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- Reform New York’s Education
Finance System – New York’s school aid system
is overly complex, outdated and inequitable. The New York State
Board of Regents and the New York State Comptroller have led educational
stakeholders in focusing attention on the fact that the formula
fails to drive resources to the districts where they are most
needed. It also hampers districts’ ability to direct resources
where they are most needed within schools. DCSBA concurs that
the state aid distribution system must be adequate, flexible,
equitable, predictable, and clear.
- Reform New York State’s Budget
Process – New York’s practice of adopting late
state budgets is notorious. Some believe there are no consequences
to a late state budget. The annual gridlock over the adoption
of a state budget jeopardizes academic programs and services for
children and misleads local taxpayers. DCSBA urges the Legislature
and the Governor to work together to negotiate a good budget,
on time. It’s good for the taxpayer, good for business and,
most importantly, good for our students and New York State’s
future.
- Provide relief to Local Taxpayers
through continuance of the STAR program, maintenance of BOCES
and building aid – Education is the nation’s
most regulated enterprise. The largest employer in many communities,
local school districts are often mired in red tape that prevents
them from operating in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.
Too much of recent state aid increases has been devoted to fulfill
in state mandates that have little relevance to improving student
achievement or operating a successful school district. School
boards’ ability to govern their districts and direct resources
to the learning process is threatened if we do not relieve districts
and the local taxpayers who support them of many of these burdensome
mandates.
- Support local control of education
and the retention of BOE authority – Education in
New York State has a long history of community-based effort. Communities
directly participate in structuring the education of their children
by electing school board members and approving school budgets.
No other level of government provides such public accountability.
This accountability ensures that decisions and policies reflect
a community’s goals for its children. Communities must continue
to control decisions affecting public education in their schools.
DCSBA will continue to strongly oppose all efforts to diminish
local authority.
- Make debt limit equitable for all
school districts; eliminate bias against small cities.
When legislation was passed several years ago requiring small
city school districts to have public votes on capital projects
(the same as other school districts) they failed to change legislation
concerning the debt limit of small city school districts. Small
city school districts have a lower debt limit, due to the way
it is calculated, then other school districts. Changing the formula
to calculate debit limit to be the same as other school districts
will allow the small city districts to plan and use capital projects
for the betterment of their students and community like all other
districts.
- Support Impact Fees as
an effort to assist school districts absorb the population impact
resulting from residential development. Impact fees would
assist in providing adequate facilities, program improvements
and services necessary to serve the growth in student population.
Many towns currently
collect impact fees for recreational use. DCSBA urges the New
York State Legislature to work with local governmental agencies
to change the current law so that the burden of increased student
population will be more equitably shared among those who benefit.
- Improve State testing and the reform
the resources available to local districts for assessment analysis
– Achieving higher standards for each student in New York
State is an educational imperative, most recently reinforced by
the federal “No Child Left Behind” law. While assessments
are a necessary and integral component of a standards-based reform
effort, their content and use must help rather than hinder the
cause. DCSBA and NYSSBA urge the Board of Regents to improve the
state’s assessment system to ensure that it reflects the
standards, serves as a way to identify students needing extra
help, provides vital information to teachers and administrators
about program effectiveness and measures the student’s performance
rather than his or her school.
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