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Good afternoon, my name is Jim Cultrara, Director for Education for the New York State Catholic Conference and Co-Chairman of the New York State Coalition for Independent and Religious Schools. Religious and independent schools educate a half million children in New York State – 15 percent of the state’s student population.

Little attention has been paid to how the economic downturn has exacerbated the financial burden on tuition-paying parents and increased the fiscal stress on these schools – and how this actually contributes to New York’s financial crisis. The failure to fully reimburse our schools for what they are owed is one of the most fiscally imprudent actions lawmakers can take. Doing so diminishes the annual savings that our schools provide to taxpayers and disrupts the lives of the children and parents who have sacrificed to attend our schools.

The financial crisis is causing a dramatic increase in the number of families who either can no longer afford tuition for their children’s education or are unable to receive needed services for their children – or both. As a result, more and more families are being forced to enroll their children in public school at far greater cost to property tax payers and to the state budget. Without meaningful financial support for these parents and essential services to children, the financial crisis you are desperately trying to address will only worsen.

We urge you to adopt the following recommendations in the spirit of doing what is right for children and families and as intelligent and fiscally prudent steps to take to keep the fiscal crisis from worsening and to help support the economic turn-around that is so urgently needed.

Full Reimbursement for Mandated Services and Comprehensive Attendance Policy:
As you know, the Governor's 2010-2011 Executive Budget proposes a 5 percent cut to religious and independent school Comprehensive Attendance Policy (CAP) reimbursement. This cut only exacerbates a $237 million deficit in the reimbursement that is owed to our schools from previous years. Specifically, the deficit consists of the following:

1. No CAP reimbursement was provided for the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years;

2. The CAP reimbursement formula was modified to accommodate an SED accounting error but the formula has never been corrected;

3. CAP is on a two-year lag as opposed to the standard one-year lag; and

4. Cuts to reimbursement and liability for both Mandated Services (MSR) and CAP were made in the last two years.

With scant resources, the religious and independent schools in each and every one of your districts are providing a solid education for the children of thousands of families you represent. Far too many of these schools have already closed and more are scheduled to close this year. This will disrupt the lives of many children, exacerbate already overcrowded public schools, and intensify the financial crisis you are desperately trying to solve.

In this year’s budget negotiations, we strongly urge you to fight to:

1. restore the reimbursement for CAP to its full level of $54.9 million and regular MSR to $87.5 million;

2. restore the 8 percent in the state’s liability for reimbursement that was cut from the 2008-09 state fiscal year; and

3. begin to pay down the debt owed to our schools by applying the current appropriations to the oldest debt of eligible schools.

MTA Payroll Tax:
As you know, the MTA payroll tax is costing religious and independent school approximately $6 million dollars. Unlike public schools, our schools are not entitled to reimbursement of their MTA payroll tax expenses. Unlike public schools, our schools do not have reserve funds or tax levy authority. Our only options are to raise tuition and/or reduce services to students. This is discriminatory and unfair to tuition-paying parents and the teachers and students in our schools.

Governor Paterson recommends $60 million to reimburse public schools for their MTA expenses. We urge you to increase the appropriation to $66 million and include religious and independent schools in the reimbursement mechanism.

Tuition Tax Credits:
A modest yet meaningful tuition tax credit will help enable parents who are faced with having to transfer their children to a public school for financial reasons to keep their children enrolled in a religious or an independent school. Doing so will help the state to avoid significantly higher state education aid payments for those children. Moreover, such a tax credit not only would help those who were forced to transfer to public schools to return to their school, it would enable other parents who would otherwise elect a religious or independent school for their children to do so – thereby helping to significantly reduce the much greater state aid payments for those children. In addition to providing meaningful educational opportunities for children, tuition tax credits provide significant savings to taxpayers and relieve the pressure on overcrowded, and sometimes underperforming public schools, especially when such credits are directed at lower-income, inner-city families.

Education Investment Tax Credits:
Similar to programs that exist in a number of states including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida and Rhode Island, an education investment tax credit leverages state dollars to spur private-sector donations to both public schools and scholarship programs serving children in independent and religious schools. An influx in private sector donations will not only provide school administrators with greater resources to meet the educational needs of the children in their respective schools, but will also help to control property taxes. Such a credit would directly benefit the New York City-based Fund for Public Schools administered by Chancellor Klein as well as any other public school district that is able to receive private-sector donations.

