Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the 2005-06 Executive Budget proposal in relation to education funding. As you pursue budget negotiations, I respectfully ask that you consider two important education funding issues that greatly impact the children and families of the City School District of Albany: Charter school and state aid funding.

Charter school funding

The Albany Board of Education has been very clear in its belief that the growth of charter schools in Albany should come to an end. In fact, this past December, the Albany Board of Education, the Albany Common Council and Albany County Legislature, all passed resolutions calling for a moratorium on charter schools in Albany.

The Albany School District and the Board of Education do not support charter schools for a myriad of reasons, but mainly because of the way they are funded. The district’s formal position does not articulate opposition to education reform as a whole, but rather to the way charter schools are funded. Our position is that funding charter schools through local school districts and its taxpayers—without their input—is wholly unjust and unreasonable, and must be stopped.

If the Governor and the Legislature believe that charter schools are a valuable tool in education reform, then by all means fund them. But fund them in a way that doesn’t burden school districts and the taxpayers who support their children’s public education.

It’s important to note that whatever benefits charter schools may bring to a community, they also bring a wide array of problems—both financial and academic.  In Albany for instance, losing five students to a charter school, at $8,800 per pupil, constitutes a total cost of $44,000 to taxpayers—or the equivalent of one teacher. Yet losing five students does not allow any reduction of teachers in the school district.

Moreover, Albany has a disproportionate number of charter schools, compared to the rest of the state. New York State is limited to setting up no more than 100 charter schools. With a statewide population of 19 million, that amounts to one charter school for every 190,000 people. On a per capita basis, Albany should have no more than one-half of a charter school. However, there are five approved charter schools in Albany—two currently in operation and three expected to open next fall.  That’s too many for a city with a population of less than 100,000, and far too many for Albany school taxpayers to support financially.

As educators, we believe in, and support, education reform, but at what price?

As it is now, 8% of the district’s budget is earmarked for charter schools. When five charter schools are fully enrolled they will siphon off more than $28 million or approximately 17.4% of the district’s budget. The state has already indicated that anything higher than an 8% impact is too much.

Given these statistics, we say ‘enough is enough.’

Perhaps we could embrace this method of education reform if charter school funding didn’t drain taxpayer dollars and undermine our school improvement efforts.  Furthermore, the cost that charter schools have imposed on the City School District of Albany is even greater than the amount of aid lost.

For example, New Covenant Charter School in Albany has produced test scores so low that the SUNY Trustees voted earlier this year to shut down its seventh and eighth grades and return 150 students to the district. More than 6 out of ten of those New Covenant students came back with such serious math deficiencies that the district had to hire additional teaching assistants, at an increased cost of $450,000, to try to bring them up to grade level.

To date, the charter school program has forced the Albany school district to take funds away from critical programs and, thus, students to give them to unproven, experimental charter schools.  In fact, this has hampered the district’s ability to provide its student with a “sound basic education” specified by the Regents Learning Standards, or to help all students meet or exceed the standards set forth in the “Leave No Child Left Behind Act” and the NYS learning standards.

We strongly urge the Legislature to stop funding charter schools through local school districts and its taxpayers.  Either fund charter schools on the state level, or allow school districts to choose if and how many charter schools would be established within their district.

State aid formula

Small city school districts, such as Albany, have disproportionate numbers of students who are poor, students with limited English proficiency, and students with special needs.

As educators in a small city school district, we acknowledge and accept these challenges. In fact, we cater our programs around these challenges so we can ensure all of our students receive a high-quality education and are afforded opportunities that will help guide them to become educated, productive citizens in society.

Yet, addressing the challenges of an urban district is made even more difficult because the current state aid formula denies adequate funding levels to school districts with the highest needs.

For years advocacy groups, such as the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the NYS Association of Small City Schools, and the Midstate Schools Finance Consortium—to name a few—have been lobbying lawmakers to bring fairness to the school aid formula, create a more predictable funding system, develop a funding system that is more understandable and easier to manage, and establish a system that relies less on the property tax.

The Albany School District supports these requests 100 percent. The time to change the way schools are funded is long overdue. The standards have changed, the mandates have increased, and the demands on students are growing, but the way state funding is calculated and distributed to schools has not changed. It still fails to deliver adequate resources to the school districts with the greatest needs.

Although the City School District of Albany continues to make strides toward academic achievement, just think how much more support it could provide its students if the state aid formula more carefully targeted resources to the highest-need districts and highest-cost pupils in the state.

Under the current antiquated formula, the average state aid received by school districts in New York is 40 percent of their budget. Albany consistently receives less than 28 percent, which is not only significantly lower than the statewide average but also lower than most of Albany’s neighboring districts.

Furthermore, studies show that schools with a high percentage of students living in poverty need more funding than schools with average poverty levels, in order to provide students with the resources and programs that they need to succeed. Students living in poverty frequently lack learning readiness skills when they arrive at school and often need additional time, help and resources to bring them to the standard level of learning.

Yet, Albany’s state aid proportion compared to poverty levels doesn’t add up: According to figures from February 2005, more than 65% of the district’s population receives free or reduced priced lunch (which is provided to low-income families), but only 28% of the school budget is funded through state aid. The rest of the budget falls on the back of its taxpayers.

We urge you to restructure the convoluted state aid formula to make it fair, equitable, understandable and predictable from year to year. We urge you to put together a formula that takes into account what it costs to meet all students’ needs—those at-risk, those with disabilities, those who are English Language Learners.

As you continue to review the 2005-06 executive budget we urge the Legislature to address the fundamental pieces of public education funding that create roadblocks for our district and places an unfair tax burden on the citizens of Albany. You can remedy this by:

1. Ending the mandate that requires local school districts to financially supporting charter schools; and

2. Replacing the existing convoluted and unbalanced state aid formula with one that is fair for all school districts (urban, suburban, and rural) and that is truly based on need.