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‘We’re one city’

by Michael Hirsch

Jun 5, 2008 3:27 PM

Coalition doesn’t fall for Bloomberg-Klein divide-and-conquer budget ploy

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Keep the Promises Coalition town hall meeting Jun 5, 2008 10:07 AM June 4, IS 303, Brooklyn Michael Carlo, chapter leader, IS 239: “These cuts are an affront to parents, teachers and children. In a totalitarian fashion, Mayor Bloomberg is preventing Campaign for Fiscal Equity funds from being distributed for the betterment of the schools.” Geofrey Sorkin, chapter leader, IS 269: “My school has already been cut by $118,000 and we are expecting to lose even more. This is unacceptable in a building already at 140 percent of capacity. The mayor and chancellor should do right by our kids and keep their promises.” Frieda Jones, chapter leader, Edward R. Murrow HS: “We need [parents’] help. We can’t do it alone. Keep the faith.”

It looked like a cunning plan, on paper. Challenged by the largest and most inclusive city education coalition since the early 1960s, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein tried driving a wedge between teachers, school principals, parents and community activists united in demanding full city funding for the public schools. Instead of meeting the Keep the Promises Coalition’s demand, Bloomberg and Klein attempted to splinter the united effort into a series of turf battles over which schools got harmed the least.

It didn’t work.

The drive to get Bloomberg to restore some $450 million in planned education cuts gathered steam as even more City Council members than had previously done so announced they would reject any budget that had classroom cuts.

At a June 2 rally at Stuyvesant HS, called to protest the cuts and the pitting of one school against another, more than 500 public school supporters — including students, teachers and principals from 51 schools in the five boroughs — declared, as UFT President Randi Weingarten said, “We are one city, dedicated to the needs of all of God’s children. We’re one voice united against the cuts. We will challenge the divide-and-conquer mentality of pitting schools that have done well against schools that have great needs.”

Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Ernest Logan blasted the mayor and chancellor for their divisive tactics. “We didn’t fall for it,” the principals union leader said. “We want all our schools funded; we don’t play games with our children. There’s money for the schools, but not to tear a hole between parents.”
Schools represented at the rally ranged from the high-performing Bronx HS of Science, Brooklyn Technical HS and Stuyvesant — among those slated to receive some of the largest cuts [see page 2 for details] — to struggling schools that would actually get some increases. That refusal to allow themselves to be divided and instead demand that all the city’s promised funding be restored testified that benefits are greatest if everyone cooperates and no one cuts side deals.

Others spoke about how the cuts would affect them. Actress Cynthia Nixon, a star of “Sex and the City” and the parent of two public school students, said her kids would lose out, too. She likened Bloomberg and Klein to malfeasant naval officers who “jumped ship” and “left 1.1 million school children … fighting over an insufficient number of life preservers.”

Stuyvesant HS Principal Stanley Teitel asked, “How can I look at the student body at Stuyvesant, who work so hard and do so many things, and now tell them that for all their good work, their reward is: ‘I’m going to give you less’?”

Brooklyn Technical HS PTA Co-President Jean Joachim, whose son is a Tech junior, told the New York Teacher that the city was not keeping up with the need even as enrollments at her and other high-performing schools continue rising.

“How can they even think of cutting?” she said.

Her PTA purchased a $16,000 van for the school’s use, “but there’s a limit to how much we in the PTA can help,” Joachim said. The parent leader noted that even under the current budget and with a new principal whom parents support enthusiastically, “it’s still an old building and it needs to be maintained. At any one time, just two out of eight elevators work in an eight-story building,” where students typically attend classes spread out on all floors of the mammoth structure.

Similar coalition demonstrations were held in all five boroughs — in an effort to press the City Council to complete a July 1 city budget that restores the $450 million in education spending that Bloomberg and Klein cut.
At a Washington Heights District 6 outdoor rally on May 22, held in Highbridge Park, PS 311 Chapter Leader Steve Powers sported a “Mantenga Las Promesas” poster as a sun hat on the unseasonably warm and bright spring day.

State Sen. Eric Schneiderman attested to how “we Albany legislators kept our promise, and now it’s time for the city to do the same. Mayoral control does not mean mayoral dictatorship.”

Councilman Miguel Martinez affirmed that he would stand with Education Committee Chair Robert Jackson and with what he expected would be a majority of the Council in voting “no” on any budget that contains school cuts.

Area activist Jay Mazur, a lifelong Heights resident, noted, “Schools in this neighborhood are overcrowded and underserved. That’s unconscionable. The movement for fiscal equity started in this neighborhood, yet the problems are still here and getting worse.

“It’s characteristic of this mayor to first give the most vulnerable populations the least attention, then talk about equity as he tries to play off communities against each other.”

Demonstrations were just one arrow in the coalition’s quiver. Well-attended town hall meetings were held in every borough, as was leafleting at schools and transit hubs.
Among the nearly 200 actions:

• UFTers attended district Community Education Council meetings to drum up support for restored funding.
• Numerous Council members were lobbied at their district offices by constituents and urged to announce they would reject any budget that didn’t fully fund the schools.
• At IS 51 in Staten Island on May 27, coalition members added one more constituency to the teachers, administrators and parents involved in the fight. Business leaders such as James McBratney, owner of Jimmy Max restaurant — and whose wife, Kathleen, teaches at the borough’s PS 31 — are on board, and the group is soliciting Island merchants to write the mayor protesting the cuts. At press time more than 30 had done so.
• In Brooklyn, a series of 311 call-in days were organized, flooding the city’s help line with requests for assistance with the city budget. Also organized was a mass postcard drop to Council members at City Hall and a June 4 town hall at IS 303, where Brooklyn’s City Council delegation was presented with 20,000 postcards from parents and other concerned residents asking them to reject the Bloomberg-Klein cuts.
• About 300 coalition members were at New Dorp HS on Staten Island on June 5 for the first public hearing on how to spend the Contract for Excellence funding. Not one speaker during the two-hour hearing spoke in favor of the DOE’s attempt to loosen those requirements and many admonished Klein for missing the hearing. “The mayor, chancellor and City Council need to hear what will happen if school after school sustains these budget cuts,” Weingarten said.
  

The UFT chartered a single-engine plane on Memorial Day sporting a 120-foot banner reading “Mayor Bloomberg, Keep Your Promise to the Schools” that flew over Brooklyn’s Coney Island, Brighton and Manhattan beaches, and then up the Hudson River.

“It’s great that we’ve done so much good work for so important a cause,” UFT Vice President of Career and Technical High Schools Michael Mulgrew said. “The tragedy is that Mayor Bloomberg won’t lift a finger to do what’s right. That’s why coalition leaders want to maintain the unified group as a permanent fixture in New York City long after this particular budget fight is history.

 

Contract for Excellence hearing June 5, New Dorp HS, Staten Island

Coalition members turn their backs to spell out the message “Keep the Promises.”

Thomas Bennett, chapter leader, Staten Island Tech: “I wish the chancellor were here because I would like to ask him: Are you a public relations director for the mayor or an advocate for children?”

Donald DeRosa, 7th-grader, IS 24: “Mr. Klein, you said we can grow up to be whatever we want. But special classes for standardized test prep on Saturdays are being cut. Education is the best investment you can make. Keep the promises!”

Thomas Bennett, chapter leader, Staten Island Tech: “I wish the chancellor were here because I would like to ask him: Are you a public relations director for the mayor or an advocate for children?”