Monday, July 14, 2025
Siela Bynoe elected last November to represent State Senate District 6, aims to add millions of dollars for education and libraries into the proposed Senate One House Budget.
Her proposals include $24 million for Hempstead Public Schools and the 2025-2026 school year.
In February, the Hempstead Board of Education said there was a potential $33 million deficit for the upcoming school year. Board President Victor Pratt tied the deficit to the funding of charter schools.
Evergreen Charter School, Academy Charter School, and the newly approved Diamond Charter School all sit within the boundaries of the Hempstead school district.
Bynoe was appointed to the Senate’s Standing Committee on Education early this year. She brought to the committee her awareness of the difficult equilibrium between charter schools and the public school districts that fund them.
“I advocated for alternative aid to school districts that had an oversaturation of charter schools,” Bynoe said. “William Johnson, the [state-appointed] monitor of the Hempstead schools, worked to create a formula that would appropriately fund school districts.”
Bynoe worked with the Central Staff of the Budget Work Group to show why Johnson’s formula made sense, not only for Hempstead, but also for Buffalo and Rochester. She also met with the leadership of the State Senate, making a case for including the alternative funding in the Senate One House Budget.
“The $24 million allocation was included to fund the short gap in the Hempstead school district budget and to alleviate the closing of a school and reduction of staffing,” she said.
Enrollment in the Hempstead district has shrunk, in part because of charter school growth. About 36 percent of K-12 students in the district attend charter schools.
In Uniondale, 18 percent of K-12 students attend charter schools. In Roosevelt, the percentage is 13 percent.
The Hempstead school board has discussed closing one of the district’s elementary schools and laying off staff to maintain control of the budget.
“For the 2025-2026 school budget in Hempstead, we are reliant on the partnership with the state and the local community in supporting the education of all students,” Pratt said. “The origin of this fiscal crisis is the ever-increasing and onerous increased costs associated with charter schools.”
Bynoe’s funding proposal could possibly solve the district’s fiscal problems for now.
“We understand that parents want options as they educate their young scholars, and charter schools provide that option,” she said, “but there needs to be a balance so there is not an impact to the public school students.”
“We can’t thank Senator Bynoe enough for standing up for our students and fighting for the entire Hempstead school community,” Pratt said.
Bynoe has also gotten greater funding for public libraries into the Senate House One Budget: $5 million more than last year for operating expenses, and $20 million more for capital improvements.
She also wove an additional $14.2 million into Material Aid to Libraries, which applies to school district libraries.
Material Aid has not increased since 2007, Bynoe said. The additional funds would enable school district libraries to be updated and staffed appropriately.
Not only that, said Bynoe, but, “I led the charge for the $1,000 tax credit for teachers throughout the state in the Senate One House Budget.”
All of these proposals are now subject to the negotiations taking place among Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and State Sen. Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.
