What the Chancellor said on class size and raising the charter cap; & Mayor proposes to cut school budgets next year once again

 1. Last week, state education budget hearings were held, where many groups, advocates and organizations inveighed against the Governor's proposal to expand the cap on charter schools. Chancellor Banks also testified and was non-committal, saying it was up to the Mayor weigh in, But under questioning from Sen. Liz Krueger, he admitted that the city’s Office of Management budget had estimated the cost to the DOE of raising the cap was $1.3 billion - though he didn't mention how it could also deprive our public schools of the space needed to lower class size.

When questioned by Sen. John Liu, however, about the new class size reduction law, Banks complained that this would cost the DOE about a billion dollars. Liu pointed out that the DOE was receiving more than this amount from the state a result of the settlement of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, so that it was hardly an unfunded mandate.

The Chancellor admitted that it would be difficult to meet the class size goals starting year three of the five-year phase in. He said that he would form a working group to help develop a class size reduction plan, something we’ve long proposed. Hopefully this group will include some of the many advocates, parents, and elected officials who have pushed for smaller classes, rather than the handful who opposed it.

2. I also submitted testimony, pointing out the many ways in which the DOE has undercut its ability to meet the benchmarks in the law, by cutting school funding, slashing the capital plan, and refusing to lessen enrollment in our most overcrowded schools. Contrary to the claims of the DOE, the Mayor's preliminary budget for next year would reduce school budgets once again – if not as radically as this year. Yet NYC schools should be receiving more funds, not less, to help them lower class size and restore services, especially as DOE is due to receive $568 million in additional CFE funds, and the IBO projects NYC will end fiscal year 2023 with an $4.9B surplus.

As for increasing the number of charter schools, you can join our email campaign urging your legislators to reject the proposal, or pass a resolution here.   I’ll be presenting the charter issue to CEC 15 tomorrow Thursday at 6:30 PM, and you can watch by logging into Zoom here.   If you’d like a similar presentation for your organization, please let me know.

thanks, Leonie

Mayor Adams preliminary education budget - bare bones & non-transparent

January 13, 2023

Yesterday, the Mayor released his preliminary budget for next year.  DOE as a whole would be cut by another $800 million, over and above a cut of an additional $176 million made in November.  Though more than $500 million of these reductions appear to relate to the decision to halt the further expansion of 3K (or as the budget document calls it, “3K right-sizing”), there are other budget lines so ambiguous as to be impossible to interpret.  I went over several of the budget docs with an education finance expert, and she was as confused as I was about some of the bullet points it contained.  You can check out the budget docs yourself,  if you are so inclined.

For example, there is a budget line in the Program to Eliminate the Gap (or PEG) of  DOE “savings” of nearly $100 million next year, added to savings of $40 million this year, entitled “Vaccine mandate school support funds re-estimate” and described this way: “Less than anticipated spending for schools addressing staffing changes related to vaccination mandate.”  What does that mean?

If this refers to schools losing positions due to staffers refusing to be vaccinated, shouldn’t schools be allowed to hire new staff to replace them?  And why are savings of nearly $100 million anticipated for next year, when presumably all the school staff who refused to be vaccinated have already left?

Here is an excerpt from the Daily News article, further showing the administration’s troubling and apparently purposeful lack of clarity:

“[Adams] blueprint shows 2024 spending for the Education Department dropping … However, in a briefing with reporters, Adams budget advisers, who only spoke on condition of anonymity, said the 2024 figures for most agencies should be taken with a grain of salt because they may not include federal grants that are baked in later on.”

Indeed, the usual black hole of the DOE budget has been made even darker by the fact that this administration claims they can move around federal money as they like, without any transparency. The only mention of schools in their brief budget summary is an increase of $47.5 million for “enhancing security measures to protect students at all Department of Education schools” – apparently  to install door locking mechanisms and cameras.  I see no mention in any of the budget documents of funding allocated for any of the other recent promises made by DOE, including adding 400 new special ed PreK seats, or the additional $12 million to support schools dealing with thousands of new migrant students.

Highlighted by many reporters is how the Mayor and his aides assured them that their original plan to make additional  cuts of $80 million to schools’  Fair Student Funding would not be imposed.  The administration also claimed that the $800 million in additional cuts they are proposing to DOE will not affect any existing teacher positions.  And  yet they made this exact same promise to the City Council  last year, and we all know how those cuts forced schools to excess hundreds of teachers, and/or found themselves unable to replace scores of teachers who had retired or quit.  As a result, class sizes increased substantially  in most schools, and many  lost teacher aides and essential programs like  art or music.

Yesterday, we re-ran the numbers on the Galaxy cuts to schools for this year, and the total net cuts at this point compared to last year are now at $823 million.  Fully 86% of schools have experienced cuts to their budgets totaling $893 million, averaging about $655,000 each.  To see how much funding your school has lost, you can check out the spreadsheet linked to on our website here.  The Comptroller’s figures, which have been widely cited by reporters and officials, only reflect the cuts to Fair Student Funding, NOT the cuts to entire school budgets, which have been far more extensive.

The fact that the city has no apparent plans to increase school budgets next year is even more unacceptable, given how they are due to receive about $600M in additional Foundation funds from the state, in what is slated to be the final increase of the CFE settlement. 

Every single dollar of that additional $600 million should go to schools to help them restore and add more positions, especially as the new state class size law comes into effect next fall, which requires them to start lowering class size. Already, according to the State Comptroller, the DOE has lost  4,815 positions since June 2020, and yet  according to a staffing budget document just released, the DOE is not planning to add a single additional teacher through at least June 2025.

In any case,  in their response to this preliminary budget, the City Council should not merely oppose these additional cuts but should fight to reverse the cuts already made to schools and substantially increase their funding, to ensure that the teaching positions already lost are restored and augmented, so that schools can start lowering class size.  As I am quoted in Gothamist, the administration should be “boosting school budgets,” particularly as the class size law is set to go into effect.

Council Members should also insist on far more budget clarity, so that the DOE include additional budget lines (called Units of Appropriation) that reflect actual dollars to be allocated to schools, making it less likely that they, along with some reporters, will be deceived again about what their proposed budget means when it comes to the quality of education that students receive every day in our schools.