ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) – As some local school districts are nearing agreements with their unions to create tougher evaluations for teachers and principals, an interest group said failure to enact the new evaluations will cost schools $1.7 billion statewide.

The New York Campaign for Achievement Now on Tuesday released its analysis, reporting that failure to enact the evaluations pushed by the Obama administration and Gov. Andrew Cuomo jeopardizes state and federal aid over two years. The group, which has ties to the charter school movement, says $1 billion in state and federal aid to school performance would be lost, besides the $700 million already publicly threatened.

“At the same time that New York public schools are failing thousands of our students in their preparation for college or careers, we bestow the vast majority of our teachers with positive job evaluations,” the report stated.

State Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. also calculates the potential loss at more than $1 billion.

In the state’s major cities, the report shows New York City schools would lose $592 million in total aid over the next two years; Buffalo would lose almost $51 million; Rochester would lose $48 million; Syracuse would lose $43 million; Yonkers would lose $16 million and Albany would lose over $4 million.

Meanwhile, the New York State United Teachers union reported Tuesday that local chapters are reaching agreements with districts to enact new evaluation methods.

At stake is the $700 million the state won a year ago in the federal Race to the Top competition. To qualify for the reform program grants, the Legislature passed an evaluation system for teachers and principals that included student performance as a measure.

But requiring scores on tests – which were never designed to reflect teachers’ effectiveness – has proven a harder sell when school districts try to negotiate changes with their local unions.

The New York State United Teachers union and the State Education Department recently reported negotiations were progressing, shortly after King suspended some school aid and Cuomo threatened to pull back millions more.

Total state school aid is about $21 billion a year.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

PHOTO: SXC.HU

Sheldon Silver, NYS Assembly Speaker

Karen DeWitt, ALBANY

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver continues to push for his bill to increase the state’s minimum wage. In an interview with public radio, the Speaker also expressed reservations about Governor Cuomo’s plan to offer an option of 401 k retirement plans for future state workers.

Assembly Speaker Silver has made increasing the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.50 an hour one of his top priorities this year.

“Nobody in our country who works a full week should be poor,” Silver said. “But today minimum wage earners are poor by all standards.”

But so far, none of the other leaders at the Capitol have signed on to the plan. Governor Cuomo has said he is philosophically in agreement, but he wants to look at the specifics and has concerns about the economic impact.

Senate GOP Leader Dean Skelos says flatly that he is against it.

“This could be a job killer,” said Skelos. “Rather than a job promoter.”

Senator Skelos says the working poor are already helped by the earned income tax credit.

Silver dismisses the arguments that increasing the minimum wage hurts jobs as a “myth”, and he says studies have proved that retail services, where many of the entry level jobs are located, don’t leave when a state raises its minimum wage.

Deals in Albany often are the result of horse trading, but Speaker Silver says he isn’t planning on bargaining for his proposal right now.

“This is not a matter of trading,” said Silver. “This is almost a moral responsibility here to give people a wage that they can live on.”

Last year, the Speaker backed an extension of the state’s temporary income tax surcharge on millionaires. While both Cuomo and the Senate initially opposed the idea, they eventually agreed to extend the tax on the rich last December. Silver says he has another tax proposal he’d like to see implemented this year. He says when the governor and legislature acted to renew the tax on millionaires, they also cut taxes for the middle class. Now, Silver say, he’d like to broaden those tax breaks to the working poor. The proposal includes a tax break for those making $30,000 a year or less, and the elimination of all income taxes for people who earn less than $20,000 a year.

“I think it’s time this year that we took care of the bottom end,” Silver said.

The Speaker says he’d like the plan in the new state budget. The state has a $2 billion dollar deficit, but he says the $150 million dollar tax break could be absorbed.

Governor Cuomo’s budget plan includes a proposal to offer a new benefit Tier VI to future state employees that would include for the first time the option of a defined retirement contribution similar to a 401k.  Speaker Silver has some reservations about that. He says the recent gyrations of the stock market means that someone could reach retirement age, only to find that their fund’s value has temporarily plummeted.

“I think it has very many pit falls,” Silver. “I don’t want to see people who’ve worked 40 years basically not be able to retire.”

The Speaker says he wants to make sure that the proposal would not “just create future welfare recipients”. Plus, he says, a new benefit Tier V was just implemented two years ago, and “the jury is still out” on whether it will generate the future savings promised.

Silver does agree with the governor’s proposal to stop public employees from using overtime in their last years of state service to artificially boost their salaries, and pension rates. The Speakers says there have been some “abuses”, and he says some of the costs do need to be “reigned in”.

PHOTO: Karen DeWitt/ NY Public Radio

Refreshing Cider: the First Five Years of the Cider Mill Playhouse

Wednesday, February 1, 7:30pm

Cider Mill Playhouse
2 S. Nanticoke Avenue
Endicott, NY  13760

website: www.CiderMillPlahouse.com

Take a journey back in time with Santino DeAngelo and his band of performing artists to the beginnings fo the Cider Mill Playhouse. Listen to musical standards that haven’t been performed at the Mill in over 30 years, along with funny anecdotes, infamous stories, and guest appearances by some of the Mill’s most beloved members.

Yet a few days after winning approval for its MARC 1 pipeline in the heart of the giant Marcellus Shale gas field, the company began condemnation proceedings against nearly half the landowners along the pipeline’s route.

That has undercut part of the approval rationale of federal regulators and angered landowners.

Some landowners are now fighting Central New York Oil and Gas Co. in court, saying it steamrolled them by refusing to negotiate in good faith on price and location.

