Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

Education Funding

Before George Latimer's election to the New York State Senate, Education has always been a priority and with his entrance to the Senate, he was appointed to be the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate's Education Committee. In that role, George Latimer has successfully fought for increased education aid to every single school district in Westchester County and against the flawed implementation of the Common Core Standards.

By supporting the 2014-14 Budget, George Latimer voted to invest nearly $1.2 billion dollars in additional funds into schools throughout New York. The total expenditure on our children's future now amounts to more than $22 billion.

With George's advocacy the most recent State Budget has made significant steps to nearly eliminate the Gap Elimination Adjustment, which was implemented to balance the State Budget in dire fiscal times and short-changed Westchester school districts. George is committed to fully eliminating this budgeting scheme as soon as possible.

George has fought to increase funding for pre-kindergarten, steer funds to the neediest schools in Westchester, and to increase funding for those schools that teach our most vulnerable children such as special act schools, 4201 schools for the blind, and 853 schools for children involved in the foster care, juvenile justice and special education systems. These schools have had a frozen tuition for five years and are systematically going out of business leaving these needy children without the resources they need.

Common Core

The role out of Common Core in New York came too fast for proper implementation. Our kids have been tested on material they have yet to be taught. These tests have real world implications for both the students and teachers. Furthermore, New York's haste to provide optimal technological solutions skipped a public input program to ensure our student's privacy was fully protected. While raising standards and expectations for our children makes sense in today's hyper-competitive economy, we must not move goal posts before teaching students the material they must know. Unfortunately, the speed of the Common Core roll out by New York has not allowed for proper curriculum to be developed in a timely fashion. The pace has also not allowed New York's Education leaders to properly assess how to deal with special needs students.

Latimer successfully fought to:
-Ensure the protection of children's personal information (InBloom Contract cancelled by SED)

-Reduce the focus on Testing (Tests won't count toward graduation requirements until 2016)

-Increase the amount of information from tests that will be shared with Teachers to help individual students

-Introduced legislation to allow children with special needs flexibility when dealing with Common Core tests

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