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After the release of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposed budget, the Rochester City School District’s financial situation has come into even sharper focus.
The clearest element is that the district will receive less in state aid than anticipated. Instead of $830 million, which was presented as an estimate earlier this month, Hochul’s budget has $826 million for RCSD.
“It is a total aid package as articulated through the governor of roughly 20 million additional dollars to RCSD, which is only a 2.45 percent increase of what we received last year,” Superintendent Eric Rosser said at a board meeting last week.
While he noted that universal pre-K funding was increasing by 24.75 percent, foundational aid, which comprises the lion’s share of revenue for RCSD, only rose by 1.92 percent. Other aid, which is mostly tied to transportation, increased by less than a quarter of a percentage point.
Blunting that news slightly is the fact that certain federal grants will, in fact, be coming through for the district. The finance department had put $6.7 million back into its projections.
All told, a funding gap of nearly$49 million—specifically, $49,748,428—in the district’s preliminary budget. This is slightly better than the previous total of $53 million but is still a substantial amount to make up.
“There’s many things that myself and members of my executive cabinet have been engaged in to identify ways in which we can reduce our expenditures,” said Rosser. “Thinking outside the box when it comes to making sure we provide a high-quality educational experience to our students, making sure professional learning is in place for staff members, and making sure that we’re also supporting parents.”
Part of that “outside the box” approach has been adjusting the district’s legislative priorities around charter school funding.
“We would like to (include this) given the fact that we stand to lose about $11 million for this upcoming year and we pay more than $155 million for charter school tuition and associated costs,” Rosser said.
The priority, which will be presented as testimony in an upcoming trip to Albany, is based on the fact that nearly 30 percent of RCSD students are enrolled in charter schools and RCSD serves a disproportionate share of students with disabilities and English language learners. The district maintains that, as the system currently works, it could have an “unsustainable imbalance” that could threaten essential student support services.
It advocates for restoring transitional protections, which offset revenue losses due to students transitioning to charters, and reassessing excess-cost calculations, which determine the minimum funds a school must spend on students with disabilities before using federal IDEA funding.
No details were shared on how much potential funding RCSD could gain from these changes.
The amended priority was accepted by the board of education, with several members voicing their support for it.
“Charter schools are taking so much money from our district and then asking to be involved in our district events,” said Commissioner Heather Feinman. “So you’re asking to double dip in a way. I think that there needs to be a delineation and an understanding with that so restoring fiscal stability is very very important.”
Next in the budget process will be a presentation of the district’s budget to the board at the end of February. Then, the plan will be submitted to the state monitor, who will give his own presentation in March. April will have budget hearings with the public and City Council, with final deliberations and a board vote set for May.
Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
The Beacon welcomes comments and letters from readers who adhere to our comment policy including use of their full, real name. See “Leave a Reply” below to discuss on this post. Comments of a general nature may be submitted to the Letters page by emailing [email protected].
Superintendent Rosser and Commissioner Feinman, the RCSD had the lowest 3rd – 8th grade academic growth in ELA and math among the nation’s largest 200 districts according to a study by Stanford’s Sean Reardon. The reports by the Distinguished Educators on the RCSD show broken systems, a bloated workforce, and pervasive waste. Yet the RCSD school board is arguably the nation’s highest paid part-time school board. Financial savings should start by making the board volunteer, with no benefits, as is the custom in the vast majority of the nation’s school boards. Perhaps then we could elect board members who would improve RCSD’s academics and financial stability. Charter students who are fleeing district failure get approximately half district funding, while their parents pay full city taxes. The blame for district deficits is not from charters, but from district waste and bloat. It is wrong for both of you to blame charter students.
I apologize for commenting again — but hard not to. I separate out this quote since obviously Commissioner Feinman does not have the number one priority on her list-
EDUCATING ROCHESTER CHILDREN. Based on this comment Education is not a priority of any Board members.
“Charter schools are taking so much money from our district and then asking to be involved in our district events,” said Commissioner Heather Feinman. “So you’re asking to double dip in a way. I think that there needs to be a delineation and an understanding with that so restoring fiscal stability is very very important.”
Financial stability is YOUR priority and to be honest – based on decades of data- the RCSD ability of managing finance as well educating ranks near the bottom in NYS.
IF your focus and priority is on financial stability- why not enlist finance experts from Monroe County business leaders to help you. We have lot of highly qualified and educated financial experts including the Simon School professors! I know your answer == they do not live in City – so we do want want them ‘messing with our schools’. I have heard that, for real!
Our Finger Lakes Region ( yes our region not just City of Rochester) is at such a disadvantage in developing an educated work force and YOU, School Board+Teachers Union+ RCSD Administrators are a HUGE part of the problem.
I ask you, Commissioner = what does or have you done that our Community can take pride in? It certainly is not educating our youth or excellence in financial stability.
Wow- Superintendent Rosser and Commissioner Feinman – you have the issue of funding education upside down and backwards! Charter Schools were created in the USA to be ‘out of the box’ and create approaches to improve educating our youth! The reason close to 10,000 students AND close to 8,500 Rochester families have selected Charter Schools is simple = the RCSD system does not work! It’s not poor RCSD, poor School Board and poor teachers union – look ‘outside the box’!!! Here’s a solid solution>> engage the Charter Schools to correct YOUR dysfunctional approach. Save money- improve learning- improve graduation rates and improve future workforce for Monroe County.
Where to begin:
1) The RCSD’s 2025-2026 budget book projects an enrollment decline from 20,423 students this year to 19,300 students next year. So, the District is seeing an increase in funding while projecting that it will be educating 7% fewer students next year. On a per-pupil basis, that increase of “only 2.45%” works out to approximately 10% per student, which is well above inflation.
2) Yes, the RCSD will transfer $155 million to charter schools this year. But that isn’t RCSD money, it is NY State money that simply flows through the District. Charter schools would welcome a shift to direct funding, where state money would flow directly to them and by-passes local school districts. But, that isn’t the way the system is currently set up.
3) The RCSD is spared the expense of educating those charter school students who comprise 30% of the City’s public school student population. Somehow, that avoided expense doesn’t find its way into the narrative.
4) Even after adjusting for the in-kind services provided to charter school students by the RCSD (transportation, school nurses, special education services) , charter school per-pupil funding is still only about half of what the RCSD spends per pupil.
Yes, the RCSD has fiscal challenges. But charter schools aren’t the reason. In fact, if charter schools did not exist, the RCSD’s funding shortfall would be materially larger than it is today because the RCSD spends so much more per-pupil than charter schools receive in funding. In fact, City of Rochester charter school students receive less NY State taxpayer funding today than they did two years ago. Every charter school in town would happily opt in to the RCSD’s funding model.