School News

by Alex Brooks

The Alliance For Quality Education (AQE), is doing a statewide fact-finding tour to document the effects of what they believe is chronic underfunding of education in New York State, and one of their first stops was a two hour meeting with Hoosick Falls Central School Superintendent Ken Facin and his staff on Monday, February 24.

The delegation from AQE included members of their staff, an expert on educational policy such as an academic or retired administrator, and senior attorneys who are preparing to file a lawsuit against the State for inadequately and unfairly funding education.

The fact finders are documenting the trajectory of State aid in individual districts and the effect that has had on educational resources offered to students.

“It was a great meeting,” said Facin. He presented the AQE group with a detailed account of the reduced State aid the Hoosick Falls District has received over the past five years, and the staff reductions the District has undertaken in response, to keep its budget in balance. “We did tighten our belt. We did downsize. And we also improved our performance at the same time. We have done more with less. But now we need to have enough resources to maintain what we have,” he said.

Facin noted that the Hoosick Falls District has been a leader in implementing the Common Core curriculum and the APPR teacher evaluation system and that this has been an enormous effort requiring additional staff time and additional costs. He said since the State is requiring these things, they should help to pay for them with at least a little increase in State aid or, at the very least, protecting Districts from cuts in State aid.

“If the State would just give us the same aid we had in 2008-09, our budget would be finished, and the local tax levy increase would be 0,” said Facin.

Facin noted that a lot of schools are getting more aid than they did five years ago, and most government agencies are funded at a higher level than they were five years ago.

“We should not be facing the worst budget cycle in seven years at a time when the State no longer has a deficit,” said Facin. He noted that the State is projecting a surplus this year and the Governor is talking about tax cuts.

Facin cites a report released in January 2014 by Dr. Bruce Baker from Rutgers and two co-authors, which studied school funding fairness in all fifty states. New York ranks near the top in total spending per pupil but near the bottom in distributing it fairly. The report gives NY an A for funding education generously but gives it an F for fairness of its distribution because the State gives a lot more dollars per pupil to wealthy districts than it does to districts of limited means. This results in a gross disparity in educational opportunities between public school students in wealthy communities and those in financially struggling communities.

Facin said he is talking to anyone he can about this problem, hoping to influence the final budget agreement on aid to education. He has said many times that he is not asking for more money overall. New York is one of the most generous states in that respect. He is asking that high-needs districts not be shortchanged. He is asking that all students in the State have equal access to educational resources distributed by the State.

Facin said if things continue the way they are going, all non-mandated programs would eventually be on the chopping block. He waxed eloquent about the wonderful arts programs going on in the Hoosick Falls District – the art, the drama, the music – and says he can’t imagine being faced with dismantling those programs.

The AQE fact-finding tour will be going on all this week, visiting two Districts each day. The information gathered will be used first to make the case to State legislators to roll back the Gap Elimination Adjustment for the upcoming budget year and later to make a case in court that the State is violating its Constitutional duty to provide a “sound basic education” to all students in the State.