Public Testimony 2004

New York State Budget Hearing Testimony
Elementary and Secondary School

Given by: Martine Guerrier, Albany Representative for the Educational Priorities Panel
February 2004, Albany, New York

Good day and thank you for the opportunity to address you on issues affecting students attending New York City’s public schools. My name is Martine Guerrier. I am the Legislative Representative and Communications Director for the Educational Priorities Panel, known to most of you as EPP. Our coalition of 28 civic, religious, and parent organizations has worked since 1976 to insure that the maximum funding available to the New York City public school system goes to student instruction and services. The goal of the Educational Priorities Panel is to improve the quality of public education for New York City’s children so that there is no longer a performance gap between city schools and those in the rest of the state.

I will testify today on these three issues: 1) Class Size Reduction; 2) School Facilities Funding; and 3) School Aid Reform.
Class Size Reduction.

First, on behalf of EPP, I applaud the Governor for keeping Class Size Reduction (CSR) as a budget item. Class size reduction has become an area of grave concern to city parents and education advocates, because the average number of students sitting in elementary, middle, and high school classes has increased dramatically this year. The exceptions are those schools that are receiving state funding to reduce class sizes in the early grades. Yet there are far too many young children still sitting in classes of 28 children all across New York City.

Imagine if you can, the myriad problems faced by students and teachers in light of recent classroom changes mandated by the NYC Department of Education. Imagine 28 kindergarten, first or even second grade students crowded close together on a mat trying to listen to their teachers teach. "Be quiet and keep your hands to yourself" is an oft repeated phrase in far too many classrooms in New York City. The problem is that a state-of-the-art, high-quality instructional model is being grafted onto an inadequate infrastructure. It is akin to pretending that Cadillac will run smoothly with a Kia motor.

The NYS Legislature’s continued commitment to support funding of Class Size Reduction as a categorical budget has gone a long way to keep some students in manageable class sizes. The challenge now is how to scale up class size reduction so that children in New York City are educated in comparable class sizes to children in the rest of the state. EPP fully endorses the strategy of the New York Adequacy Project to make class size one of the key steps to achieve instructional adequacy. (This study commissioned by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and the NYS School Boards Association based on professional judgement panels.) Money is not enough–it must go to the classroom where it will make a real difference for children.

Categorical funding for class size reduction should continue up and until the funding system for education is restructured to ensure that every child in this state has a reasonable size class and reasonable chance to get a few minutes of individual attention from a teacher during the school day.

EPP makes note that the STAR program has been fully phased in at a tune of $3 billion a year. The state’s promise to homeowners has clearly been met. The state now needs to fulfill its initial promise it made to parents and children in high-need school districts and to build upon it.

School Facilities
The lack of classroom space in New York City is a major barrier to providing an adequate education to students. Because financing and construction take lead time, adequate facilities funding must start now, during this session.

In our city, over 150,000 high school students (155,381) and over 250,000 elementary and middle school students (260,406) are impacted by overcrowding. This problem emerged because new immigrants settled in neighborhoods of Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan where there were not enough schools. Now there are new housing developments in Staten Island.

Our 2002 study, Castles in the Sand, investigated the reasons why severe school overcrowding persisted for over a decade in New York City. One of our findings is that funding inequalities within Building Aid far exceeded those within Operating Aid when it came to new school construction. From 1996 to 2001, school districts in the rest of the state received, on average, a 67 percent reimbursement rate for the costs of new school construction. During the same period, New York City received an average Building Aid reimbursement rate of 22 percent for the costs of new school construction.

Many different theories have been advanced for this glaring differential. Because my time before you is limited, I will only focus on what EPP believes is the major factor in why the most overcrowded district in the state received less state funding for new school construction than most other school districts. Without any requirement in law or regulation, Building Aid formulas made up for the drop in the average number of students in classrooms in the rest of the state by overestimating the enrollment of students in schools under construction. This was a method of ensuring that classrooms would be build to a standard size. In essence, it was a subsidy to districts in the rest of the state for their small class sizes.

