Annual state spending on school aid will be down 6.1 percent this year, according to new spending projections from Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget office.
The new projections show the state’s budget gap growing from $2 billion to up to $3.5 billion. The reductions come after three straight years of budget cuts that have left schools struggling.
Last week parent activists took their message to Cuomo’s office, urging him not to repeal the so-called “millionaire’s-tax” on high-earning residents and the decry the effects of the current state budget on class size in local schools.
Last year, New York City lost $812 million in state education funding. According to the revised plan, the state will spend about $19.6 billion on school aid this year—a reduction of nearly $1.3 billion from the 2011 budget.
Earlier this fall educators and families in New York City and elsewhere rallied against the $1.3 billion already slashed from the state’s education funds, many of them lamenting that beloved after school programs were the first expenses to go at their local schools.