With looming cuts to state aid, Riverhead will vote again on failed school budget Tuesday

Tomorrow is decision day for Riverhead School District residents, who have a second and final opportunity to weigh in on the district’s proposed $147.1 million operating budget for next year.

The budget failure in June marked the first time in 14 years that local voters rejected a school budget, which would not only portend steep spending cuts to sports and clubs, but further restrict the district’s resources as it confronts the enormous task of safely sending children back to the classroom in September.

Riverhead’s school budget failure came after record-shattering voter participation of more than 6,000 residents. Voter turnout over the past decade has only topped 3,000 twice, in 2010 and 2011. 

Last year’s budget vote, meanwhile, set a record of a very different kind: In 2019, turnout was the lowest in 20 years, with more than 90% of the district’s voters choosing to sit out.

This year’s election was the first conducted entirely by mail. Every voter received a ballot automatically, with no need to apply for an absentee ballot — a measure state officials took to prevent crowds gathering at the polls when many parts of the state were just beginning to emerge from the coronavirus shutdown.

Out of the state’s 675 school districts, Riverhead was one of just 11 that saw its budget fail and the only district with a failed budget in Suffolk County. 

Gov. Andrew Cuomo set the revote date in response to concerns that school districts like Riverhead would need to make dramatic spending cuts, even as additional pandemic-related expenses and cuts to state aid loom on the horizon.

Cuomo has warned state aid for local schools — a significant portion of the district’s revenue — could be reduced by up to 20% this year due to the state’s own pandemic-related financial losses.

Riverhead’s proposed budget does not yet include anticipated losses to state aid, since the state has yet to say whether the axe will fall and how much those losses will officials say . State officials say they are waiting to hear how much aid for state and local governments, if any, will be included in the next stimulus bill moving through Congress this week.

Though Riverhead currently has about 4% of its proposed budget in unrestricted reserves — the district’s rainy-day fund, set aside for emergencies — school officials say that likely won’t be enough to cover the kinds of cuts to aid the state has been discussing.

The district will also have unspent funds from the shutdown of school buildings in the spring. Critics of the budget have rebuked the district for being unable or unwilling to say how much of the 2019-2020 budget is left unspent, though school officials say they won’t know before the district finishes closing its books for that year.

But the school officials say they are also counting on such reserves to help them meet the state’s steep requirements for safely sending children back to school during a pandemic.

As it stands, the budget rejected by voters last month doesn’t address any of the new pandemic safety requirements the district faces this fall. Riverhead prepared its budget and began presenting it to the public before COVID-19 shut down classrooms and businesses across the state. 

The budget was therefore designed for an ordinary school year, one where COVID-19 didn’t exist.

School districts are required to submit detailed reopening safety plans for September by Friday. They will need to figure out how to alter bus routes and transportation to allow children to socially distance on buses, create new classroom space so that students can keep six feet apart, and find additional funds for face masks, face shields, thermometers, plexiglass dividers and substitute teachers to fill in for educators who may get sick.

A failed school budget this year, therefore, may impact more than sports and arts programs as school officials tap on already strained resources to take on the unprecedented task of bringing children back to the classroom during a pandemic.

Tomorrow’s revote will return to the voting booths, rather than by mail — but it’s already breaking more turnout records. As of this morning, 
Riverhead voters have requested 358 absentee ballots — more than 10 times the number of absentee ballots requested last year.

For a complete breakdown of the district’s proposed budget, see Riverhead Central School District’s website.