NYSUT is leaving nothing to chance in its efforts to restore funding to BOCES - the state's 37 Boards of Cooperative Educational Services.

After what he described as an encouraging meeting with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and anticipating the same response in an upcoming meeting with Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, NYSUT Executive Vice President Alan Lubin told activists at a March 4 BOCES Lobby Day in Albany that he and NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi had "no question" state lawmakers would restore BOCES funding cut in the executive budget released in January.

While lawmakers have consistently voted to restore BOCES funds cut in past years, Lubin nevertheless urged the activists - faculty, staff, parents, students, administrators and district superintendents from 30 BOCES across the state - to follow up after their lobby day appointments with legislators.

"It's one thing for them to support you today," Lubin said. "Our goal is to get the legislators to keep talking about this, to support it in their conferences, to keep up the pressure and their support."

As the April 1 start of the new fiscal year approaches, state lawmakers are reworking an executive budget that would cut BOCES funding by $67 million from what component school districts would otherwise receive under current law.

Major losses

The loss of anticipated funding would be a critical blow to BOCES and the component school districts they serve because those districts would be losing expected reimbursement for expenses they have already incurred for BOCES programs and services.

That message wasn't lost on lawmakers like state Sen. Michael Nozzolio, R-Seneca Falls. His legislative district - six mostly rural counties between Rochester and Syracuse - is served by four BOCES. Late on the Lobby Day morning, representatives of all four BOCES were meeting with him en masse.

"You are filling the need for programs and services that simply can't be met in our small, rural schools," Nozzolio told the activists, who included Pam Modzel, president of the Wayne-Finger Lakes BOCES Educators Association.

"This is the kind of reception we have been getting this morning," said Modzel, a special education teacher. "The people we have seen so far have been very, very supportive."

A record turnout for the annual lobby day was bolstered by a larger-than-usual contingent of high school students who came to attest to the value of BOCES programs, including several dozen from Nassau BOCES, the state's largest.

"It's a powerful message when the legislators can see and hear from the students directly," said counselor Dave Owens, a member of the Nassau BOCES Central Council of Teachers, who sits on NYSUT's Statewide BOCES Committee. "The students are what this is all about."

Lubin and Iannuzzi were joined in greeting the activists by NYSUT vice presidents Maria Neira, Robin Rapaport and Kathleen Donahue, whose office oversees BOCES issues for the statewide union.

"We're optimistic that legislators, as they have in the past, will recognize the value that BOCES provide to the school districts and the students they serve - and restore the funding," Donahue said.

Part of the solution

As lobby day plans were being finalized, BOCES activists got a boost from a published report that gives new weight to a longstanding campaign touting BOCES as "part of the solution."

In the winter edition of Government, Law and Policy Journal, the deputy director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, Robert Ward, suggested that local governments might look to BOCES as a model for intergovernmental cooperation, rather than pursuing historically unsuccessful and unpopular efforts at consolidating the many layers of local government in New York state.

Instead of looking to save money by consolidating government, Ward suggested local governments might create a non-profit entity that could offer cost-savings in services to any city, town or village that wants to join - much the way BOCES does for school districts.

Alternatively, Ward wondered whether this kind of service could simply be provided by the existing BOCES - a proposal that BOCES activists suggested to lawmakers at last year's lobby day.

- John Strachan