Where’s the accountability that mayoral control was supposed to bring?

According to the NY Times, "Next year, the city will spend an estimated $296 million on school safety, a $5.4 million increase. In 2008, the budget was roughly $204 million."

Meanwhile, the Chancellor blames the increased spending on the police; and the Police Department (more believably) says the decision about how much to spend was made by DOE.

Where is the mayor on this? Missing in action.

Manhattan President Scott Stringer -- Letter on PEP Budget Vote

THE CITY OF NEW YORK
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT
BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN

SCOTT M. STRINGER
BOROUGH PRESIDENT

June 26th, 2008

Dear Manhattan Public School Parents:

On Monday, June 23rd, the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) voted
on the executive budget for New York City public schools. As may
already know, my appointee to the PEP, Patrick Sullivan, voted
against the proposed budget, and I am writing to share with you the
reasons that Patrick and I felt it necessary to vote no.

The state law is clear from my perspective. The PEP is
supposed to "approve an estimate of the total sum of money deemed
necessary for school operations in the next fiscal year." The
budget presented by the Chancellor of the Department of Education
(DOE) would require cuts to all schools, some ranging from five
percent or higher. The proposed budget with these cuts would, in my
view, not be sufficient to fund school operations. Consequently,
pursuant to the PEP's duties as outlined in state law, Patrick and I
felt he simply could not approve of the proposed budget.
Furthermore, rather than propose an estimated budget that sets forth
the funding to meet schools' needs, it appears that the Chancellor's
budget instead starts with the funding provided by the Mayor and
reduces expenditures until a balance is achieved. This is not the
way state law dictates the budget should be presented to the PEP,
the Mayor and the City Council for approval.

My concern is that the proposed budget will require cuts to
essential programs such as academic intervention and tutoring,
including programs for those students at risk of being held back
under the third, fifth, seventh, and eighth grade retention
policies, arts, music, sports, enrichment programs, advanced
placement courses, after school programs, professional development,
technology, libraries, and classroom supplies. Many schools facing
the deepest cuts would likely lose teaching staff as well.

The lack of disclosure and transparency also made it extremely
difficult to assess the sufficiency of the budgeted funding. DOE
refused to provide budget code level detail (which would provide
information about the cuts or lack of cuts taking place at the
central level) or respond in writing to Patrick's questions about
cost increases.

What we do know about DOE's itemized $963 million in cost increases,
however, is cause for concern. DOE has embarked upon a series of
initiatives that are all extremely expensive including the retention
of thousands of students, the ramp-up in standardized testing and
test prep, the creation of charter schools, the expansion of
collaborative team teaching (CTT) classes, and the restructuring of
large high schools into small high schools. While some of these
programs are clearly beneficial and the efficacy of others is
subject to debate, the fact is that each one alone costs hundreds of
millions of dollars annually. The decision to proceed
simultaneously with many expensive initiatives while the mayor has
asked DOE to reduce its budget by $428 million raises questions
about the fiscal management of the school system. While we are
fortunate to have an additional $608 million in state funding, our
oversight of finances must be rigorous if we are to avoid harmful
cuts to the classroom.

My hope is that the Mayor and City Council can work together to
achieve an education budget that does not affect the quality of
education provided to Manhattan's children. I will join parents in
asking that the final budget restore the cuts and thus the City's
commitment to its children.

Very truly yours,
Scott M. Stringer

Manhattan Borough President

MUNICIPAL BUILDING
1 CENTRE STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10007
PHONE (212) 669-8300
FAX (212) 669-4305
www.mbpo.org
bp@manhattanbp. org

School Budget Update

The press is being briefed today and principals will hear tomorrow at a 5:00 pm meeting. A letter released to principals had lots of spin but a few details:

• $99 million in cuts will be passed on to schools.

• $200 million will be cut centrally. While that sounds good, keep in mind that "central" cuts may mean in-school programs or services may be cut if schools don't pick up the costs.
  

