Millions More For School Programs
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, announced that the budget agreement for the state’s 2012-13 fiscal year allocates $20.3 billion for General Support for Public Schools, $805 million more than the previous fiscal year.
The funding includes an additional $751 million toward formulabased aids. The 3.9 increase in total education funding is the first year-toyear increase in three years, according to Silver and Nolan.
The Assembly also was successful in boosting funding for the foundation aid formula and providing financial support through a restoration of the gap elimination adjustment (GEA) and for reimbursements for expense based aids. Overall, the budget agreement provides a $200 million increase above the executive’s budget for formula based aids.
“In this agreement, we keep the promise to increase our investment in public education, the cornerstone of our economy; providing the greatest assistance to the neediest school districts, while at the same time, encouraging innovation and better performance,” said Silver. “The increased funding for schools included in this budget strongly supports our conference’s goal to rebuild the ladder to the middle class so New Yorkers can attain financial security.”
“I’m proud that in a struggling economy the Assembly was able to ensure that the 2012-13 budget maintained the first part of a two-year pledge to increase aid to education by four percent,” said Nolan. “With the additional funding, we were able to continue critical school aid programs in this budget, which will help strengthen our schools so that our students can receive the quality education they deserve.”
Other state education programs also received increased funding, including teacher centers ($10 million), adult literacy ($1 million), aid to libraries ($3.9 million) and the Comprehensive Attendance Program for non-public schools ($7 million).
