Voters will go to the polls Tuesday to decide their small portion of a big chunk of spending during the annual mid-May school budget vote and school board election.

According to data from the state Comptroller’s Office 2018-19 School Property Tax Report Cards, overall spending for area schools in Chautauqua County — as well as Randolph and Cattaraugus-Little Valley — will increase from $463,761,487 in 2017-18 to $473,566,527 in 2018-19 while seeing another cumulative decrease in enrollment from 20,820 in 2017-18 to 20,606 in 2018-19. That roughly $10 million in spending leverages roughly $8 million in state aid and reserve spending while raising property taxes roughly $2.1 million total from $136,112,097 to $138,214,782.

Sixteen of the 20 area school districts area propose to increase spending — the largest percentage being Silver Creek (5.93 percent), Cassadaga Valley (5.51 percent), Dunkirk (5.29 percent) and Westfield (5.25 percent). The four districts cutting spending are Pine Valley (3.06 percent), Frewsburg (2.61 percent), Randolph (1.95 percent) and Cattaraugus-Little Valley (1.55 percent).

Six of those districts propose no tax increase: Falconer, Jamestown, Panama, Pine Valley, Randolph and Sherman. The largest tax increase is the 12.87 percent proposed in Clymer and the 6.67 percent increase proposed in Ripley. Given the lack of tax increases in many of the budgets, one would think most, if not all, of the budgets will be approved by voters on Tuesday. Clymer voters, staring at a 12.87 percent tax levy increase, knew a tax hike was coming in the aftermath of the defeat of a merger with the Panama Central School District and the resulting end of many shared positions between the districts.

What, then, does that $138.2 million in local tax money buy?

THE END RESULT

School Report Card data compiled by the state Education department showed the majority of Chautauqua County’s high school graduates — 92 percent — received a Regents Diploma with 38 percent of graduates receiving a Regents with Advanced Designation. Thirteen percent of the county’s high school graduates received a Regents with CTE Endorsement and 8 percent received a local diploma.

Roughly 1,000 of the county’s 1,335 graduates in 2016-17 went to either a two- or four-year college. Eighteen percent went into the workforce and 4 percent went into military service.

If one of the main state Education Department’s goals in its lengthy rewriting of the state’s education standards was to have more students graduate ready to go to college or enter the workforce, what does it say when County Executive George Borrello, moved by what he heard from the area’s business community, spent almost all of his first State of the County address speaking about the need to improve Chautauqua County’s workforce?

Borrello said the narrative regarding the need to attend a four-year institution needs to change with more of an emphasis made providing the type of education that can fill jobs businesses have open — and foresee having open in the foreseeable future as the last of the Baby Boomer generation retires.

“We’ve been sending our kids into a future that may lead them to underemployment or having to leave the county in order to find work, all while not supplying the businesses here in our county with the most crucial part of their supply chain, their workforce,” Borrello said in late April.

CHANGING

DIRECTION

The news isn’t all bad. Dunkirk is home to the P-TECH WNY STEM College and Career Academy. The academy offers place-based, differentiated learning culture with specialized educators working in tandem with higher education, business partners and component school districts to support students as they obtain a NYS Regents Diploma and a Jamestown Community College AAS degree in Mechanical Technology (with specializations available in Design Specialization or Machine Tooling) or Welding Technology.

A cornerstone of this program is additional hours of instructional time designed to introduce students to industries in the region, project-based learning, career exploration and industry terminology, standards and employment soft skills. High-rigor STEM curriculum will be taught in a connected, collaborative environment, integrated with hands-on learning using state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment.

On the other end of the county, Dr. Bret Apthorpe, Jamestown Public Schools superintendent, was already on board with Borrello’s vision. In March, Apthorpe told a community gathering the first part of his vision for the Jamestown Public Schools District involves structuring the secondary school’s curriculum that would lead to success after earning a diploma from Jamestown Public Schools. Apthorpe said the district plans to sit down with local universities and local businesses with school leaders to figure out course work tailored to success after high school.

“We want to make sure that we’re literal (and) we’re intentional about courses that align with (higher education and business needs),” Apthorpe said. “Not just rhetorically, we want physical eyes on because we want to make sure that diploma provides those kids opportunities it’s intended to provide.”