In their letters to the editor (Feb. 7, 8 and 9), four readers of the Record requested information as to how the Kiryas Joel School District was receiving an increase in state aid for education compared to other districts in the region that were all receiving a decrease. This question comes as a result of the publication of a chart comparing the aid from 2010 to 2011 proposed by Gov. Cuomo's budget (Record, Feb. 3).

Permit me to correct the first misconception. The state provides education aid to more than 700 school districts in New York. The formula to distribute the aid is uniform throughout the state, no different for Kiryas Joel than for any other public school district. It is based upon reported enrollment, attendance and expenditure data for each district. For some aid categories, the data includes students who are attending either public or nonpublic schools.

Secondly, the state aid run released to the media is misleading in that it includes in the calculation of the proposed increases for textbook and transportation aid, which are larger as a result of an increase in students in our nonpublic school system.

As recently reported in Business Week (Feb. 3), more than half of the village's population are children below the age of 12, with internal growth because of large family size. This increase in student growth causes a required increase in cost to our school district for additional textbooks and transportation services to the nonpublic schools attended by these children.

When the increases for these mandates are removed from the calculation of aid, our actual state aid for 2011 is 10.34 percent lower than last year, near the average decrease of 11 percent facing districts in our region. Like all other districts in New York, we are struggling to find ways to maintain essential programs despite the funding cuts. Unlike many districts, however, our only public program serves a special-needs population, with services mandated under both state and federal law.

The Kiryas Joel School District has a responsibility to our students to provide a quality education and a responsibility to our taxpayers to provide an affordable, balanced budget. Unfortunately, money designated for books and school buses will not ease the financial burden faced by school districts in these economic times.

Joel Petlin is superintendent of the Kiryas Joel School District.