Lawmakers expressed interest Wednesday to explore creating a tax incentive for school employees to address New York state's education staffing crisis.

Addressing the school staffing crisis is the best way to combat student learning loss, panelists testified to members of the Assembly Education Committee during a hearing in Albany on Wednesday.

James Cultrara, the executive secretary of the state Council of Catholic School Superintendents, suggest lawmakers create a state tax incentive for school employees, like a credit based on their income taxes.

"We're scrambling," Cultrara said of the staffing shortage. "We need something bold from New York state, we need something bold from the federal government to entice people to remain, to reward them for being educators, to reward them for being employees of the schools, to reward them to help retain them, and to recruit them."

Assembly Education Chair Michael Benedetto says the tax incentive for school staff is the kind of idea that could make a difference.

"I think we really should explore it and bounce it around and see if we can come up with some original, good ideas like that," he said Wednesday. "We have to come up with suggestions and ideas of recruiting more people, and ... that [idea] that was put forward today might have been a very good one."

School students continue to battle a learning and skills gap from two years of remote learning and time away from the classroom amid the COVID-19 pandemic. That learning loss persists after an uptick in teachers and school administrators resigning or retiring, and few people filling those positions.

Assemblymembers listened to hours of testimony at a hearing in Albany about how to best address the learning loss next session.

Education leaders agreed the state's requirements to license teachers and other staff must be streamlined to expand the employee pool.

New York schools received about $14 billion in federal pandemic aid, giving most districts the financial resources available to them to help with learning recovery, but a shortage of qualified employees make it difficult to spend that assistance to help with the setbacks.

Officials from the State Education Department stressed the need for Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature to fully fund school foundation aid and update its formula — which is 15 years old — in the next budget.

"The most important thing is that the foundation aid formula be fully implemented," said James Baldwin, the State Education Department's senior deputy commissioner for education policy. 'That will result in significant additional resources for school districts to help them deal with post-pandemic implications."

Gov. Hochul legislated more than $31 billion in direct funding for schools, known as foundation aid, in the 2022-23 budget. It marked a historic 7% increase.

Citing her past commitments, Baldwin said he's confident the governor is on board with fully implementing foundation aid for schools.

"Our expectation is that the state will move forward with fully funding the foundation aid formula," he said.

Student absenteeism continues to be much higher than before the pandemic, with thousands of students who have not returned to the classroom.

Baldwin says New York counties must follow through with educational neglect referrals, and proposed lawmakers designating a person in each county to help with intervention.

Department officials also advocated for more funding for mental health, housing and childhood nutrition programs, which they say should not be competitive.

"Putting school districts in a competitive position with each other often leads to those school districts most in need not receiving the funding that they need in order to address the issues that they're confronting.

SED will also focus on more assistance for special education students and expanding career technical educational opportunities for high school students to improve graduation rates.

The severity of students' education gap since the COVID-19 pandemic varies district to district, and panelists said each school must be separately assessed.

Reading scores saw their largest decrease in 30 years during the pandemic, while math scores decreased for the first time in history, according to a federal education assessment.

But the education gap is a trend that will take years to reverse.

"Certainly, there are students who will never get back that learning loss, and that is just one of the casualties of the COVID crisis," Benedetto said. "But we are moving on with trying to make those adjustments throughout the state, and there is hope."