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SCSD seeks city's approval on $573 million budget

Abigail Connolly
SCSD officials present the proposed 2024-2025 school budget to Syracuse common councilors, April 29.

Syracuse Common Councilors will be looking to approve the Syracuse City School District 2024-2025 budget.

In a budget hearing with the Syracuse Common Council, Syracuse City School District officials highlighted top budget priorities from community input. The priorities include reading intervention, mental health support, and math intervention. City School District Chief Financial Officer Michael Puntschenko said these are a top priority in next year’s budget.

“These are things that the district moved money and made sure that we are addressing these needs,” Puntschenko said.

The district's $578.1 million budget is up around 50 million dollars from last year and was approved by the school board last week. Issues with transpiration needs, increasing costs, and staff retention were listed as some of the reasons for the increase. Puntschenko said some of the district's structural plans, including the incoming STEAM high school and an additional Montessori school, are affecting this budget as well.

“This is the planning year of the STEAM high school, we’ve put 8.3 million set aside as we transition into the STEAM high school,” Puntschenko said. “This school will be opening in September of 2025 but there is a lot of planning and staffing and hiring that we have to do in the next year or so to get the school up and running.”

The Syracuse City School District, like other public agencies, will be left without ARPA funds this year. But unlike many other school districts across the state, Syracuse’s state Foundation Aid funding increased. Still, Puntschenko said there are issues that need to be resolved with the new formula.

“As a school district that has a good number of needs in terms of special education students, poverty students, so on and so forth, we don’t feel that the Foundation Aid formula reflects our population as it should, so there is going to be some discussion about that over the year,” Puntschenko said. “Hopefully once they figure out how to revise that Foundation Aid formula that will adjust our funding appropriately.”

Syracuse Common Councilors will need to approve a final plan by May 8.

Abigail is a temporary WRVO News Reporter/Producer working on regional and digital news stories. She graduated from SUNY Oswego in 2022 where she studied English and Public Relations. Abigail enjoys reading, writing, exploring CNY and spending time with family and friends. Abigail first joined the WRVO team as a student reporter in June 2022.