Every January through March, the Jericho School District holds a series of budget workshops. Departments present their line items. Administrators walk through slides. Community members sit in the audience, sometimes ask questions, and receive carefully worded non-answers. Then the budget goes up anyway. Every single time.

The FY2026–27 cycle is following the exact same script. Workshop #1 was held January 29th. Workshop #2 was held February 12th. A third is scheduled for March 3rd, with a full review on March 12th and Board adoption on March 26th. The calendar is set. The outcome is predetermined. The budget will increase. It always does.

So what is the point?

When was the last time a workshop resulted in an actual redline? When has a board member looked at a department’s proposed increase and said, “No — hold the line, find a way to do it for the same amount as last year”? When has a community question at one of these sessions led to a tangible adjustment — not a vague promise to “look into it,” but an actual dollar amount removed from a budget line? It doesn’t happen. It has never happened. The workshops are not a negotiation. They are a presentation.

The entire process is structured to create the appearance of transparency and community input without any mechanism for the community to actually change the outcome. Departments present their requests. Administrators explain why everything costs more. Board members nod. Residents who show up are told the district is “committed to efficiencies” and “maintaining a multi-year perspective.” Then the budget increases by another three to five million dollars and gets adopted on schedule.

Look at the workshop slides themselves. The “Budget Strategies” slide for FY2026–27 lists goals like “remain committed to being a premier school district,” “continue to upgrade and renovate facilities,” and “continue technology replacement plans and expand technological initiatives.” Every verb is “continue” or “expand.” Not once does the word “reduce” appear. Not once does “hold flat” appear. The strategy, stated plainly in the district’s own words, is to keep spending more. That is not a budget process. That is a spending plan with a rubber stamp at the end.

And when residents do ask questions, what do they get? They get told about contractual obligations. They get told about health insurance premium increases. They get told about unfunded mandates. These are real pressures — nobody disputes that. But they are also convenient shields. They explain why individual line items go up while conveniently ignoring the larger question: if the district collects $11 million more than it needs every single year, why does the budget need to increase at all? Why can’t the surplus absorb these cost pressures instead of being piled on top of them?

Nobody asks this question because the workshops aren’t designed for that kind of question. They’re designed to walk the community through a foregone conclusion, one department at a time, until the sheer volume of detail makes it feel like due diligence was done. It is theater. Professional, polished, well-intentioned theater — but theater nonetheless.

Over 22 fiscal years, the district generated $247.3 million in surplus — money collected above and beyond what was actually needed to operate schools. That’s an average of $11.2 million per year in over-collection. In the best years, the surplus exceeded $17 million.

Where does this surplus come from? Two places. First, the district consistently collects more revenue than it projects — on average, millions more per year. Second, the district routinely spends less than it budgets, creating additional millions in unspent appropriations. Together, these two streams of over-collection have produced a surplus every single year without exception.

The original adopted budget grew from $70.5 million in FY2004 to $140.7 million in FY2025. That is a 100% increase — the budget has doubled. Over the same period, the district has never once come in over budget. The pattern is not cyclical. It is structural.

When officials say they “appropriate surplus back into the budget,” it sounds like money is being returned to the community. It is not. Appropriating surplus means taking a portion of the over-collection and folding it into next year’s even larger budget. No taxpayer receives a refund. No tax bill goes down. The money goes right back into the machine that produced it.

Of the $247.3 million in total surplus, only $87.8 million — about 35% — was appropriated back. The remaining $159.4 million was retained by the district as net new surplus, accumulating in reserves and fund balances that sit beyond the direct reach of taxpayers.

This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: over-collect, accumulate surplus, recycle a fraction into a bigger budget, then over-collect again. The budget goes up. The surplus goes up. And the cycle repeats. It has repeated every single year for 22 years.

New York State enacted the property tax levy cap in 2012, promising relief for overburdened homeowners. It slowed the rate of budget growth — from roughly 6.5% per year in the early period down to about 1.5% during 2012–2018. But here’s the catch: during that exact period when budgets were growing the slowest, surplus generation actually increased. The average annual surplus from FY2012 through FY2018 was $15.5 million — the highest of any era. The district simply over-collected more aggressively when it couldn’t grow the topline budget as fast.

The tax cap constrained budgets on paper, but the actual cost to taxpayers kept climbing because the district continued collecting far more than it spent. The cap addressed the symptom — budget size — without touching the disease: systematic over-collection.

The FY2026–27 budget is currently being developed. Workshops #1 and #2 have been presented, with a third pending on March 3rd. Based on the department-level line items visible in those workshops and 22 years of historical growth patterns, the adopted budget for FY2027 is projected to land in the range of $144–$145 million—another 3% increase, consistent with the recent trajectory.

Looking further ahead, three projection scenarios based on historical compound annual growth rates paint a clear picture:

•      Conservative (2.4%/yr): Budget reaches $180 million by FY2036.

•      Moderate (3.0%/yr): Budget reaches $189 million by FY2036. Cumulative 10-year spending: $1.66 billion.

•      Historical (3.4%/yr): Budget reaches $195 million by FY2036 and crosses $200 million by approximately FY2038.

Under the moderate scenario, the district is projected to generate an additional $159 million in surplus over the next decade — on top of the $247 million already accumulated. The total cost to Jericho taxpayers over the next ten years would exceed $1.8 billion.

This is not about being against education funding. This is about fiscal honesty. A budget that goes up every single year for two decades, that consistently collects more than it needs, that accumulates a quarter-billion dollars in surplus while telling taxpayers it needs more — that is a system operating without meaningful financial accountability.

The numbers show that the district has the capacity to operate on less. It has proven this 22 times in a row by spending less than its budget. The surplus is the proof. Every dollar of that $247.3 million came directly from taxes that exceeded what was actually required to run the schools.

The budget will never go down on its own. In 22 years, it has not decreased once. Not voluntarily. Not because of state mandates. Not because of economic downturns. The only way it changes is if the community demands it.

Residents have the right to attend budget workshops, ask pointed questions about surplus generation, and vote on the annual budget. The data exists. The pattern is documented. What’s missing is public engagement.

At some point, the community has to decide: is it acceptable to hand the district a blank check that grows by millions every year, knowing full well that millions will be collected and never returned? Or is it time to demand that budgets reflect actual costs — not inflated projections designed to generate perpetual surplus?

Twenty-two years of data tell a clear story. The budget doubles roughly every two decades. The surplus never stops. And without intervention from the people paying the bills, it will continue exactly like this for the next twenty-two years.

It will not stop unless you stop it.

Sources: Jericho UFSD Annual Financial Reports (ST-3), FY2004–FY2025; FY2026–27 Budget Workshop #1 (January 29, 2026) and Workshop #2 (February 12, 2026). All figures derived from district-published audited financial statements.