This year’s push by parents and educators for additional state funding for public schools paid off when the governor and Albany lawmakers on April 1 finalized a new state budget that contained a $1.4 billion increase in state education funding, with $525 million going to New York City public schools.

“This year’s budget enables New York City’s public schools to continue to make progress and is a down payment on the state’s debt to public education,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. “But the battle to prevent the privatization of schools continues, and we will fight to see that charter schools — as recipients of taxpayer funds — are compelled to admit and keep all students.”

The budget’s landmark achievement was a commitment to raise the state minimum wage in New York City to $15 an hour by 2018, but the budget also contained other good news for New York City and its public schools.

Community schools with wraparound social services got a statewide funding boost of $175 million as elected officials in both parties embraced the model. Of that amount, $75 million will be used to convert the state’s “struggling” and “persistently struggling” schools into community schools and the remainder will be for other community schools. Teacher Centers will receive $14 million in state funding.

The budget also wiped out the gap elimination adjustment, a formula established in the wake of the 2008 recession that has diverted money from wealthier school district budgets for general state purposes.

“That means that we can now focus our efforts in the coming years on getting New York City schools the Campaign for Fiscal Equity money they are still owed and building equity into the state aid formula so that poor school districts get more state aid than wealthier ones,” Mulgrew said.

Senate Republicans entered budget negotiations with a wish list of more than a dozen items to benefit the charter school sector, but in the end they settled for $54 million in additional funding for charter schools paid for by the state Senate out of its discretionary fund and a renewal of some of the previous budget’s pro-charter policies.