SULLIVAN COUNTY, NY — Incumbent State Senator of the 51st District Peter Oberacker (R) and challenger Michele Frazier (D) spoke with the River Reporter about how the future of New York’s school funding impacts Sullivan schools. 

Just this year, the Sullivan West School district was prepared to lose $2 million in foundation aid—a 17 percent drop—according to New State Gov. Kathy Hochul’s initial executive budget. 

The initial proposed budget cut the “Hold Harmless” provision, which guarantees no district will receive less aid than it did the year before. The provision offers stability: No district will have to face a sudden drop-off in funding—even if they’ve lost students or have a large surplus—so that it can better plan its budgets.

Ultimately the governor reversed the provision cancellation at the last minute, but at a press conference in April, Hochul indicated plans to include an updated foundational aid formula in this year’s budget. A new state commission has been formed to overhaul the foundation aid formula to fund local school districts.

The reversal kept state aid the same for both Sullivan West and Eldred this year but looking ahead to the 2025-26 school year, Eldred Central School and other school districts in the state are bracing for cuts. 

In anticipation, Eldred talked about plans to reduce staff through attrition, saving money on software, and hoping to reduce out-of-district placements at the April 2024 board meeting.

Robert Lowry, deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, said state aid cuts would hurt rural schools the most. Eldred has lost 43 percent of its K-12 student population in 23 years, since the 1999-2000 academic year. That’s the same percentage lost by Sullivan West during the same period. 

Lawmakers in both the senate and assembly opposed the initial plan to end hold harmless in bipartisan fashion before Hochul reversed it. 

Both candidates for NY’s 51st State Senate district, Frazier and Oberacker, agree that the school foundational aid formula—which in some cases uses census numbers from 2000 and 2008—needs to be adjusted. 

But how? 

Michele Frazier (D)

Frazier said foundational school aid should accommodate the diversity of issues that rural school districts have that are different from their urban counterparts. 

She gave the example of the cost of a teacher for a class of 30 versus 15 students. “The reality is you’re going to have higher per-pupil costs to educate in smaller school districts. Economies of scale do not apply well in rural communities.”

However, Frazier said using 2000 census data to determine foundational aid needs to be updated. “We can’t have a static formula that doesn’t change with our communities.” 

“We have to have the proper kind of roll-out for these changes,” Frazier said about updating the foundational aid formula. 

“If you have a big ship, it takes you longer to turn the corner, and then if you have a little car, so when you’re talking about an entire school district, we need to make sure that we’re giving them time to make the corner under these provisions.” 

A proper roll-out includes guidance, and a foundational formula that will help handle “the curve of the ship,” Frazier said. 

One of her suggestions is a multi-year rollout that “provides the superintendents and our teachers with better information to plan, not just for the next school year, but ahead in their plans for the future.”

“As an educator, I know, I really understand that this is one of the key components to how we continue to input into our community, and we need to have a strong rural voice at the table, or we’re going to be on the menu. And the reality is that you know, my opponent isn’t always at the table. On occasion, he’s missing his seat, and therefore we’re missing our opportunities. So that’s for me, one of the biggest issues in thinking about foundational aid is that we’ve got to make sure that we do not get caught in this process because rural children need an education just as much as urban and suburban children,” Frazier said. 

Peter Oberacker (I) (R)

In a statement in Februrary 2024, Sen. Peter Oberacker said he “strongly oppose[d]” canceling the Hold Harmless provision and that it would have “negative impacts on our schools and their fiscal stability.”

But, he told the River Reporter, he believes that “the foundation aid formula needs to change. OK, it really needs to be revamped.”

Oberacker said he would “totally scrap it and start from the beginning,” starting with updated census data and adjusting the “wealth ratio” to be more representative of rural areas like Sullivan. He says the wealth ratio is part of determining foundation aid, and in places like Sullivan has been adjusted due to the influx of second homeowners which aren’t “a true indication” but “affect the amount of foundation aid.”

Oberacker also brought up the funding impacts on schools from New York State’s mandate to transition its school bus fleet to zero-emission vehicles by 2035. The mandate is part of the state’s larger climate goals. Oberacker said the cost will be a burden to school districts in Sullivan County and as a former bus driver he said there are a “host of other issues” with the buses regarding distance, heat and battery life in a rural school district. 

“Hold Harmless, I’m absolutely not in favor of doing away with that. You know, zero-emission buses. Let’s talk about it. You know, supervisors are looking at all this eventually, and if they go awry, they are going to have to plan for it in their budgets. And the only way they can do it is in a defensive position,” Oberacker said.

Oberacker said “the unfunded mandate” is not a way to legislate. “That’s no way to address one of the largest parts of the New York state budget, which is education. So we need communication. We need our superintendents to engage in that communication, and then we really need to sit down and do it right.”