By Adrienne Boudreau:
NYS Assemblyman Sean Ryan, 149th Assembly District, recently visited Lafayette High School to announce his push to have an increase in state education funding, to be set aside for schools with high refugee populations.
The Assembly budget proposal, passed Wednesday, March 12, increased aid to schools by $1.1 billion for the NYS fiscal year of 2014 -2015. This is the largest increase in 6 years and $402 million more than the executive budget proposed for a total of $22.2 billion in state aid.
“Schools with high refugee populations need extra help because they are classified as failing schools because of low graduation rates. That is in direct reflection of their high refugee and English as Second Language (ESL) populations,” said Cody Meyers, Ryan’s communication director.
Ryan’s plan would give a higher percentage of funding based on a formula to schools with a more than 50% increase of ESL students within the past 5 years.
Nearly 70% of students at Lafayette High School are ESL students, and 40% of those students are classified as Students with Interrupted Formal Education, who are often refugees who had little formal education before doing to the United States.
Lafayette is in the process of implementing an English language immersion programs for these students and Ryan hopes the final state budget will make funding for that type of program a “top priority.”
“At Lafayette upwards of 40 languages are spoken…the immersion program would make English a more hands on language for these students, working with family life and exposing kids to English at all times,” said Meyers.
The Assembly also passed legislation delaying the implantation of Common Core standards for 2 years and delayed the sharing of student data to third party vendors.
The bill removes common core aligned test scores from teacher and principal evaluations in an effort to give schools more time to adjust.
It also requires vendors to have a plan in place to resolve any data breaches and immediately notify schools or the State Education Department of any suspected or actual threat to data security.
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