‘New Rochelle Students Excel Across Disciplines,” “More Connected Than Ever Before,” “Embracing Diversity: Driving Success.” These are a few of the boosterish headlines from Budget News, a mailing sent out by the City School District of New Rochelle just in time for Tuesday’s school-budget vote.
Talk about tooting your own horn, folks.
Of course, New Rochelle is hardly alone. Districts across the state have been busily distributing such propaganda — disguised, of course, as a public-service campaign.
The Mamaroneck Union Free School District sent out e-mails to leaders of local private preschools (even religious ones) asking them to urge parents to vote for the budget, which, they say,
“Expands forward-thinking programs with minimal budgetary impact.”
Mount Vernon’s newsletter, “What’s Going On?” includes lines like “the Mount Vernon City School District has renewed its belief in itself, its students and the possibility that everyone in Mount Vernon will get the education they deserve.” (If that’s not a reason to approve a tax hike, I don’t know what is.)
Is there something unseemly in school districts using funds from the school budget to suggest it’s your duty as a publicly minded citizen to increase the school budget, especially in a county that already has one of the highest property-tax levels in the country?
In a word, yes.
But the fact that these campaigns have become so ubiquitous is actually a good sign, says E.J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center for Public Policy. “The districts are really making the hard sell. Your vote means more than ever,” he tells me. This, says McMahon, is one clear effect of the tax cap that Gov. Cuomo signed into law in 2011, limiting the overall growth in the property-tax levy to 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less — unless a 60 percent supermajority votes to exceed the cap.
Cuomo’s reform didn’t just constrain budget growth, it gave us the “two strikes and you’re out” provision: If residents vote down the budget twice, even a budget that holds taxes within the cap, then districts are left with no increase at all.
Last year, residents voted down Scarsdale’s first budget, lighting a fire under many other districts in New York City suburbs. School boards even in wealthy towns with good schools realized that there was a limit to what taxpayers were willing to swallow. While only four districts in the whole state of New York have voted against the budget twice, the school boards now have the fear of God in them.
Before the cap, districts could resubmit the budget to voters multiple times or substitute a “contingency budget” that could raise spending by up to 4 percent, notes McMahon. Voters began to wonder why they should bother voting at all. Their school boards, it seemed, would do whatever they wanted anyway.
There are reasons to be sympathetic to the school boards, as one Rye empty-nester told me. The boards don’t directly control key line items, such as how much they have to pay into pension funds.
Many suburban districts also want to show they’re spending as much as possible on education (and that they have residents’ support for doing so) in order to encourage more homebuyers and keep property values high. In wealthier towns with more reputable school districts, potential homebuyers are interested in matters like small class size, which cost a lot but don’t generally yield any significant academic results.
Despite these constraints, many districts have managed to cut significantly. McMahon says, “Quite a few of them are saving and economizing in far more imaginative and creative ways than ever before.”
Last year, for example, the Ossining Union Free School District told voters it “found savings also through an increase in employee health-plan contributions, elimination of a $238,000 deputy assistant superintendent post and a $50,000 decrease in the superintendent’s salary.”
Indeed, the constraints imposed by the cap have given the districts more power when they’re bargaining with teachers unions. Which is one reason the unions oppose the cap and are already pushing for lawmakers to let it expire in 2016.
In the meantime, though, New York voters should make their voices heard. As McMahon explains, “More people need to wake up to how empowered by the cap [they are]. The strongest, most direct democracy that exists now is in school-budget votes.”