OGDENSBURG – Ogdensburg School District has received over $1 million in supplemental aid with help from Assemblywoman Addie Russell in recent years.

"That extra aid very clearly has saved programs - arts, music, AP classes, all those things that aren't mandated - for us in recent years. That extra money has gone a long ways," Superintendent Timothy Vernsey said.

He said other school districts in the region would have also been impacted if his district would have had to cut AP classes. The Ogdensburg district serves as the home for AP classes that are utilized by students from other districts in a distance-learning program.

Assemblywoman Russell visited an AP English class, where students from OFA and three other districts were taking a quiz. Teacher Matt Denner Jr. told the assemblywoman that the students she saw on a screen taking their tests at other schools in the region would be faxing their tests to him.

"If we would have had to cut those AP classes, we would have lost that distance learning capacity," Vernsey said.

He noted the additional aid had been critical in past years when the district was facing a significant fiscal crisis.

"We had to cut upwards of 60 people during that stretch. We were cutting positions, giving out pink slips. Music, arts, marching band could have been gone," Vernsey said.

Assemblywoman Russell said she has used the supplemental aid to assist Ogdensburg because she recognizes approximately 70 percent of the property in the district is tax exempt.

The assemblywoman has also introduced legislation that would require the state to provide additional aid to school districts that contain high percentages of tax- exempt property (A10126).

She said she works to understand the budgets of the school districts in the River District so she can direct additional funding to districts with the greatest needs.

"It's all about equity. I try to focus the funding on districts with true needs. It's about who has the highest needs," she stressed.

Vernsey also took Assemblywoman Russell on a tour of the high school and junior high complex and showed her improvements made during the district's recent capital project.

There were stops in the auditorium, pool, distance learning room, library and nurse's suite during the tour.

Assemblywoman Russell also stopped in the cafeteria to talk about the farm-to-school pilot program.

School Lunch Manager Brian Mitchell told the assemblywoman he is using the district's $18,000 allocation to purchase apples from Fobares Fruits in Rensselaer Falls.

"Last year I was buying 12 cases a week from Fobares. This year, with the additional funding, I'm buying 20 cases a week, and the kids are taking the apples and eating them. It's going very well for us, and that is an extra $600 a week going to a small business in Rensselaer Falls," he said.

The supplemental aid for the current school year includes $300,000 for OFA; $250,000 for Watertown City School District; $100,000 to Sackets Harbor; $50,000 for Alexandria, Heuvelton, Lisbon, Morristown and Potsdam; and $30,000 for Hammond.

Assemblywoman Russell had also secured $1 million in supplemental aid for North Country districts in the 2015-16 school year. Districts receiving this aid included Alexandria, Canton, LaFargeville, Lyme, Massena, Ogdensburg, Sackets Harbor and Watertown.

She stressed she has a long record of fighting for equitable state aid funding for schools in St. Lawrence and Jefferson counties.

"We got an additional $8.9 million for Foundation Aid for schools in the two counties, and I’ve been hearing of success stories from superintendents in our area with dozens of jobs being added to our local schools because of this funding. I fought hard to secure that additional funding, but there is more work to be done," Assemblywoman Russell said.

"I have been a vocal advocate and sponsored legislation to fix the broken Foundation Aid formula, which disproportionately affects rural schools like we have here in the North Country," she added.

"I always fight for more aid because the suburbs are getting more than they should while our districts have been struggling in recent years to maintain even the most basic educational programs," according to Russell.