By LINDA KELLETT

C-S-E News Staff

The jury’s still out on whether the $137 billion executive budget presented by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday will be the boon to high-needs school districts that it professes to be.

As noted in an overview that appears in the briefing book detailing the 2013-’14 spending plan, “The Executive Budget reflects a strong commitment to improved student outcomes, sustainable cost growth and an equitable distribution of aid. School [a]id increases at a rate tied to the [s]tate’s underlying fiscal capacity with most of the increase provided to high need school districts.”

As outlined, the budget provides for a gap elimination adjustment restoration for those districts. That is a move favored by upstate schools that have lost significant amounts of state aid in recent years. The questions become: How much is restored and for whom? It is enough?

During a live-streamed speech Tuesday afternoon, Cuomo noted the executive budget increased aid for education statewide a total of $889 million, or 4.4 percent. Three percent of that is an increase in school aid.

An additional amount, as noted in the briefing book, is intended to help school districts with “extraordinary increases in school district fixed costs, including pension growth.”

Cuomo indicated that the state will continue to tie state funding to Annual Professional Performance Review agreements evaluating teachers’ and administrators’ performance.

The budget also provides funding support for full-day pre-kindergarten programs, longer school day or school year programs, the development of Community Schools programs, rewards for high performing teachers and Early College High School programs.

The budget will also require teachers seeking certification to take part in a longer student-teaching experience and to pass a “bar exam.”

The full budget will next go to the State Legislature.