December 16, 2011
by Christine Yeres
Superintendent Lyn McKay reported that she had met the week before with 50 other superintendents of the Lower Hudson Council of Superintendents and a dozen legislators to discuss the pressures they feel from non-funded or unfunded mandates regulating transportation, fiscal reform and special education in a climate of diminishing funding.
For example, according to a December 9 Journal News article, Hudson Valley schools seek voice to reduce state mandates, if school districts were to succeed in changing the outside distance to which they are required to transport students to private schools from 15 miles to five miles, 14 school districts would save $3.5 million a year.
McKay said that it would help greatly if the superintendents’ group were able at least to persuade Albany to “‘freeze and review all currently proposed and impending mandates’—just stop some of what they’re asking us to do, which includes evaluation of teachers and principals—at the pace they’re asking us to do it, as well as the additional assessing they’re asking us to do at that pace.” [The new Annual Professional Performance Review requirements by the State—a complex system of reviews of every principal and teacher every year—are due to be put into place in CCSD beginning the next school year.]
By way of financial context, according to the JN article, over the last three years, “30 of its member districts cut $179 million in programs and 1,559 staff positions — costing almost $11 million in unemployment costs. In the same period, the 30 districts lost more than $300 million in state and federal aid.”
“The superintendents’ group,” said McKay, “will now hire a firm and survey districts about mandate relief and transportation across several of our districts and counties.”
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