For Immediate Release

Randi Weingarten on City’s $52.9 Billion Budget Deal

Jun 28, 2006 5:47 PM

Mayor Bloomberg, Speaker Chris Quinn and the entire City Council acquitted themselves quite nicely in crafting a budget that goes a long way toward improving the educational lives of our 1.1 million public school students and their teachers.

We are particularly pleased about the $6.5 billion capital construction plan that will add 66,000 new classroom seats, and the $7 million that will open the door to universal pre-kindergarten by creating 2,000 new full-day pre-k slots. In addition, there is money in the budget to expand the teacher supply program (Teacher’s Choice), provide copy machines for educators and continue the highly successfully Dial-a-Teacher program. Now we must focus on the long-term work of making schools safe and using monies from the CFE suit to lower class size.