Health, Safety, and Security Funds:
Independent and religious schools comply with a number of mandates and provide a number of health, safety and security-related services for which they receive no funding. These include equipment for access and control of buildings and classrooms, annual fire inspections; triennial asbestos inspections; the purchase and training in the use of defibrillators and security equipment; elimination of mercury and dangerous substances used for cleaning and maintenance; radon and lead testing; etc. The health, safety and security needs of students are no less great in difficult fiscal times and we urge you to include authorizing statutory language to enable schools to be reimbursed for their expenses in these areas.

Nursing Services:
More and more school children have acute and chronic health problems that require the daily attention and care of professional school nurses. Yet the shortage of school nurses leaves school administrators and teachers in the untenable position of having to respond to health emergencies and manage chronic health problems. School administrators and teachers are not health professionals and simply cannot and should not be forced to manage and respond to their students’ asthma, diabetes, food allergies and other health conditions.

In some cases, these health conditions can be life-threatening. A child who ingests or is otherwise exposed to a food allergen, for instance, can experience anaphylaxis and die without the timely and professional administration of an epipen injection. An asthmatic student can easily experience respiratory distress requiring the administration of nebulized medication. Typical playground, athletic and even classroom accidents and injuries often require immediate professional medical attention.

The protracted nursing shortage is well documented, both nationally and in New York State. The shortage of school nurses is due, in large measure, to inadequate pay. In some cases, the salary of school bus drivers and custodial employees exceeds that of school nurses. For parents, as well as for the school staff to whom children have been entrusted, there is nothing more important that the health and safety of their children. It is simply unconscionable to put the lives and well-being of children at risk.

We urge the Governor and Legislature to ensure that a full-time nurse is available for every public, independent and religious school that needs one.

Facilitator Center for Independent and Religious Schools:
The Facilitator Center serves a number of religious and independent schools in the delivery of Academic Intervention Services as well as the services provided under a number of the federal education title programs. By coordinating the administration of these services and programs through a central entity, public schools are relieved of the burden of administering these programs for the religious and independent schools. Likewise, the religious and independent schools benefit from greater flexibility and economies of scale in the use of these funds to meet the particular needs of their students. Formally codifying the Facilitator Center in statute and expanding the list of programs that could be coordinated through the center, in a way similar to that of BOCES, would enable a greater number of religious and independent schools to participate, and, as a result, would relieve even more public schools of the burden and expense of administering these programs.

Academic Intervention Services:
Currently only $922,000 is appropriated annually to independent and religious schools to implement the Academic Intervention Services (AIS) regulations promulgated by the Board of Regents – far below the $20 million that is needed. Without adequate funding now, these at-risk children may easily fall behind even more - thus requiring more expensive academic interventions later. AIS funding should be increased so that, like public schools, our schools are able to provide these services to our children who are most in need.

Transportation:
Next to their ability to afford tuition, the second most common challenge faced by parents in enrolling their children in religious or independent schools is their ability to have their children transported to school. When parents are denied their choice of a religious or an independent school because transportation services are not available, are unreasonable or are unreliable, the burden on taxpayers increases to accommodate these children in public school. It makes financial sense to enable more parents to enroll their children in religious and independent schools and thus we strongly urge the following: (1) Return to the long-standing practice of 90 percent state reimbursement of school district transportation costs; (2) increase the maximum distance school districts are required to transport children to school from 15 to 25 miles; (3) allow parents the option to pay for the cost of transportation beyond 25 miles; (4) ensure that transportation is not denied to religious and independent schools when public schools are closed or when they make mid-year calendar changes; and (5) require small city school districts to transport children up to the maximum mileage limit rather than city limits.

Teacher Training and Mentoring:
The Regents have mandated 87.5 hours of continuing education every five years for certified teachers employed by independent and religious schools. In addition, the regulations of the Board of Regents require new teachers to obtain a mentoring experience in their first year of employment. Despite the difficult fiscal situation, it is imperative that we provide the means for all teachers to obtain and maintain the highest level of professional competence. We urge you to include $10 million in Mandated Services Aid to reimburse independent and religious schools for their expenses in providing the mandated continuing education to certified teachers and $5 million in funding to reimburse schools for their expenses in mentoring new teachers.

Learning Technology Grants:
The Governor proposes only $2.3 million for Learning Technology grants. The limited funding for this valuable program, however, serves only some 50 school districts along with their independent and religious school partners. We strongly urge you to restore and/or increase the appropriation beyond $3.29 million to a level sufficient to enable all schools to benefit from this program.