New York’s 2027-28 school funding cycle will hinge on the November 15 school aid database, according to a slide in the state aid presentation the Board of Regents received on Sept. 14. The database will provide the latest information for the Regents’ December school aid request. District business offices must submit the required filings through the State Aid Management System, or SAMS, before the October deadline.

The presentation outlines the steps leading to that request. During the summer and early fall, Regents’ stakeholder groups review priorities and model available data. Co-chairs then narrow the options in September and October with technical assistance from state Education Department staff. Staff will present the programmatic and technical details in November before the full Board adopts its final proposal in December. The request will go to the governor, who, in the year following a gubernatorial election, must submit an executive budget by Feb. 1 under Article VII of the state constitution.

The deck also reviewed the previous funding cycle. For 2026-27, the Regents requested a $1.12 billion increase in school aid, while the enacted budget provided $1.67 billion more, bringing total school aid to $39.3 billion. A single funding line accounted for most of the $544.6 million gap between the request and the enacted increase.

 

What the Regents asked for, and what came back

In December 2025 the Board requested $20 million for Universal Prekindergarten, enough by the Department's own estimate to open seats for nearly 1,500 children in high-need districts. Albany answered with a $450.92 million increase, more than 22 times the request. The same budget set a $10,000 minimum per-pupil rate for four-year-olds and required districts to serve every eligible child that age by 2028-29, according to the Senate majority's budget summary. The money is going into a program where districts sent back $170 million in unspent pre-K allocations after the 2024-25 school year.

Foundation Aid, the formula that carries most general operating money, rose $1,027.90 million against a Regents request of $996.84 million. Every district received at least 2 percent more Foundation Aid than the year before. The weighting for English language learners went up, and the formula gained new weightings for students experiencing homelessness or in foster care. The Board's December request had named homelessness and left foster care out.

One request came back empty: The Regents asked for $10.12 million in Enhanced Special Services Aids, and the enacted column on the Sept. 14 slide reads $0. The Board's December release had put a $10.1 million price on helping city districts outside the BOCES system offer career and technical education, and Commissioner Betty A. Rosa said at the time that the priorities ran "from expanding career-focused pathways to broadening access to education." Other school aids, which the December release described as reimbursement-based aid under current law, rose $189.49 million against a request of $96.81 million.

The list the Board carries into this cycle

A page near the end of the deck, headed Priorities Not Yet Achieved, records what the Board asked for and did not get. Under NY Inspires it names a professional development investment, career and technical education support for large cities, shared services grants, FAPE 22 and a juvenile justice high school. Under cultural education it names a permanent fix for the cultural education fee and the New York State Summer School for the Arts.

The December release had priced several of those items. It sought $10 million in grants for districts and BOCES that had drawn up regional shared services plans and $2 million for the summer arts school. Another $1.5 million would have paid to plan a model school district for young people held in detention settings. FAPE 22 carried no dollar figure, because it asked Albany to change the aid statutes so the state helps pay for services to students with disabilities until age 22 rather than 21.

The Board said the change would bring the law in line with court rulings and relieve districts of covering the extra year without state reimbursement. Until the statute changes, that year of services for students who have turned 21 remains a local cost.

The enacted budget also handed districts dates that fall inside the year the Regents are now pricing. The Commissioner must issue best practices for K-5 math instruction by Jan. 1, 2027. Districts then have until Sept. 1, 2027, two months into the 2027-28 fiscal year, to verify that their instruction aligns.

The November 15 file and the October cutoff

The November database is one of three data files the State Aid Office builds from SAMS each year, alongside versions dated February 15 and May 15. Each fall the office posts a reminder telling districts when SAMS changes must arrive to guarantee inclusion in the November file. The cutoff has come a day earlier each year, from Oct. 19 in 2023 to Oct. 18 in 2024 and Oct. 17 in 2025. The 2026 reminder had not been posted as of this week.

In January 2025 the office warned that building projects whose final cost reports missed the February 15 file would be left out of the enacted budget's aid projections. That aid would arrive later in the year, beginning with the June general aid payment. In July 2026 the office posted a final review of fall 2025 enrollment and economically disadvantaged counts, which its title describes as counts affecting each district's state aid.

What last spring looked like

The state budget was due April 1, 2026, and Albany missed that date by weeks. On April 17 the Education Department issued a contingency memo explaining how districts should prepare budgets for voter approval without an enacted state budget. Boards had to adopt proposed budgets by late April so property tax report cards could reach the state by the April 27 deadline, according to Questar III BOCES. The regional BOCES said districts relied on the governor's January executive budget figures as their baseline.

Bob Lowry, deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, told WAMC a week before the vote that the ballots could no longer reflect the state's education budget. "It's already too late," he said. An early version of Gov. Kathy Hochul's proposal had called for a 1 percent Foundation Aid increase. "Within days, we were hearing from superintendents, 'Our increases in health insurance costs would exceed the value of the 1% increase in foundation aid,'" Lowry said.

Dave Albert of the New York State School Boards Association told the same station, "When you don't know how much you're going to get in state aid, it makes it difficult to budget." Voters decided budgets on May 19, in what the Educational Conference Board called the first spring since 2010 that districts had finalized spending plans with that much uncertainty about state aid. The State Aid Office posted enacted 2026-27 school aid estimates for each district on May 28, nine days later.

The calendar from here

The State Aid Office's October reminder will set the last day for SAMS changes to make the November 15 file. In November the Regents hear from staff, and in December they vote on a final request. The governor's executive budget, with a school aid run for every district, follows by Feb. 1, 2027; this year's runs came out Jan. 20.

The state budget is due April 1, 2027, and under state law the school budget vote and board election fall on the third Tuesday in May, according to the School Boards Association. That puts next year's vote on May 18, 2027. The governor who answers the Regents' December request will be whoever takes the oath of office on Jan. 1.