Schools can't keep spending Cuts and layoffs will be avoided for now, but plans to save are still necessary March 2, 2009
School officials across New York put down their red pencils on Friday and sighed with relief. Their budgets for the next school year will be funded at the same level as the current, 2008-09 spending.
Gov. David A. Paterson's announcement last week avoids the deep cuts and layoffs most districts had been anticipating. But while the federal stimulus money has made that unnecessary right now, schools can't keep on spending as they did before.
In normal times, even level funding would frighten superintendents, who have grown used to 10 percent average increases in state aid over the past three years. Most schools will still have to cut to accommodate frozen state aid, because the public mood won't allow property tax increases.
That's why superintendents should seek to deliver reductions in property tax bills this spring, paying forward the federal government's gifts to help struggling property owners. Long Island schools were told in mid-December that they faced a $157 million reduction in aid; surely, they have analyzed where to make cuts. Even though the federal money is intended to save teaching jobs, some will likely be lost because teacher contracts mandate raises.
While they're at work on this year's budget, schools should also figure out how to use this temporary respite to implement economies that study after study have endorsed: consolidate districts and back-office operations, require new teachers and administrators to contribute more to their pensions and health-care costs, and change state law to squeeze waste out of student transportation and special education.
