at $9.15 per thousand of value—about half of the tax effort for the rest of the state.  Even with this low tax rate, these districts are able to raise $18,809 per enrolled student in taxes alone, spending well above the State average without resorting to any state aid.  If these districts were taxed at the 18.09 per thousand that the other districts average, about $1 Billion more would be raised for education. Who are these districts?  A substantial number are represented by shore property or exclusive communities in Nassau (8), Suffolk (18) and Westchester (6) Counties.  A few are located in the Adirondacks (7), the rest (7) are scattered around the state.  The vast majority of this property is owned by very wealthy people who scarcely need the public to subsidize low property taxes. 

 

·         Did you know that most Small City School communities are significantly poorer than average, pay higher taxes, spend less per pupil and yet educate children from families that face far greater educational challenges than the average New York family? 

 

Why should we care? We should care not only for the sake of urban children themselves, but because children are our future. Neglecting the needs of nearly half the students in our State in urban schools will drag our economy down, will result in increased costs for social services and criminal justice programs and will weaken the State’s tax base  by decreasing the numbers of young adults able to attain full productive employment. A recent symposium called “The Social Cost of Inadequate Education,” held at Columbia University’s Teachers’ College found, among other things:

 

                             that the United States loses hundreds of billions of dollars each year when young people fail to graduate from high school, that more than $50 billion is lost annually in federal and state income taxes for all 23 million high school dropouts  aged 18 to 67, that  $41.8 billion in health care costs could be saved if the 600,000 dropouts from 2004 were to advance 1 additional year in educational attainment and  that increasing the high school completion rate by just 1 percent for men aged 20 to 60 would save up to $1.4 billion annually in reduced costs from crime.