Assemblywoman Addie J. Russell (D-Theresa) announced today
that she will be reintroducing legislation she sponsored last session to
overhaul the state’s school aid formula.
The legislation, A.8844, amends several aspects of the school aid
formula to provide equity in funding - benefiting poorer school districts.
“This legislation is essential to ensuring that children in
the most disadvantaged parts of this state receive even the most basic
education,” Russell explained. “The
inequity in the state’s school aid funding is pushing our school districts over
their own fiscal cliff,” she added. “The
provisions of this bill address the needs of our North Country
schools as well as poor city schools across this state,” she added. “It is essential that all poor school
district communities band together and work to reform the school aid formula in
this year’s budget process, and they can use this bill as the model language,”
Russell concluded.
The legislation addresses several areas of the school aid
formula as follows:
·
The language allows for aid to be calculated
based upon data within the last five years, helping school districts
experiencing fluctuation in their communities.
In the North Country it will assist schools with
declining enrollment, in other areas it may help with reduced property values
or increased free and reduced school lunch figures.
·
The language eliminates the provision that
requires all school districts to receive a minimum amount of school aid. Currently school districts that should not receive
aid as a result of the formula are given aid anyway, five hundred dollars per
student. Ending minimum aid allocation
increases the amount of aid available for those districts that need it the
most.
·
The reform legislation also addresses arbitrary
provisions in the funding formula that prevent the poorest schools from being
compensated based upon their actual data.
The bill language permits schools with wealth ratios below .65 and above
.25 to use their actual wealth ration.
Current law will only allow districts to use a minimum of .65 when
calculating aid even though many districts have lower ratios. The bill also prevents wealthy school
districts from appearing poorer than they actually are. The bill language provides for increasing the
wealth ratio ceiling for school districts from a 2 to a 3. These provisions allow for calculating school
aid based upon actual figures instead of rounding the poor district wealth
ratios up and the wealthy district ratios down.
·
The legislation calls for the regional cost
index in the formula to be updated to reflect current data, a provision that
will not likely have an impact on North Country schools,
but will impact other areas of the state and makes the legislation a well
rounded approach to reform. This provision
may benefit wealthy districts.
·
The legislation builds upon an adjustment made
to the formula in last year’s budget process.
The bill eliminates automatic increases in aid to school districts that
do not need those funds as indicated by the school aid formula. The school aid formula has been overridden by
a provision driving three percent more aid year after year to districts that do
not need the aid, depriving poor school districts of those funds. In the last budget the increase was reduced
from a three percent increase to .6 percent increase. The proposed legislation only assures
districts they will receive up to eighty-five percent of what they received the
year before, in other words, allows for an up to fifteen percent reduction each
year. The language also permits
districts that are entitled to increased funding based upon historical funding
inequities to receive one hundred twenty-five percent of what they received the
year before, an increase from one hundred fifteen percent. This provision provides the mechanism to
reverse the expanding inequity in a phased approach.
“I have been working with several statewide organizations to
energize communities to make school aid reform their top priority along with me,”
Russell stated. “I spoke extensively at
the New York State Association of Small City School Districts breakfast during
the recent New York State School Boards Association conference in Rochester,”
she advised. “The breakfast provided an
opportunity to reach beyond the North Country and build
relationships and coalitions as we begin the budget process,” she
explained. “I spoke in depth about how
the reforms in A.8844 will work and the importance of showing support for the
legislation now by pushing for its inclusion in the budget,” she
explained. “The event on December 5th
being coordinated by the Alliance
for Quality Education, in which many area residents will participate, is an
important part of this process,” she added.
Assemblywoman Russell has a strong history of work with the Alliance
for Quality Education, attending their rallies in both Watertown
and Albany. Russell also penned an OpEd on the issue last
legislative session with an assembly colleague representing a district in New
York City. “New
York City and the North Country
are in the same boat when it comes to how the school aid formula works and the
impact of budget cuts,” she asserted.
The Alliance for Quality Education was a key supporter of the
campaign for fiscal equity lawsuit which resulted in a finding that the state’s
school aid funding formula was wrought with problems resulting in
inequities. The agreements made to
remedy those problems have not been kept and even more damage has been done as
a result of budget cuts.
“The promises made as a result of the lawsuit have not been
kept and the cuts to schools called the gap elimination adjustment have only
made the problem worse,” Russell explained.
“Getting rid of the gap elimination adjustment is just as important as
reforming the school aid formula,” she contended. “The two issues are tied together in terms of
removing the provisions in state law that perpetuates the inequities in school
funding across this state,” she argued.
“School Aid funding reform is one of the most divisive
issues in the state budget, even though most of the state is being shortchanged
by problems in the formula,” Russell stated.
“My approach has been to build broad based support around the state for
the reform legislation and carry the fiscal and educational realities of our local
districts to the legislature and governor,” she concluded.
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