“The education bill put before us tonight irresponsibly addresses teacher evaluations and does nothing to ease the burden Common Core continues to place on our teachers, parents and students. Teachers and their individual supervisors should have autonomy as to how to construct Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) evaluations and offer vital input when it comes to education policy. This bill ignores the needs of teachers and our children. It, instead, allows state bureaucrats to implement teacher evaluations as they please. It is irresponsible and shameful to alienate our teachers, and I cannot support legislation that does so.

“I am proud to announce that many schools from my district have received substantial increases in school aid in this year’s budget. But our education bill fails to restore the root cause of school districts’ yearly cuts and budget deficits -- the Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA). This legislation only restores about 60 percent of what was unfairly taken from our schools and that is unacceptable. For another year, we have the means to make our schools whole again and provide our children with adequate resources, but instead, we chose to spend the money on tax credits for the wealthy. Our children deserve better, our teachers deserve better, New York deserves better.”