State could restore $300K to schools

New York state may restore millions of dollars in state aid to school districts this year, just in time for a tax cap that could otherwise eliminate any possible budget growth.

In 2009-10, the state, in order to fill budget holes, began reducing school state aid by way of what it called the Gap Elimination Adjustment, or GEA. Recently, the state started to pay back some of that money, but school districts are still owed hundreds of millions of dollars. Rockville Centre is owed $309,230.

In remarks made on the opening day of the 2016 legislative session in Albany, John Flanagan, who replaced Dean Skelos as Senate majority leader late last year, promised to refund all of the GEA. “It is very, very, very important that we eliminate the GEA in its entirety,” Flanagan said. “That has been a priority of this conference. It will be our No. 1 priority in terms of education. I have said this very clearly: We will not have a budget if the GEA is not eliminated. It’s been there way too long.”

Refunding the GEA would be welcome relief for school districts, and timed just right. This year, it is likely that school districts will be facing a tax cap that allows for almost no spending increase, if any at all. The so-called 2 percent tax actually limits tax levy increases to approximately 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is smaller. For most of last year, inflation rates dropped, bringing the levy down with them.

A tax cap approaching zero percent would allow school districts to raise virtually no money through taxes, despite rising costs they might have. For the 2015-16 school year, the Rockville Centre district increased the tax levy by 3.99 percent.

“It’s going to support the budget,” Robert Bartels, the district’s assistant superintendent of business, said of refunding the GEA. “If the tax levy can’t go up and we’re not increasing the budget, we need to find other sources of revenue to support the budget.”

If it chose to ignore the tax cap and increase the tax levy, the district would need a supermajority of at least 60 percent of voters to approve its budget.

Bartels said that the district is now in the process of developing a spending plan, and has not yet reached the point at which it must decide on making cuts. He also said that the final tax cap numbers have yet to be distributed by the state, but should be shortly.

“We’re trying to get our budget together now, knowing we won’t be able to increase it that much,” he said. Any cuts the district makes would have to be approved by the Board of Education, which begins discussing the budget next month.