Governor Andrew Cuomo has consistently complained that public schools cost too much. So one of his first actions when he was elected was to persuade the legislature to pass a 2% cap on budget increases. That would save the taxpayers money but it handicapped the schools that saw inflation in their costs. To make matters worse, Cuomo inserted into the law a provision that it would take a 60% majority to raise school taxes more than 2%. A simple majority–the democratic way of deciding elections–was not enough. He insisted that any tax increase to benefit the schools (anything beyond 2%) required a super-majority.
In the recent election, 99% of districts passed their school budgets, with the typical increase being 1.9%, thus avoiding Cuomo’s cap. Eighteen districts sought an increase larger than 2%. The increase was approved in 12 of the 18 districts.
So, here is where Andrew Cuomo will meet his Waterloo. The public cares about their public schools. The schools belong to them. They teach the children of the community. The parents and local merchants know the teachers and the staff and the principal. Unlike Andrew Cuomo, they don’t see the local public schools as their enemy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fantastic! This is just what happened in California where we have had a super majority requirement for some time. Governor Jerry Brown shepherded in Prop 30 2 years ago (against the hidden opposition of Eli Broad. He secretly donated to an anti prop 39 campaign while lying by publicly pretending to support it). Voters supported Prop 30, increasing taxes to pay for education. What is with these guys who think the public will go along with destroying our schools?
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This is good news, but it also tells a tale of more of the same.
I still think we citizens should be getting FAR MORE federal aid to public schools, and NOT just for Title 1 and 3 funding. Federal aid should help middle class children and not just the poor. It should help both, and be virtually indistinguishable, the way it is in other modern countries.
Too much of my federal tax dollar goes to pay for ISIS, offshore tax havens for corporations, tax write-offs for billionaires through hit-or-miss charitable donations, military contractors, and privatized healthcare. This amounts to taxation without representation. We should have enough tax aid from OUR federal tax dollars that WE pay so that we would not HAVE to vote every year on the financial fate of our public schools.
Still, the tax cap override news is a wake-up call to an otherwise brain dead, morally void governor and catatonic legislative branch at the state level.
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This sounds like what our Governor Scott Walker’s school policy.
http://wisdems.org/recallhq/walkerfailures/education
…and he wants more cuts
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/03/18/3634306/students-teachers-brace-scott-walkers-devastating-education-cuts/
Once upon a time….
When my great grandfather came to the states in 1886 he moved to Wisconsin because Univ. of Wis. was free. “Land-grant universities were progressive not only in their approach to practical education but also because they admitted women and people of color; all students received free tuition and subsidized rail travel.”
I appreciate your reports
Sincerely, Lynn
If you wish for peace, work for justice.
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Wow. Was his father, Mario Cuomo, like this in any way as governor?
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Mario was tough and controversial and not the best with organized labor, but on the spectrum, Mario was a fair and just angel compared to his spawn-of-Satan son Andrew.
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Cuomo’s tax cap locked in a wide existing disparity in funding–and insures that the funding gaps will widen every year–and he calls this one of his great successes as governor. At the present time NY State’s wealthiest school districts spend $8,500 more per pupil than the 100 poorest school districts. Looking forward a 1% increase in the local tax levy in wealthy districts will raise over $400 per pupil while a similar increase in the levy in the poorest districts will generate an additional $51 per pupil. Project that out over a decade and our existing spending gaps widen into chasms. The result is that the students most likely to experience success are offered lavish programs while the students who come from the most challenging circumstances get barebones programs. Then our governor calls out the failing schools–the ones with the most challenging demographics….lots of noise–but never a solution from Cuomo! NY State’s funding formulas are highly politicized and contrived to drive state funds into the districts of key political leaders–essentially, school funding is distributed like pigs at the trough. The big pigs eat until they are full and the rest get the scraps! Cuomo touts this a one of his greatest successes and the TEAPublicans want to make it permanent (because even in our heavily gerrymandered state they feel threatened that enough people will go to the polls in 2016 that they will lose their majority!
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Wait……I’m confused……if 99% of the school budgets passed, but most of our kids are failing, something’s wrong. Will Cuomo somehow come up with a new algorithm to weigh each vote to reflect the reality here? It seems the voters are saying that their local schools are effective, but this “must be innacurate.” Maybe he can come up with a new formula at his email summit today.
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New York State is beset by many divisions — Democrats vs. Republicans, urban interests vs. rural vs. suburban, and residential and district school segregation that is the worst in the nation. But if there is one thing all of these various factions see eye-to-eye on, it is the Cuomo school-budget cap (see the bottom of page 4): https://www.siena.edu/assets/files/news/SNY0115_Crosstabs_012015.pdf.
That broad public support is also reflected in the fact that 97.5 of New York’s districts didn’t even attempt to exceed the cap–that’s the real story here. Districts know that New Yorkers already spend more on education than any other state, and that it is a major sacrifice for their middle-class homeowners to pay $10,000-15,000 or more in property tax every year.
It is also important to point out that the average 1.9% budget increase required only a 1.6% increase in tax levies. That was possible due to a generous 6% bump in funding from Albany, on top of what was already the highest amount of state funding in the nation.
