Editorial : Cuomo’s cuts unfairly affect poor, inner-city school districts

Gov. Andrew Cuomo released his executive budget in Albany on Feb. 3, which will cut spending in all areas. The most significant cuts will be made to New York’s greatest expenditures: Medicaid and education.

Cuomo’s decision to cut education spending by $1.5 billion will unfairly hit the districts that need that money the most, ones like the Syracuse City School District.

Impoverished city districts across upstate New York are already suffering from severe budget constraints. Syracuse city schools faced an unprecedented deficit of $47 million in 2011-12. Now with Cuomo’s additional slash to state education funding, Syracuse schools will add $16 million to their deficit. In other words, the district must cut 540 jobs.

In reining in state spending, Cuomo had to make difficult decisions. And in theory, cutting from New York’s greatest expense may force districts to use money more efficiently, perhaps even trimming exorbitant administrators’ salaries. But the poorest districts rely the most on state aid. For instance, more than 70 percent of Syracuse’s budget comes from the state. Thus blanket cuts to all districts harm those already struggling with low test scores and poor achievement rates. How can the cycle of poverty and low performance end when schools’ resources decrease?

The governor should have suggested provisions for helping districts unfairly hit by the cuts. Simply cutting aid across the board does not offer a solution for increasing efficiency. In the case of Syracuse schools, district leaders are faced with many devastating options: cutting health services in the schools, cutting teachers and staff, freezing salaries and ending certain extracurricular activities. All of these cuts directly undermine the effective education of New York state children rather than fix inefficiency in the system.