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- Referred to education
- Referred to education
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Sponsor's memo
BILL NUMBER:A8677
Title of bill
An act to amend the education law, in relation to requiring the governing body of each school district, which eliminates certain teaching positions for any school year, to eliminate funding for interscholastic sports programs
Purpose or general idea of bill
Requires governing body of school district, which eliminates certain teaching positions, to eliminate funding for interscholastic sports programs before eliminating classes such as Math, Science, English, Special Education, etc.
Summary of specific provisions
Section 1. The education law is amended by adding a new section 1527-a.
1527-a: Requires the governing body of a school district, before eliminating/cutting any teacher of science, math, special education or language arts, they will first include in such proposed budget elimi- nation of funding for sports programs affiliated with the school.
Section 2: Requires the Education Department to implement a plan-of-ac- tion for all school districts which plan to reduce its budget due to the current economic crisis.
Section 3: This act shall take effect immediately.
Justification
New York State's current economic situation has caused many drastic budget cuts. Many students and school staff have been nega- tively affected.
When budget cuts to education threaten to diminish our children's educa- tion it becomes time to take drastic action, in the case of education cuts we need to prioritize. Math, science, language arts and special education are essential to children's development and New York staying competitive when compared to other states and countries.
Students in Singapore, China and Japan outperformed U.S. fourth-graders in science. China and India - are taking a systematic approach to train- ing their young people in math, science, and computer technology while steering more of their citizens into science and engineering careers. "In 30 years we will have gone from 'sold in China' to 'made in China' to 'designed in China' to 'dreamed up in China,'" Thomas Friedman writes in The World Is Flat,
India has acquired a similarly strong national commitment to creating a workforce that can capture more and more of the world's knowledge work. Last year, the country's Ministry of Information Technology & Communi- cations produced a report entitled "Strengthening the Human Resource Foundation of the Indian IT-Enabled Services/IT Industry." It calls for educating at least 2 million more technically skilled knowledge workers by 2008.
By contrast, the math skills of U.S. 15-year-olds rank 24th out of the 29 industrialized nations that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, according to a recent international test. Our 15 year-olds' science skills fell below the 29-nation average as well. Since 1990, the number of U.S. bachelor's degrees in engineering has declined by 8%, and mathematics degrees have dropped by about 20%, according to the National Science Foundation's Science & Engineering Indicators report last year.
New York State must prioritize in these hard economic times. India, China, or Japan would never prioritize extra curricular sports over developing competitive workforce and they are doing so from the youngest children to young adults.
Prior legislative history
New legislation
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.