Education advocates are cheering changes in the state funding formula for school aid that would increase support for city students who are homeless, in foster care or learning English.<\/p>\n
State funding for New York City schools would increase by $860 million, bringing the total state aid for the city to almost $15.3 billion.<\/p>\n
The increase also reflects additional funds for early childhood education, transportation and materials.<\/p>\n
The changes are under a bill the state Legislature was expected to pass on Wednesday as part of a deal with Gov. Kathy Hochul for the overall state budget, which was due April 1 and which legislators plan to finalize this week.<\/p>\n
Maria Odom, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, called the increased investments for students who are homeless, in foster care or learning English \u201coverdue.\u201d<\/p>\n
The group focuses on policy and initiatives to help low-income children.<\/p>\n
\u201cTogether, these changes to the Foundation Aid formula will drive much-needed resources to New York City, where more than 150,000 students experienced homelessness last year and one in every six students is learning English as a new language,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Foundation Aid formula has been used since 2007 to determine how much money each school district receives from the state.<\/p>\n
The number of homeless students at city schools has been climbing for a decade, hitting a record high<\/a> in the most recent tally. According to Advocates for Children, nearly one in seven of the city\u2019s more than 900,000 students were homeless at some point during the 2024-25 school year.<\/p>\n The number of public school students who are not yet proficient in English has also been increasing.<\/p>\n There were more than 168,000 English language learners in the city\u2019s public schools in the 2024-25 school year. A report from the city\u2019s comptroller<\/a> found the school system often failed to provide those students with legally mandated instruction.<\/p>\n Last year, changes to the state funding formula resulted in New York City receiving hundreds of millions of dollars less than it.<\/p>\n The increased funding comes as Mayor Zohran Mamdani grapples with a yawning budget deficit. In his executive budget<\/a> released last week, Mamdani said he hopes to save money by delaying full implementation of a state law shrinking class sizes, and reign in spending on private school tuition<\/a> for kids with disabilities by bringing more of those services in-house.<\/p>\n The education budget bill also includes a two-year extension of mayoral control of the city\u2019s schools. While Mamdani had said during his campaign that he opposed mayoral control<\/a>, he changed his position<\/a> just before taking office, and asked lawmakers for a four-year extension of his office\u2019s authority over the school system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Education advocates are cheering changes in the state funding formula for school aid that would increase support for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-239319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239319","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=239319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}