Official calls for higher school aid
Assemblyman: High-needs districts need investment
CAPITAL REGION, N.Y. » Many school districts across the Capital Region have begun to host school budget hearing workshops to discuss the early outlook for state education funding.
Assemblyman John McDonald III, D-Cohoes, said he has stopped by to discuss the early outlook of state education funding with some of the school districts that he represents in his 108th Assembly District, including high-need schools in Troy, Cohoes and Watervliet.
Last month in his budget proposal, Gov. Andrew Cuomo outlined his $168 billion budget for the 2018-19 fiscal year, reflecting 2.3 percent growth while trying to tackle a deficit of $1.8 billion. According to his January proposal, school aid would increase $769 million, even though it previously had been planned to increase $1.2 billion.
“In the [state] Assembly our goal is a $1.5 billion increase in [education] aid, which would re- flect positively for districts like Cohoes, Watervliet and Troy because we focus on districts with high-needs, that’s our goal,” McDonald said Monday morning. “The challenge is how we are going to pay for it, in the governor’s proposal and the budget that we’re dealing with there is a variety of taxes and fees that we have to give serious consideration to if we want to implement them, a lot that doesn’t impact directly
the taxpayers and the residents but indirectly could have [an impact] and that’s why we’re struggling with this year’s budget.”
McDonald said he believes that public education funding has been lower for the past several years then he thinks it should be.
“When you look at the history of education funding, which goes back 15 or 20 years, when it comes to public education there has
been an under funding and particularly in districts with high-needs,” McDonald said. “Now more than ever before we see that we need greater resources to meet the needs of these children because it’s not just the basic elements of science, technology and math, it’s also a lot of issues that are in the home and we’ve been providing additional support to help children. It’s not easy, we want to try to meet the commitment to public education and it hasn’t been that.”
McDonald went on to explain how the governor also
proposed a cap for a ceiling on Expense Based Aid for school districts.
“Expense-based aid deals with aid to districts for BOCES services, which is important to students that may look for education outside of the normal traditional educational system,” McDonald said. “Expense- based aid also includes transportation aid, which is very important for many districts that provide busing and other services for children with special needs, so we’re concerned about that as well because that cap for expense based
aid will take away any increases in the foundation aid.
McDonald believes that recent past years of education funding have helped the school districts be able to do what is needed, but he knows that more could for sure be done to help school districts and the children.
“All the districts that I’ve met with, they’re all having budget hearings because they too are trying to provide the best education for children, so yes I think last year’s increase when you add it the prior four years increase [it] is meeting the
needs of the children, however, we all know that we can’t rest and we have more to do,” McDonald said.
McDonald said that a lot can still change within the budget and education funding for school districts since there will be a lot of negotiating between now and the April 1 deadline for lawmakers to approve the state budget and he is hopeful that a state budget will be approved before the deadline this year since that will only help the school districts for their May school budget votes.
“It will be a full run right
until the last moment until the budget is passed and ”hopefully the budget will be passed by April 1, but there will be a lot of moving parts and a lot of negotiations and I want to do the best I can to help the districts I represent get the funds that they need,” he said. “Ideally we want the budget passed by April 1, but a week or two later that’s not the end of the world, however, what we don’t want to be doing is asking districts to put out budget votes in May when they don’t have a sure idea what their revenue items are going to be.”