• Fair Student Funding will be used to allocate funds. The hold harmless provisions which prevented dramatic cuts to some schools will be maintained.

• Nevertheless, cuts to some schools could be up to 6%.
  

No word on when schools can see their actual budgets.

The mayor has been heavily criticized from across the political spectrum for failing to keep his commitments to the schools. It looks like the Bloomberg administration's current PR position will be to deflect criticism by saying the state has tied DOE's hands through the Contracts for Excellence process.

Keep the Promise TV ad

Check out the new TV ad -- opposing the administration's budget cuts:

DOE Executive Budget Vote Postponed for PEP

The DOE notified Panel for Educational Policy members that the review and vote on the executive budget scheduled for Monday night has been postponed. The meeting will be held and the other agenda items, updates on charter schools and translation services will be heard.

The reason cited was that the DOE continues its efforts to "minimize any negative impact to school budgets". The vote has not been rescheduled.

PS 87 third graders write to Klein about cuts

See the Channel 7 news story about the third graders at PS 87 who brought their letters to Tweed, asking the Chancellor not to cut the budget for our schools.

“Chancellor Klein: would you like it if you were in the third grade and the chancellor was going to take money from your school? I hope this letter will change your mind.” - Sincerely, Danny

Click on the photo for a closer look.

Staten Island Rallies Against Bloomberg Budget Cuts

Parents and their elected representatives were out in force last night to protest the mayor's cuts to the education budget.

One lawmaker with a child headed to public school criticized the mayor for failing to keep his word. From the Staten Island Advance:

"Everybody understands a promise as a promise, and even if you don't like it, you've got to live with it," Councilman Vincent Ignizio (R-South Shore) said last night. "When my baby girl attends PS 36, she's only going to get one chance at kindergarten, one chance at first grade."

Educators warned that the cut in the 2008-2009 school year budget would mean that schools all over the Island would have to scale back dramatically in music and arts programs; ax academic intervention services that help the students most at risk, and further swell class sizes.

See the full story in SI Advance here and great video footage from NY1 here.

sign our new petition! and hearings on the capital plan

We have a new petition online that asks the Mayor to come up with a better capital plan – urging him to build enough schools so that overcrowding can be eliminated and class sizes can be reduced, to plan for growth, and to provide incentives to developers to build schools along with residential and office space.

The petition grows out of the recent reports from the Manhattan borough president and City Comptroller, the work we’ve done on the Manhattan task force on school overcrowding, as well as the impending crisis caused by development that is facing so many neighborhoods throughout the city.

Please sign the petition and be sure to include your address and phone no. Be assured that this info won’t show up for anyone online to see, but it’s important information that elected officials like to have when we send them copies of the petition.

There will be City Council hearings at City Hall on the capital plan next week, Wed. May 21 – with testimony from the DOE starting at 10:30 AM, and from the public beginning at 3:30 PM. Please come if you can and share the story of your school and neighborhood. Just write a few paragraphs about whether you think the richest city in the world is treating its public schoolchildren right by jamming them like so many sardines .

If you can’t make it, leave comments on the petition, and we'll try to include as many of them as possible in our testimony.

Despite $4 billion surplus, the education Mayor still breaks his promise to our kids

See the NY Times article about the education budget cuts for next year proposed by the Mayor. Despite an estimated $4 billion surplus, and property tax cuts amounting to $1.25 billion more, the Mayor still seems intent on cutting back education by a substantial amount – though accounts differ, by about $400 million next year. This comes after mid-year cuts of more than $100 million already.

The Mayor’s office tried to hide these cuts by claiming increased spending on education by $200 million – but this turned out to be yet more PR spin. Excerpt from the NY Times:

Mr. Bloomberg and his aides emphasized that the city was spending $243 million more on education in 2009 than it did this year. But much of that is so-called rollover money, or funds that schools have left over from this year and will keep for the next year. Roughly $100 million is to cover rising food costs, increases in charter school enrollment and tuition for special education students mandated to attend private schools.

