Cuomo Purposely Brings Chaos And Dysfunction To The School Budgeting Process

From the Capital NY Morning Email:

ED GROUPS: RELEASE SCHOOL AID DETAILS—Capital’s Jessica Bakeman: “An umbrella educational advocacy group representing teachers, administrators, business officials, superintendents, school boards, big-city school districts and parents wrote a letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo imploring him to release detailed breakdowns of each district’s state aid under his budget proposal. ... The Cuomo administration withheld the detailed charts outlining state aid for districts in order to pressure lawmakers into approving a series of aggressive education reform proposals. ... Cuomo’s refusal to release the school aid runs might go unnoticed by the general public, but in education circles, it was a dramatic message demonstrating the sincerity of his threat.

“School district leaders are disillusioned, hoping Cuomo will change his mind. If he doesn’t, they’ll likely miss a March 1 deadline to determine their proposed tax levies, and they’ll have hardly any time after the final state budget’s approval in early April to craft their local spending plans before facing voters’ scrutiny in May. … ‘This is not a matter of politics or even a policy debate,’ the letter said. ‘This is a matter of basic government function and an informed decision making process for our communities. The current situation is chaotic and dysfunctional.’” http://bit.ly/1uYTtsj

Cuomo's intention (at least publicly) may be to play hardball over his reforms, but don't be surprised if another one of his intentions (not-so-publicly) is to make the budgeting process for school districts "chaotic and dysfunctional" in order to bring about the "breaking" of the public school monopoly he has repeatedly promised.

This is a governor who despises public education, public schools and public school teachers - it's not a mistake that he's currently in a showdown of his own making that will do lasting harm to public school districts.