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SCHOOLS: What to do with windfall?

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

That old axiom must be ringing in the ears of local school board members and district superintendents as they finish their 2021-22 budget proposals and look ahead to future years. New York is promising a lot with its recently passed budget, but no one needs to forget New York has made big promises about education funding before.

Rarely has the state delivered.

When the COVID-19 pandemic threatened the state’s tax revenues, local school districts found themselves worrying about state aid withholdings with every disbursement. Some districts found themselves considering mid-year layoffs to balance the budget if state aid didn’t come through as projected.

All of a sudden, instead of worrying about having enough money to run their school buildings, school districts are worrying about where they will put all of the money that is pouring into their bank accounts.

The federal American Rescue Plan sent millions to local school districts to be used to balance budgets over the next two years.

The pennies from heaven kept falling with the passage of the state budget this week that increases school aid by $3 billion (11%). That increase includes a $1.4 billion (7.6%) increase in Foundation Aid that will eventually fully fund the state’s Foundation Aid formula.

We’ve been here before. And we hope local school districts use history as their guide before starting to write really big checks based on the state’s promises.

Remember 2006? Fifteen years ago former Gov. Eliot Spitzer promised an additional $8.5 billion in additional aid for New York City and other needy school districts. The aid showed up as promised for exactly one year before the housing crisis and ensuing recession sent schools back to the poorhouse.

Instead of more money, schools took less money for several years through the Gap Elimination Adjustment. Before that, lottery funding was supposed to provide enough money for schools to flourish. We know how that story ended, too.

The way state legislators budgeted this year, one can very easily see the dollars drying up in the future. The state has borrowed $4 billion from the federal government to pay for shortfalls in its unemployment system but didn’t include spending to pay off its loan, choosing instead to spend billions of dollars elsewhere rather than paying down its debts.

All of the state’s new spending is only possible if revenues stay strong — and history shows revenues are never consistently strong. A crisis always comes up.

We hate to be Debbie Downer here in our corner of Western New York, but we have seen this movie enough times that we can quote it by heart. The next downturn means education funding gets cut and the nice new programs we started with our promised state aid windfall have to get cut.

Local schools are nearly through their budgets for this year, and the signs from the state Legislature will surely tempt school boards and district superintendents to spend money like sailors on shore leave.

This is the time to budget conservatively, rebuild reserves and add only what is necessary to support students dealing with the pains that are pandemic schooling.

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