Dear Senator Martins and Assemblywoman Sillitti: 

Your time is precious, and time is of the essence, so please allow me to be direct.  I am writing on behalf of the nearly 5,400 students of the Port Washington Union Free School District who are relying on your continued and much appreciated efforts to secure maximum state aid school funding for our district as you negotiate a final state budget over the coming weeks.

In an environment where inflation and materials costs continue to increase; where our unfunded mandate costs have skyrocketed due to our changing demographics; where our “non-mandated” expenditures necessary to help students graduate, and our “non-mandated” expenditures necessary to keep our students and staff safe – costs to address mounting mental health and behavioral issues in the classroom, security needs, cybersecurity and technology needs, infrastructure needs, etc., have increased -- all in the face of a tax cap that is blind to those costs and increases, our state aid does not come close to fulfilling our moral obligation to educate our students, let alone our legal mandates to do so.  For these reasons, Port relies on every penny of state aid to maintain and continue to educate all our students and get them to graduation day.

In an effort to assist you in your efforts, here is some data that explains why Port’s schools are unique and why receiving appropriate state aid is so important to our students:

• In contrast to significant declining student enrollment on Long Island over the past decade, Port’s enrollment has held steady, and has even increased since the pandemic.
• We are diverse, and proud of it!  Over 10% of Port’s student population is enrolled in ELL classes (some having arrived here as teenagers with either an interrupted formal education or no formal education at all), with over 17 different languages represented in our ELL program, the top three being Spanish, Japanese, and Korean.  And our overall demographic is shifting as our ELL population has been steadily growing.
• Despite being situated on “The Gold Coast” of the North Shore, our Free and Reduced lunch (FRL) population is almost 19%.
• Almost 18% of our students (close to 1,000 CSE and CPSE students) are classified to receive Special Education services, and that number has grown since the pandemic.  Since 2021, the State has been shifting more and more Special Education costs to the school districts; as a result, Port’s current “out-of-pocket” responsibility is $320,000.
• We recognize that many of our students struggle to graduate because they do not fit the “traditional” school model, and that many of our students are not college bound.  To that end, in addition to our “traditional” curricular programs, we fund a Twilight program and a BOCES CTE program and have seen enrollment in these two programs (and their associated costs) skyrocket.  That’s great, because we are succeeding in helping many students graduate who otherwise would not; but the program (and its students) is in jeopardy due to this year’s tremendous budget challenge.
• In an effort to set our youngest learners on the path to educational success, we proudly fund five “in-house” pre-kindergarten classrooms and offer transportation to our littles who otherwise would be unable to get to the classroom.
• Despite our growing enrollment, ELL, FRL, and Special Education needs and changing demographics, Port’s share of state aid, when fully funded according to the obsolete Foundation Aid formula and data, represents only +10% of our total revenue.

We are frustrated and disappointed that the proposed Executive Budget fails to honor the promise of fully funding our Foundation Aid formula, and that the Governor has proposed to lower the inflationary factor. Accordingly, we urge you to advocate for the following:

• Reject the proposed lowering of the Foundation Aid inflationary factor;
• Provide a minimum increase to all districts to account for inflation and staff shortages;
• Begin the process of formally reviewing and updating the current Foundation Aid formula; the State Education Department should lead this process;
• Support full-funding of expense-based aids;
• Oppose restrictions on Foundation Aid in the form of “set-asides”;
• Reject the proposed school aid database freeze; and 
• Restore annual funding to make payments against the prior year aid claims list.

Thank you for your commitment and dedication in support of public school districts and our students.  We are here to work with you during the rest of the state budget process and throughout the year.

Sincerely,

The Port Washington Community