March 17, 2026 · Education · 1,235 words · 6 speakers · 39 segments
Well, thank you very much. Good morning all. I'm State Senator Shelley Mayer, Chair of the Senate Education Committee. Today is Tuesday, March 17th at 10am we have a five bill agenda. Present with us is our rancor. Senator Tedisco, Senator Weber, Senator Steck. On the majority side we have Senator Martinez, Senator Jackson, Senator Salazar, and we. We have enough voting sheets, correct? Yes. Okay. First bill S523 by Senator Mayor.
An act to amend the education law in relation to reimbursement for studies for districts subject to reorganization.
Any questions?
Motion over to G. Thank you.
Senator Jackson. Second. Senator Weber, I think. All in favor?
Aye.
Oppose. Without recognition, the bill moves to finance. Will be joined by Senator Clear. Good morning. The second bill is S.1636 by Senator Borrello.
An act to authorize the Board of Education of the Salamanca City School District to establish a federal impact aid reserve fund in the event federal impact aid is reduced.
I just want to explain because I had to understand this, that in the Salamanca City school district is the native land of which Indian reservation. Can someone educate me? And that. Oh, the Salamanca City School district receives impact aid because the Allegheny Territory of the Seneca Nation of Indians is within the school district that gets special federal money. So to the extent that federal money doesn't come, they want to establish a reserve to deal with possible shortfalls. We have passed this bill before, so is there a motion?
Move it.
Thanks. Senator Jackson. Second. Senator. Who seconded it? Senator Sellers. Are all in favor? Opposed. Without REC, the bill moves to the floor. Next is S5067A by Senator Sepulveda.
An act to amend the Education Law, the Question Law, the Administrative Code of the City of New York, the Civil Service Law, the Executive Law, the Labor Law, the Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation law and Social Services law, and the State Finance law in relation to changing the name of the General Education Development Diploma to the Excelsior Diploma.
My understanding this is an effort by Senator Sepulva to try to get rid of some of the stigma attached with taking a GED course or GED test with a better name. The Excelsior Diploma.
Why not?
Thank you, Senator Clear. Senator Jackson. All in favor? Opposed. Without rec, the bill moves to the floor. Next is S8845A by Senator Martinez.
An act to amend the education law in relation to prior year state aid adjustments.
Yes. Senator Martinez might want to explain to the new bill.
Thank you. And thank you, Chairwoman, for putting us on the agenda. What we've heard from state Ed and many of our school districts is that the state always pays year of and like forgets about the year prior. So what this would do, it would require that any aid owed to a school district prior year adjustment be past the first aid payment of that school year. So what it would do, it would, it would address the imbalance that the school districts are facing and many are
owed substantial amount which they were owed back. But the state ed pays it according to this other schedule. They pay based on a queue. Right.
So they're placed on a, on a queue of who gets what when.
Yes, we've tried to deal with this in our budget. Yes, Senator Clear. Senator Clear question.
Yes, Senator Jackson so does it impact all of the school districts? And if so, I want to know how much is New York City getting in that? That's one thing. But yes, overall the big pot with all of the school districts in there, how much money is in there?
Yes. So currently the, the aid Q has over $300 million on the aid queue. I can follow up offline in terms of how much of that is specifically for New York City. I don't recall offhand, but yes, like as districts are, you know, have claims for prior year adjustments, they're not paid back, as the Senator mentioned. So yes, everything that, everything on the queue is from prior year adjustments that haven't been paid back.
But can you get from Senator Jackson the amount owed this the New York schools. New York City schools, yeah.
And also what the big pot is?
The big pot is how much?
300 million.
Yes, 309 million. And the payments go as far back as 2012. Some schools have not been paid, which may include New York City as well.
Yeah.
And you know, and there's resentment and understandably so by districts because, because they're owed the money because they were paid too much. It is not their fault generally that they received this money, but they owe it back upon, you know, accounting processes.
And even though they didn't do it intentionally, the Department of Education sent them the money.
Am I explaining correctly?
Oh yeah. It could be due to maybe they estimated they were going to have a certain number of students and they got aid based on that. But that estimate turned out to be wrong. So it's not necessarily intentional. It could just be we think we're going to have, you know, 10,000 and we actually had 9,000. Now all of a sudden you were overpaid because your estimate was wrong. So it could be something along those lines. I mean there's numerous reasons, but my understanding is primarily it's not fault based. It's not Fault based.
Yeah.
Anyway, is there a motion to move until moved it? Senator Salazar? Second. All in favor?
Aye.
Opposed? Without rec, the bill moves to finance. Last is S9003 9 by Senator Mayor.
An act to amend the education law in relation to establishing a competitive emergency mapping grant program.
Okay, thank you, San Francisco. I just want to explain that there are more sophisticated ways to map schools for security purposes. And given some of the incidents we've seen around the country, I myself am interested in seeing schools use some of the new technology to map where things are so that when law enforcement comes in, they know where the windows are, the doors are, what door is locked. Some of them are using sort of old school maps. And there's no reason we ought not to incentivize schools to move to a more sophisticated technology. We tried another bill that did not move, but this is an effort to create financial incentives for schools to do this. So I think it's worth pushing schools in this direction. Many of them want to do it, but they may need some money in order to work with a company to establish a more sophisticated integrated with law enforcement. In the city of New York and other big cities, they have this down better than they do in some smaller or more rural districts. Is there a motion to move the bill? Motion, Senator Disco. Second by Senator Martinez. All in favor? Opposed. Without rec, the bill moves to finance. Thank you all. Thank you very much.