A tremendous victory for charter schools in NY State; School Aid Fight Erupts in Albany as Budget Passes
From: Jacalyn Cortley [mailto:jcortley@nycsa.org]
Sent: Sunday, April 01, 2007 2:26 PM
To: jcocrtley@nycsa.org
Subject: LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: Legislature Votes to Double Charter Cap
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Dear Charter School Colleagues:
This morning both houses of the state legislature made it official by voting to increase the charter school cap to 200, doubling the prior limit. You should have received our press release, which also will be posted on our website www.NYCSA.org.
As you know, the legislative leaders and Governor Spitzer agreed late Thursday to raise the charter cap. However, we at the Charter Schools Association held off any celebratory announcements until we were certain of the details accompanying this agreement. Sure enough, as we informed you previously, subsequent to this agreement numerous attempts were made by legislators to include provisions that in our view would have seriously impeded the operations of existing and any future charter schools. It was not until late Saturday that we were certain those negative provisions were excluded from the final State Budget.
As to the details of the final, approved changes to the charter law, they include in summary, the following:
1) The cap on charter schools is doubled, from 100 to 200, with half the increase (50) reserved for New York City and can be approved by any of the three charter authorizers;
2) No reductions in charter funding;
3) No new, higher-cost building mandates;
4) A new notification and hearing requirement for districts intending to use part of an occupied district school building to house a charter school;
5) Several statutory timeline and process changes, including moving the October submission “deadline” to July; a required planning year for charters issued annually on or after March 15; a 90-day “comment” period on approved charters sent to the Board of Regents (increased from the current 60-day period); and required school district public hearings on charters newly proposed, revised, or renewed (failure of a district to hold a hearing then mandates the Regents to do so);
6) A process requirement for charter schools to demonstrate “good faith efforts” to attract and retain students with disabilities and limited English proficient students comparable to the district of location (rather than a mandatory number of such students, as was proposed);
7) An added threshold of review by a charter authorizer for new charter school applications proposed in districts with more than 5 percent of its enrollment already in charter schools, to ensure a “significant educational benefit” to the students expected to attend the proposed school; and
8) New charter schools (not existing ones), approved after July 1, 2007, with enrollment above 250 students within the first two instructional years must be unionized for all staff (not just instructional staff) in separate negotiating units within the respective local bargaining organizations.
In short, we believe the above measures are mostly process-related, and some provisions codifying existing practices by schools and charter authorizers. That said, we did oppose several of these measures, especially the added year for unionization, which we believe restricted the rightful choice of faculty and staff. In the end, we believe this and the other compromise provisions were manageable.
Please also feel free to contact NYCSA any time this coming week if you have any questions or wish to discuss further the details of the changes to the charter school law.
Finally, thank you from all of us at the Association for all the work you did in contacting your state legislators and spreading the word in the last two weeks. It was a precarious period for charter schools which we believe came out victorious overall.
Goin’ fishing …
PETER MURPHY
Policy Director/COO
NY Charter Schools Association
120 Broadway
Albany, New York 12204-2703
Ofc.: (518) 694-3110 (ext. 104)
Fax: (518) 694-3115
Cell: (518) 369-1154
e-mail: PeterMurphy@NYCSA.org
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School Aid Fight Erupts in Albany as Budget Passes
ALBANY, April 1 — Lawmakers finished passing an estimated $120.9 billion budget Sunday morning that they had not had time to read and had barely debated. But almost immediately after the final vote, the governor’s staff and the Legislature began to dispute what was written in the most contentious portion of the budget — education — underscoring the secretive nature of the negotiations that led to thousands of pages of legislation.
Though New York City will receive more money for schools, the final product left questions about how substantially its share of state education aid had grown and how far the city would have to go in reducing class sizes.
And while school districts across the state will receive more money, sometimes much more, Westchester legislators were left wondering whether Long Island had made off with some of their county’s rightful share.
posted by Whitney Tilson at 12:16 PM
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