On Sunday at City Hall Park a rally was held hosted by Public Advocate Letitia James about the need to fight for fair funding for our schools and against the Governor's damaging education proposals. Tish was terrific as usual about the need to support and protect our schools and listen to parents and teachers but that instead, the Governor has put forward a "Missed Opportunity Agenda." .
Other electeds and advocates who spoke eloquently included AM David Weprin and Joanne Simon, former Councilmember and lead plaintiff in the CFE education funding lawsuit Robert Jackson, and Zakiyah Ansari of AQE. Here is a news story; below is my speech:
On Thursday there were a beautiful series of rallies at more
than 100 schools throughout NYC in all the five boroughs. Parents, students, and teachers held hands
and surrounded their schools, in a peaceful, and even joyful symbolic action to
protect their schools. They were out
there to show they are united in spirit and determined to defend against the
Governor’s destructive proposals to defund, disrupt, dismantle and privatize our
public school system. Parents do love
their public schools; they just want them properly supported and funded, with
smaller classes and a well-rounded education, full of arts, music and science
and all the things that children need to flourish.
And what was the Governor’s response? According to his spokesperson, he called our
peaceful protests “a tantrum of special
interests”. Then he said, “Frankly,
the louder special interests scream — and today they were screaming at the top
of their lungs — the more we know we’re right.”
Well, Governor, parents are NOT a special interest – at least
in the way you meant it. Parents have
one special interest – their children, and you need to recognize that parents
in NYC are fed up with the agenda of test prep, budget cuts, and punitive
sanctions on our schools and teachers that we had for 12 years under Michael
Bloomberg – and that failed utterly to improve our schools. Instead we demand that you give us the
support that they need – and that the state’s highest courts said was your
constitutional obligation.
I also want to warn you, the last time a state leader called
parents a special interest was John King – and he was run out of the state on a
rail for his arrogance and refusal to listen to our concerns.
Now the Governor has put forward many outrageous proposals
as part of his budget but I want to focus on just one - his proposal to raise
the charter cap– which could send 250 more charters to NYC. This could truly be disastrous for our
schools and drain even more resources and space from our already underfunded
and overcrowded public schools.
Why? Because last
year in the budget, he included a clause in the law that obligates the city to provide
space to new charters within our already overcrowded school buildings going
forward – or pay for their rent in private spaces.
There are severely overcrowded communities in NYC that have
waited a generation to see a school built in their neighborhoods – and not to
have to bus their Kindergarten children miles away. But from now on, every new charter school can
get free space on demand – at the taxpayer’s expense.
NYC is the only district in the state, indeed the only
district in the country that is required to pay for facilities for charters –
whether we want them or not.
If the cap
is lifted, and 250 more charters are sent to NYC, as the Governor has proposed,
it could cost taxpayers more than $800M a year in charter rent alone – money that
instead should go to building more neighborhood public schools – that are not
overcrowded and can offer small classes, which is the #1 choice of NYC parents.
So we ask you to fight the Governor’s destructive proposals
by calling his office and your legislators as well as Speaker Heastie with four
simple demands:
1- give us the funding our schools deserve 2- Say NO to tying test scores to teacher evaluation;
3- No to giving tax credits to millions for private school tuition; and 4- NO to raising the cap on charter
schools.
We cannot allow our precious
resources to be siphoned off to allow Cuomo and his billionaire hedgefund
cronies to attain their goal of
privatizing our public schools.
