Education

Elementary and Secondary Education

Created in 1784, the New York State Board of Regents is the oldest independent policy-making educational body in the world. Indeed, the Regents began functioning five years before the government of the United States. Every year since, the Regents and the State Education Department (SED) have had an awesome and nationally-important impact on education, with broad jurisdiction over every education policy issue ranging from pre-school to the licensed professions.

Hinman Straub's Elementary and Secondary Education practice team assists our clients’ interactions with the Regents and SED on a host of issues, including learning and curriculum standards, state Regents examinations and other State tests, non-public school services, facilities planning, and school report cards. We do this work with a very real commitment to the Regents’ tradition in caring for more than 3.1 million school children attending more than 7,000 public and independent elementary and secondary schools.

Our Elementary and Secondary Education Practice works with clients to:

  • Engage the interest and consideration of each of the 17 members of the State Board of Regents;
  • Attend and report on the Regents’ meetings each month, and review the volumes of proposals and reports circulated monthly;
  • Present issues to any of the more than 30 program staff units within SED’s Office of Elementary, Middle, Secondary and Continuing Education (EMSC);
  • Organize proposals for contract procurements offered by EMSC; and
  • Provide outreach to any of the more than 700 school districts in the State, as well as to non-public schools and charter schools

We also serve as counsel to many professional educators and their membership organizations.

Higher Education

We represent a number of higher education clients, including both public and private institutions.

Hinman Straub's Higher Education team advocates for critical state funding and provide policy implementation advice when new laws and/or regulations are enacted. We also advise clients on the tax implications of their actions and assist them in complying with federal, state and local guidelines when public funding is involved.

We have also assisted our higher education clients on matters relating to sponsored research and regulatory compliance issues, multi-university and industry research consortiums and other joint research and development collaborations, export controls, intellectual property management, and domestic and international licensing and other technology transfer matters.