Advocacy Day Forum notes

[Timothy Weber]

Thanks to Carol Warshawsky for these notes on this weekend's forum:

Advocacy Day and what we can do!

The Advocacy Day Forum was inspirational as Martha Frommelt lead off with an expansive enumeration of all the ways in which our schools enrich the lives of our children. But it was disheartening to hear speaker after speaker explain what the impact proposed cuts in state aid will have on our districts.
While a video of the forum will be sent to our legislators, it is important that we, the voters, let our voices be heard.
Speakers at the Forum made it clear that not only will proposed cuts in aid hurt our schools, they put at risk our upstate economy. Those school districts that rely most heavily on state aid are the ones poised to lose the most. So the absurd situation arises that those who can least afford tax levy increases (hence the reason they receive higher state aid in the first place) will have to raise their tax levies all the more to keep crucial programs.
Albany has heard from educators and board members ad infinitum; now is the time for them to hear from us -- the ones who happen to elect them.

What Can We Do.
We accept there will be reduced state aid but there are things that legislators can do right now to help.
1. An on-time state budget. Without an on-time budget we must assume the worst and plan our school budgets based on the full proposed cut in revenue. We won't be able to spend any additional money that may come in because our appropriations will have been set. We need the state to have their budget in place before we have to take our budgets to the voter.
2. Mandate and regulation relief.
a. more flexibility around reserve fund use during economic downturns.
b. remove the Wicks law permanently (a requirement for bidding capital projects which raise our costs).
c. have a real moratorium on unfunded mandates and consider the costs to districts of the present ones:
Medicaid compliance--plan and compliance officer; finger printing--costs would go down if the SED would allow use of the DMV fingerprinting.
d. student testing (3-12) has increased and so have the costs.
e. required reporting is costly and burdens us with the need of technical infrastructure to handle the work. After receiving stimulus money in 2009-10, districts found out they needed to send in a host of new reports with data they hadn't known they needed to collect and very little time in which to do so.
f. school plans are required to be written and submitted to SED but it is unclear that anyone reviews these. Again, unnecessary cost and use of time.
g. several programs are required with no renumeration from those mandating them (mentoring, staff development, CPR / 1st aid training, ID badges/fingerprinting, cost to transfer homeless children within 50 miles of the school, NCLB testing, IDEA: special education, AIS, 504 mandates, RTI, etc)
h. change the way the contingency budget is formulated. Our spending is not based on the CPI so using that as a measure is unreasonable. If necessary, use a 3-5 year average so we don't end up with a year like this one where the CPI is a negative number.
i. stop shifting costs of the pre school program from the county, which has oversight to the school district.

3. Minimize cuts in aid and spread them over a few years.

Legislators must demonstrate foresight beyond their next election. If we do not offer our children the pure basics: a public education, what hope can we have for our future? If school districts are forced to make severe cuts in our budgets, the loss of jobs will further devastate our upstate economy. Education matters and will help us build a stronger tomorrow. Don't make cuts to our future.

Liz Lawyer's article in the Ithaca Journal does an excellent job of summarizing the Forum, I suggest you take some time to read it. Also find attached the powerpoint used at the Forum. Finally, the ICSD website has Brad Grainger's comments on the use of Reserve Funds and should have the video and powerpoint presentation available at some point.

PLEASE join together to contact your legislators in Albany and in DC.
If you are interested in working together to place advertisements in our newspapers or on radio, please contact me so we can work in unison and find the funds to do so. Thank you.

Carol Warshawsky
Ithaca PTA Council president
2009-2010

[krodriguez]

Look up your State Rep and Senator here:

http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/

http://www.nysenate.gov/senators