State Revisiting How Schools are Funded [Times Union]

ALBANY — Educators, administrators, and policy-makers agree: New York's schools funding formula needs an update.

Known as Foundation Aid, the formula determines how millions of state dollars are distributed across New York's 950 school districts each year. The metric has not changed significantly since the system was enacted in 2007.

The state Senate's Democratic majority next week will kick off a series of roundtables across the state, followed by a rare public hearing in New York City, during which lawmakers will hear from stakeholders on how the decade-old system can be improved.

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"It could be that the factors enumerated in the law need to be updated... or it could be that we need to revisit some of the basic premises of the way we fund our schools. But we believe that hearing from parents, teachers, administrators, taxpayers, boards of education, superintendents, that's our responsibility to be as responsive as we need to be," Shelley said in a radio interview last week.