Statement By Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos
June 1, 2010
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(New York, N.Y.)-Senate Republicans were successful in providing the votes necessary to deliver charter school legislation that lifts the cap and will dramatically improve New York’s Race to the Top application and our opportunity to receive as much as $700 million in federal funds.
We also succeeded in restoring the ability of SUNY, which was lauded by the Obama administration as one of the best charter-issuing entities in the country, to approve charters. This is a critically important provision that the Assembly did not originally support, preferring to give sole authority to approve charters to the Board of Regents.
The legislation also includes changes to improve teacher tenure provisions which will link student achievement data to tenure determinations.
This significant education reform bill is long overdue. Senate Republicans fought for charter schools back in January. Unfortunately, the failure of Senate and Assembly Democrats to act at that time severely weakened New York’s application in round one of the Race to the Top program and the state lost a chance at $830 million in funding.
While I am pleased that the Assembly has finally approved charter school legislation, I am disappointed that several measures that could have made the bill even stronger were not included.
Student test scores demonstrate that for-profit charter schools have great success. Yet, this bill bans for-profit charters in the future. Senate Republicans offered an amendment to the legislation that would have allowed for-profit charter school operators to apply to the State Education Commissioner which could allow the Board of Regents to issue charters on a case-by-case basis. Unfortunately, Assembly Democrats rejected our proposal.
In addition, the Assembly bill contained a sunset provision to prevent new charters from being issued after 2013. However, Assembly Speaker Silver has agreed to pass an amendment to resolve this issue by the Race to the Top application deadline next week and we hope that Senate Democrats will join us in passing the amendment.
Posted by News LI Editor · Filed Under Politics
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