New York's annual budget battles over state aid to public schools have taken on a new urgency in the wake of the Great Recession and the 2011 enactment of a law empowering local voters to cap their property taxes. Education spending advocates say the tax cap and a statutory limit on school aid increases are forcing school districts to slash budgets and cut programs. The latest State Education Department (SED) data highlight two important trends: (1) From 2008-09 to 2013-14, the statewide median teacher salary rose by 11.5 percent; and (2) Schools in 2013-14 were still employing almost as many professional staffers as they did in 2000-01. The full extent of the continuing rise in school spending since the recession was not inevitable or unavoidable. It was the result of: (1) increasing teacher compensation costs driven largely by automatic pay raises; and (2) continued relatively high levels of staffing, relative to enrollment, especially in non-teaching titles. State law clearly is a major factor in the first trend, while the second needs to be more closely examined. [For the 2014 report, see ED562013.]