Bellmore-Merrick Central District super decries state aid fight

 Bellmore-Merrick Central High School’s superintendent railed during a March 11 Board of Education meeting against the inability of Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature to reach a compromise over education aid.
    As of press time on Tuesday, the two parties were stalemated, with the governor fighting to tie greater amounts of state aid to passage of education reforms that he is seeking, while the Legislature, in particular the Assembly, was pushing back against the governor, according to John DeTommaso, the Central District superintendent.
    The battle has left districts uncertain how much state aid, precisely, they will receive in the 2015-16 school year, making it tough for them to finalize next year’s budgets, which school boards must approve in April in preparation for a public vote in May.
    “We’re presenting a budget that we don’t even have state aid for,” DeTommaso said. “It is disgraceful that districts like [Bellmore-Merrick] need to go through what we go through.”

The aid battle
    In his State of the State address, delivered in Albany in January, Cuomo proposed overhauling the state’s teacher evaluation system, called the Annual Professional Performance Review, or APPR, which was instituted in February 2012.
    If the State Legislature agreed to revamp APPR, the governor said, he would give school districts a 4.8 percent, or $1.1 billion, hike in state aid. If the Legislature failed to act, the increase would be 1.7 percent, or $385.8 million.
    A $1 billion increase would bring the state’s total annual aid allocation to roughly $23 billion.
    Cuomo called APPR “baloney,” arguing that 98 percent of teachers are rated effective or highly effective, yet 38 percent of students pass state exams.