Suburban Monroe County budgets, board candidates go to voters Tuesday
Residents of the Monroe County suburbs will vote Tuesday on their school districts' proposed annual budgets, the largest direct spending decision that New Yorkers make each year.
School board candidates are also on the ballot in every Monroe County school district. Poll times and locations vary by district; more details are available at district websites.
The 2024-25 budget vote is expected to be quieter than in past years. No local districts are proposing a tax cap override, a risky strategy that local voters have rejected several times in the last decade.
Largely absent, too, are slates of school board candidates running on strong ideological platforms. Since COVID-19, many local school districts have seen so-called parents' rights tickets with candidates pledging to roll back pandemic safety measures and revamp curriculum and library collections they find objectionable. Voters for the most part rejected such efforts in 2021, 2022 and 2023.
From 2022: Challenges to school libraries have been mostly ineffective, but issue remains volatile
The most pressing issue this budget cycle for district business directors is the loss of federal pandemic stimulus funding. For the first time since 2020, New York school districts will be back to their standard mix of local property taxes and traditional state and federal revenue sources.
"We worked hard during and after pandemic to address impact it had on our students," East Irondequoit Deputy Superintendent John Abbott said during a recent school budget webcast. "The federal stimulus money that runs out this year made a lot of that possible. That’s $3.8 million of annual support that’s coming to an end."
Gov. Kathy Hochul's initial state budget proposal included cuts in foundation aid to many smaller and rural districts across the state. The version eventually signed into law restored those cuts but still left many districts with little or no increase from 2023-24.
Honeoye Falls-Lima, for example, is getting an increase of less than 1%, a sum that Superintendent Gene Mancuso said won't cover increases in health and retirement costs.
Voters in the Rochester City School District and New York's other large urban districts do not vote on their school budgets, which are funded mostly by the state and city governments rather than through direct local property taxes. The Rochester school board approved its budget last week, sending it to City Council for final approval.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Monroe County NY budgets, board candidates go to voters Tuesday
