Cuomo, Paladino seen as inattentive
(From Buffalo News, October 15th, 2010)
By Phil Fairbanks
News Staff Reporter
They agree on the need for more charter schools and see a property tax cap as an important tool to rein in school spending.
They part ways on consolidating school districts and differ greatly on how to reform public education.
Yes, Andrew M. Cuomo and Carl P. Paladino disagree as much as they agree, but, in the eyes of educators, what’s more important is the candidates’ lack of attention to education as a campaign issue.
“It doesn’t seem a priority for either candidate,” said Grand Island Superintendent Robert W. Christmann, who also heads the State Council of School Superintendents. “It seems to be getting short shrift.”
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Breakdown
How Cuomo, Paladino compare on schools
Spending: Both agree on the need for a property tax cap to rein in school spending. Paladino wants to ultimately cut property taxes.
Charters: Both candidates support lifting the state cap on charter schools from 200 to 460.
Consolidation: Paladino wants to create countywide school districts. Cuomo prefers to encourage smaller districts to pool resources and buying power.
Reform: Paladino supports vouchers and wants a longer school day and year. Cuomo wants to reduce state mandates and evaluate how the state funds school construction.
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Christmann is not alone in finding fault with the candidates’ education agendas. Others point to their mutual support for charter schools and a property tax cap to suggest that they lack depth and detail.
“It makes good sound bites to say that school districts need to do more,” said James N. Mills, a retired school superintendent who now teaches educational leadership at Niagara University.
Mills doesn’t disagree with the need for a tax cap. What he questions is the candidates’ reluctance to talk more about how the state can control education expenses.
He points to a wide range of state laws and regulations — from the Wicks Law to the Taylor Law’s Triborough Amendment — that tie a district’s hands when it comes to cutting expenses, especially labor costs.
“The real problem is the state’s unfunded mandates,” said Timothy G. Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association.
Cuomo, as part of his education platform, promises to reduce state mandates but stops short of offering any detail on which ones. Both he and Paladino tend to focus more on how they would control costs through a property tax cap.
The Cuomo plan calls for capping local property tax growth at 2 percent a year or the inflation rate, whichever is lower. A district could avoid the cap if 60 percent of voters approve a higher tax levy.
“New York public schools spend more per student than any other state — fully 71 percent more than the national average, yet New York ranks 40th in the rate of high school graduation,” the Cuomo campaign says in its “New NY Agenda.”
Paladino also supports a cap but thinks local property taxes, including school levies, ultimately need to be cut, not just capped.
“Capping taxes is gutless,” he said in his position paper. “Cutting taxes takes courage. I will cut taxes.”
The fear among educators is that, without significant mandate relief from the state, most notably in the area of teacher salaries and pensions, school districts will quickly find themselves with costs largely out of their control and little means to pay for them.
“It would just be a matter of time before school officials couldn’t meet budget,” Kremer said. The result, he said, would be teacher layoffs and larger classrooms.
Cuomo’s and Paladino’s support for a tax cap prompted the New York State United Teachers, one of the state’s largest public employee unions, to stop short of endorsing either candidate.
“Public statements by all the candidates presented some real problems for us,” said Richard C. Iannuzzi, union president.
Iannuzzi sees the tax cap as the latest obstacle to New York’s foundation aid formula, which came into existence in 2007 and was supposed to base state aid on a school district’s ability to pay.
New York’s teacher unions also are watching with interest as Paladino and Cuomo offer their views on charter schools.
Both men support the state’s decision to raise the charter school cap from 200 to 460, a key step in New York winning $696 million in Race to the Top funding from the Obama administration. “The issue for us has always been quality, not quantity,” Iannuzzi said.
Where the candidates differ is in what to do with the increase in charter schools.
Paladino wants to create residential charters in the state’s worst school districts. The idea is to have children as young as kindergarten level learn in an environment that ensures such positive conditions as proper dress and nutrition.
Cuomo has his own charter school proposals, most notably to lift the current restrictions on where they are located and how they are approved. He opposes, for example, any arbitrary limit on the number of charter schools in any district.
Public school administrators say the issue with charters is not so much how many or where they are located, but how they are funded, an issue neither candidate seems eager to discuss.
Right now, charter schools receive state aid — a specified amount per pupil — through the school districts where their students live. The rub, public school advocates contend, is that the savings from losing those students don’t always match the costs.
“The issue is funding,” Christmann said of the charters. “We support them educationally, but we think there’s a better way to fund them.
Among the state’s charter school activists, including Democrats for Education Reform, the large New York City-based advocacy group, Cuomo’s election is viewed as a national priority. He’s one of four New Yorkers on the group’s “hot list” of 15 candidates the group wants elected this year.
Charter schools and school spending may be front and center in terms of the candidates’ agendas, but there is more to what they are promising to do if elected governor.
Paladino wants to extend the school year and day but doesn’t offer any proposals on how to pay for it. He also wants to create consolidated countywide school districts but again doesn’t explain how he would do it.
The Buffalo businessman also wants to adopt the use of school vouchers, an idea that educators contend is all but dead in New York State.
“That balloon has been floated, and no one’s grabbing at it,” Mills said. “I think it demonstrates he’s not doing his homework.”
Paladino also wants the power to remove school boards and superintendents in underperforming districts and Regents who “think protecting union leaders is more important than not leaving any children behind.”
“They suggest a strategy that looks to intimidation as a way to govern,” Iannuzzi said of Paladino’s ideas. “I don’t think that’s what New York wants.”
Cuomo also has his share of controversial ideas.
The Democrat, in his education agenda, suggests that it’s time for New York to re-evaluate how it reimburses local districts for school construction and rehabilitation.
It’s a proposal that could pose problems for Buffalo’s $1.45 billion school-reconstruction program.
Mills is hoping Cuomo learns more about the advantages, financially and educationally, of school modernization and what he describes as an already stringent reimbursement review process before making drastic changes.
He also thinks Cuomo can learn from Buffalo’s success and pointed to the recent $38 million rehabilitation of Burgard High School.
“The conditions at Burgard High School before the recent renovation were atrocious,” Mills said. “No child should have to go to school in a building like that.”