General News
Governor reaffirms commitment
Jan 17, 2008 12:46 PM
Small class sizes, professional development, affordable housing for educators highlight his State of the State
Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s Jan. 9 State of the State message was — as are governor’s state of the state messages each year — filled with broad statements about policies to be inaugurated and problems to be solved. His remarks were a prelude to a more detailed executive budget statement Spitzer will give to the Legislature on Jan. 22, which will recommend appropriations for particular spending items.
On education, Spitzer reaffirmed his commitment to quality education and small class sizes as he reviewed what was accomplished in the state’s schools this past year.
“C-F-E used to stand for an endless lawsuit,” Spitzer said. “Today, it stands for Contracts for Excellence. We made the single-largest education investment in New York’s history. We assured that this new investment would be distributed fairly. Most important, we tied it to accountability. For our kindergarten to 12th-grade students, our plan for education involves a simple equation: Investment plus accountability equals excellence.”
The governor calculated how “nearly half of the state’s students are now learning in schools that have signed Contracts for Excellence. These contracts do something we have never done before; they guarantee that our investment will be spent on reforms proven to work: smaller classes, more time in school and teacher training.”
He also announced a $400 million Housing Opportunity Fund to build homes “for the men and women who teach our kids and patrol our streets.”
UFT President Randi Weingarten congratulated the governor on his steadfast support for pre-K-12 education and for a housing initiative that makes it possible for educators to afford to live in the metropolitan area and remain in the school system.
“It is encouraging to see that Gov. Spitzer has reaffirmed his commitment to continue funding to meet the goals of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity,” Weingarten said in a press statement. “This will go far to address the needs of city public schools and help the city significantly reduce class size to the five-year goals of 20 students in kindergarten through 3rd grade and 23 students in grades 4-12.”
Weingarten also noted the governor’s relating how, in his visit to a Bronx school, he was told by students “about how much more they could learn in smaller classes,”so he obviously understands how important this issue is for children, parents and educators, too. His commitment to making it happen offers great hope for our school system and we applaud him for the sustained effort.”
On the housing initiative, Weingarten said: “New Yorkers in general — and we at the teachers’ union in particular — know all too well that developing affordable work-force housing here is not easy. It requires a strong partnership with government and developers for union-built housing along with a commitment to helping workers afford to stay and raise their families here. The governor’s appreciation of the challenge workers face in securing affordable housing is heartening, and we applaud him for trying to help.”
On other matters, Spitzer embraced a policy he had previously rejected in backing a commission to study ways of controlling escalating property taxes, including a property-tax ceiling. He also called for creating a $4 billion endowment for the state’s public higher education system, adding 2,000 full-time positions to the CUNY and SUNY faculties, along with providing tuition waivers for returning combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to any CUNY or SUNY campus.
Turning to children’s health, Spitzer said he would use state dollars to provide insurance in place of the program scrapped when the Bush administration vetoed congressional legislation authorizing an expanded national State Children’s Heath Insurance Plan. He also announced an upstate economic development fund to jump-start job creation for the state’s heavily depressed rural areas. And he called for establishing a “Peace Corps” for doctors by helping to pay off student loan bills for those newly minted physicians agreeing to work in underserved urban and rural areas.
Absent from the presentation, but expected to be addressed in his upcoming budget statement, were ways to close a possible budget gap that some expect to top $4.3 billion.
