Check out your school's budget cuts here!

Please attend the budget hearings tomorrow morning (Tuesday, May 27), when the Chancellor is due to appear before the Council at City Hall to testify about his proposed cuts to our schools . Keep the Promises Coalition and Class Size Matters need enough parents to fill the room at 9:30 AM when the Council hearings begin; then we plan to march to Tweed at noon. Public testimony starts at 4 PM.

There will also be a rally/press conference on Wed. May 28 at 1 PM – around the time of the stated Council meeting.

A list (in excel) with the amount of cuts for every school and expected final budget (if DOE gets its way) is posted here. The amounts range from slashing 6.2% for the American Sign Language school (!!) and the Professional Performing Arts HS, to cuts of 1.4% for about 700 schools. The rationale for how these reductions were distributed has not been offered by DOE; moreover, there’s no need for any school to suffer cuts next year, given nearly $600 million more in state dollars and a projected city surplus of more than $4 billion.

Chancellor Klein has said that if only the state had let him have more “flexibility” with the Contract for excellence funding, he could cut all school budgets more “equitably” at 1.4%; but that makes no sense either – since averaged out, the amount would have to lie somewhere between 1.4% and 6.2%.

For the egregious way in which the administration appears to be trying to pit parents against each other (so far unsuccessfully), see the NY Times and CBS news.