Education spending is not remotely “miserly”

In its editorial celebrating Gov. Kathy Hochul’s embrace of a (further) enriched state education aid formula (“A new day for schools,” Oct. 19), the Times Union Editorial Board bemoans New York’s “miserly education policy.”

Miserly? Really? Consider the numbers: according to U.S. Census Bureau data for 2018-19, New York schools had operating expenditures of $25,139 per pupil — 91 percent above the national average, topping all states and comfortably exceeding all of New York’s neighbors in the high-priced Northeast. Indeed, New York is the Lake Wobegon of K-12 education funding, a state where even the lowestspending rural school system (General Brown in Jefferson County) spends more than the national average.

Well over half of 681 New York school districts (including Albany) ranked within the highest-spending 10 percent of school districts nationally in 2018-19, and most of the rest were in the highestspending quintile.

Schenectady — singled out as an example of inadequate funding in the editorial — spent $19,467 per pupil as measured by census data in 2018-19, exceeding the comparable spending levels of nearby suburban districts including Niskayuna, Rotterdam-mohonasen, Shenendehowa, Bethlehem, Guilderland and North Colonie.

Schenectady spends because poorer urban districts are favored by the state aid formula, which is far from perfect but undeniably redistributive.

By the way, the primary reason for New York's No. 1 ranking isn’t administrative overhead but instructional salaries and benefits, which are more than double the national per-pupil level, reflecting a combination of high staffing levels and high teacher salaries.

There are a lot of words that would best describe this state of affairs but “miserly” isn’t one of them. Edmund J. Mcmahon

Delmar