What should schools cut if a tax cap passes?

Seventh-grade sports might have to be eliminated. The nine-period day might be reduced to eight. And teachers might have to be let go. After that, no one’s sure what might happen, but school districts will have to keep cutting.

That was the consensus in the brief and informal survey of school officials I conducted this week, asking what might happen if the State Legislature passes a 2 percent property-tax cap, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo would surely sign into law since the measure is his idea.

Last week, it suddenly appeared likely that the Legislature would pass a cap in June, after Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a New York City Democrat, announced that he — meaning the Assembly — would support one, so long as city rent controls were extended.

Three previous governors — George Pataki, the short-lived Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson — tried to pass property-tax caps, to no avail. Last year Cuomo campaigned on a promise to enact the 2 percent cap. But few people believed he would do it, seeing as how Silver had long opposed a cap and had blocked the legislation from even reaching the floor of the Assembly for a vote.

School officials tell me that parents should buckle up. With a property-tax cap in place, next year’s school budget process could be one very wild ride. Dramatic cuts could make this year’s heavy round of reductions look like the calm before the storm.

School districts have only two sources of income — property taxes and state aid. School officials have long complained that the state continually reduces aid while increasing mandates that it’s unwilling to fund — from new tests to automated external defibrillators. With less state aid, school districts must increase property taxes to maintain services or cut programs. In the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District where I live, state aid accounted for nearly 20 percent of the budget only a decade ago. Now that figure is below 13 percent.