{"id":200118,"date":"2026-04-16T23:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T23:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/200118\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T23:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T23:56:10","slug":"n-y-foundation-aid-formula-update-is-overdue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/200118\/","title":{"rendered":"N.Y. Foundation Aid formula update is overdue"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Bob Lowry, deputy director for advocacy, research and communications for the New York state Council of School Superintendents (NYSCOSS), education has not been a primary topic of conversation during this state budget season for several reasons. For part of the past year, the outlook for the budget was more pessimistic than it turned out to be. Plus, other issues, like Medicaid cuts, commanded more attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only so much bandwidth for our collective attention,\u201d Lowry told Capital Tonight.<\/p>\n

But there are several education issues that still need to be addressed by lawmakers. For example, the state Senate and Assembly have proposed a 2% increase for schools, but under Gov. Kathy Hochul\u2019s proposed budget, about two-thirds of school districts would be limited to a 1% minimum increase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething that\u2019s been striking this year is how often superintendents and other school district leaders bring up the fact that just their health insurance costs alone would fully absorb the value of such a small Foundation Aid increase,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Lowry also hoped that lawmakers would continue to reform the Foundation Aid formula \u2013 a process that began last year with the Rockefeller Institute\u2019s report on the issue.<\/a> But the easiest, most obvious changes were made last year, including replacing outdated poverty measures. Still left to tackle are the politically tricky regional cost adjustment and what\u2019s called the Foundation amount.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe study behind that hasn\u2019t been updated in over 10 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s enacted state budget provided $27.1 billion in Foundation Aid. This year\u2019s budget will include even more money (we won\u2019t know how much until the budget is passed), but Lowry is concerned that the formula no longer functions as intended.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, again, there were flaws in the formula. It was a great accomplishment when it was enacted, but it\u2019s now over 20 years old and some pieces have never been updated,\u201d said Lowry.<\/p>\n

Lowry also discussed the impact of an untimely state budget with Capital Tonight: All non-city districts need to finalize ballots for May school budget votes by April 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to Bob Lowry, deputy director for advocacy, research and communications for the New York state Council of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[206,205,203,109,116,204,202,67,9,24,55,54,49,12,56,112,87,4281,201,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-200118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-albany-capital-region","9":"tag-app-capital-tonight","10":"tag-app-education","11":"tag-app-local-state-politics","12":"tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","13":"tag-capital-tonight","14":"tag-capital-tonight-interviews","15":"tag-education","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","19":"tag-new-york-city-news","20":"tag-new-york-state","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-ny","23":"tag-ny-state-of-politics","24":"tag-politics","25":"tag-state-budget","26":"tag-susan-arbetter","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}