NEW YORK: Yonkers’ Senate Education Chairwoman Shelley Mayer hosted a rountables in Yonkers and a bunch of others places across New York to give presentations on the state’s education funding formula where parents, advocates, union officials, and educators were not allowed to speak.
ALBANY: Yonkers’ Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Senate Education Chairwoman Shelley Mayer.Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, Assemblyman Nader Sayegh need to fully fund the existing NYS Education Department existing formula before changing it.
YONKERS: Mayor Mike Spano has repeatedly said that we have to make sure we don’t erase what’s owed from the last 10 years as the formula is revamped.
The Foundation Aid formula has been neglected and it is the formula the state uses to allocate extra dollars to high-needs districts, such as Yonkers.
While Senate Education Chairwoman Shelley Mayer is exploring how to update key elements of the aid — including how student poverty is measured — the formula has almost never been funded to the level intended, advocates and elected officials have long contended in Yonkers
That’s because the state halted funding under the formula during the recession, and after restarting it, never phased in money to the level that was originally expected.
The following is a quick history of Foundation aid in New York State
In 1993, a group of parents and advocates in New York City filed a lawsuit claiming that the state’s education funding formula was unconstitutional.
In 2006, after a 13-year fight, a New York State Court of Appeals ruled the state owed schools more money in order to provide students with a “sound basic education.”
The state set out to provide billions in funds to comply with the lawsuit in 2007 and 2008.
But in 2009, the recession caused the plans to stall. During that year, some wondered if the campaign had failed to deliver on its promise.
The next few years were dominated by other education reforms. For instance, the state fought for Race to the Top funding, adopted Common Core and revised teacher evaluations.
In 2016, the state began backing away from those reforms, and the legislative session seemed to refocus on school funding.
The state restored the Gap Elimination Adjustment (a funding cut that mainly hurt wealthier districts) and overall, oversaw a $1.3 billion increase in school aid.
Still, state officials did not fully restore the money owed to schools like Yonkers.
In 2017, the governor sought to make a controversial change to the Foundation Aid formula, which is how the state sought to divvy up the billions in additional lawsuit funds.
Advocates called it a “repeal” of the formula and charged that Governor Andrew Cuomo wanted to back out of the state’s commitment to provide billions in school aid.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s officials say no such requirement exists.
Andrew Cuomo’s plan to change the foundation aid formula was defeated in the 2017 budget and lawmakers provided $700 million in foundation aid.
In 2018 testimony to state lawmakers, the Alliance for Quality Education argued that $4.2 billion is still owed to schools.
Some educational advocates, school official and elected officials claim that the Yonkers Public Schools are still owed hundreds of millions under the formula created in 2007.
Money that Mayor Mike Spano says the city needs to rebuild Yonkers’ Public Schools.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo would likely dismiss that number.
He has called the 1993 lawsuit that created the aid and subsequent efforts to boost it “ghosts of the past,” since the case has been settled.
The state increased education funding last year by $1 billion for districts statewide, $618 million of that for Foundation Aid.
That was the same increase as the year before and far short of what Yonkers advocates, parents, elected officials and and school board members wanted.
Yonkers Senator Shelley Mayer says she launched the roundtables amid growing calls to rejigger certain elements of the Foundation Aid formula.
For example, it uses 2000 Census data to help measure student poverty, even though there has been a Census count since then.
Yonkers School Advocates acknowledged the need to refresh or update the formula but were not allowed to argue at the Yonkers Library Roundtable for fully funding the formula first, because they were not allowed to speak.
Yonkers schools are overcrowded, grappling with crumbling infrastructure, and that local principals have seen after school programs cut.
Parents of the 27,000 Yonkers students are sick and tired of having to watch New York State continue to under-serve the community year after year, and decade after decade.
Yonkers’ State lawmakers need to fully fund the formula and make it key priority or Yonkers will lose scores of millions.
Senate Democrats had promised they would champion fully funding foundation aid when they took control of the state Senate this year.
But so far they have been no better than the Republicans at getting what is owed to Yonkers children.
Yonkers’ Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Senate Education Chairwoman Shelley Mayer.Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, Assemblyman Nader Sayegh needs to do more and fund the damn thing.
They need to resolved in doing that in budget negotiations.
Yonkers’ Senate Education Chairwoman Shelley Mayer argues that it’s possible to “do two things at once” — talking about fixing underfunding and also finding ways to update the formula.
But getting the the scores of millions of unpaid education funding owed Yonkers taxpayers needs to be job one, so that we can end the suffering that our school children must endure.
It is time to end the teaching of Yonkers children in hallways, supply closets and gymnasium stages, because New york State continues to pay the foundation aid that is due to them in the city of hills.
Enough is enough, and Yonkers Senate Majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins needs to make Governor Andrew Cuomo put the money owed to Yonkers schools in his budget this spring.
Yonkers school advocates, parents and elected officials must push Albany to pay the scores of millions owed to our school children.
Make these leaders know that Yonkers school advocates vote in New York’s Fourth largest city.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo
Email: https://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form
Phone: (518) 474-8390
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NYGovCuomo
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GovernorAndrewCuomo/
Write:
NYS State Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224
Yonkers State Delegation
New York State Senate
Majority Leader Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins
Email: scousins@nysenate.gov
Phone: (914) 423-4031
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndreaSCousins
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andrea.stewartcousins/
Write
28 Wells Avenue, Building #3
Yonkers, NY 10701
Senator Shelley B. Mayer, Chair, Education Committee
Email: smayer@nysenate.gov
Phone: (914) 934-5250
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShelleyBMayer?lang=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShelleyMayerSD37/
Write:
222 Grace Church Street Suite 300
Port Chester, NY 10573
New York State Assembly
Assemblyman Nader J. Sayegh
Email: sayeghn@nyassembly.gov
Phone: (914) 779-8805
Twitter: https://twitter.com/naderjsayegh
Write:
35 East Grassy Sprain Rd. 406B
Yonkers, NY 10710
Assemblyman J. Gary Pretlow
Email: PretloJ@nyassembly.gov
Phone: (914) 667-0127
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jgpretlow?lang=en
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jgary.pretlow/
Write:
6 Gramatan Ave. Suite 201
Mt. Vernon, NY 10550
Other Important State, Elected Officials That Yonkers Education Advocates And Parents Should Write To:
Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie
Email: speaker@assembly.state.ny.us
Phone: (718) 654-6539
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CarlEHeastie
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Honorable-Speaker-of-the-New-York-State-Assembly-Carl-E-Heastie-140974846001214/
Write:
1446 East Gun Hill Road
Bronx, NY 10469
Senator Liz Krueger, Chair, Finance Committee
Email: lkrueger@nysenate.gov
Phone: (212) 490-9535
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LizKrueger
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/statesenatorlizkrueger/
Write:
211 E 43rd Street Suite 1201
New York, NY 10017
Assemblywoman Helene E. Weinstein, Chair, Ways and Means Committee
Email: https://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/Helene-E-Weinstein/contact
Phone: (718) 648-4700
Write:
3520 Nostrand Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11229
Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, Chair, Education Committee
Email: benedettom@nyassembly.gov
Phone: (718) 784-3194
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.r.benedetto
Write:
3602 E. Tremont Ave. Suite 201
Bronx, NY 10465