Randolph Central School officials will have to decide how to proceed after voters overwhelmingly defeated the district’s proposed 2026-27 school budget.

The $27,021,901 budget, which came with a 19.27% increase in spending and a 39.75% increase in the district’s property tax levy. The budget proposed spending an additional $1,015,112 on teaching-related costs, according to a budget statement posted on the district’s website, while instructional support costs were to increase by $92,901, pupil personnel services were to increase by $108,798 and debt service was to increase from $469,300 to $2,762,943.

Kaine Kelly, Randolph superintendent, said in the school’s budget newsletter sent to district residents this spring that the district was hurt by the state Foundation Aid formula that relies too heavily on the value of tax-exempt Allegany State Park state forest and parkland property values that overstated the ability of remaining property taxpayers to raise tax revenue for the school district.

This is the 16th budget cycle since New York adopted a cap on the growth of property taxes, including school taxes. Under that law, a district can increase its tax levy no more than 2 percent in any year or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower, unless an override is approved by 60 percent of voters. On Tuesday, more than half of districts (352) planned to increase property taxes by exactly as much as New York’s property tax cap allows without approval from 60% of voters, according to the Empire Center, an independent, not-for-profit based in Albany. Forty districts planned to override their caps, with Randolph’s budget seeking the highest property tax increase in the state on Tuesday. Plattsburgh Central School was seeking to increase taxes by 34%.

Budgets approved statewide planned to spend an average of $37,033 per student, up 4.9% percent from the current school year, according to new state data compiled by the Empire Center. Data collected by the state Education Department and made searchable below show most districts (510) plan to increase total spending by more than core inflation (2.8%), with 179 of the 668 districts projecting their enrollment to increase.

Following trends from previous years, 417 school districts (62%) are expecting their enrollment to decline, according to the proposed budget figures. Outside the Big Five, school districts are expecting enrollment to drop by more than 14,000 students (1.03%). More than half of this proposed spending ($25.9 billion) will be raised through tax levies. New York’s property owners are expected to pay $18,979 per student in school district property taxes – a 3.8% increase from current year. More than half of districts plan to spend at least $37,000 per student and 67 districts plan to spend more than $50,000. For comparison, US schools spent an average of $17,619 during fiscal year 2023, according to the most recent census data.

The rest of the region’s school budgets, propositions and library referendums were approved by voters on Tuesday.

Statewide, preliminary results show that approximately 95% of school budgets passed.