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Governor David Paterson has
unveiled plans for mid-year budget cuts to close the state's current year
budget deficit, now estimated to be at least $3 billion. This is the
first installment of a two-year $5 billion Deficit Reduction Plan.
The plan would cut School Aid
by a total of $686 million for the 2009-10 school year, or 3 percent. The
cut would amount to 4.5 percent of undisbursed aid payments.
While the STAR program has been spared, additional reductions are
proposed for higher education and categorical program expenditures such
as extended school day, targeted Pre-K, summer special education,
nonpublic school aid, school breakfast/lunch reimbursement, Timothy's
Law, etc.
School Aid reduction would be structured progressively based on local
fiscal capacity, student need, and residential tax effort. Reductions
will range from 3% to 9% of a school district's state aid allotment.
However, in application, 9% of (low) state aid to an affluent district
translates to much fewer dollars than 3% of (high) state aid for a poor
district. As such, the hardest hit school districts will continue to be
those that are most dependent on state aid, our low wealth/high needs
districts.
We must recall the lessons learned from a similar measure taken 20 years
ago. With the imposition of mid-year school aid cuts, tax payers saw
their schools ability to provide a full range of programs and services
hampered, the state's ability to attract business diminished, and a
resultant steady rise of local property taxes to try to catch up. Many
school districts have still not recovered from the fiscal injury
incurred. More importantly, the impact on students was to create a
generation of remedial work, lack of college readiness, and increased
inequities between districts with the means to manage the cuts and those
districts more dependent on state aid.
With crisis comes opportunity. We ask that you contact your state
representatives and let them know that this fiscal crisis is their
opportunity to find real solutions that do not break the back of public
education but that support and sustain quality public education for all
of NY's children.
To Take Action, Click on the link and use the letter provided or compose
your own...
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