|
Charles Winters, SCSD
Education Finance Consultant, issued the following memo to Association
Executive Director, Robert Biggerstaff, on February 7th.
Overall, Mr. Winters is cautiously optimistic that the Governor has
proposed aid targeted to school districts with the greatest need. He
also reports that the Governor’s proposal offers sustained reform,
rather than a one or two year “band-aid”.
Governor Spitzer’s
proposal for school aid may have started with the Regents concepts, but
it made many excellent refinements. The results for Foundation Aid were
clearly targeted on student need. The vast majority of the small city
schools fared very well.
|
|
% of Districts On
Formula |
Over 5% Increase |
Over 7% Increase |
Overall Foundation
Percent Increase |
|
Small Cities |
75% |
67% |
51% |
9.5% |
|
Big-5 |
80% |
80% |
60% |
8.9% |
|
Non-city |
53% |
44% |
31% |
6.2% |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
5 NYC Metro
Counties |
8% |
6% |
5% |
4.5% |
|
Upstate
|
71% |
60% |
42% |
7.8% |
|
Total State |
55% |
47% |
33% |
7.8% |
The calculated aid
ceilings are based on three factors: the base aid ceiling, the regional
cost index and the pupil need index. The pupil need index itself
includes four factors: the free and reduced lunch weight of .65, the
poverty rate from the 2000 census also weighted at .65, the LEP rate at
.5 and sparsity factor that begins at 25 students per square mile or
lower. When all of these weights are included, however, the resulting
need weighting correlates with the free lunch rate at .85, with a very
steep slope, much like the Small Cities FFA formula. As a result, most
rural and urban districts made distinct gains over suburban districts.
This is exactly the result we had urged. The multi-part poverty rate
will not fluctuate as much over time as a single free lunch rate might.
Moreover, the formula is
already pre-indexed for four years of 2.5% cost-of-living increases.
The fourth year’s (2010-2011) foundation is what is calculated and 20%
of that long term increase is paid this year. The local share of the
foundation is calculated an assumed tax rate of $16 per $1,000 of value,
modified by each district’s income ratio to the state. Future base tax
rates will be pegged to 90% of the state average rate. This is also
something we urged to prevent high rates of property inflation from
reducing the state’s share.
We had also urged that all
districts receive only a portion of their increase each year so that
more districts will continue to have a stake in reform down the road.
This important point originally came from Dr. William Duncombe’s advice
on our initial FFA proposal. This is an exceptionally clever way to
spread reform over four years. If this passes intact this year, it will
make it far more difficult for future legislatures to renege on the
promises made now. Formula districts only received 20% of their
projected total aid increase this year. This implies a steady
continuation of these overall results for the balance of the Governor’s
entire first term. We have also warned that, unless districts were
assured that increases would continue, they would be reluctant to invest
in recurring costs like added staff. This proposal addresses this worry
very directly.
Governors of both parties
have historically been very careless with their initial school aid
proposals, knowing that the legislature would do the serious work and
the heavy lifting of adding more funding, but the end result has been
driven by political shares, not student needs. By contrast, this
proposal is the most serious and thoughtful look at school finance
reform that I have ever seen. It is principled, thoughtful and
ingenious. Whoever helped craft this proposal should be congratulated
on an excellent and thorough job.
The Regent’s proposal was
already well conceived to target aid, but the Governor’s proposal has
added elements to improve stability and predictability while keeping the
funds highly focused on needy districts.
However, the Governor’s
work has also preempted the traditional work of both Houses of the
Legislature. Their possible reaction concerns me. I am writing strong
letters of support to both of my legislators. I hope others will as
well.
Down the road we can look
at some fine tuning that could be helpful without doing harm to the
targeted nature of design. I have the data on the detailed mechanics of
the proposal, so we will be in a position to analyze alternative
outcomes. |