The company insists it’s trying to reach a “fair settlement” with all property owners and wants to be a good neighbor.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

PHOTO: karathepirate via flickr.com

The Legislative task force on redistricting held its first meeting since new proposed maps were released. Lawmakers heard numerous accusations that the new lines were “gerrymandered” and say the proposed maps are not set in stone. Karen DeWitt reports from Albany:

The task force held the first of a round of several new hearings on the proposed maps. The new district lines were released last week, and immediately criticized by numerous government reform groups as partisan and blatantly gerrymandered. Governor Cuomo said the lines, as currently designed, are “unacceptable” and “full of political machinations”, and would have to be vetoed.

Assembly task force chair Jack McEneny says the maps will likely change before they are voted on around March 1st, and perhaps by then will meet the governor’s approval.

“Historically, there have always been different lines,” McEneny said. “Why would we bother having nine public hearings?”

McEneny says he and others on the task force will listen to the comments at the hearings “very carefully”, and says their suggestions “may wind up on the maps”.

And Legislators heard plenty of comments during the first day of the hearings.  The proposed new lines pit six minority party Senate Democrats against one another in three districts.  Republicans, who are the majority party in the Senate, and who drew the lines, do not pair up any GOP incumbents in any districts.

The proposed Senate maps also split several upstate counties into numerous districts, for example, Monroe County, which contains the City of Rochester, is split among four Senators, and St. Lawrence, Tompkins and Cayuga Counties are divided into three Senate districts   The League of Women Voters called the new lines an “incumbency protection plan”. The League’s Barbara Bartoletti says New Yorkers realize the process hasn’t been fair.

“Even though the public doesn’t know the ins and the outs , they know it isn’t working,” said Bartoletti.

Bill Mahoney, with the New York Public Interest Research Group did not just criticize the Senate’s lines. He says the Assembly’s lines, drawn by Majority Party Democrats, are also gerrymandered. He says while the Senate lines favor upstate and Republicans, the Assembly lines favor down state and Democrats, and he says both are too “partisan”.

“There needs to be a complete redesign of this process,” Mahoney said.

That irritated Senate task force Chair Mike Nozzolio.

“You cast a lot of aspersions,” Nozzolio said.

Senator Nozzolio says the government reform groups are ignoring the positive aspects of maps, like creating the first Asian American majority district in Queens.

The Senator,  speaking before the hearing, answered criticisms that some of the Senate districts are oddly shaped, in particular a new 63rd district carved out of part of New York’s capital region, that appears designed to favor a Republican.

“We’re not interested in shapes,” said Nozzolio “We’re interested in communities of interest.”

Sue Lerner is with Common Cause, whose organization drew model non partisan legislative maps that are markedly different than the legislature’s proposed maps. Lerner says she’s deeply disappointed with the Senate and Assembly’s product. She says she hopes the initial maps have not been drawn in a blatantly partisan manner so that Governor Cuomo and the legislature could settle on a slightly less gerrymandered version in the coming weeks, then call it reform.

“That would be a sorry state of affairs from the public’s point of view,” Lerner said.

Lerner says she continues to have faith in Governor Cuomo’s threat to veto any plan that is partisan.

PHOTO: Karen DeWitt / NY Public Radio

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver introduced his bill to increase the state’s minimum wage from the present $7.25 an hour to $8.50, saying its “absurd” to think that anyone can make a living on the current amount. From Albany, Karen DeWitt reports:

Speaker Silver, saying that no one who works hard and plays by the rules should be “poor and bereft of hope”, says the proposed increase in the minimum wage would help New Yorkers’ in the lowest rungs of the economic ladder  survive. He says the recommended amount of $8.50 cents is low enough to prevent any potential job losses from businesses who say they can’t afford a sudden increase.

“It is a balancing act,” said Silver. “And right now, New York State is out of balance.”

Under the bill’s provisions, the new minimum wage would then increase by the rate of inflation each year. Silver says if the state’s minimum wage had been tied to the rate of inflation all along, it would now be $10.80 cents an hour.

PHOTO: sxc.hu

Innovation Trail Matt Richmond speaks with WSKG’s Crystal Sarakas

Part of “nine seconds,” WSKG’s series on the dropout crisis. Originally broadcast Tuesday, November 1, 2011.

PHOTO: SXC.HU

A sign explaining porous asphalt in Ann Arbor Michigan. This is what will be used on some roads adjacent to Lake George in New York state.

LAKE GEORGE, N.Y. (AP) – A heavily traveled road in an Adirondack tourist town is getting a new type of road pavement designed to keep pollutants from flowing into water supplies.

Warren County and state transportation officials are working on a $6 million project to install porous asphalt on Beach Road in the village of Lake George. The road runs along the lake’s southern shore.

Officials say the pervious pavement looks like normal asphalt but allows storm water to drain through to layers of sand and gravel that filter out pollutants. They say the new pavement will provide a new layer of protection for Lake George’s water quality.

Officials involved in the project say Beach Road will be the first heavily traveled road in New York state to use porous asphalt.

Construction is expected to start in April.

Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

PHOTO: Robert Blackie via flickr.com

A Buffalo-based company is poised to research threats posed by biological weapons and medication-resistant infections on behalf of the federal government. The contract could be worth nearly $70 million dollars.

The job of the Department of Health and Human Services is to fill the gaps in the government’s response to possible medical scenarios. That’s the basis behind a grant awarded to Buffalo’s CUBRC, which will fund research that could prove invaluable in the case of an outbreak and biological attack, says CUBRC’s Anne Radcliff  ”What it will mean for most people in the world is potential cures for diseases that are currently incurable.”

Read more at Innovationtrail.org

PHOTO: Daniel Robison, Innovation Trail