Mar. 10, 2016
ALBANY — At this time last year, teachers, parents and union representatives were gearing up to battle controversial education policy initiatives in the state budget.
“Think where we were one year ago — we were putting our war paint on,” United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew said Wednesday to approximately 1,200 parents and teachers at the union’s lobby day in the state Capitol.
This year it’s eerily quiet. Senate and Assembly leaders say it’s not a calm before the storm, but an actual indication of an unusual sense of stability, and there are no real surprises looming in terms of education proposals in the one-house budgets expected out at the end of this week.
It’s a strange feeling, union leaders said.
“Now we are here today in a whole different atmosphere and a whole different environment,” Mulgrew said before releasing the volunteer lobbyists to speak with lawmakers about their legislative agenda, which includes increased funding and support for educators.
Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, speaking at the rally, agreed that last year there was “a lot of consternation, a lot of friction, a lot of frustration” with the budget.
This session, both Flanagan and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Wednesday, will include funding increases and little education policy.
“Some of the policy things, unlike last year’s budget, if they have to be dealt with, they’ll be better and more wisely dealt with outside of the budget,” Flanagan told POLITICO New York.
Education has been a contentious issue in the past few years as the state rolled out the controversial Common Core learning standards, increased standardized testing and put in place an evaluation system that used student state test scores to rate teachers and principals.
Frustration from parents and educators came to a head last year after Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive budget proposal included a teacher evaluation system that increased the weight of student tests scores, and held hostage school aid contingent on the passing of the evaluation initiative.
The evaluation system was later passed, and parents, expressing dissatisfaction with the testing, the standards and the increased pressure on teachers and students, led one of the largest test refusal movements in the nation, with more than 20 percent of the state’s eligible students opting out of the state standardized, Common Core-aligned math and English language arts exams.
The frustration further leaked into the voting booth and Cuomo began to back away from the evaluation system and Common Core. In December the state Board of Regents, based on the recommendations of Cuomo’s Common Core task force, put a moratorium on the use of test scores in teacher evaluations. The state education department also is studying and revising the standards, assessments and evaluation system.
Cuomo’s conciliatory executive budget proposal for the 2016-17 school year set the tone for this legislative session, marking a new chapter for the state as lawmakers seem to be looking to largely leave education policy decisions up to the Board of Regents.
As the budget process begins to heat up, the one-house proposals from the Republican-led Senate and Democratic-led Assembly are expected to be business as usual in terms of education.
Heastie told reporters following his speech at the rally that the Assembly school aid proposal will be higher than the governor’s, which includes a proposed school aid increase of nearly $1 billion. The Regents and other stakeholder groups have called for a more than $2 billion increase.
“We are pretty much in line with where the governor’s priorities are on education,” Heastie said. “We have some differences in spending. There’s nothing earth-shattering or new or different. It’s just financial.”
He would not elaborate further, but did say the controversial education tax credit, included in Cuomo's budget, is not likely to advance in the Assembly.
Members of the Assembly and the Senate have proposed different versions of the tax credit, which would help those who make donations to schools and scholarship funds. The Senate, which already passed a bill with the credit, is expected to include a verision of it in its one-house budget.
The Assembly also will likely include funding for community schools, as indicated by Heastie’s speech at the rally in support of wrap-around social services for children and their families.
Cuomo’s budget includes $100 million for community schools, with $75 million earmarked specifically for districts with “failing” schools to be able to convert into community schools.
Members of the Assembly, and their counterparts in the Senate, including Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, have advocated for $250 million for community schools. “I don’t think there’s enough that we can do to support our children,” Stewart-Cousins said at the rally.
Flanagan told POLITICO New York that the Senate still is looking at the details of the governor’s community schools proposal. “Just to say community schools, there’s a lot to it," he said. "Is it how is the school doing? Is it doing well, or doing poorly? What’s going on with the leadership? There are a lot of facets."
As Flanagan announced the first day of session, the Senate budget proposal will certainly restore cuts in school aid made through the Gap Elimination Adjustment, a formula established during the 2008 recession that distributed cuts to school districts as the state grappled with deficits. The state has been decreasing the amount of cuts, but $434 million remains. Cuomo’s proposal would eliminate the GEA over two years. The Senate and Assembly have said it should be done this year.
“I think it’s going to be consistent with things that we’ve advocated for in the past, great support for public education, issues involving charter schools, the education tax credit,” Flanagan said of the one-house budget proposal.
Other than the GEA elimination, the focus will be on funding, he said.
“I think there’s always consistent concerns about what’s going on in education, certainly the primary obligation and foremost consideration is funding,” Flanagan said. “The governor deserves credit for starting the dialogue off in a good way by putting in almost a billion dollars. We’re focusing on equitable distribution for sure.”
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