“There’s going to have to be some cuts in the schools,” Mr. Klein said. “I’m optimistic if we continue being intelligent about this, we can navigate these waters effectively.”

Continue being intelligent about this? That assumes they ever were. Charter schools, for some reason, do not face any new cuts next year.

…In January, the department ordered a cut of 1.7 percent at schools across the city, prompting a loud outcry from principals, who said they had to reduce valued programs like after-school sports and Saturday tutoring in the middle of the year. Additional school-level cuts seem likely for next year, although Mr. Klein appeared to rule out cuts at every school in the fall, saying one of the challenges would be to tailor reductions to each school.

Tailor reductions to each school? This sounds like the Chancellor is still intent on pushing through the full implementation of his unfair “fair student funding” scheme – which he promised not to do for at least two years. The city also plans to delay payments by “stretching out its capital plan by a year” which if applied to school construction, would be disastrous.

See the NY Sun about the fact that education advocates, the teachers and the principals unions plan to fight these cuts with TV and radio ads – as well they should. I can’t remember such drastic cuts to our schools before in a time of surplus –not to mention following the decision of our state’s highest court that our kids’ education was unconstitutionally underfunded.

Please add your name to a petition in support of City Council Resolution #1302, which calls on Bloomberg to restore all cuts to education funding, co-sponsored by Council Members Robert Jackson and Bill Di Blasio.

And see this video of a rally in the Bronx protesting the cuts:

Daily News: Bloomberg Administration Spinning of Education Stories

The Daily News blog Daily Politics takes a close look at the massive Tweed PR machine. Liz Benjamin reports that a former TV reporter will be hired to "pitch 'positive' stories to the media". Public relations staff will be increased to twelve and staff expense will top $1 million before benefits. The ramp-up in spending makes for quite a contrast with the cuts hitting elementary school cafeteria workers.

Click here for the full story. We covered the food service cuts here.

If you have not already, check out Juan Gonzalez's excellent column exposing the truth behind the spinning of test scores. Click here for "Klein Smears Immigrant Kids."

New DoE Budget: Klein Signals Early Defiance of New State Law

The DoE operating budget for next year was unveiled this week at two events, the Panel for Educational Policy meeting on Monday and a joint session of the City Council Education and Finance Committees on Tuesday. While there was no press coverage, there was important news:

First, the budget for next year will include a substantial increase of more than a billion dollars: $16.9 billion vs. $15.8 billion last year.

Second, the state has made funds available to settle the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) case, whereby the state was ordered to address unconstitutional deficiencies in our schools. Under the terms of the new state education law requiring a "Contract for Excellence" with each district, these funds are to be spent in five areas: full-day pre-K, class size reduction, time on task, middle/high school restructuring and principal/teacher quality.

Unfortunately, Chancellor Klein seemed to signal that he was reluctant to comply with an important aspect of the new state law regarding class size reduction. Under the law, the city is required to submit a five year plan to reduce class sizes in all grades -- and start lowering class size starting next year. When questioned at both the PEP and City Council, the Chancellor, disagreed, saying no such plan was required, at least not for this year. Also disturbing was an exchange with Education Chairman Robert Jackson, the lead plaintiff in the CFE lawsuit brought thirteen years ago:

Jackson: You would agree that putting two teachers in a classroom is not class size reduction?

Klein: No, I disagree.

When questioned, Klein could not say how much money was being directed to smaller classes or how he intended to achieve them, given the overcrowding that exists in many schools. His plan seemed to consist of little more than providing principals with more money, who he thought would probably hire more teachers if they had the space. As evidence he pointed to how Empowerment Zone schools hired more teachers with their funds in prior years. He did not, however, mention that many of those same schools were sent more children as a result.

Finally, despite a budget increase of more than a billion dollars, DoE will be cutting the lunch service budget in elementary schools by $5 million. Deputy Chancellor Grimm explained the same staff would be retained but paid fewer hours.

