Over 100 community members joined the Ithaca Teachers Association to call for a substantial increase in University funding of the Ithaca City School District on Wednesday, Oct. 16. Attendees rallied for $10 million in annual contribution by the University, up from the current $650,000.
The event featured several speakers including Ithaca Mayor Robert Cantelmo, ICSD Board member Jill Tripp and a student from DeWitt Middle School.
ICSD receives 75 percent of its operating costs from local property taxes. ITA President Kathryn Cernera said since Cornell is a tax-exempt institution but owns the majority of land within ICSD’s jurisdiction, the district is left with inadequate funding.
The district is currently facing a $7 million deficit, even after shutting down several programs and increasing class sizes this past school year according to Cernera. If the University was taxed at the same rate as other properties in Ithaca, they would pay approximately $46 million to ICSD annually. The request for $10 million, according to Cernera, is reasonable considering this.
Organizers intentionally planned for the rally to occur on the day Jennifer Tavares joined Cornell as its new director of the Office of Community Relations. The ITA invited Tavares to attend and collect a growing petition calling for an increase in University funding to ICSD, but she did not attend, as pointed out by ITA secretary Aurora Rojer when the rally began.
Maddie, an eighth grader at DeWitt Middle School and speaker at the rally, expressed her frustration with what she saw as diminishing opportunities in the district due to shortfalls in funding.
“I don’t understand how Cornell expects the middle schoolers and high schoolers to excel and be able to get to Cornell if they aren’t giving us the opportunity to actually excel in school,” Maddie said.
The University’s annual contribution to ICSD increased from $500,000 to $650,000 in late 2023, an agreement set to expire in 2031. Tripp called for $10 million in funding from Cornell in a budget proposed in spring 2024, which though rejected by ICSD led to the establishment of the Board’s Revenue Exploration Council. She continues to advocate for greater financial contribution by the University.
“[Cornell] pay[s] somewhat to roads. They pay their water and sewer bill, because that’s a service rather than a tax,” Tripp said. “So they bring a lot to the community, and they take a lot from the community. There are at least hundreds of students in the public schools who are the children of staff, faculty and schools, and they receive a public school education that we are very proud of, but it costs money.”
When asked about the proposed increase of $9.3 million, Tripp characterized the current $650,000 of funding as “a gross underestimate and, frankly, somewhat insulting.”
In a statement to The Sun, Vice President for University Relations Joel Malina said the University contributes $2.1 million in property taxes to ICSD for its land not used for higher education. Cornell additionally provides non-monetary support for ICSD in the form of educational programs and other opportunities, such as “the chilled water provided to ICSD property on Lake Street from our Lake Source Cooling system.”
Rally speaker Sam Poole ’28, member of the Cornell chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America, said recent events brought attention to the corporatization of the University, including its response to the weeks-long United Auto Workers strike and Cornell Graduate Student Union pleas.
“If the events of the past year so far have shown us anything, it is that Cornell, whatever it might say, is a quintessentially corporate university that values profit over people,” Poole said.
Cernera said the ITA does not expect the University to increase its funding to ICSD due to the rally. The goal instead is to spread the word about how schools are funded to the community, showing how “the way that we fund our schools is just wrong in so many ways.”
“Cornell not paying taxes is not illegal,” Cernera said. “It is totally legal. They do not have to pay taxes. But really the thing that we want to bring into the community is the question of whether they should.”
Emma Cohen and Shubha Gautam are Sun contributors and can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
Correction, Oct. 19, 11:50 p.m.: A previous version of this article incorrectly described the expiration of the University’s increase in funding.
Correction, Oct. 19, 11:50 p.m.: A previous version of this article incorrectly described the timeline of ICSD Board member Jill Tripp’s rejected ICSD budget proposal.