Arne Duncan in NYC: is the federal stimulus bill a Trojan Horse?

The good news: Arne Duncan came to NYC, and appeared at a press conference with the mayor and Chancellor Klein. He promised about $535 million from the federal stimulus package for NYC public schools in each of the next two years, as well as $300 million for Title I, approximately $100 million for special education, and more than $25 million in educational technology funds. (For more details, see Wonkster, GothamSchools, NY Times City Room, and the NY Post.)

Bad news: Though this infusion of cash will help fill the gap in the city education budget, it will not address the cuts in state aid to our schools, which are estimated to be $700 million or more.

More bad news: The press conference was held at yet another charter school, Brooklyn Explore Charter School. Here is an excerpt from the DOE press release:

Named a National Charter School of the Year by the Center for Education Reform, Explore Charter earned an A on its 2007-2008 Progress Report. The school serves 425 students, and more than 1,700 families are on the school’s waiting list.

Unmentioned is the fact that this school also has class sizes of 16, according to Gotham Schools.

By relentlessly promoting the success of NYC charter schools -- that is, those schools that are not under their total control -- the administration appears to forget that they have denied the vast majority of our students who attend regular public schools the same advantages. In fact, at our regular public schools, class sizes greatly exceed state and national averages and grew even larger in nearly every grade this year – as a direct result of the DOE's obstinate failure to comply with state law, .

Even more bad news: At the press conference, Duncan gave lavish praise to the myriad "reforms" of the administration, and pledged to disperse lots of cash from his new $5 billion slush fund for all those programs pushed by the Klein administration – such as encouraging more teacher performance pay based on test scores, dysfunctional "data systems", and similar initiatives that, unlike smaller classes, do not benefit our kids.

For more on this, see Diane Ravitch in Politico:

…along comes Arne Duncan, our new Secretary of Education, and everything he has said to date might have just as well been said by Bush's Secretary Margaret Spellings. Duncan paid his visit to New York City and toured a charter school, not a regular public school. He declared that the nation's schools need more testing, as though we don't have enough information already to act on our problems. He declared his support for charter schools, where only 2% of the nation's children are enrolled...

It looks like Obama's education policy will be a third term for President George W. Bush. This is not change I can believe in.

School construction funds blocked in stimulus bill

Well, you win some and you lose some.

The deal was made yesterday on the federal stimulus package. According to the WSJ, the "state stabilization fund" was increased to $53.6 billion from $44 billion, which is still far less than the $95 billion the House had originally proposed. There are estimates are that about $1 billion of that may come to NYC schools, which will help prevent massive teacher layoffs, though gaps in education funding will likely remain -- unless we continue to fight for restorations in the state and city budgets.

The biggest disappointment is that all targeted funds for new school construction were eliminated -- though districts can take funds out of the stabilization program to modernize or repair schools if they so choose.

According to the NY Times, the insistence of the GOP "moderates" about eliminating the school construction funds almost blocked the deal from happening:

House Democrats, angry over some of the cuts, particularly for school construction, initially balked at the deal and delayed a final meeting on Wednesday afternoon between House and Senate negotiators. ....Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference that the delay helped House Democrats win some final concessions, including an agreement to let states use some money in a fiscal stabilization fund for school renovations.

But not to build new schools.

For some reason, the GOP Senators were especially adamant that no federal funds should go to new school construction, which Republican members have been opposed to ever since the 1950's. During that era, President Eisenhower proposed a federal role in school construction, just as the feds were helping to build roads, bridges, etc. -- yet his own party blocked this from occurring.

Meanwhile, according to EdWeek, Klein was up in DC, emphasizing the need for federal funding for "data systems" and teacher performance pay! Which shows you where his priorities lie.

So, thanks to those of you who called and emailed -- we were partially successful, and at least we got the message across that NYC parents care about class size, new school construction and preventing layoffs of teachers.

Let's harness that energy in the weeks to come towards restoring the cuts in the state and city's education budget, and especially, to improve the administration's proposed capital budget for schools which remains pitifully inadequate.

See this earlier post by Joan Walsh in Salon, Party on GOP, bemoaning the fervent opposition of the Republican party to building new schools, despite the crying need for them. What could be more Un-American?