ASBO Spring Budget Survey Results

Based on the 311 responses to ASBO’s recent survey of school business officials, there is no one way that New York school districts are confronting fiscal challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Impact on 2019-20 Budgets

With the shutdown, school districts that contract out for all or part of their pupil transportation faced the question of whether to continue paying those contracts even though no students were being transported or to temporarily stop paying them. According to our survey, of districts that contract at least some of their transportation, 31 percent are currently paying their contracts, 51 percent have decided not to or are not paying while awaiting guidance, and 18 percent have negotiated or are negotiating partial payments.

Another question we asked about current finances also produced divergent results. When asked if they anticipate exceeding the four percent limit on unassigned fund balance during the 2019-20 school year, 51 percent of districts said yes, and 49 percent said no.

2020-21 School Budgets

As school districts wait to hear the results of potential cuts to State Aid following the close of the April budget review window ahead of the June 9 school budget votes, only 16 percent of school districts have already adopted their budgets. For these districts, the two most common strategies were using fund balance (67 percent) and staffing attrition through not replacing retirees (57 percent). These are also the most common strategies that are being used by districts still working on their budgets. The following table shows the percentage of districts in each grouping that indicated they’re using or considering each strategy.

Conclusion

The Foundation Aid freeze and local economic pressures due to the COVID-19 pandemic pose enormous challenges to public school districts. Additional State Aid cuts will only exacerbate the concerns. ASBO has advocated that Congress pass another stimulus package that specifically provides additional funding to the states that supports public education.