Although it has just 215 students, kindergarten through 12th grade, Franklin Central School is the heart of the northern Catskills community.
The three Main Street restaurants in Franklin Village, New York rely on the work of students, staff and their families to stay afloat, and nearly every community event—from the annual senior luncheon to the farmers market—is held with the help of student volunteers.
“The village and the school just tie together,” said Amanda Groff, 44, who has three children enrolled in the district. “I can’t imagine one without the other.”
But the school’s future is uncertain, its superintendent, Bryan Ayres, said in an interview. A new budget plan announced by Gov. Kathy Hochsul earlier this year could cut Franklin’s state aid by nearly $1.3 million — more than 12 percent of its total budget. Mr Ayres is concerned he will have to lay off high school teaching staff and send older students to schools in neighboring areas if the cuts are approved.
About half of New York’s school districts would see cuts in funding under the plan, according to state projections. Some are affluent, suburban districts in places like Westchester County and Long Island, but many are low-income, rural areas that are less able to fill budget gaps with property taxes.
Rural district leaders from across the state said the new plan would mean many rural students would have fewer opportunities than their suburban or urban counterparts as schools are forced to cut staff, after-school programming, offerings courses and fine arts programs.
The cuts were included in the $233 billion spending plan Ms. Hotchul unveiled in January that would change the Foundation Aid formula, the complex method New York uses to determine how much state aid is distributed to individual school districts. The plan requires the approval of the state Legislature before it can take effect.
The updated formula will change how the state looks at an area’s cost of living. Currently, the state grants aid based in part on the cost of living in a given area in the past year. Ms. Hochul suggested using the average cost of living over the past 10 years, which would result in all districts receiving less aid than previously expected.
The new plan would also end a decades-old practice known as “hold harmless,” which guarantees that school districts receive at least as much aid each year as the year before, even as enrollment declines. Ms. Hochul said the policy is absurd.
“Why are we funding a program for kids that aren’t there?” he said during a press conference in February.
There are hundreds of school districts in New York state, and state officials say only a small fraction are rural districts that are set to see significant budget cuts.
Officials note that many districts, including small districts in New York’s suburbs that serve large minority populations, for example, stand to benefit from the changes as more funds are directed their way. Many of the districts — including some in rural areas — have seen enrollment skyrocket in recent years and are considered “high needs” based on the number of students who come from low-income households, are English learners or have disabilities.
Ms. Hochul’s budget plan also includes $100 million in supplemental funds for school districts next year. The governor and state legislative leaders will negotiate how that money will be disbursed before the Legislature votes on the proposed budget plan later this year.
A spokesman for the governor, Avi Small, said school aid has increased statewide since Ms. Hochul took office and that “her budget proposal continues those record increases while funding is right for districts that have seen significant population loss over two decades. “
Many of New York’s rural areas have seen significant enrollment declines in recent years — a trend that experts say has been seen nationally. Several district leaders said they had long expected their state aid to eventually begin to reflect those losses.
But the severity of the cuts proposed by Ms. Hotchul shocked them, they said.
Kathleen Bressler, the superintendent of the Sullivan West School District in Sullivan County, said learning her district could lose nearly $2 million immediately made her feel physically ill and that it would be nearly impossible to decide where to cut. .
“Whatever we decide to do reduces opportunities for kids,” Ms. Bressler said, adding, “nothing is off the table with a $2 million cut.”
Determining how to distribute education aid is complex and has sparked debate in many states about how to equitably fund rural schools, where there are typically fewer students and per-pupil costs can be higher than in urban and suburban districts. .
In rural areas, schools are often also community hubs and among the largest employers, experts and district leaders said. Rural schools also often provide physical and mental health care in areas where access to these resources may be limited.
The extracurricular activities offered at the Marion Central School District, about 40 minutes outside of Rochester, are some of the only social opportunities available to families locally, said Superintendent Ellen Lloyd.
If the state implements the updated formula, Marion Central would lose $1.2 million in state funding, Ms. Lloyd said, and would have to cut much of its non-academic programming.
“I feel like we do so much work to make sure our kids have a fair experience,” she said. “That, in my opinion, will be less fair.”
Foundation Aid is based on many factors, including the number of students enrolled in a particular district, its level of need and the overall wealth of the district. The formula also uses, in part, a district’s income tax base to estimate its ability to generate local revenue.
Rural leaders are particularly concerned about this last piece of the formula if the “hold harmless” policy ends. Median income has risen in some rural communities where wealthy New Yorkers sought refuge during the pandemic. But district leaders say they can’t necessarily translate that added wealth into more money for schools.
That’s because the state property tax cap law limits districts from raising annual tax rates by more than 2 percent or more than the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. Districts would need a supermajority of local voters to approve raising property taxes above the tax cap, an unlikely scenario.
Several district leaders said the tax cap would prevent them from generating more than $100,000 to $300,000 to offset cuts in their budgets.
Any increase in wealth would have to be particularly extreme to significantly affect state aid, said Blake Washington, the state’s budget director.
In Franklin, located in Delaware County, it was. In recent years, more than half of college students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a federal measure of poverty. But total income in the region tripled between 2020 and 2021, rising from $49 million to almost $150 million, according to Mr Ayres.
The cuts may seem harsh, Ms. Hochul said when she unveiled her budget, but they are critical to addressing the state’s $4.3 billion budget gap and keeping the state fiscally healthy amid surging Medicaid enrollment. and an immigration crisis. New York has significantly increased school aid in recent years to rates that were unsustainable, he said.
“As much as we want to, we’re not going to be able to repeat the huge increases of the last two years,” Ms Hotchul said in January.
Many districts also have far more money in reserve than required by law, Ms. Hochul said. Several rural district leaders said they would draw from reserves, but said most of those funds were earmarked for specific purposes, such as workers’ compensation, capital projects or buses.
The cuts come at a difficult time, district leaders and experts said. Pandemic-era federal education aid is scheduled to expire this fall. Schools are scrambling to deal with pandemic learning loss and also to deal with government initiatives, including overhauling their reading instruction.
Karen Hawley Miles, the CEO of the nonprofit Education Resource Strategies, said all of the financial challenges facing school districts add up to a “once in a generational moment.”
“Implementing this change now and at this time is really, really difficult,” he said. He said many states were moving in the opposite direction, pouring more money into schools.
Mr. Washington, the budget director, said the governor was “exactly aware” of the financial challenges facing school districts, and rural areas in particular. The goal of the plan was to start a conversation about how districts could be more fiscally responsible, he said, adding that Ms. Hochul was open to change.
“We know this is a disruptive proposition. It is deliberately so,” he said, adding that the budget was not set in stone. “We look forward to working with the Legislature to smooth out the rough edges.”
At Franklin, Mr. Ayres said he feared the cuts could cause additional enrollment declines and funding cuts. At worst, enrollment and state aid would increase until the school is eventually forced to close.
Meg Shivers, 52, whose son attends Franklin and whose daughter graduated last year, grew up in nearby Treadwell and saw how it changed after the elementary school closed.
“You don’t see school kids riding their bikes on the sidewalks. You don’t hear kids playing,” Ms. Shivers said. “There is nothing left.“
