Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio are waging a nasty food fight over education funding.
Cuomo delivered a shot at City Hall, claiming he and state lawmakers have done more to aid New York City schools than the mayor and the City Council.
Cuomo’s budget office said the state increased education aid to the city by $1.84 billion over the past three years, or 21.7 percent—about 7 percent a year.
His analysis claims the city, under de Blasio, increased school funding by $1.5 billion or 15.7 percent over three years—slightly over 5 percent a year over the same period.
Cuomo’s office said the state’s rate of funding increase for Big Apple schools is 35 percent higher than City Hall’s contribution over the three-year span.
Cuomo pulled out his verbal bazooka during a Post editorial board meeting Thursday.
“What does New York City do with the money they receive,” Cuomo asked.
“Why isn’t there a ‘maintenance of effort?’”
That is a phrase state lawmakers have used to make sure that the city doesn’t take additional state education funding while scaling back on its own funding commitment to schools.
“That should be the conversation,” Cuomo said. Cuomo lashed out after de Blasio, during testimony in Albany last week, claimed the governor and the Legislature weren’t pulling their weight in funding city schools to abide with a court ruling.
“Since 2008, the city’s share of spending of education spending has increased from 49 percent to 57 percent, while the state share has declined from 41 percent to 37 percent. The state shortfall is $1.6 billion,” de Blasio said.
“We are doing our part to provide equitable funding to our schools but we need the state’s partnership, and we need the state to do more,” the mayor added.
But Cuomo said de Blasio used figures from the Bloomberg years to inflate his numbers.
“Bloomberg funded more than de Blasio, which is really ironic,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo said Albany now provides 50 percent of funding for city schools.
During his testimony last week, De Blasio also complained that Cuomo’s budget plan shifts $198.3 million from the city Department of Education to charter schools Cuomo noted that students who attend charters are public school students, too.
“The [charter school] kids if they were in a public school you would have to pay for them. These are public charter schools,” Cuomo told the Post.
De Blasio insists the city contributes more to schools than the state, especially when factoring in costly pension payments, fringe benefits and debt service.
“There is no question the City is doing more than their fair share,” the mayor’s office said in a statement. “NYC provides 60 percent of the State revenues, we have 53 percent of the State’s Free and Reduced Price Lunch Students and 40 percent of students in the entire state. The State needs to step up and do their part.”
City Hall disputed Cuomo’s figures Including proposed spending for the upcoming fiscal year, de Blasio has has increased funding to schools by $3.1 billion—an increase of about 21.2 percent, more than the state has, said mayoral spokeswoman Freddi Goldstein.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
