About School Funding in New York
As the entire state approaches the day when taxpayers vote to approve or reject their school districts' proposed budgets, The Community Journalism Fund, created by the Gazette News Group, the current owners of the Register-Star, shares a report: "New York public schools lead nation in per-pupil spending--again." The article describes the the Hudson City School District as a "large urban district" and describes our per pupil spending as "more moderate":Other large urban districts in the area, including Hudson in Columbia County and Schenectady in the immediate Capital Region, operate with more moderate averages of $34,000 and $31,000, respectively.
Given the current reported enrollment of 1,557 and the proposed budget of $59,171,704, the cost per pupil is $38,000.
The defenders of this budget use outdated student counts.
ReplyDeleteThe Daily Gazette / RS cites $34,000. Gossips references $38,000 using PublicSchoolReview's 1,557 figure, which includes pre-K and predates the documented decline.
The New York State Education Department's most recent BEDS Day count, October 2024, is 1,471 K-12 students.¹ Applied to the adopted $59.17 million budget, the per-pupil figure is $40,226. Adjusted for the 2.2% annual decline NYSED itself recorded between 2023-24 and 2024-25, the 2026-27 figure lands closer to $42,000.²
$42k is the number HCS used in our Special Report, cited from an earlier Gossips report, which cited an HCSD budget meeting, because it is the going forward reality that covers the budget we are voting to fund.
Add the City of Hudson's own youth spending on top, including the Youth Department ($1k plus per youth living in the City) and grants to allied nonprofits serving the same resident cohort, and the public dollar per Hudson-resident young person climbs into the $45,000 to $50,000 range.
Pick your number and your denominator.
None of them is buying the outcome it should.
HCSD students remain in the bottom quartile of New York State on ELA and math.
Enrollment keeps falling. The working middle class, the Hudsonians who cannot exit to private school, pay the 5.8% levy increase and absorb the layoffs.
The students are not being serviced. The taxpayer is.
References:
https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.php?instid=800000053704
https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.php?instid=800000053704&year=2024