A budget’s bitter aftertaste

For the second time in five weeks, the Rochester City School District board on June 16 approved a budget for the 2026-2027 school year. As before, the new version passed 4-3 without a vote to spare—and the head of the teachers union, community members, Rochester City Council, and the commissioners themselves expressed little satisfaction with the outcome.

The amended spending plan became necessary when the state budget—approved six days after the first RCSD budget vote—delivered $4.1 million less than expected. The revised plan closed that gap primarily from two sources: $1.1 million from afterschool/summer programming for 2026-2027 and $2.2 million from a “best practice replication” plan for Padilla High School.

“Was this process perfect? I’d be a liar if I said that it was,” President Camille Simmons remarked at the RCSD board meeting last week. “Was it great? No. Absolutely not. It was painful. It was difficult. And nobody rubber stamped this thing. We were almost ready not to pass this sucker because we were just kind of concerned about all of the changes.”

She was joined in her approval vote by Vice President Amy Maloy and commissioners Kareem McCullough and Heather Feinman.

Commissioner Beatriz LeBron-Harris, who voted against the amended budget, said she has “no confidence right now in the finance department and where we are at.

“(Simmons) is making the financial circumstances seem very flowery, but these are not small concerns. Getting a year’s worth of incomplete finance reports is not something for us to be this calm about at this moment in time.”

Commissioners Isaiah Santiago and Jacqueline Griffin joined LeBron-Harris in voting against the amended budget.

Fund balance debate

The road to approval of RCSD’s nearly $1.2 billion budget was long and rocky, drawing scrutiny from the community and members of the board themselves, even those who voted to pass the plan. Several commissioners noted that potential ripple effects and legal ramifications of a failed budget vote convinced them to support the financial plan. Others bemoaned the lack of transparency and communication in the process.

Budget proceedings began in earnest when the RCSD finance department identified an initial $50 million funding gap. Matters were complicated due to a state budget that was nearly two months late.

Overall, 16.8 full-time equivalent employees were cut from the 2026-2027 RCSD budget compared to last year, with civil service and teaching positions taking the largest hits. However, cuts to the Home Hospital Instruction program, which provides academic services to students who cannot attend school due to extenuating circumstances, as well as social workers, counselors, and food services have faced pushback from the community and local leaders.

“These cuts are both cruel and unnecessary,” says Adam Urbanski, Rochester Teacher Association union president.

Even with those cuts, the spending plan needed to use $23.8 million from the district’s $312.8 million fund balance. The board is generally united in opposition to using the fund balance, savings that provide the district a financial cushion, to fix its budget shortfalls. RCSD superintendent Eric Rosser  said the amended budget did not draw additional money from the fund balance.

Rosser and State Monitor Jaime Alicea have warned that spending trends could place the district in a situation. Based on five-year revenue projections, they estimate there could be a $128 million deficit by 2031, even with the currently healthy fund balance. 

Urbanski isn’t convinced, however. He believes that the district has a larger fund balance than reported. He is currently working on an outside budget analysis with help from New York State United Teachers.

“The district does not have a gap, the district has a surplus,” Urbanski argues. “With the reserve of $312 million that we know of, probably more, we are puzzled why they would even consider making any cuts, but especially cuts that target the most vulnerable students in our district.

“That is inaccurate and disingenuous. Their fund balance is not diminishing. It is growing, because they are investing that surplus and it’s earning interest,” he adds. “They are fabricating a shortage of money at a time when they have an unprecedented surplus that is likely to increase rather than decrease.”

NYSUT and Peter Applebee, former deputy director of the state Senate Finance Committee, are currently compiling a financial analysis of RCSD, which Urbanski believes will prove there is no funding shortage. He estimates the report will be finished by July 22. 

“(Applebee’s) credentials are impeccable. He is much more credible than the district’s chief financial officer (Robert McDow),” says Urbanski. “I believe that the superintendent is trusting the information presented to him by his CFO. And I believe that that information is a misrepresentation of the actual district budget. I don’t know if it’s incompetence or willful misrepresentation; it’s a mystery to us.”

