Lawmakers & advocates agree to press Cuomo
BY ALEJANDRA
O'CONNELL-DOMENECH
Lawmakers were again pushed to
fully fund Foundation Aid, the
main source of funding for New
York state’s public schools, at a state
Senate Education Committee public
hearing held Tuesday in Manhattan.
The message is not new. The hearing,
hosted by committee chairs state Senator
Shelley Mayer and state Senator
Brian Benjamin, comes two weeks after
the last of fi ve roundtable discussions
the committee held across the state.
The sessions were held to gather community
input on how to best adjust the
12-year-old Foundation Aid formula.
Foundation Aid was created in the
mid-2000s based on a lawsuit challenging
the existing funding formula,
which a court ruling found to create
greater inequality throughout the Empire
State’s schools. But differences in
the ruling’s interpretation have divided
the Governor and state lawmakers for
years.
Those who testifi ed at the Dec. 3
hearing repeated the message at the last
roundtable discussion: The fi rst step to
making improving the quality of education
is to fully fund Foundation Aid as
it was intended.
“It’s important that we get more
money into the hands of principals,”
said New York City Department of Education
Chief Financial Offi cer Lindsey
Oates who added the city is owed $1.1
billion in education funding. According
to the formula, Oates said, the city
should have received $9.2 billion in
funding but only received a little over
$8 billion last fi scal year. Some lawmakers
and advocates say that a total
of $4 billion is owed to districts across
PHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES
the state. Oates added that additional
funds could go towards hiring more
teachers, guidance counselors, mental
health professionals and multilingual
education services. “We know that
when we provide additional resources
to principals that they hire additional
staff.”
But union offi cials, school offi cials,
advocates and city representatives were
reminded that changes to Foundation
Aid were not just up to committee
members, and that the governor would
need to be convinced to help bring
about change.
“We have looked at and found new
sources of resources of revenue to fully
fund it and I think we are ready to increase
the budget amount but there is
one person who is not ready,” said state
Senator John Liu about Governor Cuomo
the hearing held at 250 Broadway.
Liu called the 2 percent cap on annual
budget increases a “personal edict”
that was not rooted in the law.
Liu asked both the president of New
York State United Teachers Andrew
Pallotta and president of the United
Federation of Teachers Michael Mulgrew,
“Will you stand with us and demand
that he throw this ridiculously
arbitrary 2 percent spending increase
cap out the window?”
Both responded that they would
stand with lawmakers in the “battle” to
come. And that they believed that the
time had come for advocates, teachers
and elected offi cials to stand together
and demand change and agreed to meet
state Senator Liu in Albany at the start
of the 2020 legislative session on Jan.
8.
The Governor’s offi ce did not respond
to a request for comment by
press time.
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