Take Two: Senator Joseph Addabbo, Jr.

Addabbo Appointed to Serve on NYS Legislative Conference Committee on Education

Queens, NY - Senator Joseph Addabbo, Jr. (D-Queens) has been appointed to serve as the representative of the Senate Democratic Conference for the New York State Legislative Conference Committee on Education – the bipartisan Senate and Assembly panel responsible for negotiating a final 2012-2013 budget agreement on funding for New York’s schools and other educational issues. 

Already a member of the State Senate Standing Committee on Education, Addabbo said, “I am honored to serve as a member of this additional committee, and I look forward to working with my colleagues from both houses and from both sides of the aisle to negotiate a fair, responsible education package for the State Budget that will provide all of our schoolchildren with the opportunity to succeed academically.” 

The Legislative Conference Committee on Education will review the Senate and Assembly budget resolutions recently passed by the two houses, and come to a final agreement on the Legislature’s vision for education. 

The agreement reached by the Conference Committee will be included in the final budget document scheduled to be approved by the Senate and Assembly by the April 1st deadline. From there, the Legislature’s State Budget plan goes to Governor Cuomo for his consideration. 

The Legislative Conference Committee on Education held its first meeting in Albany on March 14 and Addabbo notes, “I think we are making good progress on negotiating an education package that will assist our schoolchildren while recognizing the need to spend our education dollars fairly, wisely and with accountability. We are well on our way to enacting a responsible, responsive, on-time State Budget.”

Among the educational issues Addabbo cited at the committee meeting that he wanted to work on during budget negotiations, are the State’s obligation to fairly compensate New York City schools as part of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court decision and an increase in library funding, which was agreed to by both the Senate and Assembly budget proposals. 

Other topics the senator said he wanted to highlight were funding for Non-Public School Aid, improved bus transportation for students and the monies for the Office of People with Developmental Disabilities.

A major issue is overall funding for local schools. While there is approximately a 4% increase in state spending for education in the budget, funds are distributed by the local municipalities.

While the governor’s proposal could result in less localized funds, both the Senate and Assembly have proposed to redirect the budget funds toward more direct school aid for local schools.

“In making decisions about the education of our children, we are almost literally holding their future and the future of our city and state in our hands. I take my responsibility on this committee very seriously,” Addabbo concluded.

Addabbo: 'What Happened to $2.3 Billion in State Aid for Education Awarded by the Court?"

Senator Addabbo is reminding state lawmakers during budget negotiations of a court decision that called for the restoration of monies to New York City public schools that were wrongfully underfunded by the state. 

In 2001, an almost decade-old lawsuit by the New York City-based Campaign for Fiscal Equity, led to the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division’s ruling that limiting resources to public schools violated a student’s constitutional right to a “sound, basic education”.

The ruling led to a $2.3 billion increase in cumulative state aid to local public schools through 2007 that has since been ignored, and furthermore damaged, by $2.7 billion in subsequent budget cuts.

  

“Governor Pataki was supposed to have set aside the larger share of $2.3 billion increase in state aid for downstate education as a result of the Court’s 2001 ruling. Where is it and how do we get it?” asks Addabbo.

According to this excerpt from a January 21, 2009 article in The Village Voice, “The Campaign for fiscal Equity Lawsuit Was the Best Hope for City Schools. It Failed.”:

  

Following the court ruling, newly elected Governor Eliot Spitzer proposed boosting state education funds to the city by $5.4 billion by the year 2011, factoring in the kind of programmatic specificity the lawsuit’s filers had suggested. School districts would have to sign “Contracts for Excellence,” vowing to use the windfall to improve one of five educational areas:  teacher quality, length of school days, smaller class sizes, restructured middle and high schools, and full-day pre-K and kindergarten. Under Spitzer’s plan, spending increases would be slowly phased in over five years, but only $228 million out of the $700 million in extra funding the first year would be subject to Contract for Excellence restrictions. The rest trickled out through various loopholes--$60 million for charter schools, $38 million for “experimental” programs—and into other pots of money the school system was free to spend however it wanted.

There were numerous complaints of insufficient oversight over how the money was actually being spent. Rather than pouring the dollars into consolidated citywide programs targeted at improving teacher quality or lengthening the school day, the city left it up to principals to decide how to spend their tiny portion of the funds. The result was no comprehensive strategy for using the funds, and a paper trail that is, at best, patchwork and, at worst, unreliable: principals only had to report their intentions, not how the money was ultimately spent.

      

So where is the money? From discussions with government colleagues and staff, Addabbo believes that due to the state’s poor fiscal condition over the past three years, lack of available dollars caused the state to become unable to keep up with its educational funding obligation set by the State Supreme Court.

  

The Senator is hopeful that by raising the issue during the current budget negotiations, when the state is in an improved economic situation, it can resume to honor the Court’s decision and its payment toward New York City’s schoolchildren.

Concludes Addabbo, “With the issue of New York City’s student-to-teacher ratio, rising costs and the city threatening to close dozens of schools, New York’s public school system could really use this money--now more than ever. More than a billion dollars in recovered funds would go a long way toward helping students and teachers have positive outcomes in their classrooms."