State cash bonanza for city schools

More than 1,000 city schools will get a direct injection of hundreds of millions in cash they can use on expenses like hiring staff and purchasing supplies, following a state budget agreement that boosts funding to the city school system, Mayor de Blasio announced Monday.

The influx of new state dollars allows the city to finally give each public school 100% of the money it is owed under the city’s Fair Student Funding system — a formula that assigns funding per student, with extra cash directed to schools with needier populations.

For more than a decade, the majority of city schools have gotten a fraction of the money they’re assigned through the formula because of state budget shortfalls. But this year’s state budget boost will ultimately pad the city schools system’s budget by more than $1 billion per year.

“For years and years we all saw an injustice in this city that some schools got more money ... than other schools,” de Blasio said Monday. “Now because of extraordinary action taken at the federal and state level, we are able to right this wrong.”

There are currently 1,164 city schools that receive less than 100% of the funding they’re owed. The new cash influx will lift all those schools to 100% at a cost of roughly $600 million per year, city officials said Monday.

The new funding will hit school budgets in time for the next school year, city officials say.

Many school principals consider Fair Student Funding money their most valuable funding stream, because they have the most flexibility over how to spend it.

The state funding comes on top of billions of dollars in federal stimulus support.