April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
EDUCATION IN NEW YORK

Bishop testifies regarding state education budget

(Editor's note: Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger presented testimony Jan. 27 on behalf of the New York State Catholic Conference to a joint legislative budget hearing before members of the State Senate and Assembly regarding Gov. Andrew Cuomo's executive budget. One of a series, this particular hearing addressed the state's elementary and secondary education budget. Below are portions of the Bishop's testimony.)

 For more than 200 years, the state's Catholic schools have been providing an outstanding education to thousands of our state's children, many of whom are not Catholic. Especially in our inner cities, Catholic schools continue to help bring children out of poverty. However, parents are increasingly unable to shoulder the dual burden of taxes to support public schools while paying tuition to support the education of their own children.

The decline in enrollment and the resulting closing of Catholic schools over the decades is no surprise. Little attention, however, has been paid to the added cost to taxpayers. In the last five years, more than 75 Catholic schools across the state were forced to close. More than 300 have closed in the last 20 years.

Most displaced students then enroll in the already over-burdened public school system, at a far greater cost to taxpayers. The shift of enrollment from private to public schools over the last 20 years has increased the cost to taxpayers by more than $2 billion - each and every year!

Unless something meaningful is done to support the education of children in religious and independent schools, this trend will continue to exacerbate the burden on taxpayers. But, even more importantly, more and more children will be denied the opportunity to escape poverty and have a brighter future that the remarkable success of Catholic schools offers.

I must note that no Catholic school has closed due to academic failure. This cannot be said about either traditional public or charter schools. Nor have our schools been closed due to lack of desire on the part of parents to enroll their children. The loss of Catholic schools in New York State comes down entirely to the rising costs and the inability of parents to pay the increasing tuition needed to meet those costs. The good news is that you have the opportunity to do something about it, without hurting any other children or any other schools.

Education tax credits
 Working and middle class families too often cannot afford even the modest tuition that we must charge -- and there are long waiting lists for the limited number of scholarships that can be offered. It is well known that our Catholic schools serve many non-Catholic families; our reach and service goes well beyond the Catholic community. Our ability to serve poor families and the broader community with a quality education depends on the ability of low-income and minority families to access scholarships.

Our public schools also face considerable financial challenges -- but these challenges are not new. In fact, numerous school districts have long-established fundraising arms to encourage charitable donations. But, as we can attest, the current tax deduction incentive is simply insufficient to drive the level of private sector resources that could otherwise be invested into education.

Education tax credits would help provide desperately-needed assistance to public schools and tuition-paying families. The measure provides a tax credit for individuals or businesses making a donation to private scholarship organizations or public schools, local education funds established to support public schools, and to non-profit organizations providing educational programs in public schools.

Opponents of this measure are simply ignoring reality when they argue that this proposal will diminish public school funding. On the contrary, this measure will only increase overall funding to public schools. Adopting the education tax credit will ensure that public schools get an additional and on-going source of revenue. Moreover, teachers who spend their own money for necessary classroom supplies will benefit from a personal tax credit for those expenses.

Mandated services and CAP
The Governor's recommended $104.2 million appropriation under the Mandated Services Reimbursement program once again is sufficient to fully reimburse schools for their current-year MSR expenses; and, for the first time since 2008, the executive budget recommendation of $69.8 million for CAP (Comprehensive Attendance Policy) restores the original formula and is sufficient to keep the state's prior-year debt from growing. Moreover, last June's supplemental appropriation of $250 million was the most substantial payment to date. As a result, the state's prior-year obligations, which we estimated at approximately $320 million, have been reduced to approximately $80 million.

This year offers an opportunity for lawmakers to meet the final payments on the state's prior-year obligations and to begin addressing some of the unmet needs under the program. We ask that you provide an additional $80 million for CAP and provide an additional $7.7 million in Mandated Services Reimbursement to cover the actual costs of meeting expanded immunization record-keeping requirements.

Religious/independent schools
 Recognizing the essential role religious and independent schools play in educating nearly a half million of the state's children, the State Education Department (SED) created a fully-staffed office for "non-public" schools, headed by an assistant commissioner. The office was responsible for overseeing the numerous programmatic issues and publicly-funded programs relating to religious and independent schools.

Since the retirement of the first assistant commissioner in the 1980s, the office has been downgraded to the point where not only is there no assistant commissioner, other SED staff responsible for overseeing programs related to public schools are being unfairly expected to take on the significant demands related to non-public schools.

As a result, there has been an unacceptable backlog of work and disbursement of funds, as well as an inability to fully oversee the programs and enforce the state and federal statutes related to non-public schools. We urge you to appropriate $1 million and enact implementing statutory language to establish the State Office of Religious and Independent Schools within SED.

Health, safety and security
We are grateful to you and Gov. Cuomo for providing $4.5 million in safety equipment funds each of the last three years and are grateful for the Governor's continued funding of this initiative in his executive budget. These funds are critically important in assisting our schools with needed safety and security measures, but this level of funding amounts to approximately $9 per student, well below the amount needed to adequately address the health, safety and security needs of the children and adults who utilize our school buildings.

The needs include defibrillators and CRP and equipment and training; carbon monoxide detectors; security assessments, systems and training; security guards; and traffic control devices. We urge a total appropriation of $10.3 million and, if necessary, authorizing language to enable funds to be used for the full range of health, safety and security needs.

Nursing services
 An increasing number of children have acute and chronic health problems that require the daily attention and care of professional school nurses. Yet the shortage of school nurses leaves school administrators and teachers in the untenable position of having to respond to health emergencies and manage chronic health problems.

School administrators and teachers are not health professionals and simply cannot and should not be forced to manage and respond to their students' asthma, diabetes, food allergies and other health conditions.

We urge you to include sufficient funding to ensure that a full-time nurse is available for every public, independent and religious school.

Teacher training and mentoring
 The mandated continuing education for certified teachers and school leaders is essential to maintaining high-quality academic programs, to meet the growing needs of students and to keep pace with developments in standards, assessments, technology and other programs. We urge you to include $10 million for teacher and leader professional development in religious and independent schools.

Transportation
 When parents are denied their choice of a religious or an independent school because transportation services are not available or are unreasonable or are unreliable, the burden on taxpayers increases as more of these children are forced to enroll in public schools.

We strongly urge the following: Restore 90-percent state reimbursement of school district costs of transporting religious and independent school students; increase the distance school districts are required to transport children to school from 15 to 25 miles; allow parents to pay for the cost of transportation beyond 25 miles; ensure that transportation is provided for schools with disparate schedules and calendars -- and not denied to religious and independent schools when public schools are closed or when they make mid-year calendar changes; and require small city school districts to transport children up to the mileage limit, rather than city limits.

Academic intervention
 Currently, only $922,000 is appropriated annually to independent and religious schools to implement the Academic Intervention Services (AIS) regulations promulgated by the Board of Regents, far below the $20 million that is needed. Without adequate funding now, these at-risk children may easily fall behind even more, requiring more expensive academic interventions later.

Learning technology grants
 The Governor proposes $3.3 million for learning technology grants. The limited funding for this valuable program, however, serves only 50 school districts, along with their independent and religious school partners. We strongly urge you to increase the appropriation to a level sufficient to enable all needy schools to benefit from this program.

Energy, capital improvements
 Advances in technology and construction techniques enable schools to be healthier, safer, more accessible and more energy efficient than ever before. Public schools are able to finance these projects with their local tax levy authority, coupled with state building aid. We urge you to appropriate seed money that would enable religious and independent schools to initiate these worthy projects.[[In-content Ad]]

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