Nassau BOCES Board of Trustees, Governor Kathy Hochul, and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman

Nassau BOCES collected $115 million more from Long Island school districts than it spent over the last three years.

It kept $49.1 million of it.

Not with your permission. Not with a vote. Not with any approval from the 56 school districts whose taxpayers generated that money. It just kept it.

Here is how it works, because the entire system is designed so you never ask.

The Scam in Plain English
Your school district pays Nassau BOCES for services like special education, transportation, and technology. But it does not pay based on what things actually cost. It pays based on estimates that BOCES sets at the beginning of the year. Every single year, those estimates are inflated. Every single year, the actual costs come in millions below what your district was charged.

In a normal world, you would get a refund. That is not what happens.

BOCES takes its cut first. Over the last three years, it skimmed $49.9 million off the top and moved it into its own capital projects fund and reserves. Then it credited a fraction of what was left back to districts. Not as a check. As a line item on next year's bill. The bill that will also be inflated.

The amount returned to districts shrank 19% in three years while the surplus stayed the same. BOCES is keeping a bigger piece every year.

Meanwhile, $21.4 million your districts overpaid was sitting on BOCES books at the end of FY 2025. BOCES earned interest on your money. It used that interest income to pay its own administrative costs. You gave them an interest-free loan and they used the profits to pay themselves.

It Gets Worse: The BOCES Aid Loop
The state reimburses your district for a portion of what it paid BOCES. This is called BOCES Aid. In 2024-25, the state sent $121.7 million back to Nassau County districts through this formula.

Sounds great until you realize: the reimbursement is calculated from the inflated charges, not the actual costs. So the more BOCES overcharges you, the more state aid flows. The more state aid flows, the less anyone questions the overcharge. The more BOCES overcharges. Round and round.

BOCES literally advertises this in its own budget documents as a benefit. They are telling you the overcharge is a feature, not a bug.

Where Your Money Actually Goes
Let us be clear about something first: Nassau BOCES does not generate a single dollar of its own revenue. Zero. It has no taxing authority. It has no customers. It has no products. Every dollar it has ever received came from your school district, which got it from you. That is important to remember for what comes next.

$190.9 million in real estate and property sits on Nassau BOCES books as capital assets. $9.2 million in land. $134 million in buildings and improvements. $39.6 million in equipment. All acquired with money that came from the 56 school districts. All of it owned by BOCES, not by the districts that paid for it.

Read that again. Your tax dollars bought the land. Your tax dollars built the buildings. Your tax dollars maintain the facilities. Your tax dollars paid off the debt. And you own none of it. BOCES owns all of it. It sits on their balance sheet as their asset, appreciating in value, while the districts that funded every square foot have zero ownership stake.

$71.6 million is sitting in a BOCES capital projects fund that grew 34.7% in three years. This is the pipeline for the next round of acquisitions. BOCES uses surplus skimmed from district payments to buy and expand properties. Then it charges those same districts rent and facilities fees to use the buildings their money built. You funded the landlord. Now you pay the landlord. And the landlord's property portfolio keeps growing with your money.

The Seaman Neck Road property acquisition, previously reported by this publication, is the clearest example: BOCES used district-generated surplus to purchase a property, then structured the financing so districts pay capital assessments for the acquisition and will pay occupancy charges to use it. The proposed budget shows $93 million in approved capital projects, several of which have been "temporarily cancelled." The money collected for those cancelled projects has not been returned.

$125.7 million total sits in BOCES reserves across all funds. New York law caps how much a school district can stockpile at 4% of its budget. No such cap exists for BOCES. There is no limit. They can hoard without restriction, and they do.

Half the administrative budget ($13.9 million of $27.9 million) pays for healthcare for 1,612 retirees who no longer work there. When your school board votes on the BOCES admin budget, half of what they are approving is benefits for people who left.

The entire BOCES budget for 2025-26 is $532.8 million, growing at 7.4% per year. Most districts cannot grow their own budgets above 2% under the state tax cap. Every dollar of BOCES growth above that cap comes directly out of what your local school board can spend on your kids' classrooms.

An entity that generates no revenue of its own has accumulated $190.9 million in property assets and $125.7 million in financial reserves using exclusively other people's money. It then charges those same people to use the assets they paid for. In what universe is this a public service?

Why Your District Cannot Stop It
BOCES is a legal monopoly. Your district cannot shop for a competing provider. It cannot negotiate rates. It cannot decline mandatory services. It cannot vote down program charges. The only budget component districts vote on is the administrative operations budget, and that vote happens in in minutes with zero discussion.

Your district's representative on the BOCES Budget Review Committee is one of 27 people overseeing a half-billion-dollar operation. The committee reviews proposed budgets and approves them in under a minute. That is the entirety of the oversight.