The Regents proposal for a $31 million planning grant so that New York City can better leverage Building Aid for new school construction ignores the problem of how fundamentally dysfunctional the Building Aid system is for reducing overcrowding in urban, high-needs districts. The Executive Budget proposal to place a moratorium on new construction projects is simply counterproductive. Proposals to change the capacity formula within Building Aid may simply reduce reimbursement rates to school districts in the rest of the state rather than increase New York City’s reimbursement rate. Similarly, prioritization may make it particularly difficult for high-needs districts to initiate projects given uncertainty as to whether they would qualify for Building Aid.
EPP strongly urges the NYS legislature to make Building Aid formulas fair, rational, targeted to need, and simplified. Until these reforms take place, the most immediate tasks in light of the CFE decision are:* To fully fund the NYC Chancellor’s $13.1 billion capital plan to end all overcrowding in NYC schools within five years. The request is that close of half of that amount ($6 billion) be funded by the state and the rest reimbursed by Building Aid.

* In addition, EPP proposes that the legislature push for outright grants to New York City in order to start construction or leasing of least 26 schools this academic year.

The NYS Legislature has already approved innovative school building and rehabilitation projects for two high-needs districts, Buffalo and Niagara Falls. The funding mechanisms that were employed dramatically reduced the local share of construction costs. A similar, large-scale project should be developed for New York City. Even a large-scale leasing program, which could stretch out state investments, could end overcrowding within a few years. It should be noted that the Governor was able to create the Millennium High School in the financial district in New York City within six short months through innovative leasing. Why can’t this be duplicated?

School Aid Reform
The details of the funding proposals of the New York Adequacy Project and the Governor’s NYS Commission on Education Reform are not public at this time. EPP has, however, reviewed the Regents proposal and the Executive Budget proposed changes. This review has helped us to formulate the following six principles:
1. Any new funding system must measure differences in student need, regional cost, and school district wealth and be geared to helping all children meet higher learning standards. The Regents proposal creates foundation formula that includes some of these key components, but some of the measurements are questionable. The Governor’s Flex Aid proposal, on the other hand, does not improve upon the current funding system.

2. Any student-need index must include a count of students who are English Language Learners. Currently, ELL students are provided an additional PCEN weight of .25 within Operating Aid and are an important factor in determining a school district’s Extraordinary Needs Aid allocation. Even though the Regents proposal provides documentation on the difficulties that English language learners have in meeting state standards, only a poverty factor and geographical sparcity are used for the purposes of creating a student-needs index. Eliminating an ELL count not only negatively affects urban districts, but Downstate suburban districts as well. EPP is perplexed by this recommendation.

3. Any student-need index should not contain an additional school district wealth measurement. School district wealth is currently a factor in Operating Aid. Unfortunately, it is also a factor in Extraordinary Needs Aid allocations. Why count wealth twice? It limits ENA allocations to New York City and some surrounding suburban schools districts of average wealth with a high proportion of high-needs students. A comparison of student test outcome data do not support driving more student-needs funds to low-wealth districts and less to those closer to average for the state. The Regents foundation proposal already includes a calculation on the expected local contribution. Again, why count wealth twice?

4. Special Education funding should be kept as a separate formula aid. It needs to be protected from the vagaries of administrative policies and priorities which often undercut services to students with disabilities. EPP strongly objects to the Executive Budget proposal to fold in this funding stream into Flex Aid.

5. The size of the New York City school district should continue to be factored into its wealth measurement. New York City contains five counties within its borders. In contrast, all the other school districts within the state represent small subdivisions within each county. This skews wealth measurements. For example, if aid were distributed to counties, as in Florida, Hempstead’s school allocations from the state would be negatively affected by the high wealth of Great Neck. In a reverse scenario, if each of New York City’s 32 community school districts became independent school districts, then far more state aid would go to the city because the wealth of community school districts 1, 2, and 3 in Manhattan and 26 in Queens would not impact the remaining 28 districts. The current borough aid system, which calculates an average wealth for the city by creating an average from the wealth measurements of each of the five counties, is not a gimmick. It is an attempt to adjust for the extraordinary size difference between New York City and the small districts in the rest of the state. The Regents proposal eliminates borough aid, which would increase the city’s wealth measurement and result in diminished aid to New York City. Even though the Regents proposal is not supposed to be an answer to the CFE decision, why reduce the city’s allocations in almost every formula?

6. Any reform of the current state aid system must not contain a long phase-in period and caps on increases to high-needs districts. These mechanism have only served to perpetuate funding inequalities in the current system. If the Regents proposed seven-year transition period and caps were adopted this session, students now in kindergarten would be in seventh grade before most of the benefits of the foundation formula would be in place.