Click here for the budget presentation and here for the text of the state education law. (Scroll down to section "S 211-D" for the new part)

Victory at last!!!!

Late last night, we won our battle to ensure that NYC must use part of the additional state education aid to reduce class size in all grades.

I haven’t seen the exact language yet, but this represents a great victory for our children -- and we owe the Chair of the Assembly Education Committee, Cathy Nolan, Assemblymember Lancman, and Governor Spitzer tremendous thanks for their leadership on this issue.

It will be up to Commissioner Mills to write the rules and what the class size goals should be, so this remains a work in progress.

Nevertheless, we can all be proud of the campaign we waged together to convince the Governor and our legislators to do the right thing for our kids – despite the fact that the Mayor, Chancellor and their minions were trying to block this every way they could. Indeed, the administration's lobbyists even told legislators that they already had plans to reduce class size so there was no need for a state mandate -- even though it is clear to us here in NYC that they have no such intention.

Now, we will all have to watch them like hawks -- to see that the plan they submit is realistic and will lead to significant progress -- and that they adhere to it. If past experience is any guide, they will try to dissimulate, manipulate, and evade their obligations to reduce class size in any way they can.

The Mayor and Chancellor should instead look to Florida for an example. When that state's voters passed a constitutional amendment to require smaller classes in all grades in 2002, then-governor Jeb Bush was caught on tape saying that he had "devious plans" to subvert the will of the people.

Bush tried not once, but three times to overturn the amendment, and each time was foiled by the Florida State legislature, which while dominated by members of his own party, resisted his efforts because the class size amendment proved even more popular when it was put into place than when it originally passed, and turned out to be considerably less expensive to fund than expected. The last time Bush tried and failed to overturn the class size amendment, this was widely hailed as the most humiliating political defeat of his career.

Over the last three years, class sizes have been dramatically reduced in all grades, by about six students per class in Kindergarten through third grade, five students in fourth through eighth grades, and two students in ninth through 12th grades. For the 2006-07 school year, 94% of Florida's public schools met the class size requirements. (see chart at right)

Now Florida has a new Governor, also a Republican, Charlie Crist, who wholeheartedly supports the class size law, even as the state moves towards actual caps in all schools of no more than 18 students per class in grades K-3, no more than 22 in 4th -8th grade, and no more than 25 in high school.

Here is the latest statement from Gov. Crist on this issue: "the will of the people was to do what was passed, and I think we should respect it."

Listen to that Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein, and beware!!!

A fax today could change your children's lives!

Right now, in the Legislature, there is a proposal to require that the city be required to produce a plan that would lead to smaller classes in all grades, using a portion of the extra funds our schools will receive as a result of the Court's decision in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case.

Huge pressure is being put on our lawmakers from the Mayor and DOE to eliminate all language requiring smaller classes in our schools.

These provisions would be in this year's state budget, due only a week away, on April 1.

The meeting between Queens legislators and Chancellor Klein referred to below occurred because Queens parents, as well as public school parents citywide, continue to be agonized about the huge class sizes their kids are crammed into, with no significant improvement over the last four years and no relief in sight.

Despite the fact that our schools are projected to receive more than $5 billion in additional funds over the next four years, this administration has no plan to significantly reduce class size in any grade -- even though smaller classes are one of the few educational reforms that have been proven to work. For years into the future, our classes would remain the largest in the state by far and among the largest in the nation.

Indeed, NY state's highest court found that our kids were being deprived their constitutional right to an adequate education because of their excessive class sizes.

All public school parents have to do our part to tell our legislators that is their responsibility to make sure our kids have a fair chance to learn by providing them with the smaller classes that students in the rest of the state -- as well as the children of the Mayor and the Chancellor -- already receive.

To send a free fax to the Governor, click here.

To send a free fax to your Assembly member, click here.

To send a free fax to your State Senator, click here.

If you can, personalize the message. Tell them how your child is suffering, and why it is their responsibility to make sure that our schools reduce class size soon!