RSCD budget proposal eclipses $1B, reflects lost stimulus funding
Rochester School Superintendent Carmine Peluso on Thursday proposed a $1.07 billion budget for the district with slightly more local funding a but significant overall cuts due to the loss of federal stimulus funding.
The budget would include a decrease of about 360 positions in the district's 5,680-person workforce, most of them people whose positions had been funded through American Rescue Plan Act dollars. Those positions, and about $46 million in total spending, have mostly disappeared as the funding as lapsed.
On the other hand, there are dozens of additional special education and English language learner education positions, among other increases.
The budget counts on an increase of $26.4 million in state aid, a number will not be finalized until the state budget passes. The proposal uses $8 million from fund balance, which the state monitor, Jaime Alicea, said is the lowest proposed number of any large urban district in New York.
RCSD is helped by a return to regular transportation aid after the state declined to reimburse some expenses in last year's budget. That change means another $21 million of revenue in the budget proposal. The district is also earning much more money in interest — about $11 million — because of its greater fund balance, including federal stimulus funds.
On the expenditure side, RCSD will pay $127 million to charter schools educating Rochester residents, up from $114 million in 2023-24. About 8,100 students will attend charter schools next year compared to about 21,000 in RCSD.
District officials have been looking forward with trepidation to the loss of the federal COVID stimulus money. Those funds are sunsetting in June and districts across the country must decide whether to continue supplementary programs with their own dollars or to cut them loose.
RCSD's billion dollars will be dispersed very differently in 2024-25. Eleven schools and two programs have closed and five other schools are opening. There is a new tier of junior high schools throughout the city, meaning K-8 schools are having their upper grades lopped off.
The board's decision to let the East High School's partnership with the University of Rochester expire will not affect the 2024-25 budget, as that lapse doesn't take place until June 2025.
Alicea, the state monitor, praised the district for a more coherent budget development process this year. In a highly unusual departure from standard practice, though, the district never made a public presentation of its final proposal. Rather it posted the 324-page document on its website last week, and Peluso and his team had meetings with individual board members to explain what was in it.
There will be a public budget hearing April 10. The board is scheduled to vote May 7 before City Council gives final approval in June.
— Justin Murphy is a veteran reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle and author of "Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger: School Segregation in Rochester, New York." Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/CitizenMurphy or contact him at jmurphy7@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: RSCD superintendent proposes $1.07 billion budget in Rochester NY
