Assembly Passes Education Spending Plan Aimed At
Keeping The Promise Of Quality Education

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Ways and Means Committee Chair Herman D. Farrell, Jr., and Education Committee Chair Catherine Nolan announced that the SFY 2008-09 budget includes a historic level of funding to continue the Assembly's strong commitment to educational excellence for the nearly three million school children throughout New York State.

The historic increase in education funding provides an additional $1.75 billion in general support for public school funding over the previous school year, with a total investment of $21.4 billion. This critical funding maintains the Assembly Majority's long-standing commitment to providing a quality education for all of New York's children. The budget provides for a $533 million increase in Foundation Aid for New York City.

Universal Pre-K is expanded to include an allocation of $450 million and increase of $96 million over 2007-08. This expands the number of 4-year-old children attending pre-K from 93,000 up to 121,000, bringing New York even closer to achieving Universal Pre-K.

"While recognizing the deep economic problems facing not only our nation, but our state, it is important that we not lose sight of the critical importance education plays in the economic viability of our state. For far too long, far too many children have been shortchanged by our educational system. This is hardly the time to be penny-wise and pound foolish. The progress that we have made in improving the quality of education our children receive must not be eroded," said Silver.

"We are continuing an important commitment to the children of New York State by providing the educational resources necessary to help them meet higher academic standards," said Nolan (D-Queens). "Adequate resources for education mean more pre-K programs, smaller class sizes and better preparation for classroom success."

"Education spending in this budget is the continuation of a long over-due process of addressing the inequities inherent in New York's education funding system. This budget recognizes the special circumstances of high-needs school districts and provides a more broad-based funding strategy aimed at meeting the educational needs of our children," said Farrell (D-Manhattan).

The final budget adds $85 million for additional programs and restorations, including adult literacy education, independent living centers and libraries. The aid will also support programs that provide needed services to disabled adults.

Recognizing the critical services provided by BOCES programs, this budget returns BOCES Aid to its current levels. The executive budget reduced BOCES aid but the Assembly restored it by a total of $78 million in the final state budget.

In an effort to ensure that no high-needs school district lacks adequate funding and that all school districts have the tools necessary to help students succeed the budget raises the minimum increase for foundation aid for school districts from 2 percent to 3 percent and restores the enacted state sharing ratio calculation, for a net increase of $21.5 million.

The lawmakers noted that a number of proposals contained in the initial Executive budget would have had a negative impact on New York City schools. Similarly, the final budget rejects a proposal which would have lagged New York City building aid for 18 months. In order to ensure that New York City building aid estimates are more accurate and that aid on those estimates will be paid in a timely manner the budget calls for additional claims to be paid by the following school year and rejects the proposal to offset New York City operating aid with increases in reimbursable aids.

Additional provisions of the budget would:

• Reject an executive proposal to shift $42 million in preschool special education evaluation costs to school districts;
• Ease tax burdens for communities that are highly-taxed but have comparatively lower wealth than neighboring districts by including $202 million in additional school aid for high-cost school districts. The funding marks an increase of $102 million over the Executive;
• Ensure that accountability measures set minimum statewide standards (not maximum) for deciding teacher tenure. The provisions also ensure Regents set the rules for teacher evaluations, allows for the creation of a commission to study further assessment measures and includes a 2 year sunset for review of the effectiveness of standards;
• Reject a proposed elimination of a selected building aid ratio.
• Allocates $1.1 million to assist school districts across the state conduct fingerprinting and background checks for prospective employees of school districts and certain workers who might come into contact with students; and,
• Provide for an additional $85 million for other education programs such as libraries, adult education and Independent Living Centers (ILC).

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