Cuomo may certainly have a Waterloo, but it isn’t going to be the property tax cap. Taxpayers are thrilled that spiraling costs are in check and that there’s no more sky-is-falling rhetoric about how their district can’t possibly function without an 8, 10, or 12%+ increase every year. Everyone can move forward knowing that 2% is the new reality.
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The tax cap is a bandaid that solves nothing and stores the problems for the future. Did you hear the This American Life episode on East Ramapo? One of the points made was that thanks to basic increases in costs, primarily personnel, the to-the-bone cuts East Ramapo made STILL resulted in a 20% increase in taxes. The neighboring districts saw increases of 33% (over several years).
There are a few issues here: One, teacher pay. Downstate teachers are very well paid–which I support. People can yak about overpaid teachers all they want–where do they think a teacher on Long Island is going to live? But if you have average pay over $100K, which isn’t unheard of and it’s not entirely due to longevity (I looked up people I know in the sunshine database, since Long Island pay scales are not as readily available as the UFT’s) you need to find a way to pay for it. Health costs are escalating. AIUI, NYSTRS is doing fairly well, compared to some other states, but again, costs are rising.
Cuomo is unwilling to consider any fundamental changes in school finance and no one is willing to consider major reductions in the number of taxing entities in the suburbs or school district consolidation. Long Island has 127 school districts.
The tax cap makes people happy for now, but it’s pushing the problem to the future.
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Tim,
Instead of rhetoric about “the sky is falling because of out of control costs,” we have Cuomo’s rhetoric about “the sky is falling because public schools are a monopoly” and he wants more testing to discredit more schools, fire more teachers, and hand public schools over to privateers. And in many districts, the sky is indeed falling because of his tax cap, which does not allow for inflation and fixed costs.
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Ohio has something similar enacted several years ago where costs are controlled by an arbitrary cap. NY could look there for a possible future outcome. Kasich drastically cut schools to “balance the budget”. In reality, all he did was dump budget problems on the local schools and governments, who then requested more local levies and higher taxes. Unless “services” were cut, taxes had to be raised. But “services” meant teachers, extracurriculars, busing, salaries, health care, safety forces. Schools are still trying to recover.
But by these cuts, Republicans were able to stay under the cap – for a while. Now, the increasing budget demands are approaching the cap and pressure is building. I suspect many legislators are hoping to be in other jobs and let someone else deal with the issue. Caps, like all fiat budgeting policies grown in ideology, tend to be myopic and blunt rather than address the real issues. The problem is people see education as merely an annoying line item cost and not an investment.
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No Democrat or Republican has been good for public education or the public sector. Under all the major party elected officials, the public schools of New York City have been grossly underfunded as have poor rural schools, while suburban schools in affluent districts have used their families’ wealth to tax them as much as needed to pay for what those privileged(white)kids needed. Now that the two major parties are both captured by neoliberal Wall Street hedge funders, they are obliged to impose spending caps on all districts, including suburban ones. This may turn the tide b/c suburban white districts are used to taxing their own property values to pay for their own children’s school needs. The billionaires who control Hillary, Cuomo, Christie, Obama, Bush, Malloy, etc., may have gone too far at last, drunk with the power of their own vast wealth and the complicity of trade union leaders who refuse to organize their millions of members for militant opposition. Parents pushed over the edge and outraged at the abuse of their own children and at the looting of their district budgets by Pearson, took the lead with the magnificent eruption of opting-out. If public schoolteachers follow their lead with wildcat strikes, like they did in Washington State, not standing by while the teacher union leaders take Gates money and twiddle their thumbs, we may yet overwhelm the billionaires boys club.
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I like to just clarify what the tax cap is for Diane’s readers outside of NYS. It’s a cap on the amount that the local tax levy can be raised, not the tax rate or the school budget itself. Among its other bad consequences, the cap on the levy is forcing schools to use up reserves, with small rural schools being espeically affected.
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Rural schools will figure out the rip off first.
That’s what happened in Ohio
Kasich was primed to throw his most loyal voters under the ed reform bus until the leg stepped in and stopped him
The same will happen in NY
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Most of the budgets being passed under Cuomo’s 2% tax cap are lower than the contingency budgets that used to be forced on districts whose budget proposals were rejected by voters.
Passing these budgets is less than treading water.
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Cuomo didn’t invent this. Like all ed reform initiatives it’s national.
Kasich did the same thing My state taxes went down 200 and my property taxes went up 500.
It’s a rip off, which NY will realize in a year or two. You’ll pay more taxes and get less money back from the state for your schools.
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Here is a current cap in Ohio – the State Appropriation Limit.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/04/03/budget-cap.html
These ideas, like Kasich’s beloved Balanced Budget Amendment, all pretty much throw out governing and assume declaring an arbitrary limit on spending (revenue is never considered), will magically transform politicians into responsible leaders. Like all price controls, the caps will fail. It is ironic that neoliberals like Cuomo and Republicans borrow these central planning economic ideas from the Soviet Union.
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