If anyone was silly enough to think that NYS legislators give a hoot about doing what's right and fair for children, this should put that delusion to rest. Kudos to Spitzer for trying to change this byzantine system!

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 March 18, 2007

Albany Divided on Calculation of School Aid

By MICHAEL COOPER

www.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/nyregion/18budget.html

ALBANY, March 17 — For years, school aid in New York has been calculated with dozens of formulas that make the Human Genome Project look downright intelligible by comparison. But year after year, no matter which districts gained or lost students, or what data was plugged into the formulas, New York City always received close to 39 percent of new spending and Long Island received between 12 and 13 percent.

This year Gov. Eliot Spitzer, facing a court order that said New York City’s schools were being shortchanged, is trying to change the way the pie is divided. He is calling for a $7 billion increase in education spending over the next four years, and he wants to replace most of the existing formulas with a simpler, more universal one. He wants more money to go to the state’s high-needs districts, with 46 percent of the new aid next year sent to New York City and only 8 percent to Long Island.

This has the Republican-led State Senate up in arms, since many members come from suburban districts that have benefited from the old system. The idea of “breaking shares” has long been anathema to them.

So the Senate made a counterproposal that called for spending even more money than the governor called for, and adjusting his new uber-formula. The result? Their plan would send about 38.9 percent of the increased aid to New York City and about 13 percent to Long Island, maintaining the historic share system, according to an analysis by the governor’s budget division.

“What they have done in their budget is lock in place the shares system,” said Billy Easton, the executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, a group that has long advocated sending more aid to poor districts. “Their distribution formula is almost obscene in the way that it favors wealthy districts at the expense of high-needs students. In essence, they are locking in a lifetime of inequity.”