ALBANY >> Legislators and school officials Thursday called on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to release estimates of next year’s state aid levels, saying that using such vital data as a state budget bargaining chip will cause financial havoc and staff cuts.
“What Gov. Cuomo is doing is an unprecedented and underhanded maneuver to further his political agenda and it unfair to the children of New York,” Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb (R-Geneva) said. “The governor’s tactics prevent school districts from being able to accurately plan for the future and his heavy-handed approach flies in the face of good fiscal practice.”
As they spoke, Cuomo intensified his attack on New York’s educational establishment, issuing a report entitled “The State of New York’s Failing Schools” that listed 178 schools with 109,000 students. The report designated a school as failing if it is in the bottom 5 percent of schools statewide based on combined ELA and math scores, doesn’t show progress in test performance, or has graduation rates that are below 60 percent for the last three years.
Most of the schools are in New York City and Buffalo, the state’s two largest cities, but the list also includes schools in Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Amsterdam, Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers, and Mount Vernon.
In the Albany area, the list includes Albany High School, which has been on the failing list for 10 years, and P.S. 2 in Troy, on the list for four years. Each schools spends about $19,000 annually per pupil, almost double the national average.
The report noted that in the past four years, the Troy School District has seen its state aid increase by $13.9 million, while Albany has gotten another $9.6 million.
“This is the real scandal in Albany, the alarming fact that state government has stood by and done nothing as generation after generation of students have passed through failing schools,” Cuomo said in a series of press releases he issued Thursday naming each failing school and the legislators whose districts they are located in. “This report underscores the severity and shocking nature of this problem. The time is now for the State Legislature to act and do something about this problem so we no longer are condemning our children to failing schools.”
NYSUT teachers union president Karen Magee fired back at “this latest attack by our thin-skinned governor. Instead of truly supporting teachers and providing the right investments and tools they need to help all children, the governor is doing the bidding of his billionaire hedge fund friends who bankrolled his last campaign.”
At the press conference with Kolb, Schodack School Superintendent Robert Horan said that his district is struggling without the “school aid runs” normally put out with the governor’s budget proposal. The report is an estimate of how much each district will get in state aid when the budget is adopted, and it is seen as a reliable indicator to plan local district budgets.
“This year we are at a large disadvantage because we really don’t have the right numbers,” Horan said. “We don’t want to go with the doom and gloom and give the worse case scenario and get everybody all up in a panic, and we also don’t want to sugarcoat it and later on pull the carpet out from underneath the students and the teachers that are expecting some kind of program.”
He said not releasing aid estimates affects vital issues such as how many advanced placement courses can be offered and what staffing levels are affordable. He said some districts may be contractually obligated to send out layoff notices to staff.
“We have to put forward out anticipated tax levy for the state to approve by March 1,” said New York State School Boards Association executive director Tim Kremer. “That’s this Sunday. “We have to put forward what we believe to be the spending plan for discussion among our taxpayers in late April.”
“There’s a process that has to take place,” he added. “These are multi-million dollar budgets and to be putting these together with one or two weeks or three weeks to work on is impossible.”
Cuomo has proposed an increase of $1.06 billion in school aid, or 4.8 percent above the current total. But he said that total is contingent on the Legislature passing his school reform agenda. To keep the pressure on, his Budget Division broke with decades of past practice and refused to put out the school aid runs.
The Educational Conference Board said the move has created a “chaotic and dysfunctional” situation.
Cuomo is seeking a tougher system to rate the performance of teachers, a five-year tenure process, and making it easier to fire bad teachers. He also wants a new intervention model for failing schools, including putting some in receivership, and expanding the number of charter schools.
