Top News Stories
UFT: Build schools where they’re needed
Jun 5, 2008 3:22 PM
Weingarten speaks to the press while UFT Vice President Michael Mulgrew leads the chanting outside City Hall on May 21.
Unlike the Department of Education operating expense budget, where the mayor cut some $450 million in promised funding, the School Construction Authority’s five-year capital spending plans were untouched.
That doesn’t mean the capital budget is perfect, Vice President of Career and Technical Education Michael Mulgrew told a joint hearing of the City Council’s Finance and Education Committees in written testimony for May 21.
“The big questions are: How is it being spent? And how well is the city planning to spend it? The answer: Not that well, we believe.”
The key problem with the capital budget, in Mulgrew’s view — and something both Comptroller William Thompson and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer have also asserted — is that new schools are not being built in neighborhoods where the crowding is worst and the need is greatest. While new schools are going up in affected school districts, they are not necessarily going up in newly growing areas within those districts, he said.
“What we have is a disparity between a building boom and a school construction bust,” Mulgrew said.
