After months of fighting over the controversial education reforms Governor Andrew Cuomo had pushed to include in the budget, some of the debates will continue into the spring. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed this report.
Governor Andrew Cuomo made clear his top priority in the new state budget he proposed in January.
"Education, the great equalizer. This is the area, my friends, where I think we need to do the most reform and, frankly, where reform is going to be difficult," he said.
He was right about the difficulty. Over the past few weeks, the governor faced a storm of criticism from the powerful teachers unions, and also from parents, who fear Cuomo's attemps to crack down on poorly performing teachers would result in students forced to spend even more time on test prep.
As the final details of the budget trickled out late Tuesday, just hours before the midnight deadline, advocates on all sides—from the unions, to charter-school leaders, to parent groups— suggested they were unhappy with key aspects of the final deal.
"No matter what was left on the table, we don't agree with," said teachers union president Michael Mulgrew.
In a major change opposed by the unions, teachers must work at least four years to earn tenure, up from just three—but not the five-year process the governor wanted.
Cuomo also won changes to the teacher evaluation system, tying ratings closer to test scores and making it easier to fire teachers who get poor ratings several years in a row.
The unions were able to put off other contententious reforms, however.
"This was just the beginning of our campaign to really put in place the policies that we know are going to help us," said Mulgrew.
Some of those issues likely will not resurface until next year's budget fight, like a proposed tax credit for private school scholarships, a big item on Cardinal Timothy Dolan's wish list.
Others will be debated this spring: including mayoral control of New York City schools—which expires in June—and raising the cap on the number of charter schools. So even as budget season ends, the battles over education will rage on.