Ossining Schools to Rally Against State Aid Injustice

Forty-four million dollars and counting—that’s the amount of education aid New York State has unfairly denied Ossining Schools since 2009. That’s why district leaders are rallying the community to attend an urgent meeting Wednesday at Claremont Elementary School at 7:30 p.m. to demand that state lawmakers change the way education aid is distributed.

At issue is the state’s failure to abide by a 2007 law establishing a formula to ensure that all school districts get their fair share of education aid. The law was passed in response to a 2006 court decision that found the state was not providing the aid needed to guarantee a “sound basic education” to all New York students.

For two years, districts across the state received the Foundation Aid to which they were entitled under the new formula. In 2008-2009, however, the aid was frozen at current levels. As a result, Ossining currently receives only 55 percent of the aid it should receive. In fact, only seven school districts in the state receive less Foundation Aid than Ossining.

While the majority of districts have been denied the full benefit of the 2007 law, districts like Ossining that have experienced an increase in enrollment and a decrease in wealth have been especially hard hit. There are districts with greater wealth that are receiving a larger portion of Foundation Aid than Ossining. In some instances, they are receiving 100 percent or more of the aid that was promised.

“We want the state legislature to fix the state aid formula so we receive our fair share,” said Alita Zuber, assistant superintendent for business in the Ossining School District. “Unless the state unfreezes the Foundation Aid, Ossining students will continue to be deprived of their constitutional rights.”

To raise awareness in the community and develop a plan of action, the Ossining Board of Education is holding a special meeting Wednesday at Claremont Elementary School at 7:30 p.m. A panel of experts will be on hand to explain the inequities in state education aid and discuss possible actions to combat this injustice.

Panelists will include: Wendy Lecker, senior attorney for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity Project; Joe Rogers, Jr., of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University; Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education; Michael Fox of the New York State School Boards Association; Steve Golas, a state aid analyst with Questar III BOCES; and Anthony Cashara of School Aid Specialists.

"To think that we have had to make very difficult cuts that have compromised the quality of education for our children when we did not have to do so is sickening,” said Lutonya M. Russell-Humes of the Budget Advisory Committee. “The State of New York needs to answer to why state foundation aid remains frozen to the detriment of so many school districts, including Ossining."

There are currently two challenges to New York’s system for distributing state education aid: one is a lawsuit filed by eight, small city school districts charging the state with chronically underfunding their districts since the freeze; the other is a federal civil rights challenge being made by some of the same school districts on behalf of their minority students. Data shows that the existing system for state aid distribution unfairly affects racially diverse districts where minorities make up more than half of the student body.

The issue of education aid inequity is especially important now, Zuber said, given the challenges posed by the state tax levy cap. As a result of declining state aid, limits to the tax levy and increasing state and federal mandates, school districts across the state are moving closer each year to fiscal and educational insolvency.

With fiscal insolvency, school districts are like bankrupt businesses; they are unable to pay their bills. With educational insolvency, school districts are unable to fulfill state and federal requirements for instructing students. In other words, they are not able to provide a sound basic education.

Carlos Desmaras, a member of the Budget Advisory Committee, said he was shocked to learn how freezing state education aid had affected districts across the state in such disparate ways.

“Some districts are being overpaid by tens of millions of dollars and our district has been underpaid by more than $44 million,” said Desmaras, who works for Mesirow Financial, Inc.  “The freeze has the effect of defunding growing and high-need districts and overpaying shrinking and low-need districts. The intent of the freeze was to do no harm; they need to know it is harming Ossining.”