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Data used in this study are from the Bureau of Municipal Research & Statistics, Office of the State Comptroller, for school district fiscal years ending in June 1985 and June 1995, and appear in Comptroller's Special Report on Municipal Affairs for the relevant years. (The Special Report contains data for all municipalities as well as school districts. The bureau also publishes Financial Data For School Districts for fiscal year ended June 30, 19XX; that report includes more extensive data on school district finances, including a variety of useful data comparing districts.) The base data used in this report are available from the bureau (518-474-3687); request Table 6 (data for school districts) from the Special Report. A processing fee may apply. Data are reported annually to the Office of the State Comptroller by each school district.
Tax figures include school district property taxes and, in cases where districts collect them, utility and sales taxes.
In this study, an effort was made to identify cases where school districts merged between 1985 and 1995. Data the two separate districts reported in 1985 were combined and then compared with those reported by the combined district for 1995, to calculate enrollment changes and per-student figures for tax collections and state aid.
School districts analyzed for this report include 656 school districts of the 711 outside New York City for which the Office of the State Comptroller reports data. This study omitted districts with fewer than 250 students, to avoid potentially misleading comparisons of per-student data. Other factors may make it difficult to compare one district to another; The Public Policy Institute encourages those interested in the subject to obtain the base data from the Office of the State Comptroller and make their own analyses. The Institute also encourages examination of the "School Report Cards" prepared by the New York State Education Department for information on each school's record of academic success.
The inflation figure for the period, 35 percent, represents the change in the State and Local Government Fixed-Weighted Price Index, calculated by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis. The index is commonly used to analyze trends in fiscal affairs of governmental units, and the Office of the State Comptroller uses the index to calculate inflation-adjusted changes in expenditures made and revenues collected by localities and school districts. The increase in the Consumer Price Index for the period was slightly higher than that for the State and Local Government Fixed-Weighted Price Index.
| Table 1 | Table 2 | Table 3 | Table 4 | Table 5 | Table 6 | Table 7 |
| Complete Listing of School Districts |