January 31, 2012

Race to the Top, Another Unfunded Mandate for PV Schools

Dear Putnam Valley Community,

You may have read the 1/29/12 Journal News front-page article entitled “The Costly Race.” As you may know, as a result of the Obama administrations “Race to the Top” funding, New York schools are supposed to be receiving $700 million in order to implement many large scale initiatives. The two most ambitious undertakings are a new system for teacher and principal evaluations and the implementation of common core standards in English/Language Arts and Mathematics. As the article had clearly stated, the amount of funding provided to each school, especially in the Lower Hudson area would be a fraction of the initial and continuing costs to implement these enormous requirements.

The Putnam Valley schools were notified of the amount of monies they would receive under the “Race to the Top” initiative; approximately $6,000 spread over a four-year period. In applying and agreeing to accept the allocation, the expenses for the initial required paperwork; record keeping including quarterly progress reports, data analysis and devoted staff would cost us significantly more than $1500 per year.

Even though we will not be receiving the “Race to the Top” monies, we will still need to be in compliance with the initiatives associated with it. We are working with our teachers and administrators unions to continue to refine our new system for teacher and principal evaluations and our teachers are engaged in aligning their curriculum with the new common core standards.

As you can well imagine, these large-scale initiatives are extremely costly to us at Putnam Valley. At this juncture, unfunded and underfunded mandates cost the taxpayers in Putnam Valley over $10 million dollars. This DOES NOT include all the additional monies it will take to comply with the “Race to the Top” major initiatives. The costs associated with these undertakings including staff training, purchasing software and data requirements will total hundreds of thousands of dollars when fully implemented.

We do believe that these initiatives could have the ability to assist us in “raising the bar” in terms of student performance. Yet, during these difficult economic times, when we are grappling with the implications of a 2% tax levy cap, it is disheartening that we will receive no funding for the implementation of these monumental endeavors.

Sincerely,

Dr. Barbara Fuchs
Superintendent