Hochul, lawmakers react to long-awaited school aid overhaul report

And 33 more bills were sent to Hochul Monday evening.

Good afternoon — it’s Tuesday and the National Day of Giving.

In today’s CapCon:

• A long-awaited report on New York’s Foundation aid formula, which determines state funding, received consistent reactions from Hochul and lawmakers.

• The judiciary wants a 10% budget increase next year. Here’s where they want to spend the money.

• 33 more bills were sent to Hochul Monday evening, including one on transparency in state contracts.

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(Lori Van Buren/Times Union)

🍎 Long-awaited Foundation Aid report receives mixed reactions from Hochul, lawmakers

Everyone in the state Legislature was really mad this year when Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed an overhaul of the state’s school funding formula that would’ve reduced aid for some districts.

Hochul took issue with the fact that some school districts — 227 of them it turns out — were sitting on more in cash reserves than was allowed under state law. That rule is intended to incentivize districts to spend the money they receive from local taxpayers and the state.

At the same time, districts that had lost student enrollment were still receiving funding based on old data, she said, warping the picture of what they actually needed from the state.

Lawmakers didn’t necessarily disagree with those points. They also thought an update to how the state calculates school aid, called the Foundation Aid formula, was overdue. It hasn’t been updated since 2007, after all.

So Hochul and the Legislature agreed to punt the issue to next year and direct the Rockefeller Institute, an entity within SUNY, to study the formula, solicit public input and release its findings in a report.

That report was released Monday evening and I spent a few hours today going through it so you don’t have to.

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I’ll tell you about the big-ticket item in the report in a second but check out this story I wrote over on the Times Union website for an even deeper dive into the findings. (Free for CapCon subscribers)

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It’s a packed report that recommends using more recent data and utilizing other ways to measure things like poverty and income levels in each district.

But the part most observers had their eyes on was something called “Save Harmless.” That’s a state policy that guarantees school districts will receive at least as much funding from the state as they did the year before, even if other factors change.

That policy is widely supported in the Legislature, which is why I wasn’t surprised to see opposition Tuesday to the report’s recommendation that it be phased out.

Senate Education Chair Shelley Mayer (Phoebe Sheehan/Times Union)

🗣️ How Hochul and key lawmakers have reacted.

Hochul is in the middle of crafting her executive budget proposal, which she’s required to present in January. School aid accounts for about a third of the state’s operating budget.