The Yonkers school system faced a grim funding puzzle this year: the loss of federal pandemic aid that it used to hire a platoon of badly needed workers but that was now ending after a few years.
Administrators were determined to keep those 239 teachers and other employees, who they said had filled dire staffing gaps and were needed more than ever after the pandemic. But there was no obvious way to replace the $33 million in federal money that paid those salaries and benefits last year.
Yet in the end, the city appears to have done just that.
This week, the City Council approved a $1.5 billion budget that funds both the city government and 24,000-student Yonkers School District and that made no layoffs in the school workforce, according to spokespersons for the city and school district.
How did Yonkers avert layoffs in new budget?
That feat began with a series of budget moves that reduced the number of possible layoffs to 47, said Christina Gilmartin, a spokeswoman for Mayor Mike Spano. The city added nearly $13 million of its own funding to the schools; dropped long-vacant school jobs from the budget; and cut still other positions through attrition, holding off on replacing teachers who retired or took jobs in other districts, she said.
Then it found another maneuver to avert the 47 layoffs: it borrowed $5 million from the pot of state aid it expects to get from Albany next year, Gilmartin said.
The layoffs nearly happened. Samantha Rosado-Ciriello, president of the Yonkers Federation of Teachers, said Thursday that those 47 union members already had been notified they would lose their jobs at the end of June.
She said their jobs ultimately were saved by the $5 million loan from Albany, which state lawmakers helped arrange, and by the 5.45% tax increase in the city's budget.
Spano saluted the legislators' loan assistance in his budget statement: “Special thanks to our State delegation for recognizing the needs of our students and helping Yonkers Public Schools avoid potential cuts in jobs and services, and continue the progress we’ve made in the District."
Lakisha Collins-Bellamy, the council president, said in her own comments that as a parent and lifelong Yonkers resident, she was "determined to maintain the level of education that the children of Yonkers deserve."
"Although I understand the burden of any tax increase, however small, it was important to bridge the gap between the lack of federal funding and rising costs in order to fund our education and essential services,” she said.
The state budget adopted in April hiked foundation aid to Yonkers School District by 8%, bringing it to $284.5 million. Even so, Yonkers school officials had laid out a bleak fiscal picture in March with a $86 million deficit in their own preliminary budget for the next school year.
Shaky reviews:State comptroller: Yonkers' city and school budgets 'structurally unbalanced'
Used federal aid to fund long-needed school positions
Using temporary federal aid to hire employees had always been a gamble for the school district, but one that administrators said was unavoidable after years of chronic underfunding. They brought on music and art teachers they had long been forced to do without. They hired counselors, social workers and psychologists, all vital workers as schools sought to help students recover from pandemic setbacks.
"We were so far behind the 8 ball that the federal stimulus, if anything, was our salvation," then-Superintendent Edwin Quezada said in an interview last year, as the funding cutoff began to loom. "Those 239 positions were not a wish list. They were positions that should have been filled for the last 20 years in the Yonkers Public Schools."
Looming gap:How will Yonkers schools keep 'essential' staff hired with stimulus funds? No one knows
Not all of those jobs remain. Among the vacant positions eliminated in this week's budget were 11 that had been filled with federal funding. They included five art teachers, three music teachers, two social workers and one guidance counselor.
Yonkers schools were given a hefty $74.6 million through the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021, the largest of three sets of federal aid distributed to schools across the U.S. during the pandemic.
Declining enrollment allowed Yonkers to cut vacant positions this year. The school system had 24,000 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade this year, a drop of roughly 2,500 students or 10% over the last five years, according to data from state Department of Education.
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com.
