Apr 12, 2007 5:12 PM
Chicago architect Mies van der Rohe famously observed how “God is in the details,” and there are plenty of details affecting city schools in the new, commodious 2,000-page state budget.
Adopted just 11 hours past its March 31 midnight deadline, the record $120.9 billion fiscal package includes substantially more money for New York City schools, requires the city to lower class sizes and breaks up the old, inequitable education funding formula.
It provides a $600 million boost in funding for the city’s schools, including $60 million in added half-day prekindergarten support. The city’s share of new school aid rose to 41 percent of the total outlay. Statewide, school aid increased by $1.76 billion.
New York City will be obligated to put up a local share of school costs to complement the increased state revenue. The total additional state foundation aid coming to the city by 2010-11 is expected to be $3.3 billion and the city will have to contribute an additional $2.2 billion.
What is unmistakable amid the reams of detail is the victory for the UFT and parents working to shrink class sizes over the Department of Education’s strenuous objections. This budget requires New York City to reduce class sizes in all grades over the next five years to grade-by-grade averages set by the state education commissioner. UFT President Randi Weingarten called the provision a guarantee of “meaningful class size reform.”
“This is a great day for New York City’s 1.1 million students, their parents and all public school educators,” Weingarten said. “This is the most important of all education reforms — along with ensuring there are quality teachers in every classroom.”
The agreement’s language stipulates methods for lowering sizes, “such as the creation or construction of more classrooms and school buildings, the placement of more than one teacher in a classroom or methods to otherwise reduce” the student-to-teacher ratio.
The legislation does build in some flexibility for Michael Bloomberg and future mayors by not specifying minimum target numbers the city must achieve or amount the city must spend on class-size reduction. The legislation also creates an enforcement mechanism, while at the same time protecting the city from lawsuits over class size by putting enforcement in the hands of the state education commissioner.
One of the key provisions of the new budget is a change in the formula for education funding. The previous formula, which favored political clout over education needs, was one of the key complaints in the CFE lawsuit. Spitzer’s recommendations, which the Legislature accepted in toto, will now provide “a permanent foundation formula that distributes aid based on a district’s educational needs and local ability to support education.”
Districts will be obligated to submit to the commissioner “Contracts for Excellence” before receiving substantial increases in foundation aid. The process for developing the contract is truncated in the 2007-08 school year, allowing only comment by the public, though a greater role for the public in developing future contracts is envisioned. The programs specified in the contracts have to be shown to predominantly benefit students with the greatest educational needs including students with limited English proficiency, students in poverty and students with disabilities.
In New York City, a contract for the entire school system and separate pacts for each community school district that is home to at least one failing school must be put in place detailing the new programs on which the additional funds will be spent. Allowable programs will be limited to those that reduce class size, increase student “time on task,” promote teacher and principal quality initiatives, restructure middle schools and high schools and initiate full-day kindergarten and prekindergarten, with class size reduction required.
The contracts must be reviewed and approved by the state education commissioner, who must certify the funds are spent for allowable purposes. In addition, the school district’s certified audit (in the city the audit is done by the comptroller) must certify that the foundation funds were used to supplement, and not supplant, funds allocated by the school district.
In a rebuff to the city administration, which wanted to use test scores as the primary basis for tenure determinations, the budget ensures that tenure reviews will be conducted as prescribed by the state regents. Reviews must include:
In order to win enough votes to keep his promise to comply with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision to provide more dollars for New York City schools, Gov. Eliot Spitzer had to accommodate Senate Republican demands for more funding for high-performing school districts on Long Island. Of the state’s approximately $100 million in new education aid for districts with high taxes, $70 million went to Nassau and Suffolk. Similarly, $21 million in new aid for special education went to the Long Island counties. Westchester, another high-tax area but with fewer elected Republican legislators, did not receive the same largesse. Homeowners will also receive $1.3 billion in school property tax rebates.
While the budget raises the cap on the maximum number of charter schools in the state from 100 to 200, including adding up to 50 new schools in New York City to the 60 presently operating, it does not give the city the chartering authority the chancellor sought and the UFT vigorously opposed. That will continue to be the provenance of the State University of New York and the state Board of Regents. New charter schools are expected to come on line in fall 2008.
In a boost for union organizing efforts, the budget mandates that the staff of any charter schools enrolling more than 250 students in its first two years must be unionized. Asked at an April 2 press conference if the city would back unionization for all charter schools, Chancellor Joel Klein punted, responding that the issue “is up to the schools and the teachers at the schools. Our job is to make sure they are excellent.”
The budget sets the number of schools that can be listed as Schools Under Registration Review (SURR) at up to 5 percent of all state schools. Such schools whether identified under state or federal NCLB rules, can be closed if no improvement in their students’ achievement is demonstrated after receiving increasing levels of intervention. Help will come from a pool of “distinguished educators,” including active and retired superintendents, principals, teachers and other experts. Schools, school leaders and student progress will all be evaluated and reported annually.
Van der Rohe is also widely quoted as saying “Less is more.” But for New York City, in this education budget, for the first time in a long time, more is more.
Predictably, the new state budget was slammed by conservatives who felt this year’s record spending could not be sustained. It also got criticism from labor union supporters who argued that the state’s skewed tax structure means too little revenue is coming in, and that from the wrong sources.
“New York continues to have not just high taxes, but highly unfair taxes,” said Working Families Party Executive Director Dan Cantor. “The middle class and working class pay higher percentages of their overall income in taxes than [do] the wealthy.”
Noting how “the passion for an on-time budget got in the way of a more serious exploration of the state’s fiscal situation,” Cantor said that his party, which is supported by the UFT and other leading city unions and community organizations, is urging the public to “ask Gov. Spitzer to put progressive taxation back on the table for next year’s budget.”
This is the statutory language that applies to the state funds and the contract for excellence:
“In a city school district in a city having a population of one million or more inhabitants such contract shall also include a multi-year (5 year) plan to reduce average class sizes, as defined by the Commissioner for the following grade ranges: (i) pre-kindergarten-third grade; (ii) fourth-eighth grade and; (iii) high school. Such plan shall include class size reduction for low performing and overcrowded schools and also include the methods to be used to achieve such class sizes, such as the creation or construction of more classrooms and school buildings, the placement of more than one teacher in a classroom or methods to otherwise reduce the student to teacher ration; provided, however, that notwithstanding any law, rule or regulation to the contrary, the sole and exclusive remedy for a violation of the requirements of this paragraph shall be pursuant to a petition to the commissioner of education under subdivision seven of section three hundred ten of the education law, and the decision of the commissioner on such petition shall be final and unreviewable.”
This is the statutory language that applies to the city’s share:
“The City of NY shall contribute no less than an additional two billion two hundred million dollars in increased spending by the 2010-2011 school year, to be targeted in ways that will support educational programs. Such additional city funding shall only be required upon the implementation of foundation aid by the 2010-2011 school year pursuant to subdivision 4 of section 3602 of the education law (the state’s portion), and shall be subject to the provisions of subdivision five-a of section two thousand five hundred seventy-six of the education law (the old maintenance of effort law). Priority shall be on appropriate class sizes including adequate accessible school buildings with sufficient space to ensure appropriate class size and implementation of a sound curriculum. Other priorities also may include sufficient numbers of qualified teachers, principals and other personnel, sufficient and up-to-date books, supplies, libraries, educational technology and laboratories; suitable curricula including an expanded platform of programs to help at risk students by giving them more time on task; adequate resources for students with extraordinary needs; and a safe orderly environment.”