The Superintendent's blog presents More Information About the Scheduled Merger Meetings, Survey Results, and Tours at the Morrisville-Eaton and Hamilton School Districts. - Dr. Bowers - SuperintendentHamilton CSD
Some of the terms will be unfamiliar to some readers; there are lists of acronyms at NYSED: State Aid Glossary but if you want to know what "High Cost Aid" actually is, look at the New York State Educational Terms Guide (pdf)
And each slide deserves thought... "Wealth of the Community" rising from $220M to $350M in the 2004-2010 period is of course partly inflation, but less than half, and you can think of that curve as a faded upstate echo of the housing bubble, but it's real enough, and the student decline was real enough too. Will either trend continue? We have more elementary students than at any time since 1997, and elementary students become high school students; Colgate just invested heavily in expanding the nursery school to meet expanded demand, and those are future elementary students. That suggests that the situation is much less urgent than the 2004-2010 trend suggested, but we really don't know what the trends of 2013-2065 will be, or even 2013-2026 for current students.
Note the penultimate "If We Don't Merge" slide, in particular "Increase political pressure to: return of the GEA, modify unfunded mandates." The basic problem is that New York State education, including our own, costs about twice as much as the national average without being obviously better, and many of the costs are imposed by Albany as items to be paid for by local taxes. "Return of the GEA" means paying for those with state taxes; "modify unfunded mandates" could mean funding them, or could mean removing them. Every one of them has defenders, with arguments as to why this cost isn't the one to cut.
No easy answers....
the power point that will be presented at the upcoming Merger Study Information Meetings(If the slide-show at the bottom seems small, your browser probably has a "View/Zoom" menu option.)
Some of the terms will be unfamiliar to some readers; there are lists of acronyms at NYSED: State Aid Glossary but if you want to know what "High Cost Aid" actually is, look at the New York State Educational Terms Guide (pdf)
High Cost Aid – Aid available for resident students with disabilities served in a DSE approved public school or BOCES, for whom the annual cost exceeds three times the district’s Approved Operating Expense per TAPU for Expense (without limits).Of course, then you may want to look up several other terms, or you may just say "oh, special needs kids, for whom we have a substantially expanded program over the past several years. Okay." Some terms you may want to Google for, like the GEA or Gap Elimination Adjustment
Those might now be the three dirtiest words in New York's public schools.We see again that state aid expectations really can't be relied upon. (Some of us aren't even blaming the state for cutting aid; we're just sceptical of plans which depend on future aid not being cut.)
And each slide deserves thought... "Wealth of the Community" rising from $220M to $350M in the 2004-2010 period is of course partly inflation, but less than half, and you can think of that curve as a faded upstate echo of the housing bubble, but it's real enough, and the student decline was real enough too. Will either trend continue? We have more elementary students than at any time since 1997, and elementary students become high school students; Colgate just invested heavily in expanding the nursery school to meet expanded demand, and those are future elementary students. That suggests that the situation is much less urgent than the 2004-2010 trend suggested, but we really don't know what the trends of 2013-2065 will be, or even 2013-2026 for current students.
Note the penultimate "If We Don't Merge" slide, in particular "Increase political pressure to: return of the GEA, modify unfunded mandates." The basic problem is that New York State education, including our own, costs about twice as much as the national average without being obviously better, and many of the costs are imposed by Albany as items to be paid for by local taxes. "Return of the GEA" means paying for those with state taxes; "modify unfunded mandates" could mean funding them, or could mean removing them. Every one of them has defenders, with arguments as to why this cost isn't the one to cut.
No easy answers....
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