Wednesday must have felt like Christmas morning for many of the region’s school superintendents and school board members.

Passage of the state’s school budget bill on Tuesday brought with $30,687,272 in additional state Foundation Aid to the area’s schools. While a few schools — Ripley, Panama, Forestville, Bemus Point, Clymer and Cassadaga Valley — saw aid increases between 3% and 5%, many districts will see much bigger increases.

It’s one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats agreed on in this year’s state budget.

And that’s part of the problem.

It’s easy for state legislators to come back to their home districts after a long, drawn out budget process and point to additional state aid as something they brought home to their constituents. But all that additional aid does is prop up an education system that already wasted taxpayer money. Now, we’re just wasting more.

New York already spent, by far, more money per pupil than any state. U.S. Census data released in May 2022 showed New York spending $25,519 per pupil — 89% more than the national average of $13,494. That disparity only grew after the last two years of record education spending approved in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 state budgets. Few are satisfied with the results on state or federal examinations that measure student learning, and the state is in the midst of revamping its graduation requirements after years of complaints that too many students were graduating from New York’s schools unprepared for college or a career.

In a couple of weeks local voters will go to the polls to approve school budgets. Most, if not all, of those budgets will pass — especially with little financial pressure after the influx of federal stimulus money and now the state’s extra windfall of state aid.

But no one should be deceived. We have not solved our school’s structural issues. In fact, we’re making them worse. Rural counties like ours are spending tens of millions of dollars more each year to educate fewer students, to offer fewer classes and fewer educational and extracurricular opportunities. There are savings to be had that could be poured into creating a better school system for our county’s youth — but no one will want to have those discussions now. A strong balance sheet doesn’t mean we have solved the issues facing our schools. We’ve just papered over them with crisp $100 bills.