January marks the beginning of the legislative session in Albany and I am happy to report, as we head into the session, that we have seen a lot of positive change on education policy in the last year. However, the lack of equity in state aid to school districts remains a tremendous problem that we will have to tackle if we want to address class sizes and all the other challenges our schools face as a result of insufficient funds.

We fought hard this past year alongside our allies across the state for greater school funding in the state budget and won a 6.1 percent increase statewide which, although not enough to meet our schools’ needs, nevertheless was a good start.

The amount of money isn’t the real problem. The real problem is how it is divided between school districts.

Unlike in many other states, in New York, state aid to school districts is not given out based on need but on local property taxes. As a result, more affluent districts get an unequal share of school funds in the state budget. In New York City, among the poorer school districts in the state, where extra resources would make a real difference, we get a far smaller share.

Our position is that the state’s school-funding system is broken — and New York’s highest court agrees with us. In 2006, the court ruled that the state’s inequitable school funding had resulted in a failure by the state to meet its obligation under the state constitution to provide all students with a “sound, basic education.” The court’s remedy was to order the state to pay up but, 10 years later, the state still owes $4.8 billion to schools across New York, including $2 billion to New York City schools alone.

Individual city schools are owed in the millions of dollars while some community school districts are owed in the hundreds of millions. Gregorio Luperón HS in Washington Heights, for example, is owed $1,045,491 or $2,165 per student, while District 24 in Corona, Queens, is owed $119,501,982. Seventy-two percent of the schools owed money are high-needs schools that educate our most vulnerable students: students who live in poverty, speak English as a second language or have learning disabilities.

More funds will, above all, allow us to reduce class sizes — and not just to the limits in our contract, but below them as well.

We all know that large classes are one of the greatest impediments to student learning. Although city schools have fewer oversized classrooms this year than they have had in years, there were still 5,485 oversized classrooms in the fall, with some 180,000 students in them. We must bring this number down for the sake of our students.

That’s why our top priority this session in Albany is to secure the funds necessary to lower class sizes and make sure every child in every neighborhood in our city attends a school with the resources — social and economic as well as academic — that we know students must have in order to succeed and reach their potential.

Our Community Learning Schools program, which we intend to expand, is the perfect vehicle for providing students with both the academic and the social and economic supports they need. Community Learning Schools don’t just provide students with an education; they also provide families and communities with wraparound social services like basic medical and dental care, mental health counseling, and college and job counseling.

I am very glad the governor highlighted community schools and their valuable work in his State of the State speech and hope to work with him — as well as parents and the community — as we seek additional state funds to expand our program.

The governor also said he would like to bring prekindergarten to 100 percent of our communities; proposed a $200 tax credit for teachers who spend their own money on school supplies; and called for a $2.1 billion increase in state school aid over a two-year period — including nearly $1 billion for the coming school year — that although not enough is a decent starting point.

Funding is incredibly important, but it isn’t everything, which is why we also continue to push hard in support of the recommendations made by the governor’s Common Core task force, which was charged with developing new state standards to replace the Common Core.

The task force also recommended — and the state Board of Regents on Dec. 14 adopted — a moratorium on the use of standardized test scores to evaluate either students or teachers for four years.

Educators will be part of every step in the development and implementation of the new New York State standards, with our input incorporated into the final standards and the curricula and tests aligned with them.

We fought for these changes, which still need to be approved by the state Legislature, with a 30-second television ad, “Working Together,” that documented the task force’s findings on the disastrous rollout of the Common Core in New York and highlighted its most important recommendations. Watch the ad.

But we still have more to do. We’re very happy with recent developments, but now is not the time to rest on our laurels. With your support — and by demonstrating in your schools every day what educators can do when they have the support they need — we will see that all of these changes, from funding to the new standards, come to fruition.