Editorials
Mayor lets down schoolchildren
May 8, 2008 5:29 PM
Michael Bloomberg first ran for mayor promising to do wonderful things for the city’s schoolchildren. He persuaded the state Legislature to give him mayoral control of the school system by promising to do wonderful things for the city’s schoolchildren. Periodically he and his schools chancellor have held press conferences and pointed to the latest high-stakes test scores or graduation rates as proof of what wonderful things he has done for the city’s schoolchildren.
Well …
We’ll put off for now an evaluation of the mayor’s legacy. Instead, we have been fighting him all of 2008 for what he could have done for the city’s schoolchildren — but has not. That is to fulfill the promise made last year as part of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit settlement to increase funding for the schools. The state Legislature and the governor fulfilled that promise and then some by increasing funding to city schools by $600 million this year, even though the state has genuine budget troubles. The city has a $4.5 billion surplus — or more, depending on who’s counting.
The mayor, by contrast, is giving $450 million less in education funding in his executive budget than he and the City Council promised only last year. If this January’s midterm cuts are any indication, most of that will come out of school budgets, not Tweed’s. Just another wonderful thing for the city’s schoolchildren.
So now it’s up to the City Council. Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson said that he would vote against the budget unless all or most of the school cuts are restored. Councilman Bill de Blasio has offered a resolution to restore most of the cuts — including this year’s midyear cuts — and has 44 co-signers. We urge the rest of the Council to follow suit.
There may be some irony if it takes the City Council to salvage the mayor’s legacy, but never mind: if it forces the mayor to reverse course and keep his promises, the Council will really be doing something wonderful for the city’s schoolchildren.
