Yesterday's Council hearings on their resolution urging the Mayor to restore the budget cuts to schools

See excerpts in the NBC News story above from yesterday's hearings on the Council resolution, demanding the Mayor restore $469 million in Fair Student Funding cuts to schools.  

You can also check out Comptroller Brad Lander's written testimony, pointing out that 1- DOE has  $600 million in unspent federal funds from last year rolled into this year's budget that could be used to restore these cuts; 2- and there's an extra $800 million in city tax revenue not reflected in the adopted city budget, that will bring the city's reserve fund to $10 billion -- the largest ever.  

He also called for the need for long term and short term planning, and suggested that it could be more important to sustain the smaller classes and existing important programs from last year that were so beneficial to students than to expand or create new programs, including expanded 3K.  The video of the proceedings is here.

Class Size Matters' testimony is here, along with an updated analysis showing that DOE cuts to schools' Galaxy budgets as of August 21, 2022 totaled nearly $1.3 billion dollars. 

More specifically, 1,514 schools saw cuts, while only 68 saw increases. Those schools that were cut experienced an average cut of $865,182, or about 10.6% of their budgets. Those schools that saw increases had an average increase of $309,994, or 6.4% of their budgets.

In my testimony, I also critiqued the Fair Student Funding formula, and showed how it incentivizes large classes and the potential growth of the expensive and wasteful Absent Teacher Reserve. You can check out the cuts to your own school's Galaxy budget on our spreadsheet here: Galaxy cuts as of 8.21.22

See also the written testimony from Paul Trust, teacher, parent and plaintiff in the budget cuts lawsuit, and from parent Christianna Nelson. 

If you'd like to provide your own comments on these cuts to the Council, you can email it to testimony@council.nyc.gov until Thursday at 12:30 PM. If you would like to share it with others as well, please info@classsizematters.org and we will post it on our blog.  Thanks!