With much anticipation, the Rockefeller Institute of Government released its “Review of New York’s Foundation Aid Education Funding Formula with Recommendations for Improvement” this past Monday evening. Coming in at 314 pages, the NYSSBA Governmental Relations team has completed a full review of the report and created an easy to digest summary that can be found here.
Within the summary, you can also find links to the testimony we submitted during the public hearing phase of the Institute’s work and the Educational Conference Board’s Foundation Aid recommendations from late last year. NYSSBA released a press statement on Tuesday morning that you can find here.
2025 Legislative Preview Webinar Recording
During this past Tuesday’s “2025 Legislative Preview Webinar” a brief overview of the Rockefeller report was discussed. For those that were unable to join us live, you can find a recording of the webinar here. The webinar included Federal and State education outlooks, a discussion of NYSSBA budget and legislative priorities and a Q&A with our members. We hope this webinar serves as a primer for NYSSBA’s advocacy in the year ahead. The power point slides can be found here.
Zero-Emission Bus Legislation Delivered to the Governor
During the final weeks of legislative session, the Senate and Assembly passed a NYSSBA-supported bill that would help ease the required transition to zero-emission buses. S.9292-A (Mayer)/A.9238-A (Woerner) would shorten the period of time over which transportation aid is provided to districts for purchasing and leasing zero-emission school buses, from twelve to eight years. This would better match the budgetary process for zero-emission bus purchases and leases to the actual life expectancy of such buses.
The bill was just recently delivered to the Governor for her review, so now is the time to let the Governor know how important this issue is to school board members and school districts, and ask her to sign the bill into law. You can do so through our pre-populated ‘Take Action’ letter below.