YONKERS: The Yonkers Public Schools money crunch has been delayed.

New York State will send a full school aid payment this month, and won’t hold back the 20% as expected.

Yonkers Public Schools Superintendent Edwin Quezada was expecting for Governor Andrew Cuomo to withhold $14 Million in aid this month, but it looks like the Board of Education can expect the full $70 Million that is due this month.

Smaller aid payments in July and August came in at 80% of what was budgeted, because of shortfalls caused by the pandemic.

Yonkers Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-cousins and other legislators gave the governor power to withhold a percentage of school aid as he saw fit.

This has hurt Yonkers especially hard, because the funding formula already penalizes Yonkers, which gets $11,000 per student in aid, far less than aid delivered to Rochester and Buffalo.

The 20% A reductions in state aid had Yonkers looking at a doomsday scenario of firing hundreds of school employees.

Yonkers educators still worry about future deep cuts and more possible layoffs.

Most elected officials fault the federal failure to act and offset the New York’s pandemic related revenue losses.

The state teachers union is suing, demanding full payment of all the aid allocated in the state budget.