While not reminiscent of the battle over Foundation Aid that took place at this time last year, with the release of one-house budgets Tuesday, there is daylight when it comes to education policy and funding between Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal and that of legislative leaders.

When it comes to a cell phone ban in schools, Hochul is gearing up to push her bell-to-bell proposal across the finish line when the state budget is due April 1, with the backing of the powerful New York State United Teachers union and other education groups.

“This is what the experts say, this is what the parents want, this is what the teachers want,” Hochul told reporters.

While there is agreement on some sort of cell phone ban, state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins says the upper chamber is proposing more input from schools, and they only want the ban to apply to instructional time only.

In many cases, parents have expressed concern over a bell-to-bell ban for safety reasons, and Stewart-Cousins wants running room for districts that have already waded into the territory of their own limits on cell phone use.

“We agree that getting cell phones out of the hands of our children during school is a benefit to everyone,” she said. “There are districts that have gone ahead and done different things they feel are working, we talked to superintendents who want a bit of flexibility, so we have injected that into the conversation."

In their proposal, the state Assembly watered things down even further, “omitting” the proposal from their one-house budget but including language in support of some sort of restriction.

“The Assembly is continuing to explore the issue and supports restricting students' use of cell phones and other internet-enabled devices in school to better cultivate a healthy and productive environment for children to learn,” the proposal reads. “The Assembly is committed to furthering this goal and ensuring that the policies implemented in schools are comprehensive and account for the needs of stakeholders, including students, parents, and school professionals.”

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie explained that he’ll lean into that flexibility as negotiations get underway.

“The members were kind of divided on if you do one statewide plan or allow the school districts to have flexibility so we’ll figure that out over the next two and a half weeks,” he said.

Hochul says she’s ready.

“I’m committed to fighting for bell-to-bell,” she told reporters.

Also up for debate is how the state will ultimately utilize the Rockefeller Institute’s study of the formula released last year which provided a variety of different options to modernize the process used to calculate school aid.

Hochul proposed two relatively minor data tweaks, switching out severely outdated 2000 Census poverty data for 2020 numbers, and changing the way the state calculates how many lower-income students a district has.

Historically, the state has relied on how many students receive free and reduced school lunches to calculate that need, but would move instead to use economically disadvantaged data if the governor’s proposal is enacted.

The state also had to step in with an additional tweak to ensure districts don’t lose money after a run of the updated formula resulted in flat numbers for hundreds of districts. Under the current plan, every district will see at least a 2% increase, and additional aid was funneled to low-wealth school districts.

The Assembly is proposing $569 million more in aid than Hochul, and updates three entirely different calculations resulting in at least a 2.9% increase for districts.

The Assembly proposal updates the Regional Cost Index the greater of the 2006 number, or the 2024 value for each region; increases the English Language Learner Factor of the Pupil Needs Index from 0.5 to 0.65; and lowers the Income Wealth Index floor from 0.65 to 0 over three years.

The Senate went even further, establishing at least a 3% increase for all districts, and bolstering the regional cost index for the Hudson Valley and New York City after concerns that Hochul’s proposal would hit downstate districts especially hard.