President's Perspective
June priorities
Jun 4, 2009 2:54 PM
It’s June, and while I know we are all starting to think summer, we still have two major objectives to accomplish to make sure our schools are ready for next year: a budget and a governance system that support good education.
It’s hard to celebrate when a disaster turns out better than expected but is still not good. That’s how I feel about the school budgets that the Department of Education recently sent out to the schools. Previously, we had faced possible cuts of anywhere between 6 and 12 percent, so less than 5 percent for most schools should be a relief. And it is.
Except when you think about what that means for the children and staff in each of those schools.
But before we think about that, let’s take a moment to appreciate what we’ve accomplished so far.
As it turns out, it was Washington that really saved the day. It was the federal stimulus package, and especially the historic $100 billion for education that it contained, that enabled the state Legislature to avoid ripping the heart out of school aid. And it’s that stimulus money that brought the school allocations to more bearable levels.
When the mayor issued his preliminary budget in January, we were looking at $1.5 billion in education cuts and 15,000 teacher layoffs. Now we’re down to about $400 million and no teacher layoffs — although the city has so far not offered similar assurances for paraprofessionals and secretaries.
From D.C. to Albany, none of this would have happened without your advocacy. With the economy being what it was, we knew there would have to be some belt-tightening. But we never took our eyes off the prize. Whatever else happened, we aimed to protect direct services to students and the security of our members, as well as vital services for the most vulnerable among us.
I’ve spent much of this week in California, which has a budget catastrophe — thousands of educator layoffs, elimination of basic health coverage for poor kids and much more. When I saw what was happening there, I felt so proud of my state and city. And I feel especially proud of our members and our brothers and sisters in the labor movement here. After all, it was the support of labor that enabled our state legislators to take the politically difficult step of raising taxes in order to protect the safety net for children, the poor, the elderly and the ill. And it was knowing that we would be behind them that allowed our representatives in Washington to vote for billions in new spending, when to some that seemed profligate in a recession. (In fact, not doing so would have been penny-wise, pound foolish.)
Speaking of our labor brothers and sisters, this week the Municipal Labor Committee and the mayor figured out how to save the city $200 million while maintaining our existing premium-free health plans, forestalling layoffs for a few months and finding some money for our welfare funds. [See article on page 5.] As you know, keeping our health programs intact was a key budget and contract priority for all of us.
Now we have to carry the same message to our City Council members. The budget cuts must be mitigated. Because, despite the fact that it could have been worse, most schools cannot afford funding cuts that average over a quarter million dollars each (and go much higher for some). Academic intervention programs, tutoring, after-school activities and Saturday classes would disappear. Supplies, materials, books and equipment would be scarce and school cleanliness and routine repairs would be compromised.
We must think creatively about strategies for savings that do not directly affect student services. And we must consider raising revenues so that principals and school leadership teams can make decisions that are both fiscally prudent and educationally sound. Every dollar must be spent wisely.
To give credit where it is due, the DOE already adopted our most important recommendation by implementing stringent restrictions on hiring from outside the system. That will ensure that everyone who is currently employed will have the first chance to fill any vacancies, including those who, through no fault of their own, have been languishing as Absent Teacher Reserves.
Other savings can be found in a variety of places including a retirement incentive for veteran teachers and in areas like scaling back the Principals’ Leadership Academy, the testing and accountability apparatus and outsourcing and no-bid contracting.
The dilemma is that filling the $400 million hole in the school expense budget requires ways to both cut costs and generate revenue. And that means going back to Albany.
We have only weeks to go to allay the cuts, restore funding for Teacher’s and Provider’s Choice, alleviate crowding and protect class sizes and ensure the security of all our members. Every day we are making our voices heard on this — both through your faxes, e-mails and phone calls and through our advocacy in City Hall and Albany. For those of you who have taken part, we thank you for your work on this. For others, please get involved.
I want to say a few words about the other June priority — the school governance law, which expires this month. One of the risks of taking a position that is informed and nuanced — as the UFT has done — is that people sometimes see only the parts they want and ignore the rest. The media, for example, prefer an either-or stance, black-and-white answers. So proponents on both sides of this issue have reduced our careful reasoning to a simple Yes or No.
But we know that there are no simple answers in a system as complex as ours. That is why a multi-party task force of dozens of rank-and-file members took more than a year to carefully develop a statement of where we stand on the issue of mayoral control of our schools. [You can read the task force’s report on our Web site at www.uft.org/news/issues/reports.] In my opinion, it is the smartest, most balanced position anyone has taken, and I have carried its message to everyone I speak to.
Let me state it as clearly as I can: We support the continuation of mayoral control with modifications. In other words, we want some checks and balances to add transparency and other voices to decision-making in order to ensure that community, parent and teacher input is heard and valued and that schools are better managed and brought closer to their communities.
It’s amazing how some people emphasize the first part of that sentence (“continuation of mayoral control”), and list us in the support column, while others focus on the rest of the sentence (“with modifications”) and list us in the oppose column. But there is no contradiction: we can keep the stability, cohesiveness and resources that mayoral control has brought and still make it better.
Wisely, our task force recommended several ways to achieve those checks and balances.
One — the one that has attracted the most attention — is to dilute the mayor’s dominance of the central board by adding some non-mayoral appointees, but not so many that he (or she) can’t win on most issues with a little jawboning. With five appointees, the mayor would need to persuade only two of the eight non-mayoral appointees to vote his way to gain a majority.
But even if that reform fails to make it into law, it is not the only way to achieve the same end. Others include: giving the board members fixed terms, so they can be free to exercise some independent judgment; increasing the number of department actions that require board approval; and ending the chancellor’s voting status and automatic chairmanship of the board.
Another approach to ensuring community input is to strengthen community superintendents, district councils and school leadership teams. Mandated open hearings would help. So would giving the Independent Budget Office authority to evaluate programs, spending, contracting and data. That transparency is an absolute necessity for any public agency, but especially one that affects the lives of so many families.
Toward those ends, the union is once again conducting a 360-degree evaluation of the central DOE and the chancellor. Accountability must flow both ways, so just as our members are held accountable up the chain of command, so must the system’s leaders be accountable in the other direction.
In a few days you will receive from the American Arbitration Association a PIN which you can use to respond (confidentially) to our online survey. It consists of just a few questions about your opinions of some DOE actions and policies. If you respond by June 21, we can release the results at the year’s last Delegate Assembly on the 24th.
So, as the year wraps up, there’s still plenty to do. Please watch the Action Alert box on our Web site at uft.org and respond when your chapter leader asks for help communicating with your state and city representatives, whether it’s to fight for budget restorations or for a better governance system.
And take the opportunity to be your own check and balance by participating in our online survey. That’s one June “chore” I hope you will enjoy.
