Jun 29, 2009 1:30 PM
[For more photos, go to the “Union wins funding for Teacher’s Choice in final budget” gallery]
Ratcheting up pressure on city officials to do the right thing as they finalized the new city education budget, the UFT won back two key programs — Teacher’s Choice and Provider’s Choice — whose continued funding was at risk.
The final city budget, however, did not restore the $400 million that the Department of Education has cut from school budgets for this fall. Union officials vowed to continue working over the summer to try to find ways to reduce those cuts.
The school system faced $1.4 billion in cuts going into last fall, but thanks to the vigorous budget fight that thousands of UFT members mounted, the size of the cut to schools was reduced dramatically at the state and federal levels.
“We didn’t get everything we wanted, but raising $1 billion for a school system is something that members can be proud of,” said Vice President Michael Mulgrew.
In the fight to urge the City Council not to cut funding for schools and children’s services, union lobbyists maintained a daily presence at City Hall, more than 7,000 members sent faxes to Councilmembers, and other UFT members participated in union phone banks. On June 4, the UFT joined with parents and other education allies for a City Hall protest rally and press conference to drive home the impact of the cuts in different parts of the city.
In the end, the Council restored current funding levels to the otherwise endangered Teacher’s Choice and Provider’s Choice programs. That means that Teacher’s Choice will continue at $150 for general education classroom teachers, for example.
The mayor promised to take another look at the budget once savings from the recent health and pension agreements with city unions become clearer.
As part of the June 22 labor agreement the city pledged to meet with the UFT by September to assess the impact of budget cuts and to “identify potential additional funding for schools.”
The picture of where and how the school cuts hit is not pretty.
Cuts average more than $266,000 per school, with 101 schools facing cuts of more than $500,000. Thirteen schools saw cuts of more than $1 million.
These latest budget losses — in a crisis economic environment in which city and state revenues have plummeted since the Wall Street investment and housing bubbles burst last fall — come on top of earlier funding reductions of $565 million, starting when the Department of Education budget was first slashed in January 2008.
The new $59 billion city budget, which takes effect on July 1, is itself smaller than the previous year’s, even though costs of city services have increased.
The expected net effect of a shrunken spending regimen for the schools come September: scores of teachers excessed; class sizes rising; academic intervention services, tutoring and enrichment programs reduced or eliminated; after-school and weekend programs cancelled; and supplies chronically short.
The job fate of non-mandated paraprofessionals, many of whom work with the most vulnerable children, is still uncertain.
Standing with a chart showing looming reductions by district, UFT President Randi Weingarten urged the mayor and the Council at the June 4 press conference to turn back the cuts and instead initiate cost-saving measures within the central Department of Education, including offering a retirement incentive for veteran educators and reducing spending on testing, accountability and public relations.
“We need to restore education funding and maintain investment in teachers and resources for the additional services that keep our students moving forward academically,” Weingarten said. “We can’t afford to go backward and deny our children a first-class education.”
A young 6th-grader from the Bronx’s MS 218, Aminata Sillah, may have said it best in her remarks directed to Council members attending the press conference.
“I go to a great school, one with the advantage of teaching both in English and Spanish,” Aminata said. “With our teachers’ help, we went from 3 to 4 on our test scores. I could be an author or a dropout. Which do you want me to be?”
Hundreds of parents and school children joined the UFT at a Staten Island Town Hall meeting on “Surviving the Budget Cuts.” The gathering, held at PS 42, featured union officials, parent leaders, area principals and other administrators testifying to what the cuts would do to their school programs.