It all comes down to state aid.
That's one of the things legislators and members of the Schoharie County School Boards Association agreed on at a meeting held Thursday in Duanesburg.
Speakers were State Senators Jim Seward and Cecelia Tkaczyk and Assemblyman Pete Lopez.
All agreed the state's aid formula for rural upstate schools isn't working and called for doing away with the gap elimination adjustment-money the state has began withholding from schools about five years ago in an effort to balance the budget.
"You need to keep after us," Senator Tkaczyk told the audience of about 50 school board members, administrators, and Duanesburg Central School Participation in Government students.
"The real issue is that our schools aren't adequately funded," something especially noticeable when it comes to state mandates, where the state requires small schools to do everything the big schools do-but without the staff.
"We need to get education right," Senator Tkaczyk added.
Thursday's meeting was rescheduled from one in February that was cancelled because of snow.
All agreed, though, that the issues haven't changed in the intervening eight months.
"These are critically important times," said Senator Seward, who called the alignment of Common Core and budget concerns a perfect storm.
While the Legislature has taken some steps to allow for more local control and input on Common Core issues of testing and teacher evaluation, Senator Seward said it still has a long way to go when it comes to fairly distributing state school aid.
"Let's get rid of the GEA for once and for all and move forward to a more equitable distribution of state aid," he said.
All three legislators said they'd voted against bills and budgets because there wasn't enough in them for education and pointed out that though there's a multi-million dollar 'surplus' in the 2015-'16 budget, there will be plenty of competition for it from things like infrastructure and tax cuts.
Schools saw some increase in overall aid last year, and though it was welcome, Assemblyman Lopez said it was a "Titantic struggle' that pitted upstate rural and suburban schools against wealthy Long Island districts.
"Part of the struggle is us," he said. "We need to present a more united voice.
'Foundation aid [traditional state aid] is the best thing we have because it's the only thing we have, but if you give more to one, the others want more."
Also of concern is talk coming out of Albany regarding private but state-funded charter schools.
"We can barely afford to support the school system we have now," Senator Tkaczyk said.
Audience members questioned the wisdom of financing technology through the $2 million Smart Schools Bond Act on Tuesday's ballot and Senator Seward said he'd be voting against it.
"This is bad financing," he said of the five-year plan to bond technology that will be outdated in a year or two. "Let's take that debt service and put it into the state aid formula."
Cobleskill-Richmondville School Board President Bruce Tryon brought the discussion back to unfounded mandates-an issue he said he's brought to legislators again and again and again.
"What can we do to make that stop?" he asked. "We've asked again and again. We're going to go right into the ground unless things change."