ยง 551. Apportionment. 1. In order to meet proper health, welfare and
safety standards in qualifying schools for the benefit of the pupils
enrolled therein, there shall be apportioned health, welfare and safety
grants by the commissioner to each qualifying school for the school
years beginning on and after July first, nineteen hundred seventy-one,
an amount equal to the product of thirty dollars multiplied by the
average daily attendance of pupils receiving instruction in such school,
to be applied for costs of maintenance and repair. Such apportionment
shall be increased by ten dollars multiplied by the average daily
attendance of pupils receiving instruction in a school building
constructed prior to nineteen hundred forty-seven. In no event shall the
per pupil annual allowance computed under this section exceed fifty per
centum of the average per pupil cost of equivalent maintenance and
repair in the public schools of the state on a state-wide basis, as
determined by the commissioner, and in no event shall the apportionment
to a qualifying school exceed the amount of expenditures for maintenance
and repair of such school as reported pursuant to section five hundred
fifty-two of this article.
2. The apportionment pursuant to this section shall be reduced by one
one hundred eightieth for each day less than one hundred eighty days
that such school was actually in total session in the base year, except
that the commissioner may disregard such reduction up to five days if he
finds that the school was not in session for one hundred eighty days
because of extraordinary adverse weather conditions, impairment of
heating facilities, insufficiency of water supply, shortage of fuel or
the destruction of a school building, and if the commissioner further
finds that such school cannot make up such days of instruction during
the school year. No such reduction shall be made, however, for any day
on which such school was in session for the purpose of administering the
regents examinations or the regents scholarship examinations, or any
day, not to exceed three days, when such school was not in session
because of a conference of teachers called by the principal of the
school.