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NYSUT: Pataki budget wrong on every level
Feb. 16, 2006 NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan Lubin confers with Director of Legislation Steve Allinger, center, and Carol Gerstl of the UFT before Lubin testified on the state education budget. Calling Gov. Pataki's budget "an all-out assault on public education, on children and on property tax payers," NYSUT leaders are challenging the Legislature to craft a better spending package for public school students and the institutions they attend. "On every level, the governor's budget is just wrong for New York 's children," New York State United Teachers President Dick Iannuzzi said. "He has completely ignored the funding gap and the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision. Either the governor simply doesn't understand what's happening in our schools, or he simply doesn't care." In testimony before the joint Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means committees, NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan Lubin said the Pataki budget misses an opportunity to invest a $2 billion surplus in New York 's public schools. Instead, Lubin told the panel in January, the proposed budget is rife with schemes to divert funds away from public education, including a multi-million-dollar "backdoor voucher plan," an effort to increase the number of charter schools and an incentive for taxpayers to vote 'no' on school budgets. "The governor is proposing a $400 million voucher plan in the guise of a tax credit that will do nothing to improve our schools," Iannuzzi explained. "It won't hire one new teacher for the classroom; it won't place one new book on the shelf; it won't put one new computer in the school library. And that's just one bad piece of a really bad budget." Pataki is seeking to increase the maximum number of charter schools from 100 to 250, even though the experimental schools have failed to distinguish themselves from public schools since their creation was authorized in 1998, Lubin said. "The governor continues to expand a program that has not shown positive results," he said. "And school districts are facing real fiscal problems because of the way the state funds charter schools." NYSUT is supporting legislation to increase charter school accountability and address the financial impact they have on school districts that are forced to host them. 'Taxpayer bribery' Lubin also called on state lawmakers to reject the governor's attempts at what he called "taxpayer bribery" — a major change in the STAR school tax relief program. Pataki has proposed giving $400 rebates to taxpayers in any district that voluntarily holds budget increases to the austerity level required of districts on a contingency budget. In 2006-07, that increase will be limited to 4 percent over a district's current year's spending. Other proposals in the governor's spending plan that the statewide union opposes include limiting districts to a single vote on a school budget and requiring that bond issues be voted on at the same time as the budget. NYSUT will also seek to halt proposed cuts in special education funding and Pataki's perennial efforts to slash BOCES aid. — Clarisse Butler Banks |
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