Archive: Opinions

EditorialNew York State is a leader.  Unfortunately it is a leader in hemorrhaging residents to other states.  From 2000 to 2008 our state lost over 1.5 million residents, or about 8% of our population.  The recent behavior of the State Legislature in not positioning the state for federal school aid dollars is a great example of why the Empire State is more and more like the Emperor's New Clothes.  A lot of talk.  Not a lot of clothes.

I'm talking about Governor David Patterson's recent failed bid to make New York eligible for federal 'Race To The Top' school aid dollars.  To put it simply, states that could demonstrate that they are trying to pursue excellence in education could qualify for the lions share of federal school aid dollars.  New York would have been eligible for $700 million.  Lansing's share would have been about $100,000 -- not a huge piece of the $22 million annual budget, but every bit helps in these times that threaten seriously reduced school revenues.  The state could have gotten something for nothing, but it chose not to.

Patterson wanted legislation to remove the 200 school cap from the number of charter schools allowed in New York State, to change the sunset date from July 1, 2010 to January 15, 2010 for tenure determinations, allow the Dormitory Authority to finance charter school capital funding for approved charter schools, and allow the Regents to appoint a temporary receiver to address chronically under-performing schools.

It was defeated in large part because teacher's unions across the state opposed it, and legislators actually tried to curtail charter schools and tossed in some little gems like removing SUNY as a chartering authority.  Threats to teachers' jobs won over creative approaches to helping our children succeed.  That this goes against what teachers are supposed to stand for didn't ring the irony bell in Albany.

Instead of eliminating the cap on charter schools the legislature attempted to torpedo them.  In addition to curtailing SUNY they tried to allow the Regents to limit when and where charter school applications could come from, place severe restrictions on establishing charter schools in public school space, increase costs to charter schools' capital construction costs, and ban charter schools from contracting with private management firms.  For this the legislature would have agreed to a new cap of 400 schools, rendered moot because the restrictions would have reduced the number of charter schools, not increased them.

Even if you are 100% against charter schools, let's look at reality for a moment.  The current cap on charter schools in New York State is 200.  At the moment there are about 120 -- the last statistic I saw counted 118.  To reach the cap 80 or so charter schools would have to be formed.  What are the chances of that happening any time soon with funding for everything drying up?  I say zero. 

So it doesn't matter whether you raise the cap or not -- the likelihood of reaching the cap we have in the foreseeable future is impossible.  That's what I mean by getting something for nothing.  Lifting the cap on charter schools isn't the same as chartering schools.  The rate of new charter schools wouldn't change -- if anything in these economically disastrous times the rate would go down.  Passing Patterson's legislation wouldn't have changed anything in the reality of New York State schools.

Except for one single thing: our state's schools would have gotten 700 million dollars.  We New Yorkers pay plenty in federal taxes.  So if we don't attract federal aid when it becomes available, its our dollars going somewhere else.  We are already taxed more than just about any other Americans.  And now our legislators are throwing our money away.

Worse than that they are throwing money away that could have benefited our children.  That isn't $700M that would have gone to charter schools.  The money would have gone to all our public schools.  That is unconscionable.  That adults would cavalierly throw away money that could actually help our kids learn better is heinous.

I happen to like the charter school idea very much, mainly because it encourages competition in education that encourages innovation.  As a twice-tenured former teacher I certainly understand the appeal of the tenure system and I am not against it -- as long as other systems are put in place to spark creativity and excellence in meaningful ways.

Our representatives in Albany were singularly uncreative, and I would go so far as to say that their behavior was anti-children, putting political and special interests before the best interests of our children.  Personally I am not a Patterson fan, but on this issue he had it 100% right.

If our state legislators don't get why the state is losing so much of its population here it is in a nutshell: they tax too much and they throw money away.  New York is infamous for that behavior.  Why we don't throw the bums out and replace them with responsible representatives I just don't know.

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