More than a week after a fierce and protracted fight between education advocates over state budget items and allocations involving public schools, both sides are still pushing their respective envelopes.
“Tens of thousands of New Yorkers engaged in a fierce battle against Governor Cuomo’s outright attack on public education. Cuomo was backed in his efforts by a handful of billionaire hedge fund managers who are promoting a privatization and test and punish agenda for our schools. On some important issues, with the support of the State Assembly Majority, our students and communities won, on others we suffered significant setbacks for students, teachers, and schools,” wrote Billy Easton, Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education in a email to members and the media.
Easton thanked the state assembly for their help in beating back some of Gov. Cuomo’s reform proposals and chastised the state senate for satnding, “with the Governor on diverting money from public schools to private schools through an education tax credit, on more funding for privately run charter schools and on increasing the number of these publicly funded, privately run schools in New York State.”
“This year’s budget fight is not the end of the road, the well-financed attacks on public education will continue and our demand for high-quality education for all students without regard to race, income and zip code is far from over,” wrote Easton.
Not to be outdone, the statewide education advocacy organization StudentsFirstNY, which largely backs Como’s reforms released an ad campaign praising Cuomo and the legislature for enacting important education reforms as a part of this year’s budget agreement and encouraging them to keep going. The ad will run statewide beginning today.
“Governor Cuomo laid out an incredibly ambitious statewide education reform agenda, and with the support of the Senate and Assembly, delivered key and major reforms.,” said Jenny Sedlis, Executive Director of StudentsFirstNY. “While there’s still more to do this session on charters and the education investment tax credit, Governor Cuomo and Senate Majority Leader Skelos fought hard to put students first and the public should know what was accomplished.”
