Cuomo's Budget Flouts Students' Rights to Education | Teachers College Columbia University

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TC’s Michael Rebell: Cuomo’s Budget Flouts Students’ Rights to Education

Michael Rebell, Professor of Law & Educational Practice, and Executive Director of The Campaign for Educational Equity
Michael Rebell, Professor of Law & Educational Practice, and Executive Director of The Campaign for Educational Equity
An opinion piece published in the New York Daily News by TC’s Michael Rebell argues that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive budget, issued last week, flouts the constitutional right of all students in New York State to the opportunity for a sound basic education.

First, Rebell writes, the proposal would increase basic foundation aid for schools statewide by $428 million—“less than 10% of the current $4.3 billion gap between the amounts appropriated for the current year and the amounts called for in the a formula adopted by the state in 2007, after the Court of Appeals’ decisions in the landmark Campaign for Fiscal Equity” lawsuit, in which Rebell represented plaintiffs. 

Second, Rebell writes, the governor’s proposal would eliminate the foundation-aid formula effective fiscal year 2019 — “and apparently return the state to the system of political dealmaking that the Court of Appeals specifically held to be unconstitutional in its 2003 CFE opinion.”

Rebell is a Professor of Law and Educational Practice at Teachers College and founding Executive Director of the Campaign for Educational Equity at Teachers College. 

LINK: The state’s failure on school funding (via New York Daily News)

Published Monday, Jan 30, 2017