Press & Sun Bulletin
1/17/12
Cara Matthews & George Basier
http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20120117/NEWS01/201170381/Tier-educators-applaud-school-aid-plan?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE
Southern Tier school officials welcomed Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to boost state school aid in his proposed state budget.
But the increase still leaves them short as they prepare their own budgets for 2012-13, they said.
“It’s certainly better than another cut,” said Jason Andrews, superintendent of the Windsor Central School District, which stands to see a 2.12 percent increase in total aid, including building and transportation aid. But his district’s costs, driven by such items as pension costs, are going up more rapidly than that.
“If you look at the total dollar amounts across the region, any aid increases are negated by the loss of federal jobs money,” Andrews said.
Cuomo’s education budget proposal includes a 4.1 percent increase in education spending to a total of $20.3 billion, a figure Cuomo and state lawmakers agreed to when they developed the budget for the current fiscal year.
At the same time, Cuomo said districts won’t get a share of the additional funding in the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school budgets if they don’t have new teacher-evaluation systems in place by Jan. 17, 2013. Cuomo said the existing law that requires districts to put teacher- and principal-evaluation systems in place is a failure. He gave the state Education Department and school unions 30 days to agree on one or he will propose his own system in his 30-day budget amendments.
“I understand this is hard to do, but I also understand that if you’re serious about improving education, this is what we have to do and this is what we have to do this year,” the governor said in presenting his budget.
Elements of the evaluation system under current law are subject to collective bargaining, and negotiations in many of the state’s roughly 700 school districts have not reached agreements.
In his proposed budget, the governor earmarked 76 percent of the increase in aid for high-needs school districts.
Of the $805 million in new funds, $250 million would be set aside for an expansion of competitive grants for school districts based on performance and efficiency. Another $265 million would support increased expenses for expense-based aid programs, such as transportation and school construction, and $290 million would be handed out for basic classroom funding.
Binghamton Superintendent Peggy J. Wozniak was pleased that much of the aid increase would go to high-needs, low-wealth districts, such as Binghamton. The city school district stands to see a 5.41 percent increase in total aid, including building and transportation aid, according to state aid projections released Tuesday.
Vestal, on the other hand, stands to see a 1.2 percent increase in total aid under the governor’s proposal. Superintendent Mark LaRoach said this didn’t come as a surprise.
“The expectation was that our aid increase would be minimal at best,” he said.
The $805 million in new funds for education is welcome news, said Lea Webb, a community activist with Citizens Action and the Alliance for Quality Education. But the alliance is concerned about the idea of competitive grants because “it has the potential of creating winners and losers,” she said.
Cuomo’s ultimatum about the teacher-evaluation system also leaves a great deal of confusion, local school officials said. They noted they have met the state’s requirement to be involved in negotiations with their teachers’ associations.
“We thought we were moving along and meeting all the required deadlines,” Union-Endicott Superintendent Suzanne McLeod said. She called Cuomo’s ultimatum “as clear as mud.”
Cuomo’s move to tie the aid increase to competitive grants and the teacher-evaluation law “will create uncertainties for school districts, and I think that’s problematic,’ said Richard Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers, which filed a lawsuit against parts of the evaluation system.
But state Education Commissioner John King said he welcomed Cuomo’s leadership on the issue and hoped it will help spur negotiations.
