Last month, Gov. David A. Paterson froze $750 million in aid to cities and school districts. This latest round of mid-year budget cuts is another example of Albany’s callous treatment of our state’s most valuable resource: our children.

New York State is second in per-pupil spending nationwide, but is 40th in percent of students graduating. In Buffalo, the statistics are worse. According to the State Education Department, only 46 percent of Buffalo high school students graduate in four years.

Shortly after his election, President Obama created a program called the Race to the Top to prod states like New York to reform public education. The program is a competition among the states to pass reforms in order to win a share of the $4.35 billion available from the Obama administration.

To apply, each state must enact reforms designed to:

Raise the standards of student, teacher and school achievement.

Develop data systems that measure student and teacher performance.

Train and recruit better teachers and principals.

Improve failing schools.

In October, Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo, heeded the president’s call, proposing the most comprehensive plan to overhaul education in the history of New York State and satisfying the four required reforms.

At the time, the head of the Buffalo teachers union (a perpetual obstacle to education reform) told The Buffalo News, “Everybody knows this stuff isn’t going to happen.”

This poisonous prediction seemed accurate until December, when State Education Commissioner David Steiner presented a plan that echoed Hoyt’s bill. If passed by the Legislature, it will position New York to win nearly $700 million under Race to the Top. The Board of Regents immediately endorsed Steiner’s plan. Paterson, mindful of his recent cut in aid to cities and schools, recognized the potential windfall and also embraced the plan. Now the hope for sweeping reform rests with the Assembly and Senate; both must pass the proposed reforms by Jan. 19 for New York to win the $700 million.

The Race to the Top funding presents an unprecedented opportunity to reform an education system that has failed generations of school children in New York. Thanks to Hoyt, Steiner and the Board of Regents, New York State is poised to seize this opportunity.

Tell your state representatives our children cannot afford to miss it. To find your representatives, please go to http://

www.nysenate.gov/mem/

and http://assembly. state. ny. us/mem/ The deadline for the State Legislature looms, as does the threat of continued legislative failure in both houses.

Katie Campos is director of development at Democrats for Education Reform. James Gardner, a Republican, worked for the Center on Children and Families at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Both are working on education reform issues in Western New York.