The superintendent of Jamestown Public Schools is enthusiastically backing an amendment to the state’s constitution that he says will level the playing field with other districts when it comes to capital projects.

Voters statewide will decide Nov. 7 whether 57 small-city school districts in New York can increase the amount they can borrow from 5% to 10% of their real property values. If approved, the referendum will allow smaller districts to borrow funds for needed capital improvements instead of parceling out a series of smaller projects over a number of years.

Dr. Kevin Whitaker, Jamestown Public Schools superintendent, said suburban and rural schools in New York have a distinct advantage over smaller-city districts with the higher debt limit. To exceed the 5%, he said, districts such as Jamestown have to get approval by voters, the state comptroller and the Board of Regents.

“We just want what every other school district has,” Whitaker said. “We just want to be treated the same.”

This past April, district officials broke ground on the first phase of its $86.5 million capital improvement projects, which were approved by district residents in 2021. As he noted at the ground-breaking, and reiterated this week, Whitaker said the projects help keep students “warm, safe and dry.”

Both houses of the state Legislature passed bills during the last two sessions that officially put the proposition on November’s ballot; state lawmakers have to pass a proposed amendment in two consecutive sessions before it can be put to voters.

Specifically, the measure would eliminate the constitutional debt limit for small-city school districts — defined in the state’s constitution as any school district partly or fully within or a district with less than 125,000 inhabitants. The debt limit currently amounts to 5% of the average full value of the last five years’ property tax rolls within the district, Whitaker said.

The 5% difference is the result of an amendment overwhelmingly passed by voters in 1951. At the time, according to the Journal News, small-city districts were exempt from annual school budget votes that other districts hold. A tighter debt limit was put in place as a substitute for voter involvement in spending, the Journal News reported last month.

In 1997, the state passed a law extending budget votes to include small-city districts. However, the 5% debt limit has remained in the constitution.

“Repeal of the 5% constitutional debt ceiling for small city school districts and replacement of that limit with a 10% statutory limit under the local finance law is essential to the continued integrity of our urban school infrastructure,” said Robert Breidenstein, executive director of the New York State Association of Small City School Districts. “Approval of this referendum will be an important step toward treating small city schools fairly and toward putting them on an equal footing with central school districts.”

In 2003, New York voters rejected the same referendum on lifting the constitutional debt limit.

If passed this November, the measure also would remove language from the constitution excluding debt contracted for educational purposes for small cities. Whitaker noted that suburban and rural school districts can deduct costs reimbursed through state building aid from debt subject to the 10% limit. Small-city districts, he said, cannot offset state aid toward their debt limits.

Whitaker said approval will not result in any burden to taxpayers. He said the amendment will “level the field” for smaller districts and benefits students and families.

He encourages district residents to read the amendment and understand how it may help JPS.