Send a letter TODAY to NYC Council Speaker & leaders that school budgets must be increased, not cut

Update:  According to insiders, the Mayor is being stubborn and insisting on school budget cuts.  Please send this separate letter to the Mayor and Chancellor today!. 

Please send a letter to the NYC Council  Speaker Corey Johnson today and the Education and Finance Council chairs to say that the DOE budget should NOT be cut next year, as the Mayor has proposed; but instead, school funding should be increased so they can hire more teachers, counselors, nurses, custodial staff as well as purchasing the supplies to ensure that our children can go back to school safely next year and with the full academic and social-emotional support they will need.

The City Council is in the final stretches of negotiating a city budget for next year. Meanwhile, the Mayor proposed a 3% cut in the overall DOE budget next year, with more than $280 million of cuts directed towards schools. And yet it is clear that schools will need more funding not less next year to create the health and safety precautions, as well as the smaller classes needed for social distancing and enhanced instruction.

A recent cost analysis from the School Superintendents Association and the Association of School Business Officials shows that school districts can expect to spend an additional $490 per student just to purchase hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes and other cleaning supplies, gloves, masks and other personal protective equipment, and hiring additional custodial staff and nurses to ensure health and safety. Given that NYC has more than one million public school students, that means that nearly $490 million alone may be required.

And that’s not counting the additional teachers necessary to provide instruction either remotely or in-person, and extra counselors to offer the emotional support, so critical given the disruption and distress that so many students have experienced during the Covid pandemic.

While Council members announced that while they are intent on negotiating a $1 billion cut to the police budget, they hadn’t yet decided where the savings would go. Clearly a big chunk will be directed to restore cuts to the summer youth jobs, but a large portion should go directly toward schools to pay for additional teachers, counselors and other staffing, as well as health and safety measures that will be critical for NYC school children next year.

Please send a letter now by clicking here, before it’s too late.

Thanks!

Welcome to a new school year, and please take our 5-minute survey!

Welcome back to a new school year! The good news in NYC is that we finally have a Chancellor, Richard Carranza, who is progressive and believes in the importance of class size.

The bad news is that neither he nor the mayor have put in place any specific programs or incentives to encourage smaller classes – even in struggling schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students.

Outside NYC, school budgets in many states are still lower than they were in 2008 before the recession hit. In NYC, though our budget has grown, class sizes are still significantly larger than in 2008.

While the overall DOE budget increased this year by nearly $1 billion, not a single dime will be spent specifically to lower class size, and $200 million more will go to charter schools as their enrollment continues to grow. Nearly $31 million more will be spent on central administration, with more than $1.7 million to pay for the salaries of nine new Executive Superintendents.

Please let us know what the class sizes are this year in your child’s schools, by filling out our five-minute survey here. If you don’t know, ask your child’s teacher -- or ask your middle school or high school child to count heads. The UFT class size limits are posted here. (Subscribers outside NYC are also welcome to take the survey.)

Since projected student enrollment has declined slightly and the City Council successfully pushed for an extra $125 million so that all schools will receive at least 90% of their Fair Student Funding, we hope that this may help lead to slight decreases in average class size this year.

The DOE also announced that 21 new schools were opening this year, but 15 are charter schools. Only one new public elementary school opened in Queens – the most overcrowded borough – and in every borough there are neighborhoods still is suffering from school overcrowding.

This fall the DOE will propose a new five-year capital plan, and we are going to try to keep the Mayor at his word to fully fund this plan and provide all the new school seats that are needed to alleviate overcrowding and accommodate enrollment growth.

We are also going to push for dedicated funding for class size reduction. Let me know if you’re interested in helping with our campaign by replying to this message and/or by filling out our survey.