1.   As he has in the past, he proposed simplifying the cumbersome school aid formulas, collapsing several streams of revenue into one block grant.

2.   At stake are billions of dollars in federal aid and the membership of Congress, which rely on census data to shape aid formulas and district boundaries.

3.   Forget that state aid formulas have cheated city schoolchildren for decades, while favoring the wealthy suburbs.

4.   He voted to strip the city of its ability to regulate watershed development, and he indicates that the school aid formula seems fair to him.

5.   Instead of an overall change, lawmakers could end up revising the federal aid formulas for specific programs to reflect regional differences in the cost of living.

6.   Leaders in both the Senate and Assembly said any plan to overhaul the state school aid formulas would face an uphill political battle.

7.   MEFA officials and their colleagues elsewhere are lobbying the federal government to change the aid formula to benefit prepayment plans as well.

8.   Old Bridge and about a dozen other districts have decided that their best bet is to go to court to challenge the state aid formula.

9.   Pataki said Tuesday that he did not want a judge determining school aid formulas.

10.   Pataki has promised to rectify the school aid formula but is putting it off.