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‘Keep the Promises’ coalition forms to reverse city, state ed funding cuts
Feb 14, 2008 12:42 PM
UFT President Randi Weingarten joins Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Ernest Logan and other union and elected officials to speak out against the city school cuts on Jan. 31.
A diverse coalition of education advocacy groups, community organizations, clergy, labor unions and dozens of elected officials has launched a major campaign to fight state and city budget proposals that could cost New York City public schools $700 million.
Members of more than 60 community groups, parent organizations and unions, as well as some 40 state and city elected officials, gathered on the steps of City Hall on Feb. 10 to announce the formation of the “Keep the Promises” coalition in response to budget reductions and proposed cuts in education for city schools. The list of cuts includes the following:
- The city has imposed an immediate 1.75 percent cut to schools — a $100 million, midyear cut that will disrupt schools’ programs, schedules and staffing.
- The mayor’s 2009 budget proposal cuts New York City education by $324 million.
- The state budget proposes to give city schools nearly $200 million less than was expected in the Contract for Excellence, stalling progress in class size reduction, full-day pre-kindergarten expansion, improving middle schools and other programs and services.
The state is also proposing to cap building aid, which will slow school construction.
“When government promises to safeguard the quality education of our children, parents and the public have a right to expect those promises to be honored,” UFT President Randi Weingarten said to reporters as she stood on the City Hall steps flanked by dozens of her coalition colleagues.
She said that “in the absence of an independent Board of Education and an independent schools chancellor, public school children need champions to intervene and protect them. That’s why we are part of this coalition launching this campaign.” Weingarten said the coalition would fight to have the funds restored because the city’s children deserve the quality education they’ve been promised.
“Make no mistake,” Weingarten added. “School-based educators would never dream of saying, ‘Now that we have less we will do less.’ Instead we will fight the school cuts.”
Geri D. Palast — executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, which took the state to court to win increased funding for New York City schools — noted that after 13 years of litigation, New York State “legislated a promise” to add $2.35 billion in classroom operating aid for New York City over four years. At the same time, Mayor Bloomberg said the city would add $2.2 billion. The state also said it would provide $11.2 billion to subsidize the city’s $13.1 billion school construction plan to “finally fund the constitutional right to a sound, basic education,” Palast said.
However, she added, both the state and the city are proposing $700 million in cuts in these commitments. “Long overdue funding of these promises tied to accountability for this catch-up plan must be immunized from short-term economic fluctuations,” Palast said. “A generation of kids has already paid the price for delayed funding with their futures.”
The campaign will raise public awareness, lobby city and state elected officials and will include a large rally to be held in mid-March.
Showing the breadth of the coalition, Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Ernest Logan stood with Weingarten to say that the midyear budget cuts are particularly troubling and could not come at a worse time.
“Since the Department of Education’s devastating midyear school budget cuts were announced, there’s been much frustration and anger,” Logan said. “Budget cuts at the school level should have been the last resort, especially considering there’s been little transparency in the DOE’s central administration cuts. Principals should not have been put in a position where the intervention programs and other school activities they vested time and money into now run the risk of being considerably downsized or eliminated altogether.”
Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, said: “The elected leadership of the city and the state promised to finally end the delays and excuses for not educating every child. Only one year after historic school funding commitments by both the city and the state, we must not break the promises to our kids. Every dollar promised must be delivered to our classrooms and this coalition is demanding that a promise made is a promise kept.”
“After more than a decade of fighting in court, the long wait for adequate funding for our schools was supposed to be over,” said Bertha Lewis, executive director of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). “We cannot renege on the promises made to our children because of a flutter in the economy. It’s time to move forward by giving them the resources they need to be their best.”
The UFT Delegate Assembly passed a resolution on Feb. 6 affirming that the union will actively participate with the coalition and calling upon the DOE to open its books to see what other areas could be cut before implementing cuts to schools.
The following day, Weingarten told a fired-up overflow crowd of 150 community activists, parents and some 50 elected officials attending a strategy meeting that the cuts were ill-advised.
“It’s stunning,” Weingarten said. “In an age of accountability the first thing they cut is the schools.”
“We know the economy is slumping and Wall Street is gyrating,” she continued, “But promises to students have to be kept even in hard times and we expect our city and state governments to keep the promises they made to students, parents and educators.”
Weingarten tells an overflow crowd at a Feb. 7 strategy meeting that the cuts were ill-advised.
To that end, members of the coalition called for:
- full restoration of all state funds promised;
- restoration of this year’s city education budget and full funding for next year; and
- no delay in state reimbursement for the school system’s capital fund providing for school construction.
Other members of the coalition include: Hispanic Federation of New York State Executive Director Lillian Rodriguez Lopez, New York City Central Labor Council Executive Director Ed Ott, ACORN Head Organizer Jon Kest, representatives of the Chancellor’s Parents Advisory Committee, UNITE HERE, SEIU Local 32-BJ, New York Immigration Coalition, NAACP Metropolitan Council, El Centro de la Hospitalidad, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Coalition for Asian American Children, Advocates for Children, the Center for Arts Education, Coalition for Educational Excellence for English Language Learners, Education Voters of New York, Make the Road by Walking New York, New Settlement Parent Action Committee, Crotona Committee to Stop the Violence, Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, South Brooklyn Youth Consortium Inc., Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, and Highbridge Community Life Center.
