State Education Department leaders are exploring creating a new formula in the state budget to give high schools reliable funding to offset costs of early college classes and expand their availability statewide.

Department officials had discourse with lawmakers about the idea last week during a legislative hearing in Albany focused on strengthening partnerships between high schools, colleges and universities. 

Jim Baldwin, the education department’s senior deputy commissioner for education policy, says dual enrollment programs would benefit from a more permanent funding mechanism.

"How do we make this the rule rather than the exception?" he told Capital Tonight. "How do we create a program with appropriate guardrails that the state can support long term that is available to students throughout the state?"

The latest state budget included a $20 million increase for Pathways in Technology and other early college in the high school programs. Gov. Kathy Hochul has directed state agencies to keep their spending flat in their upcoming budget requests. SED officials say they don't expect cuts or reducing existing programs.

The department wants to end requiring school districts to compete and submit proposals for state funding for early college programs, Baldwin said.

Lawmakers say they're starting conversations now to ensure the programs won't get left behind in the next budget.

“We are doubling down," Assembly Higher Education Committee chair Pat Fahy said Wednesday. "I do believe that this is higher education's turn.”

Dual enrollment programs help make college more affordable and accessible for high school students, and increases the likelihood they'll enroll or graduate from a college or university.

Expanding these programs often comes down to available funding, concerning lawmakers with the state's uncertain fiscal picture.

Assembly Education Committee chair Michael Benedetto says colleges and universities with large endowments should use some of that money to boost state aid.

“Maybe it's also important to look ahead and plant the idea in the minds of some of these colleges, some of these universities, that maybe they should be doing more in the communities that they live,” he said Wednesday. "Maybe, it's give back time."

Benedetto is encouraging colleges and universities to submit proposals to the Legislature to include in future budgets.

He and Fahy agree the state should review its funding formulas. 

SED leaders and lawmakers say they plan to get creative after declining enrollment took an even sharper hit after the COVID pandemic.

"We've struggled with enrollments the last few years — this is a critical piece to turning that around," Fahy said.

Baldwin said New York students affected by the COVID learning gap are catching up, and will be ready for college-level coursework in high school.

"As we gain distance from the pandemic, and the fact that we had extended school closures, there are programs that have been instituted to help them catch up," Baldwin said. "The state has provided funding to school districts to support those programs. And I feel that over the long term that the negative impacts will be mitigated as students move toward high school graduation."

Fahy says she's remaining optimistic amid a challenging financial climate for SUNY. She plans to push to expand the state's Tuition Assistance Program, or TAP program, to part-time students in high school taking early college classes. 

The assemblywoman says it's more important to expand dual enrollment than ever so students caught in the COVID learning deficit don't continue to fall through the cracks.

"This is the COVID cohort," she said. "We need to reach these students and make sure we are getting them into college, giving them the opportunities that they often missed when they stayed at home."