It appears the full force of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Executive Budget proposal to end "hold harmless" won’t be felt in this year’s budget.

Hold harmless prevents school districts from receiving less in Foundation Aid than the previous school year.

Hochul indicated to reporters during a visit to the State Capitol’s third floor press quarters on Thursday that plans were being made to ensure the Foundation Aid formula is updated by the passage of next year’s budget.

"We've talked about putting a process in place so by this time next year, giving everybody the notice and warning that they all asked for, that there will be a different formula," Hochul said. "I'm just deciding with the leaders how that mechanism will work, but I think it's going to put us all in a much better place."

While we may not see an end to hold harmless in the final enacted state budget as the governor had insisted throughout the first months of the year, the impression was that Hochul felt her desire to spearhead change when it comes to an outdated Foundation Aid formula was a success.

“For years, people knew we had a formula that was outdated, based on populations back in 2008,” she said. “No one had the guts to say the emperor has no clothes, something is not working here. I came up and said, 'why is it that these districts have lost population...we’re paying for empty seats.'”

While the state Assembly and Senate did not include the proposal to end hold harmless in their one-house budgets, few have argued Hochul’s stance that the formula is outdated, rather stressing that school districts and therefore students would suffer from ending the provision with no notice as districts work to prepare their own budgets.

What the final deal will look like, and if any changes at all will be made when it comes to Foundation Aid, remains to be seen as budget negotiations continue days after the April 1 deadline. 

Lawmakers, who opposed the initial plan to end hold harmless in bipartisan fashion, reacted to the news Friday.

Assemblymember Pat Fahy told Spectrum News 1 she supports taking time to figure out a plan to update the formula, which in some cases, uses Census data from 2000.

“We need to work to grow our student population in general,” she said. “We also need to make sure that formula is fairly done and that’s going to take work. And usually that’s hard to do in a few weeks in the budget, so I think this is the right approach.”

Fahy, who is chair of the Assembly Higher Education Committee, added that she hopes plans can also be worked out in the budget to reform higher education funding.

State Senator Jim Tedisco, who as ranking member on the Senate Education Committee was a leading voice against the move, stressed that he was channeling the frustration of his constituents in oposituon to the plan.

“I think it’s the result indirectly of us but directly of our constituents,” he said. “We’re hearing directly that ‘we don’t like the overall spending, taxing and borrowing, but we want you to have priorities in your spending, and education is a priority.'”