April 16, 2018

State Budget Includes New Building Level Reporting Requirement
First Round of Districts Must Comply in 2018

The recently enacted budget includes a modified version of the Executive proposal for school building-based budget approval. Beginning with the 2018-19 school year, any district with at least four schools that receives at least fifty percent of its total revenue through state aid will be required to annually report its budgeted support for individual schools within the district.

April 5, 2018

Earlier today the NYSSBA Governmental Relations team conducted a webinar to present their analysis of the 2018 State Budget and to answer questions.

If you were unable to view the webinar live, you may view it at any time at the link below.

• NYSSBA 2018 Budget Webinar
• NYSSBA 2018 Budget Webinar PowerPoint

March 31, 2018

Late last night and early this morning both houses completed their work to finalize the budget. While complete analysis of the agreement is underway, here are some of the highlights:

• Total Education funding increase of nearly $1 billion
  • Traditional School Aid $859 million
    • Foundation Aid $619 million
    • Expense Based Aids $240 million

March 29, 2018

Yesterday, the first of the final budget bills were introduced in both the Senate and Assembly. However, as has been the case in recent years, the first bills were stripped down to include minimal, noncontroversial content. There is no deal on the major education issues including school aid, nonpublic school issues, charter schools, whether or not school districts will be required to seek state approval of their building level, or per pupil spending plans. A handful of education issues were addressed in the initial bills, including:  

March 26, 2018

This week and last week, the Governmental Relations team was aggressive in working to ensure NYSSBA's budget priorities are included in the final state budget. The Joint Budget Conference committee, made of legislative leaders from each house, known as the "mothership", met and a spending amount or "table target" of $70 million dollars was announced for the education table. Table targets relate to budgeted revenues for Legislative additions to the Executive budget proposal. Some of the items under discussion for funding are school safety, mental health programs and funding for nonpublic schools and the charter industry. 

March 19, 2018

Following the release of the Legislative budget proposals, the Governmental Relations team is hard at work advocating for NYSSBA's budget priorities, including:

• Increasing Foundation Aid funding well above the Executive's proposal
• Eliminating Foundation Aid set-asides, including Contracts for Excellence and Community Schools
• Rejecting the proposed caps on expense-based aids, including transportation, building and BOCES aids

March 16, 2018

Below, you will find NYSSBA analyses of the Senate and Assembly budget proposals.

As we indicated earlier this week, both houses included proposals for significantly more education aid, primarily Foundation Aid, than the executive proposed. However, like the executive, each house included a variety of policy-related proposals directly affecting school districts.

March 14, 2018

Last night, the Senate released its own response to the Executive budget proposal. This afternoon, they introduced the accompanying resolution that provided some additional details around the proposal.

Complete analysis of the bills are underway, however some initial highlights include:

• A $957 million increase in education aid over 2017-18
  • $717.2 million of this funding would be an increase in Foundation Aid
• A rejection of the Executive proposal to cap reimbursement for BOCES, transportation and building aid

March 13, 2018

Last night, the Assembly Majority released their legislative budget proposal. Analysis of the bills is underway, however an initial read reveals that this proposal includes a number of NYSSBA priority items, and rejects some of the most harmful items in the Executive proposal.

The Assembly proposal includes:

• $1.5 billion in education funding over 2017-18
• $1.2 billion in Foundation Aid over 2017-18, more than tripling the Executive proposal
• A commitment to a four year phase-in of the Foundation Aid formula
• An increase in the BOCES district superintendent salary cap  
• Authorization for districts to create a TRS reserve fund

March 7, 2018

Earlier this week, the State Senate and Assembly each acted on a series of bills in response to the most recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida. The Senate acted first, taking up a series of school focused bills on Monday afternoon. Included in their package was legislation that would:

• Make all threats of mass violence against a school a felony
• Alter the reimbursement for the Smart Schools Bond Act payments
• Establish grant programs for some districts to access funding mental health coordinators and school resource officers
• Increase the salary limits for retired police officers serving as school resource officers
• Require that a NYC police officer be placed in every NYC school
• Designate all school resource officers as peace officers
• Create distinctive license plates, the fees for which would fund school safety programs