Teach NYS Help 100+ Schools Collect Millions in STEM Teacher Funding
In addition to championing the initial STEM/MST legislation, Teach NYS fights for funding increases every year. In total, $178 million has been allocated to nonpublic schools through this program, which reimburses schools for a portion of their STEM teachers’ salaries. See below for the annual funding breakdown and most recent statuses. Currently, NYSED is reviewing the 1800 applications they received for the 2020-21 school year, and Teach NYS assisted with over 600 of those received.
For this most recent round of reimbursements from the 2019-20 school year, schools received a total of $30 million. Our member schools collected 28% of that total, and they received an average of $165,000 each. In terms of individual teacher reimbursements at member schools, here are some examples:
- A Brooklyn school received $48,000 for an engineering teacher teaching about 27 weekly periods.
- A Lawrence school received $28,000 for a science teacher teaching about 16 weekly periods.
- A Far Rockaway school received $7,500 for a math teacher teaching about 4 weekly periods.
The Government Maximization (GovMax) department at Teach NYS is dedicated to helping schools through challenging processes, including these annual STEM/MST applications. In this past round alone (for the 2021-22 school year), we directly assisted or advised 112 schools on over 650 applications. We provide a thorough review of all application components, comparisons of the individual and master schedules, and detailed, written feedback. We’re proud to be able to offer such assistance, and we also hold webinars, provide checklists, create templates, advise on hiring new STEM teachers, and more.
For this upcoming round (the 22-23 school year) we successfully advocated for a major increase in funding, securing a 70% increase from the previous year, up to $58 million. Not only will we provide the same level of attention to each school in this upcoming round as we have in the past, but we will also work with the schools to submit via NYSED’s portal, provide a master schedule template, improve the checklist, and much more.
Reach out to katza@teachcoalition.org for assistance from Teach NYS with this incredible program.