Catch 22: Financial penalty for schools moving off 'persistently struggling' list

On Board Online • May 2, 2016

By Cathy Woodruff
Senior Writer

For nearly 70 schools around New York, the word that they soon will graduate from state lists of struggling and persistently struggling schools has created a classic good news-bad news scenario.

Losing the label has been cause for celebration in many schools, lifting them from a state-imposed program known as receivership. But by shedding that status, nine schools now stand to lose shares of $75 million the Legislature set aside for "persistently struggling" schools.

"It's a bit of a Catch 22," said NYSSBA Executive Director Timothy G. Kremer. "Why should improvement lead to ineligibility for money that the Legislature set aside for schools serving the most vulnerable populations?"

After less than a year in "superintendent receivership," which provides enhanced powers for superintendents to institute turnaround strategies and even override school boards, nearly half of the145 schools targeted for improvement will lose the label at the end of this school year.

State law describes how being on a federal list of priority schools repeatedly can lead to a school being put into receivership, but it does not address how receivership status is affected if a school comes off that list. So, the Board of Regents adopted a regulation that says schools in receivership will lose that status at the end of the school year if they are removed from the federal list of priority schools.

When the new federal designations were determined early this year, the State Education Department (SED) announced that a number of schools would come out of receivership.

That announcement has touched off a disagreement between two state agencies. SED officials say they had a ministerial duty to update the list, but the governor's Budget Division has accused SED of acting "unilaterally" to remove the schools from receivership, triggering a halt in funding under the law.

"These schools continue to be eligible for the dedicated state funding if they remain part of the program," said Budget Division spokesman Morris Peters. "We believe it would be a travesty for these schools, many of which have been failing for more than 10 years, to be prematurely stripped of their designation and removed from the program before the first year of their improvement plans (was) even completed."

"Further," Peters added, "it is a blatant disservice to the children who have been condemned to a substandard education."

But a spokesman for SED said schools that were promised money and other support through the receivership program should continue to receive it, regardless of their status on the list.

"It makes no sense to take away funding from schools that have just started to show progress and that need all the support and resources we can give to keep them from backsliding," said SED spokesman Jonathan Burman. "For these schools to lose their funding would be to punish them for success."

Cutting off funding, Burman said, is inconsistent with the standard the federal government applies for its School Improvement Grant program, which allows schools to continue to receive grants, even after they return to good standing.

Burman also defended SED's decision to remove the schools from the state struggling and persistently struggling lists.

The receivership law "was rather prescriptive" about how schools would be identified as struggling or persistently struggling, he said, and Commissioner MaryEllen Elia's determination that the schools should be removed is consistent with regulations adopted by the Board of Regents.

"That regulatory framework was developed through an open process that included input from a variety of stakeholders, a public comment period and board deliberations that were open to the public," Burman said. "No one is saying that the schools that will be removed from this designation are doing fine and that we can turn our attention somewhere else."

It is not clear, now, how much of the $75 million allocated in last year's budget for persistently struggling schools will actually find its way to the schools who were supposed to receive the support by the end of the school year.

In February, an SED tally showed only about $5.2 million of the money had been distributed, and a two-year cycle for allocations from the fund was planned.