Assemblywoman Addie J. Russell (D-Theresa) announced today
that she is reintroducing the legislation she sponsored last session to
overhaul the state’s school aid formula.
The legislation, now known as the School Funding Equity Act, 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,” Russell concluded.
The legislation addresses several areas of the school aid
formula as follows:
·
Allows for aid to be calculated based upon data
within the last five years, helping school districts experiencing fluctuation
in their communities.
·
Provides for accurate calculation of the average
cost of general education instruction by utilizing spending data from all but
the top 10% and bottom 10% schools.
·
Places more emphasis on the number of students
that qualify for free and reduced school lunch.
·
Eliminates the provision that requires all
school districts to receive a minimum amount of school aid.
·
Calls for the regional cost index in the formula
to be updated to reflect current data.
·
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.
·
Eliminates automatic increases in aid to school
districts that do not need those funds as indicated by the school aid formula. Further,
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.
“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.