No private business could operate like this. If a contractor billed you 4% above actual costs every year, skimmed 43% of the overcharge into its own accounts, credited the rest against next year's inflated bill, and earned interest on the money it owed you, you would fire that contractor. You would probably call a lawyer. But you cannot fire BOCES. You cannot even bid out the work.

What We Are Demanding
To the Nassau BOCES Board of Trustees:

1. Independent forensic audit of all surplus generation, retention, and distribution for FY 2020-2025. Not conducted by your current auditor. An independent firm selected by component districts.
2. Immediate return of excess surplus to component districts as cash refunds, not credits against future inflated bills.
3. End the estimates-based billing system. Districts should pay actual costs, verified quarterly, not inflated projections designed to generate surplus.
4. Open all capital project spending to district-level RFP processes. Districts should be permitted to purchase their own equipment, technology, and services and receive state reimbursement directly. The blanket BOCES purchasing monopoly must end. If BOCES offers the best price, it will win the bid. If it does not, taxpayers should not be forced to pay more.
5. Publish line-item cost breakdowns for every service charged to every district. No more bundled billing. No more lump-sum categories. Districts and taxpayers deserve to see exactly what they are paying for.
6. Cap BOCES reserves at the same 4% statutory limit that applies to school districts. If districts cannot stockpile, neither should BOCES.
7. Proportional district ownership of all BOCES-held property. Every building, every parcel of land, and every piece of equipment acquired with district funds should be held in proportion by the districts that paid for it. If taxpayers fund the acquisition and fund the maintenance, they own the asset. Period. BOCES should not be building a real estate portfolio with other people's money.
8. Return funds collected for cancelled capital projects. The proposed budget shows projects that have been "temporarily cancelled." The money collected from districts for those projects must be returned immediately, not held in reserves.

To Governor Hochul and the New York State Legislature:

1. Close the BOCES reserve loophole. Pass legislation applying the same fund balance caps to BOCES entities that currently apply to school districts under Education Law.
2. Reform the BOCES Aid formula so reimbursements are calculated from audited actual costs, not estimated charges. The current formula rewards overcharging.
3. End the BOCES purchasing monopoly. Districts should be permitted to purchase their own equipment, technology, supplies, and services through competitive RFP and receive the same state aid reimbursement they would get buying through BOCES. If BOCES offers the best price, it wins the bid. If it does not, taxpayers should not be forced to pay more so BOCES can clip the ticket. The blanket requirement to funnel purchases through a single entity with no competitive pressure is why costs are inflated. Let districts shop. Let BOCES compete. Watch prices drop.
4. Require competitive bidding for all BOCES-provided services. Any service currently provided exclusively through BOCES should be open to competitive bid, with districts receiving equivalent state aid regardless of provider.
5. Mandate annual independent audits of all BOCES entities in New York, selected by the State Comptroller, not by BOCES itself.

To Bruce Blakeman, Nassau County Executive and Candidate for Governor:

1. Commit publicly to BOCES reform before the election. You are campaigning on fiscal responsibility. A state-mandated agency in your home county has been overcharging school districts, hoarding reserves with no cap, and building a real estate empire with taxpayer money. The governor has the authority to fix this. Tell voters whether you will. Put it in writing. Put it on your platform. No dodging.
2. Pledge to direct the State Education Department to audit all BOCES entities statewide in your first year. Not a review. Not a study. A forensic audit of every BOCES in New York, conducted by independent firms, with results made public.
3. Pledge to support legislation ending the BOCES billing and aid loopholes described in this petition. Reserve caps. Actual-cost billing. Competitive purchasing rights for districts. Reformed aid formulas. If you believe in small government and fiscal accountability, this is your chance to prove it. Nassau County is watching. And we vote.

The Numbers Are Their Own
Every dollar figure in this petition comes from audited financial statements and proposed budget documents published by Nassau BOCES itself. These are not allegations. They are not estimates. They are the agency's own accounting of its own operations.

$115 million in surplus. $49.1 million kept. $190.9 million in property you paid for and do not own. $125.7 million in reserves with no cap. $71.6 million in a capital fund growing by $15-18 million per year. Zero dollars of independently generated revenue. A billing system built on inflated estimates. A state aid formula that rewards the overcharge. A governance structure that approves half a billion dollars with limited district voting or power.

This is not a cooperative. This is an entity that takes money from every school district in Nassau County, uses it to build a property empire, charges those districts to use the properties they paid for, and answers to no one in the process.

Sign this petition. Demand accountability before the May budget vote. Your tax dollars are funding a system that answers to no one. Not to the districts. Not to the taxpayers. Not to the county executive who wants a promotion. That changes when enough people say it has to.

All figures derived from Nassau BOCES Audited Financial Statements FY 2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25 and Proposed Budgets 2024-25, 2025-26.