Cuomo budget: Funds for pre-K, technology, and merit pay

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing a school spending plan that would allocate an extra $807 million in state school aid — including through a teacher merit pay program and an expansion of pre-kindergarten funding.

Cuomo outlined his education priorities during a presentation today in Albany about his proposed budget for the 2014-2015 fiscal year. Most of the priorities are familiar, having been floated in interviews, proposed in his State of the State speech or endorsed by his education advisors in recent weeks.

But an accompanying budget bill and funding allocations added new details and dollar signs to Cuomo’s rhetoric. And although no funding came with his comments, the governor dipped his toe into the state’s controversial rollout of Common Core standards after staying silent on the issue for months.

The prominence of education initiatives in this year’s budget proposal means that they are likely to be the scene of a showdown when Cuomo and legislators hash out a final budget, which must happen by April 1. How to fund the expansion of pre-K programs will likely be the biggest battleground, but it is by no means the only one. Here are other points of interest, and possible points of contention, in Cuomo’s education budget proposal.

  • State education funding: Cuomo’s 2014-2015 budget includes $21.9 billion for the next school year, an overall increase of 3.8 percent — or $807 million, a substantially smaller school aid increase than he proposed last year. Most of the total, $682 million, would go toward a general pot of funds that gets distributed to districts through several funding streams based on their need. The sum is less than the Board of Regents’ $1 billion request and a fraction of the $1.9 billion total that some lawmakers and advocates are aggressively pushing for.
  • Pre-kindergarten: A portion of next year’s funds, $100 million, would be set aside for districts that have the capacity to add more universal kindergarten seats. It is an alternative proposal to the locally-funded tax plan proposed by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said today that he would continue to push his funding strategy anyway. Cuomo’s proposal calls for an overall $1.5 billion investment in pre-K over five years, the length of de Blasio’s pre-K plan. De Blasio’s allies immediately responded by saying Cuomo’s allocation wouldn’t be enough even for New York City.
  • After-school program funding: Cuomo is also hoping to allocate $720 million in funding over five years for after school programs — tackling the other portion of de Blasio’s tax proposal. But the spending wouldn’t start until the 2015-2016 school year. De Blasio has proposed lengthening the school day for middle schools using the same tax revenue that would fund universal pre-K, beginning as soon as this fall.
  • Teacher merit pay: Teachers who receive “highly effective” ratings on their most recent evaluations would be eligible for up to $20,000 in a one-time bonus as part of a grant program — called a “Teacher Excellence Fund” — that Cuomo wants to fund with $20 million next year. According to proposed legislation, districts would be more likely to win a grant if they promise to pay top teachers to work in high-need schools, to fill high-need subject areas, or to stay in the classroom instead of leaving for another position. City and teachers union officials were cool to Cuomo’s proposal when he first aired it earlier this month.
  • Classroom technology and pre-K facilities: As he indicated in his State of the State address, Cuomo will push for the passage of a $2 billion technology bond that voters would have to approve in November. The borrowed funds would help schools upgrade and enhance their high-speed wireless capacity and purchase computers, servers, interactive whiteboards and tablets for their classrooms. A new detail today is that the bond would also fund facility construction for pre-K programs.
  • Pre-K for charter schools: Charter schools would be able to get a slice of Cuomo’s universal pre-kindergarten funding, he said today in his presentation. Cuomo’s education reform commission proposed the policy shift, which will require legislation to allow, last week, immediately drawing praise from charter school advocates.
  • Fund more P-TECHs: Cuomo wants to spend an additional $5 million next year to duplicate the much-praised model established at Pathways in Technology Early College High School in Brooklyn. The school model serves high-need students and partners with colleges and companies to prepare them for careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
  • Common Core reform: It won’t show up anywhere in his proposed budget bills, but Cuomo said he’s jumping into the state’s controversial rollout of new Common Core standards. The topic has been hotly debated over the last year by state education officials and lawmakers, but Cuomo stood noticeably on the sidelines. He declined to mention the issue in his State of the State speech two weeks ago, raising eyebrows among advocates on both sides of the debate. Today, he acknowledged that the implementation “has been flawed” and said he would convene his own panel to review possible changes.
  • A ban on bubble tests: Cuomo mostly steered clear of teacher evaluations, which figured prominently into his budget plans in the last two years. But he did endorse an increasingly popular proposed ban on standardized testing for kindergarten through second grades, which some districts have used to measure student learning for teacher evaluations. The bill has already been proposed in both the Assembly and the State Senate and endorsed by the State Education Department, teachers unions, and the city education department.