President's Perspective

Keeping our promises to kids

Feb 14, 2008 10:52 AM

Last April, when the state and city agreed to end 13 years of litigation in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit with a four-year pact to give city schools more than five billion additional dollars, I wasn’t naive enough to think our work had ended. Indeed, when some suggested that the group that brought the lawsuit close its doors, the UFT advised against it.

But who would have thought our schools would face $700 million in budget cuts less than a year later?

Yet, just as 2008 dawned, both the governor and the mayor announced plans to pull back on their promises — at least for this year.

While darkening economic clouds were hovering last spring, nobody expected the ensuing storm to set Wall Street gyrating as it has. In that context, belt-tightening is a rational good-government response. But one of the purposes of the CFE multi-year agreement was to insulate children in times like this, when promises are hard to keep. As responsible grown-ups, our first priority must be to protect our children.

While Gov. Spitzer’s executive budget does boost city school aid for next year, it is shy of the promised Contracts for Excellence funding by some $200 million. And that’s the money that was targeted to meet the city’s CFE goals, primarily reducing class size. In addition, according to city budget experts, the governor has short-counted the city’s building aid as well, thus further stalling efforts to build more classrooms so schools have room to reduce class size.

The governor has made it clear he means to keep his overall four-year commitment of $3.2 billion new dollars, but he has asked for the timetable to be delayed. Well, did you ever try to tell a kid you really will get him or her that [fill in the blank] you promised; he’ll just have to wait a year or two when times are better? If so, you know that waiting a year or two for the gift of one’s dreams is hard for a kid. But waiting a year or two for a decent education is impossible!

When it comes to education, a promise delayed is a promise denied. Our kids can’t afford to wait. They need to learn every year in a class small enough to be orderly and able to provide each child with some of the teacher’s undivided attention. That need for a decent education does not fluctuate with the Dow Jones average.

(Ironically, even the DOE knows this. How often has someone there said — as their justification for whatever teacher scrutiny plans are on their minds — that the quality of a student’s teachers for two or three years in a row is a make or break for the student’s success?)

To make matters worse, the mayor’s proposed executive budget also cuts school funds. And, unlike the state budget, the impact of the city fund reductions will be felt in schools immediately. That’s because not only is money for schools scheduled to shrink next year by $324 million, there is also an immediate midyear cut of about $180 million. And, sadly, most of that cut will fall on individual school budgets, not on the central bureaucracy —despite the fact that the central budget is bloated with myriad no-bid contracts and consultants for everything from school bus routes to cash incentives for kids to more and more test-based schemes like value-added assessment and progress reports.

Those immediate cuts — ranging from $9,000 for a small school to upwards of half a million dollars in the already stressed large high schools — hit schools and their principals like a ton of bricks. So much for all their alleged empowerment! Of course, even with less money, they —and we — are expected to meet the same school-improvement goals or risk the consequences.

And, as if to make sure that the principals know who is really in charge, the Chancellor’s minions, with only an evening e-mails notice, went into each school’s online budget and erased the money with a click of a mouse, leaving the principals scrambling to find ways to reduce expenditures before another check was written.

At this writing we already have some anecdotes about how the budget reduction mandate was implemented in our city’s schools. From what we see, most of the cuts strip children of “extras” like remedial and enrichment programs, extended hours, and extra-curricular activities. Some schools have merged classes and abruptly terminated clubs, teams and parent outreach activities. We have asked chapter leaders to report to us more systematically so we can fully assess the damage.

Make no mistake, we educators would never dream of saying, “Now that we have less, we will do less.” Instead we will fight these budget cuts. That is taking real responsibility.

The UFT was already making plans to oppose these cuts loudly, strongly and publicly when the principals’ union called us for support. Of course we will work together, I told the CSA president, Ernest Logan. Within hours, the two of us were on the steps of City Hall with Robert Jackson, the City Council education committee chair, and others, decrying both the cuts and the way they were done. The following Sunday about 60 organizations representing parents, students, educators, labor unions and community groups and more than 50 elected officials announced the “Keep the Promises” coalition.

It’s as though everybody recognizes that in the absence of an independent chancellor and a representative and responsive school board, children need champions. Parents, educators, unionists, advocates and a wide spectrum of civic activists must speak out on their behalf. Again, that is taking real responsibility.

The coalition has put together an education and action agenda to get the budget cuts restored. It includes petitions, press conferences, rallies and community outreach.

In addition, our February Delegate Assembly approved a resolution urging the DOE to open its books and reveal all the bureaucratic bloat — including the excessive and redundant testing and paperwork it imposes on schools, teachers and students in the name of its factory-model accountability. If the revenue picture is really that worrisome, these should be cut instead of asking the schools and our kids to bear so much of the burden. That would be taking real responsibility.

When families need to cut back, parents, like educators, do everything they can before they impose sacrifices on their children. Our public officials should do the same. As I said, that would be taking real responsibility. After all, isn’t that what accountability is all about?