Without cuts, spending is expected to rise about 7.8% for the 2026-2027 school year, a figure that would require a large increase in school taxes and for the district to spend a significant amount of its unassigned fund balance--excess money that is supposed to serve as a rainy day fund.
But the situation is worse than that. Even if the school board were to approve a budget that would raise taxes by the maximum allowable amount this year--5.8%--and spend the maximum allowable amount of the unassigned fund balance, the district would be $2.58 short, or more than 4% of the total proposed budget of $63.1 million.
Gilson reports that Mark DePace, president of the Board of Education, asked the district to prepare plans for cutting $2.5 to $4.5 million from the proposed budget, "allowing for different options with tax increases and using the unassigned fund balance," before the next board meeting, which takes place on April 14.
This comment was submitted by Susan Troy via email:
ReplyDeleteCurious as to how many:
NASA astronauts
Professional (with contracts) athletes in any sport
Pulitzer Prize winners
Nobel Peace Prize winners
Academy Award winners
Lasker Award winners
Templeton Prize winners
Fields Medal winners
Booker Prize winners
Johan Skytte Award winners
Grammy Award winners
Julia Burke Award winners
National Medal of Arts winners
National Medal of Technology and Innovation Award winners
Medal of Honor recipients
the Hudson City School District has produced over the last quarter century.
Or, the accurate numbers of high school graduates - I'm certain someone can pull that data and prepare a graph - over the last twenty-five years, with the per pupil cost.
There are some truly mind-boggling things stated in this article. Apparently, the school district since 2016 may have been hiring staff without the school board being aware of it and thus, the salaries weren't accounted for in the budget.
ReplyDeleteDoes the HCSD not have a treasurer that would notice when staffing costs exceed the allotments in the budget?
Time to make some hard choices.
ReplyDeleteWell at least the City of Hudson property taxes are coming down and we have a mayor who is committed to not raising taxes locally, in a state that already has the highest taxes in the country...
DeleteOur taxes are coming down? How’s that? There’s been neither a new budget, a revaluation nor a new tax warrant issued since the last round. On what basis do you posit our taxes are going down? Beyond these basic mechanics, there’s no evidence that either the mayor or council are initiating a legislative policy program of any sort, let alone one that would yield a lower property tax levy.
DeleteThis is not unique to Hudson. The shortfalls are showing themselves at districts all around NY and in the millions. Take a look at this budget and shortfall... https://wjffradio.org/community-pushback-grows-over-rondout-valley-school-budget-cuts/
ReplyDeleteI think MS misses the point of Gilson's story. It's not difficulties in finding money for programs, which is a pretty standard challenge; it is the misuse of an accounting program which puts the district at significant peril. I had asked the BOE for a forensic audit over a year ago when Supt Pennyman and some of her staff were registering some odd behaviors. Had the board done that audit, they might have avoided the serious problems they now have. Could this be why Pennyman abruptly "resigned" last year?
DeleteI understand it, and if you look at other school districts, it’s a misuse of accounting, not simply finding money for programs. They didn’t raise the budget adequately in past years, and now cannot request the needed amount due to % caps. It’s all mismanagement regardless of who or what led to the problem. And a side note, Rondout now has Hudson’s former financial chief.
DeleteThis sounds a lot like Wag the Dog, the '97 movie about a president who started a war to shift news away from a brewing scandal. Contacted by a source in the District, there are "many people from past administrations upset over this article as [the current administration is] trying to push blame [to them] when the blame should be on them and the last few years…many [current employees] are losing their jobs over this [current] budget fiasco…." Stay tuned.
ReplyDeleteThe list of Nobel Prize winners and astronauts feels less like a genuine question and more like a way of implying that local students aren’t “impressive enough” to justify investment.
ReplyDeleteThat’s a pretty narrow—and frankly elitist—way to measure the value of a public school system. By that logic, most districts in the country would be written off as failures, which says more about the metric than the schools.
Public education isn’t designed to mass-produce globally decorated outliers. It’s meant to educate an entire community—students who go on to build lives, families, businesses, and, yes, the very towns people later decide are worth moving to.
Reducing that to a comparison with once-in-a-generation achievements doesn’t just miss the point—it ends up dismissing the majority of people who come through these schools and contribute in ways that don’t come with a trophy attached.
And more broadly, a lot of this discussion seems focused on metrics, blame, or tax impact, but not much on the actual impact these decisions will have on students and families. That feels like the real issue being missed in this thread.
If we’re going to have this conversation, it should be grounded in what these choices mean for the people who live here—not just what they cost or who to blame.
Simply on the basis of outcomes, the HCSD sucks. Flat out. Framing critique as “elitist” or anything else along such lines ignores the fact that many of students are obviously poorly served by the district. And denigrating the costs to the tax payers devalues the hard work and sacrifice most families make of focus on their children’s education.
DeleteI think John and Susan make a similar point: it's pretty easy to get the data that shows that HCSD students aren't performing (2/3 of our students read below grade level). It's also easy to get the data that many of HCSD students have performed well (1/3 at or above grade level). And if you parse the data a little differently, it's costing almost a million dollars to graduate one of our students. The fact is, we have hundreds of schools all over the country with Hudson's demographics -- high poverty and poor parents -- who are educating those kids quite well. No more blaming the victims or saddling taxpayers with bad academic programs, please.
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