EdVANTAGE Blog

A few items on our website pertaining to Governor Cuomo’s proposed budget for education:

• Our testimony at last week’s Assembly-Senate budget hearing.
• An excel spreadsheet that produces easy to read printouts of the Governor’s School Aid proposal for any district.
• A power point presentation I did for superintendents in Western New York last Friday.

Part of my presentation attempted to convey how different and better the state budget outlook is for schools compared to a year ago.  Obviously, however, the tax cap is a huge dark cloud on the horizon.

Battle lines are forming over one aspect of the Governor’s education budget – his proposal to devote nearly a third of his overall proposed increase — $250 million – to incentive grants intended to encourage and reward gains in student achievement and management efficiency.

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Governor Andrew Cuomo delivered his second annual State of the State address, outlining an ambitious agenda designed to build on the impressive achievements of his first year in office.

In the area of education, the Governor that in his first year he learned the lesson that superintendents, teachers, school boards, maintenance personnel, and bus drivers all have lobbyists, but students do not have a lobbyist.  So he declared he would be taking on a second job in the coming year – students’ lobbyist.

He announced he would appoint a commission on education to recommend reforms in key areas, including teacher accountability and student achievement and management efficiency.

The Governor said, “we need a meaningful teacher evaluation system. The legislation enacted in 2010 to qualify for Race to the Top didn’t work.”

He added, “We must make our schools accountable for the results they achieve and the dollars they spend.”

No details have been provided yet on who will sit on the commission or when it will report.

I was quoted in a New York Times article on the commission and appeared on Time Warner’s statewide Capitol Tonight television show, along with Tim Kremer from the School Boards Association and Nikki Jones from the Alliance for Quality Education.

In the Times article, I said

“There are a lot of people who would disagree with the governor’s rhetoric and parts of his analysis, but would agree with the big picture.  How do we produce more learning for students with the resources our taxpayers can provide?” Read the rest of this entry »

In this post:

1. Governor to appoint education commission
2. Teacher evaluation conflicts
3. School finance news

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The Board of Regents adopted its School Aid proposal for 2012-13 this week.

The Regents proposal would attempt to re-start the Foundation Aid formula which was first enacted in 2007 as a resolution of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s challenge to the constitutionality of the state’s system of funding public schools.

Big increases in Foundation Aid were approved in 2007-08 and 2008-09, but the formula has been frozen for the past three years.

Meanwhile total aid from all formulas (excluding Building Aid and Universal Prekindergarten) has been reduced through large “Gap Elimination Adjustments” in each of the last two years.

The Regents propose an overall increase in aid of $805 million or 4.1 percent, consistent with the unique two-year appropriation for School Aid in the current state budget.

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State Education Commissioner John King has sparked a debate over school district consolidation…

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Yesterday, Governor Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos announced agreement on a package of legislation expected to be approved during a special legislative session this week.

The agreement improves the outlook for School Ai in next year’s state budget.

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A summary of state budget deficit forecasts and School Aid projections…

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Today, Council Executive Director Robert Reidy joined with leaders of 10 other education, local government and business groups to call for action on a six-part mandate relief plan, titled, Let New York Work:  A Common Agenda for the Common Good.

Below is the text of the news release announcing the agenda.  At the end of the release is a link to a more detailed explanation of the agenda.

Update:  Here is a 12-minute video clip video of Bob Reidy discussing the agenda with Gannett News Service reporter Jon Campbell.

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A week ago, we released our report, At the Edge:  A Survey of New York State School Superintendents on Fiscal Matters.

It has generated a lot of attention.

I was invited to discuss the report with Liz Benjamin on Time Warner cable’s Capital Tonight statewide television show.

Superintendent Neil O’Brien of Port Byron (Cayuga County, west of Syracuse) and I discussed it with Susan Arbetter on the statewide Capitol Pressroom radio show.

It received a good amount of print coverage.  I think Gannett News Service did the best piece, running in many of their papers.  See this version from yesterday’s Rochester Democrat and Chronicle as an example.

A Sunday editorial in the Albany Times Union said, “The superintendents’ report should be required reading.”

UPDATE:  And on Wednesday (October 19), as reported in the New York Daily News, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer cited our report in advocating for part of the President’s jobs plan.

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Yesterday, the Council issued a report on its survey of superintendents on school budgeting issues.

The report, titled At the Edge, is available here.

A presentation summarizing the survey is here.

A key theme of the report is that although schools absorbed one of the biggest cuts in state aid ever in 2011, and now face operating under a property tax cap, this was not the first tough year.

State aid was also cut in 2010-11 and most aid was frozen in 2009-10.  At the same time, schools have had to absorb steep increases in pension and health insurance costs.

As a result, going forward, schools find it harder and harder to make cuts that don’t cut jobs or hurt student services.

A spokesman for Governor Cuomo responded to the report by saying, “The schools and school districts chose to make these reductions in the classroom rather than dip into their reserves, cut back on the bureaucracy or reduce the growing number of administrators.”

But the report plainly contradicts these claims.

Nearly 90 percent of superintendents are concerned by the extent to which their districts are already relying upon reserves to fund operating costs.  Without the reserves used this year, their districts would have had to cut spending by over 4 percent, raise taxes by an additional 7 percent, or adopt some combination of the two.

The report also shows that districts cut administrative positions more steeply than teaching jobs.  Superintendents reported eliminating an average of 7.5 percent of administrator positions in 2011-12, compared to 4.3 percent of their teaching staff.