Statement released by
Glynda C. Carr, Executive Director, Education Voters
March 31, 2009 – President Obama put education at the center of his plan for America’s economic recovery and growth. The federal stimulus package New York received helped to restore much-needed funding and prevented teacher lay-offs and devastating cuts in the classroom. Unfortunately, New York State’s elected leaders chose another path: they invested zero dollars in public education
Today, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity will suffer a hard set-back. The education budget freezes the CFE increase for the next two years, and thereby stretches out the Campaign for Fiscal Equity agreement to seven years instead of four years. New York’s children have to wait 3 MORE years after having already waited 16 years for fair school funding.
The Governor and the Legislature did keep their commitment to accountability and maintained the Contract for Excellence, which mandates that the CFE funds serve the neediest students and school. and that the funding is invested in programs and strategies that increase student achievement.
The budget being voted on today has some good steps forward, including reform of the state’s personal income tax structure with the enactment of the Fair Share Tax Reform. We applaud the Legislature for showing the political strength to ask wealthy New Yorkers to contribute a bit more, so that the budget was not balanced solely on the backs of working families. This is a giant step towards a progressive tax reform, but it didn’t go far enough. Education Voters along with other allied partners including the One New York Coalition would have like to see a permanent tax structure instead of a three-year temporary surcharge and the inclusion of a third bracket increase on New Yorkers making over a million dollars.
We acknowledge that our elected leaders were faced with some hard decisions, but unfortunately they chose to put our children’s future on hold. Three million school-aged children across the state should not be asked to wait while we attempt to fix the failures of Wall Street. They are the next generation of business and civic leaders and our investment in their future is critical to the future of a thriving economy.
The tough choices have been made, now it is time to regroup, reorganize and develop the policies necessary in this tough economic climate to ensure that every child is equipped with the educational tools to compete in the 21st century knowledge economy.
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Statement released by Glynda C. Carr, Executive Director, Education VotersMarch 31, 2009 – President Obama put education at the center of his plan for America’s economic recovery and growth. The federal stimulus package New York received helped to restore much-needed funding and prevented teacher lay-offs and devastating cuts in the classroom. Unfortunately, New York State’s elected leaders chose another path: they invested zero dollars in public education
Today, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity will suffer a hard set-back. The education budget freezes the CFE increase for the next two years, and thereby stretches out the Campaign for Fiscal Equity agreement to seven years instead of four years. New York’s children have to wait 3 MORE years after having already waited 16 years for fair school funding.
The Governor and the Legislature did keep their commitment to accountability and maintained the Contract for Excellence, which mandates that the CFE funds serve the neediest students and school. and that the funding is invested in programs and strategies that increase student achievement.
The budget being voted on today has some good steps forward, including reform of the state’s personal income tax structure with the enactment of the Fair Share Tax Reform. We applaud the Legislature for showing the political strength to ask wealthy New Yorkers to contribute a bit more, so that the budget was not balanced solely on the backs of working families. This is a giant step towards a progressive tax reform, but it didn’t go far enough. Education Voters along with other allied partners including the One New York Coalition would have like to see a permanent tax structure instead of a three-year temporary surcharge and the inclusion of a third bracket increase on New Yorkers making over a million dollars.
We acknowledge that our elected leaders were faced with some hard decisions, but unfortunately they chose to put our children’s future on hold. Three million school-aged children across the state should not be asked to wait while we attempt to fix the failures of Wall Street. They are the next generation of business and civic leaders and our investment in their future is critical to the future of a thriving economy.
The tough choices have been made, now it is time to regroup, reorganize and develop the policies necessary in this tough economic climate to ensure that every child is equipped with the educational tools to compete in the 21st century knowledge economy.