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Final city budget contains no classroom cuts
Jun 26, 2008 4:27 PM
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announce agreement on a final city budget in the City Hall Rotunda late on June 26.
After a protracted fight, the city kept most of its funding promises to the schools. Thanks to the City Council’s stepping up and intense and persistent pressure from a coalition of more than 40 community organizations including the UFT and the principals union, the adopted city budget restored significant enough funds to save schools from classroom cuts and to ensure that the state Contract for Excellence funding was directed to the schools and kids to which it was intended.
Facing what they believe is worsening fiscal constraints, the mayor and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn shook hands on a final $59.1 billion city budget on June 26 that reduces funding for many critical social services and not-for-profit agencies. However, the Council was able to add $129 million from its own discretionary budget to stave off classroom cuts. In addition, the $63 million in state Contract for Excellence funds that the Department of Education was withholding, in a failed gambit to wrest greater spending flexibility from the state, was put back into the schools’ operating budgets.
Klein drops planned school cuts
In a letter to Quinn, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein confirmed that the $129 million restoration will be “used to eliminate school budget cuts for all schools for the fiscal 2009 school year.” The chancellor had previously announced planned cuts to schools this September, some ranging as high as 6 percent.
Some $300 million in remaining cuts will be absorbed by the Department of Education’s bureaucracy. Improvements will be made in middle schools and services for English Language Learners
School supporters were also successful in salvaging some 60 percent of Teacher’s Choice funds, which had been threatened with elimination. The reimbursements were reduced from $20 million this school year to $13 million next school year.
“This is not a budget any of us had particularly ever wanted to pass,” said Quinn. But she gave the Council credit for restoring $412 million of the $700 million in cuts proposed by Mayor Bloomberg in anticipation of a projected $2.5 billion shortfall in fiscal year 2010.
UFT President Randi Weingarten said she was grateful that schools were shielded in a difficult budget year.
“In a tough budget that no one is heralding, Chris Quinn and the entire City Council deserve a big thank you from all New Yorkers for championing children and working so hard with the Mayor to negotiate an agreement that protects all of our public schools from budget cuts,” Weingarten said. “Facing tough economic times and hard choices, they listened to their constituents and the Keep the Promises Coalition, which worked tirelessly for months to ensure that children would be insulated from the pain of our current economic downturn.”
Weingarten said that the city’s elected officials, including the Council, Comptroller William Thompson and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, as well as the governor and the state Legislature “should be applauded for showing great vision in making the needs of children a top priority.”
The union and its allies in the Keep the Promises Coalition launched some 200 actions to drum up public support to ensure that schoolchildren would be protected. These ranged from leafleting transit hubs and organizing Town Hall meetings to holding two large City Hall demonstrations. The coalition intensely lobbied individual Council members while UFT members sent thousands of faxes to their Council Members, which helped persuade a majority of the Council to threaten to vote down any final budget unless schools were held harmless.
Coalition unanimous in praise
The UFT’s coalition partners also heaped praise on the Council.
Geri Palast, executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, said she was especially pleased that the added funding will ensure “new investments in innovative initiatives for middle schools, English language learners and class-size reduction in low-performing schools.”
Chung-Wha Hong, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said that her organization found encouraging the DOE’s promise of greater accountability for English language learner services.
“We will continue to work with the Council and the mayor to ensure the full needs of most vulnerable children are met and that the city’s budget complies with the principles and requirements of the Contract for Excellence,” she said.
Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, gave the Council “all the credit for digging deep and making budget restorations and for insisting on new investments to address the greatest educational needs.”
He added that it was disappointing “that because the mayor would not meet the Council halfway on funding restorations, we are seeing cuts in a number of vital community services.”
Announcing the completed budget talks just three days before the deadline for adopting a new city budget, Mayor Bloomberg put the best face on the contentious budget negotiations.
“These are difficult times, and the forecasts are worrisome, so we wanted to make sure we acted as prudently as we possibly could and at the same time as compassionately as we possibly could,” Bloomberg said in announcing the budget pact from the City Hall Rotunda late on June 26.
Weingarten gave special thanks to Michael Mulgrew, the UFT VP for Career and Technical High Schools, for coordinating the Keep the Promises Coalition’s myriad events and for taking the steps needed to ensure the recently formed coalition becomes a permanent fixture in city politics.
