Special Delivery: PCSD Advocates Hand Deliver Letters to Senator Murphy's Office

On Thursday, December 8, Peekskill City School District students, parents and administrators paid a visit to Senator Terrence Murphy’s Shrub Oak Office to deliver hundreds of letters addressed to Governor Cuomo. The letters, which Murphy will review before delivering to Albany, were written by members of the Peekskill school community and call for the immediate unfreezing of Foundation Aid and a recalculation of the Foundation Aid formula.

The District’s letter writing campaign coincides with the Governor’s timeline to draft New York State’s educational budget for the 2017-2018 year. Next year, Peekskill is hoping to see not only an increase of aid moving forward, but a phase-in of the $11 million dollars of aid owed to the district by New York State from previous years.

Though the Senator was unable to be there when Peekskill’s representatives stopped by his office, the Senator’s Chief of Staff Matthew Slater was on hand to greet the group and to speak on Murphy’s behalf. Slater said the Senator is aware of the struggle schools such as Peekskill are currently enduring, and that he and his staff agree that a change is needed.

“We believe we need to upgrade the education formula,” Slater said. “The Foundation Aid formula in New York State is archaic, in our view, for Westchester in particular and for Peekskill especially. And that’s why this is one of our top priorities. We want to help fight for that additional funding and to help get the Foundation Aid moving. We’ll be going [to Albany] with your letters and your support and we plan to let people know that there are some real problems that we need to address.”

While they had Slater’s ear, students in attendance expressed what they would want to do with the money, should Peekskill receive additional funding. The youngest in the group requested more school supplies and field trips, while Angeline Carlos-Caceres, a student at Peekskill Middle School, spoke about adding enough Chromebooks for all students in her building.

“We have five classes in six-north and we only have around 30 Chromebooks and in six-south they have five classes and they only have 20 Chromebooks,” Carlos-Caceres said.

Peekskill schools’ advocate and parent Branwen MacDonald said that she would like to see the additional funding put towards resources to help reduce class size and bring in more teacher aides.

“Twenty-four kids in each class is a lot,” MacDonald said. “I see these fantastic teachers, and they are doing their very best, but they do have a lot of kids in the class, so I would like to see smaller classes, recognizing student needs.”

After the group left the building, Peekskill Superintendent Dr. David Fine thanked those who participated in the letter writing campaign as well as those who came out to show support and help with the delivery of the letters.

“What we just did right now is called advocacy,” Dr. Fine said speaking directly to the children in the crowd. “You guys made a difference today.”