Educators seek aid restoration, end of dreaded GEA

• Schools in NYS have lost %248.4 billion to annual state cuts known as GEA.
• GEA started in 2010 to reduce state budget deficit%3B Cuomo says there%27s now a surplus
• Educators say cumulative effects of GEA are %22crippling%22 education
• Huge lobbying push is under way to end the GEA and add school aid to state budget%2C due April 1

The Common Core has been dominating the headlines, but a far less flashy buzzword has emerged as the massive new headache going around education circles.

It's called the GEA, or Gap Elimination Adjustment, and over the past four years it has quietly drained $8.4 billion from New York's school coffers.

For districts in Rockland, Westchester and Putnam, the cumulative reduction in aid exceeds $455 million between 2010 and 2014.

"The GEA is the bane of our existence," said Rick Timbs, executive director of the Statewide School Finance Consortium, which is composed mostly of districts from average and low-wealth communities. "We just see schools as being used as a scapegoat for the state's budget deficit."

In 2010, the state began to cut part of the base education funding, known as Foundation Aid, that's doled out yearly to school districts to reduce its own $10 billion deficit. The annual withholding, which eventually became known as the GEA, was introduced by then-Gov. David Paterson as a short-term deficit-reduction measure. It was enacted following a state freeze on Foundation Aid in 2008-09.

School districts have lobbied hard for Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature to restore money lost to GEA in the 2014-15 state budget, which is due April 1. Districts are hoping for extra aid as they craft their own budgets.

The campaign gained momentum over the winter, with more than 20 school districts in Westchester and Putnam adopting resolutions demanding the end of the GEA. An effort headed by the Eastchester district has resulted in more than 1,400 letters sent to local representatives and to Cuomo demanding a restoration of the aid.

Rockland districts have made similar efforts to tell policymakers the issue is more urgent than ever, said Pam Frederick, executive director of the county School Boards Association.

"The cumulative effects are just crippling on school districts," Frederick said. "We want our money back."

GEA funds state budget surplus

The complaints reached a crescendo recently as Cuomo rolled out his executive budget proposal touting a $2 billion budget surplus — a key talking point in his 2014 re-election campaign. Critics say the state has run up a big debt to school districts in order to find the surplus.

"Cuomo wants to run as a good fiscal manager, but he's done it on the backs of the schoolchildren of New York," said Port Chester school Trustee Robert Johnson, who has lobbied to end the GEA.

A spokeswoman for Cuomo said the state has and continues to return some of the money withheld under the GEA while also increasing other categories of education aid.

"Education is the governor's top priority, which is why his proposed budget includes an overall $807 million increase in education funding, bringing it to its highest levels in New York's history," spokeswoman Dani Lever said. "During the last two years, $918 million was invested toward eliminating the Gap Elimination Adjustment and an additional $323 million is proposed in the 2014-15 executive budget."

Less-affluent local districts with many "high-needs" students deeply resent that the state has sought to balance its books by withholding school aid. They're harder hit because they rely more heavily on state aid than wealthier districts, which can lean on property taxes to a greater degree, said Robert Lowry Jr., deputy director of the state Council of School Superintendents.

Poorer districts also may have started with less, Lowry said.

"You can't eliminate the same teaching job more than once," he said. "If you already have larger class sizes and fewer Advanced Placement classes, you have less to cut from to begin with."

Take a district such as North Rockland, which has cut programs, negotiated contracts and tapped reserve funds year after year but remains constrained by the tax-levy cap and a multimillion-dollar tax certiorari settlement with Mirant Corp. while expenses such as pensions and health care continue to rise.

"(State officials) have to define what a sound, basic education is for children and then fund it, because you can't fund it all at the local level," said North Rockland Trustee Peggy Zugibe, the Rockland BOCES area director for the state School Boards Association.

Less money, more students

East Ramapo, Port Chester and Ossining, which have seen enrollments increase, say they need a Foundation Aid increase — plus the end of the GEA.

Port Chester has lost $103 million in state aid due to the Foundation Aid freeze since 2007, and another $10.3 million from the GEA, Superintendent Edward Kliszus said. The district's enrollment has risen by more than 600 since 2007, and many students come from poverty and lack English proficiency.

"We need the money," Kliszus said. "It costs more to educate children with more needs."

East Ramapo has cut more than 450 positions since 2008 despite enrollment increases of 100 students every year for the past four years. Similarly, Ossining has cut 100 positions over the past four years while enrollment has risen 17 percent since 2006.

"We are trying to avoid insolvency and to keep the programs we need," Ossining Superintendent Raymond Sanchez said.

Legislators do seem to grasp the importance of reducing and eventually erasing the GEA, said Michael Borges, executive director of the state Association of School Business Officials.

Though no one thinks the $8.4 billion in cuts over the past four years will ever be fully restored, the Assembly and Senate have included partial GEA restoration in their 2014-15 budget proposals as well as more overall school aid. The Assembly proposed $367 million in GEA restoration and the Senate $541 million; both more than Cuomo's proposal of $323 million.

But a phaseout may not come fast enough, Borges said, considering the impact of the property-tax levy cap and, potentially, Cuomo's tax-rebate proposal.

"The state should fulfill its obligations to school districts before committing itself to prekindergarten or charter schools or other things," Borges said.

Bedford's Susan Elion Wollin, president of the Westchester-Putnam School Boards Association, said she was concerned that school districts' focus on the Common Core implementation and other state reforms may have sapped their time and energy to demand the dollars they need.

"Without the proper funding, everything else is irrelevant," she said. "The reforms issues may have diverted attention from the budget problems and the lack of mandate relief."

Linda Schwartz, whose two children go to Ramapo Central schools, is part of a group of parents who've been urging state officials to end the GEA. Ramapo Central has lost $9.7 million to the GEA since 2010, and district officials say budget deficits are all but certain unless additional programs and staff are cut.

Schwartz said she's seen fewer support services in elementary schools as a result of cutbacks this year, and she dreads the day her fifth-grade daughter and sixth-grade son get to high school and find out that many of the current programs are gone.

"We've had excellent experiences at Ramapo Central, and we are very frightened about what tomorrow's going to bring," she said.

Staff writers Swapna Venugopal and Randi Weiner contributed to this report.

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