2015 Agenda for Senate GOP's

Six days after Election Day, the New York State GOP’s met to discuss what their 2015 agenda will be when the next legislative session begins in January. Improving public education, especially raising the cap on charter schools seems to be a top priority for the newly elected GOP representatives in the Senate. Another top priority of the GOP controlled Senate is to cut taxes and rid the business sector of unnecessary regulations.

Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos talked about the Senate’s 2015 agenda by saying “We want to make sure we continue to improve our public education system, but we also believe in charter schools, where we can help kids get education, especially within the minority communities,” He also stated “We want to continue to cut taxes, but in a more dramatic way so that we can create private sector jobs. And we have to look at regulations that are unnecessary. …. Sometimes regulations hurt businesses even more than taxes.”

The expansion of charter schools in the state does seem to be something that’s in our near future. A major reason for that is because the GOP now controls the State Senate, after they picked up 7 new senators this past election. Republicans traditionally support charter schools because they feel that they give parents more options for their children’s education, and can boost student performance. They also support charter schools because private groups and organizations run them. They believe because of this, and the competition between the different charter schools that would result from this would make our education system better and boost performance.

Two main reasons why I believe that we will see a lot more charter schools in the state get created in 2015 is because an Independent PAC called StudentsFirstNY, who favors charter schools, spent over 4 million dollars in 2014 on ads and efforts supporting Republican candidates in key Senate districts. So you can expect the senators that they endorsed will be paying them back by increasing the amount of charter schools in the state. This will be an easy task for them to accomplish not only because the have a majority in both houses but because the Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo also supports charter schools so if you’re a betting man, bet on seeing more charter schools in 2015.