Executive Director's Message
And That's a Wrap!
The 2024-2025 legislative session has come to a close and there were some noteworthy things that happened. The approved budget included Universal School Meals for All Students, which was an advocacy priority of ours for the last few years and this will benefit so many families in our region and across the state.
Some other advocacy priorities that were approved were; increasing the aidable cap for CTE teachers, extension of the retiree earnings cap, changes to how poverty is measured within the Foundation Aid formula, and some changes to the zero emission bus mandate.
We also have some new mandates that we have to implement, of note are the bell to bell cell phone ban, and the classroom temperature mandate.
Sometimes, advocacy is about what isn't approved, and this is also a great example of why a local school board association matters.
The "Project Labor Agreement" bills (A.756B and S.1672B) were specific to Long Island school districts. We strongly opposed these bills that had tremendous local bipartisan support. The Senate approved their bill, and the Assembly approved this bill in both the education and ways & means committees with bipartisan support. Luckily the bill never advanced out of the rules committee and therefore never made it to the floor for a full vote on it by the Assembly. These bills were problematic on multiple fronts and we are grateful it did not get approved. We will work with our local & state officials over the summer to try to avoid the bills being reintroduced. Thank you to all of you who helped with our advocacy efforts.
Lastly as we look ahead towards the next school year, we are working with Suffolk County on the planning of the 250th anniversary of our country's independence. Read the article from County Executive Romaine about the efforts that are underway.
On behalf of the N-SSBA team, thank you for your support this past year, and we wish you all an enjoyable summer and look forward to working together in 2025-2026!
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