The Remarks of Speaker Sheldon Silver

Contracts for Excellence

The Grabiarz School of Excellence, 225 Lawn Avenue, Buffalo, NY
Monday, November 19, 2007 [2 p.m.]

Thank you, Governor, for that very generous introduction.

Governor Spitzer. My Colleagues in the Western New York Legislative Delegation. Chancellor Bennett. Commissioner Mills. Meryl Tisch. Regents. Teachers. Students. Ladies and Gentlemen.

It is a pleasure to be back in Buffalo; a great city led by one of this state's most visionary and talented mayors, my friend, Mayor Byron Brown.

May I say that it is also a privilege to be at the Grabiarz School of Excellence, here in the 144th Assembly District, strongly represented by my friend and colleague, Assemblyman Sam Hoyt.

Let me preface my remarks by saying how pleased my colleagues and I are to have a partner in the executive branch of our state government who truly comprehends, as we do, the immense importance of public education and who shares the Assembly Majority's historic commitment to education funding and to education reform; an issue that has defined our struggle for more than a decade.

In the People's House of the New York State Legislature, we in the Assembly Majority hold public education sacred. By our words and by our actions, we have sent a clear and continuing message through the years, and the message is this:

Excellent schools are the cornerstone of prosperous communities just as a highly skilled workforce is the backbone of a healthy, job-producing economy.

Therefore, our children and their education will always be priority number one and our commitment to them and to our schools and our teachers will never, ever, waver.

I am not going to give a history lecture here, but it is important to remember that from 1995 to 2006, this state had a governor who asserted that an eighth-grade education is sufficient for our children and for our economy.

That governor turned his back on CFE, proposed billions of dollars in education cuts, and broke billions of dollars in education promises to our students, to our teachers, and to working families across this state.

During those years, the Assembly Majority never walked away from the negotiating table and we never abandoned our commitment to public education. More important, we didn't settle for restoring more than five billion dollars in education cuts.

With the passionate leadership of our Education Chair, Assemblywoman Catherine Nolan, and with the steadfast resolve of Assembly leaders - many from Western New York - including Sam Hoyt, Crystal Peoples, Robin Schimminger, Francine Delmonte, Mark Schroeder, and Dennis Gabryszak, we led the effort to raise academic standards.

We directed much-needed resources to our high-needs school districts.

We led and we won the fight for a state commitment to universal pre-K for every four-year-old, to all-day kindergarten programs, and to class-size reductions beginning in the early grades.

We fought for after-school programs, for better educational resources for our children, for professional development for our teachers, and for an ongoing program of school rehabilitation and construction.

Our formula was and is a simple one: REFORM PLUS RESOURCES EQUALS RESULTS.

Unlike his predecessor, Governor Eliot Spitzer has taken on the challenge posed by CFE and in doing so, is helping us to change the education paradigm in this state.

These Contracts for Excellence are an investment in a brighter future for our children and in the smarter, more innovative, more competitive workforce that our communities need to grow and to prosper in this 21st Century innovation and information economy.

We are reforming our education system, closing the achievement gap, and ensuring the very best return on the dollars our hardworking property taxpayers invest in public education.

Most important, we are demanding accountability from every education leader and every education stakeholder, because the only way we can know if our efforts are paying off is by comparing actions and results.

The contracts announced here in Buffalo today are but a step forward in what must be an ongoing process.

We will continue to invest so that our children can meet and even exceed academic standards.

To that end, even these contracts should be reviewed, analyzed and if necessary, improved upon, because we are, after all, engaged in a learning process that is shaping the future.

Keep this in mind. At this very moment, the high-school graduating class of 2020 is hard at work in kindergarten classrooms across this state.

These five-year-old girls and boys don't realize it just yet, but they are already involved in an aggressive competition with children from Massachusetts and Ohio, Texas and California, China and Germany, India, Canada and Japan, for the leadership positions, for the most promising opportunities and for the most rewarding careers of this new millennium.

For our children's sake, for the revitalization of Buffalo and all of our "main street" economies, for the long-term prosperity of our state from border to border, we must acknowledge that public education is our moral obligation, and we must honor it as such.

I am confident that with Governor Spitzer's leadership, with the leadership of the Legislature and education advocates at every level of government, and with the firm commitment of all New Yorkers, we can - as "One New York" - ensure all of our children the brighter future and the better state that they deserve.

Twelve years is a long time to struggle, but speaking for my colleagues in the Assembly Majority, our children and the future of this state are well worth the fight.

Thank you.