The State Capitol, Albany NY.

ALBANY – State lawmakers will continue with a busy day today in Albany as they work to approve various bills for the 2015-16 state budget.

On Sunday night, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders announced that a budget deal had been reached – less than three days before the April 1 budget deadline. On Monday, lawmakers began reviewing and acting on the bills that are associated with the budget.

As lawmakers approached tonight’s state budget deadline, Gov. Cuomo on Monday was finalizing what could be described as a take-it-or-leave education reform package that continues to rely heavily on standardized test results but seems to put the onus on the state teachers union to seek second chances for low-scoring teachers.

The Education Transformation Act is tied to a school funding increase of more than $1.33 billion, but it may be a hard pill for lawmakers to swallow — especially in the Democrat-dominated Assembly, where members are closely aligned with teachers unions.

Under the plan, teachers whose students persistently do poorly on tests designed to show student growth during the school year could be fired, even if they are tenured.

At the same time, Karen Magee – the leader of the New York State United Teachers union – was urging parents to boycott the tests given in grades 3 to 8. The tests are currently the basis for up to 20 percent of a teachers rating.

Magee said instructions on how to opt out were available on the union’s website.

As she was calling for a boycott, though, the governor’s office was preparing school “runs,” or charts showing how much state aid the various school districts will receive under the final budget plan.

To get that money, lawmakers would have to approve the new testing program.

Local school districts have had their budget process in a holding pattern as they await those school aid runs. Jamestown, in particular, is waiting with bated breath as it needs to come up with several million dollars in additional state aid to help close a looming $4.9 million budget gap for next school year.

NYSUT regional director Anne Geronimo works with more than 7500 members from throughout Chautauqua, Cattaraugus and Allegany Counties. She was a guest Thrusday on WRFA’s Community Matters program and during our interview, she said educators aren’t necessarily opposed to Common Core, but instead are against how it’s been introduced and implemented by state education leaders.

“We support raising standards for kids. We always have supported that and we have many of our members who think the Common Core as they’ve seen it is a great thing and they’re happy to be working with it in their classrooms,” Geronimo explained. “Where we’ve run into problems is the state’s implementation of it in such a way that materials were not provided to teachers in a timely fashion. They were asked to test students on material that they hadn’t even introduced in the classroom yet.”

Geronimo also said that because of the poor implementation, both teachers and students are seeing a negative impact. “Children are having anxiety over this. They’re failing exams that they had never even seeing material for. They’re coming home crying. They’re exhibiting a lot of symptons in the classroom of anxiety. Any teacher is going to be deeply stressed by seeing their students stressed. So the genesis of our resistence to the implementation was the experience we saw our students having with the tests.”

New York State Education Commissioner John King, Jr. speaks with reporters prior to a public forum on public education at Jamestown High School on Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2013. King has been criticized by NYSUT and others for not being receptive to concerns regarding the implementation of the Common Core.

Geronimo adds that teachers across the state are also against the state’s new evaluation model, which uses the test results from Common Core to help determine a teacher’s overall performance. She said its simply not far to use those results, considering teachers were not made aware of what material would be on the tests – making it difficult if not impossible to prepare students.

In January NYSUT came out with a  vote of no confidence for State Education Commissioner John King, Jr. In addition, it is calling for a moratorium on Common Core so that some of the issues can be addressed. Leaders in the state legislature have also offered their support and Geronimo tells WRFA she’s also seeing local support.

“Joe Giglio, the assemblyman from Cattaraugus and Allegany County did come out against the common core and so far he’s the only legilsator in this region to make a public statement supporting our posiiton,” Geronimo said. “We’ve had very good conversations with [Senator] Cathy Young on that also, so we know that the legislators are hearing from their constituents who are coming from the place that we have to protect our schools and our kids and our communities.”

Geronimo says in the coming  months, NYSUT will be focusing on the school budget votes and elections for various local school boards, encouraring residents to support those candidates who are opposed to the way the state has handled the rollout of Common Core.  She also encourages anyone who wants to be more involed with the issue to contact her office in Jamestown at (716) 664-7425 or to learn more by visiting NYSUT.org.

If you missed the full interview with Geronimo, it will be replayed at noon this Sunday on WRFA and will also be made available at wrfalp.com via podcast early next week.

NYSUT’s president said that in challenging the constitutionality of the tax cap, the union is fighting for the right of citizens, through local control of their schools, to determine for themselves how much they want to spend on their own community’s schools.

NYSUT lawyers filed their suit in Supreme Court in Albany County Wednesday morning.

NYSUT represents more than 600,000 teachers and other school-related professionals; academic and professional faculty at SUNY, CUNY, and the state’s community colleges; retirees; and healthcare and other professionals in public and private employment.

Mueller is challenging Goodell for the 150 Assembly District seat in the November General Election. A meet-the-candidates debate between the two candidates is set to take place on the evening Oct. 22 at the Prendergast Library, sponsored by the Chautauqua County League of Women Voters.