Closing the $4.1 million gap

While the final budget made cuts to the afterschool/summer programming for 2026-2027, Rosser says it still will receive $2.6 million. This is double the current year’s amount and enough to allow RCSD to expand its offerings. Further, he said there could be a chance to restore some after-school programming with additional potential transportation aid in November.

The superintendent also said the Padilla High School cuts were not directly related to the budget gap.

After the dissolution of the Educational Partnership Organization between the University of Rochester and East Upper and Lower schools in 2024, the RCSD planned to implement similar systems at other district schools, with Padilla High School first on the list.

The newly approved budget will now delay this rollout a year. This postponement simply reflects the reality of the school’s preparedness, Rosser said.

“In having conversations with the Padilla team, which would be inclusive of RTA reps as well as building administration, they felt that they needed additional time to be able to create a program that would then serve as the replication of best practices learned from the EPO,” he said. “So, our decision to remove the $2.2 million is predicated upon the team at Padilla indicating that they were not ready to move forward with this best practice replication. 

“They indicated that they would like to work over the course of the ’26-27 school year to then come up with a plan that they feel would receive (support of) 80% of the RTA membership at (Padilla).”

Urbanski confirmed that RTA was involved in the decision to delay the development of the Padilla plan.

Santiago, who voted against the amended budget, still had concerns about Padilla, a school he said has already taken “some of the hardest cuts.”

“This is a school that we already know is high needs and historically has been high needs,” he said. “There have been crises that have gone on at Padilla. How is this a school that’s being chosen almost every time when it comes to the cuts? I’m very concerned about that.

“Four of the social workers out of the 10 that we’re cutting districtwide are coming from Padilla. Same thing with guidance counselors. Five of those guidance counselors that we’re cutting are coming from Padilla,” continued Santiago.

While a staffing chart produced by RCSD shows that Padilla will have four fewer social workers, it appears the school’s counselor total will only decrease by one.

Other concerns

Unrelated to the measures taken to close the $4.1 million gap, community members and several commissioners remain concerned about programming at School No. 12, the Anna Murray-Douglass Academy. Rosser said at a May 19 meeting that bilingual pre-K, a two-way dual language program for 3- and 4-year-olds, was saved from being cut due to tweaks to the plan.

He also spoke positively about the school’s other unique curriculum, its nature-based learning programming for pre-K through grade 8. Kyra Stephenson, the nature-based learning coach who oversees this program, would be let go under the current budget, however.

While he did not commit to saving the position, Rosser indicated that the administration was looking at opportunities to fund it, possibly through philanthropic support. No updates have been made since. The district did not respond in time for publication when asked for comment.

“(School 12 families) were verbally told at a board meeting that the (nature-based learning) position would be reinstated and it’s been a few weeks since they’ve heard anything,” said LeBron-Harris. “I’ve also expressed concerns regarding statements that positions and services would be restored without any clear documentation identifying where the funding is coming from, what offsets will be required, and how those changes impact the broader budget.

“My larger concern with that is where would that money actually come from? And so as board members, our role is simply not to accept assurances from administration,” she continued. “Our role is to exercise oversight, ask questions, and when the information does not align or when sufficient assumptions remain unclear, we have a duty to continue to ask questions.”

Simmons, however, commended Rosser.

“School districts, especially urban districts, are facing massive school closures, hundreds of staff being laid off and you managed not to do this because you made the efforts to stay as far away (as possible) from the classroom,” she said.

“Even the city of Rochester (faced) a $130 million deficit,” Simmons added. “We ourselves don’t even have the ability to raise taxes, so we’ve got to figure it out and make this make sense. This is not just unique to Rochester. This is happening in school districts next door, across the nation.”

The “school district next door,” in Buffalo, passed its $1.4 billion budget last week. It included 51 job cuts and closure of two schools for the 2027-2028 school year. The Buffalo board of education also approved a 3% raise to the superintendent’s cabinet staff and other exempt employees.

 Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.

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