Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $26.7 billion New York State Budget for the 2018-19 fiscal year was enacted on Monday with a bump in foundation aid for school districts around the state.

The official budget includes an increase of $618 million in foundation aid up from the initial proposed increase of $338 million at the end of last year. In addition to foundation aid, the budget includes $2 billion for districts currently involved in the Smart Schools Bond Act and funding for Pre-K was given an additional $15 million.

Many districts around Chautauqua County were critical the original foundation aid proposal last year, and many hoped for an increase when the budget was finalized.

Bret Apthorpe, superintendent of Jamestown Public Schools, said the increase in foundation aid for Jamestown is around $362,000.

Apthorpe said the district was expecting to receive a larger increase in the budget but was pleased the increase was higher than the initial proposed budget.

“We’re happy with anything we can get,” Apthorpe said.

Apthorpe said the $362,000 will primarily be used to pay off debt services in the district and purchase five buses with the increase as opposed to borrowing more money to pay for the vehicles.

Apthorpe praised the support from state Sen. Cathy Young, R-Olean, and Assemblyman Andy Goodell, R-Jamestown.

“I’m very grateful for Andy Goodell and Cathy Young for their accessibility and support for our schools,” he said.

Also impacting the district is a new regulation that was passed through the budget being labeled as Education Transparency. The new regulation requires a school district with nine or more buildings to submit a voter-approved budget to the state Education Department and the state Division of Budget for an additional approval process. The purpose is to ensure equitable funding among school buildings within a district.

During a media call on Tuesday, Cuomo addressed the new regulation and noted that it will give the state more information on how state aid is distributed within school districts.

“Education Transparency says the schools can distribute the money anyway they want, but SED and DOB wants the distribution allocation and just wants to make sure it is accurate,” Cuomo said. “So if you get $100 and you distribute to 10 schools, we want to know how you distribute the $100 among the 10 schools.”

Cuomo said that the discrepancies in distribution are most notable in New York City that has 1,600 schools, and said without a requirement like Education Transparency the state is unaware of how the money is divided up between buildings.

“Education funding is at another record high. A billion dollars, 3.9 percent, we have a total of about $27 billion,” Cuomo said. “It’s the highest level of education funding in history. That’s a 36 percent increase since 2012. Again, the question is going to be, ‘Who gets that money?’ That’s what I’m trying to get with Education Transparency.”

Apthorpe reiterated a similar idea that the new regulation is “more for the bigger schools.” He said Jamestown only falls into the Education Transparency guideline because it has nine school buildings (the minimum amount for Education Transparency) in the district and noted the district is already transparent with its distribution of money.

“We just happen to fall into a bureaucratic requirement,” he said.

Apthorpe noted that Jamestown might allocate more money to a particular building because of the lack of resources. The superintendent said it’s common for the district to consolidate all of the special education resources into one building and all the English as a Second Language resources into one building in order to compensate for the limited number of teachers. This consolidation would appear as if one school is receiving a larger amount of state aid than other buildings, Apthorpe said.

He was hopeful that the additional approval process will allow the district to explain these variances, but noted that there is lack of information available for new requirement.

“Nobody knows what it looks like,” he added. “We don’t know. We don’t have details on that.”

A start date for when this regulation will be implemented has yet to be announced. The superintendent said the district has only received “tentative” and “ball park” dates and time frames.

Cuomo also discussed higher education and emphasized the importance of its funding with a budget of $7.6 million, up 25 percent from 2012. Also, the No Student Goes Hungry Program for college students who struggle feed themselves received more funding.

Additionally, the Excelsior Scholarship allows families that make up to $110,000 to now qualify for aid. Cuomo said the goal is to eventually have free tuition for all state colleges. He compared making state colleges free to making high school tuition free 60 years ago.

“Our children are going to need a college to diploma to be competitive,” the governor said.

Katrina Fuller contributed to this story.