Voting Sanity into School Budgets

On Tuesday, May 20^th, 2025, the year’s most under-announced election will take place. It takes place in school districts throughout New York. It is the school district election, which elects public school boards and determines budgets.

Unsurprisingly, in many districts voters are presented with proposals to increase school budgets yet again. It turns out that school administrators can dream up new uses for our money much faster than we can earn it.

Just as lay citizens’ mailboxes are barraged by advertisements for everything under the sun, school administrators receive industry catalogs showcasing all sorts of equipment which can be ordered for their school, from cleaning supplies to athletic installations and more. Administrators receive tailored offers for services of all sorts, ranging from landscaping, to PR primers, to “social-emotional learning” compliance. School administrators also attend live and virtual conferences wherein the latest educational trends are pitched. And since funding allocated for school budgets is on the basis of “use it or lose it,” administrators figure that they might as well splurge whilst the splurging’s good!

As if attempting to ensure that voters are thoroughly buttered up for the proposed budget hikes, recently on social media I have seen a number of these “classroom crowdfunders.” These are fundraisers posted by teachers seeking donations for supplies to be used in their classrooms – maybe on a specific project. As had been communicated in similar posts in the past, the teachers were conducting the fundraiser because they had been supplying the classrooms out of their own pockets. The implication was that the school district did not have the supplies for the classrooms (even commonplace materials like watercolor paints and construction paper) and would not reimburse the teachers for acquiring them.

I have happily contributed to these fundraisers in the past, in support of friends who had posted them, but these recent classroom crowdfunders’ timing is odd. They had popped up around the time of Teacher Appreciation Week, which not coincidentally is just two weeks before the under-announced school budget vote. One hates to be so cynical as to think that an entity like a teachers’ union would put members up to posting these crowdfunders, but it would not be the first time the union’s interests diverged from those of the taxpayers.

The teachers themselves should not be vilified here in any way. Teacher Appreciation Week is almost redundant since everyone values teachers, yet in regards to any proposed school budget increase, there is some misdirection at play. Voters may be given to believe that teachers receive raises when a proposed budget increase is approved, but that is only marginally true. Administrators receive the lion’s share of any salarial gain due to an increased budget, and they outnumber the teachers by ratios in some cases approaching eight to one. This includes staff such as officers for human resources, purchasing agents, groundskeepers, IT technicians, union-board liaisons, and DEI compliance specialists. Some of these employees contribute impactfully to the students’ experience in institutional education, but they are not “front-line” like the teachers. It is an exercise in subterfuge for voters to be given the impression that approval of a proposed budget increase directly benefits the educators, when more accurately these educators only get raises from what’s left over from the administrators’ upkeep.

It is unreasonable to presume that a given school district will never have a legitimate reason to request a budget hike. For example, a school building’s roof may spring a costly leak, or a wheelchair-elevator may be needed for an older building’s staircase. Such emergencies may occasion a request to taxpayers for a budget increase, yet if a school district – like many in New York – is demanding a budget hike every single year, then the school district is improperly administering its resources. Such constant requests show no reciprocal appreciation for taxpayers. This is lamentable given that taxpayers also have emergencies. We may have a sudden death in the family, uninsured medical outlays, or unusual expenses relating to the house or car. Often the proposals for school district budget hikes downplay their impact by saying something like, “It will cost the average taxpayer only $80 more per year,” taking no account of the fact that after successive years of such increases, the burden adds up quickly.

Taking the bird’s eye view, New York State now spends around $36,000 per student – the highest in the country. Despite an infusion of $3.8 billion from the New York Lottery into public education statewide, school districts have steadily demanded more from taxpayers. Without delving into whether commensurate academic results are achieved – which is a topic unto itself – one has to ask when will enough be enough? There is a SmartBoard® in every classroom and an iPad in every knapsack, yet the school districts’ wish-lists for voters are endless.

As this is all about education, most school districts need a hard lesson in scarcity. They need to learn that it is not about always having more money but making the money you have stretch further. It is about finding the best value in what is purchased, not the highest value. Tug though they may on our heart strings – inviting voters parents to band recitals the week before the school budget vote – we must realize that by voting nay to the budget increase, we teach a valuable lesson to the district about living within one’s means, just like the rest of us mere mortals.

And this vote we can cast on Tuesday, May 20^th, 2025 at a school district near you.