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Schools count ways this year’s cuts have hurt
Oct 29, 2009 11:55 AM
A$223 million midyear budget cut — the amount that Gov. David Paterson is threatening to take from city schools in January — will do real damage to classrooms if a union survey of the harm already wrought by the $400 million in city budget cuts this fall is any indication.
UFT President Michael Mulgrew vowed to fight the midyear cuts, even as he acknowledged that the state is facing a tough budget situation. Funding that is eliminated after midyear requires reducing services twice as deeply as saving the same amount of money beginning at the start of the year, he noted.
“While we all recognize the state’s fiscal condition, the children in New York City’s classrooms should not have to bear the brunt of these cuts,” Mulgrew said.
Two weeks ago the UFT surveyed its chapter leaders about the impact of this fall’s budget cuts. The union asked chapter leaders to describe how the cuts actually came down on the classrooms in their schools. The responses were sobering to say the least.
“Our supply budget is nonexistent and we have had teachers and paras excessed. We have also lost school aides because of the budget,” a Queens high school chapter leader wrote.
“The self-contained English language learner class was eliminated, which has a huge impact in the classroom. Students newly arrived to the country are lost and struggling,” said a Queens middle school chapter leader.
The survey hit a nerve. It went out the night of Oct. 15 and by the next morning there were 200 responses. By Oct. 21, more than 700 chapter leaders had replied, sharing their frustrations with ballooning class sizes and excessed staff, cuts in arts, science, social studies, foreign language and computer classes, and often the total elimination of after-school programs and academic intervention services.
“The Saturday tutoring program which targets students at risk was cut. This program helped many students pass the state tests,” a Brooklyn elementary school chapter leader reported. “The AIS teacher was cut so fewer students are receiving [academic intervention] services. The part-time reading recovery position was cut — the person focused on the most at-risk students, for example, 5th-graders reading on a 1st-grade level.”
Two thirds of the chapter leaders said that their schools had fewer staff this year even though 80 percent also said their enrollments were the same or larger. Not surprisingly, two thirds of the schools reported larger class sizes. More than one quarter of the staff cuts were classroom teachers. Another 13 percent of the staff cuts were paraprofessionals. Many schools also reported that they lost secretaries, guidance counselors, related service providers and aides.
Larger class sizes were probably the chapter leaders’ biggest concern, followed by the loss of tutoring and intervention services for at-risk students. At 31 percent of elementary and middle schools and 45 percent of high schools, special education students with Individualized Education Programs were not receiving appropriate services, chapter leaders said.
Cuts in the arts, electives, special programs and after-school clubs that keep at-risk students involved and attending school were a major worry for the chapter leaders. They reported that at a third of elementary and middle schools and more than half of high schools entire subjects or sections of courses had been eliminated.
“Our absenteeism has dramatically increased; our dropout rate will increase due to this,” a Bronx high school chapter leader wrote. “After-school and Saturday activities (tutoring, Regents prep, etc.) have been ended; at-risk students who once benefited from these services must now fend for themselves.”
Of the elimination of clubs and after-school activities at the school, a Manhattan high school chapter leader wrote, “Our student population does not have a lot to go home to after school, and the clubs offer a safe, vibrant, educational, fun place for them to socialize and grow in a nonacademic environment. There is too little for them to do during the school day that taps into their genuine interests too often of the time, and some of these clubs are what really motivate them to make it to school.”
While the effects on students were their main concern, many of the chapter leaders said that the staff at their schools are demoralized as well.
Chapter leaders said there is no funding for substitute teachers and no money for professional development.
“There are NO supplies in the school,” a Queens K-8 school chapter leader wrote. “Everything you need, the teachers have to personally buy. There is a shortage of books as well as chairs and desks.”
