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UFT joins rally against midyear cuts
Oct 1, 2009 1:51 PM
UFT President Michael Mulgrew joins educators, parents, unionists and elected officials on the steps of City Hall on Sept. 23 in warning against midyear school budget cuts.
On the same day that Gov. David Paterson announced that this year’s state budget deficit is growing and could reach $3 billion, the UFT joined education, labor, parent and community groups at a Sept. 23 rally on the City Hall steps to try to head off midyear cuts to schools.
“We understand things are tough, which is exactly why we have to protect the children of this city,” UFT President Michael Mulgrew said. “The children must be held harmless.”
With school budgets already in place, Mulgrew predicted that “any midyear cuts mean removing services and disrupting continuity of support.”
Such cuts would be particularly devastating as city schools already have had to absorb $400 million in city budget cuts this fall.
The rally, organized by the Alliance for Quality Education, was called after Paterson let it be known that he and legislative leaders in Albany were having private discussions on proposals to close the deficit.
“I put my proposals out last year and got blistered by everybody,” Paterson told The New York Times by way of explanation. This year, he said, his budget plans will be made only in consultation with select lawmakers.
Since Paterson has ruled out tax hikes, health care and education — the two biggest pieces of the state budget — are considered juicy targets for the budget ax.
Acknowledging that “this is a difficult time for our economy,“ Mulgrew insisted that “we need to keep our promises to children and ensure they get the education they need.”
With state funding increases to schools over the past two years coinciding with marked increases in student achievement among students of color in such high-needs cities as Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester and New York City, Geri Palast of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity argued that “without sustained investment, further progress is impossible.”
Several speakers at the rally noted that the state had this year not made the sizeable increase in school spending that it had committed to make as part of the resolution of the 13-year Campaign for Fiscal Equity school funding lawsuit.
With the $600 million in “foundation aid” meant to go to the classroom channeled into deficit reduction instead, and school spending flat this year even as costs rose, speakers charged that the present state education appropriation itself amounted to a cut. Midyear cuts would magnify the harm, they said.
Esperanza Vasquez, a parent leader with New Settlement Apartments in the Bronx, called possible further cuts to city schools “a step backward. With the state making graduation requirements more rigorous, this is not the time to cut.”
Elected officials present and pledging their support included Assembly members Richard Gottfried and Linda Rosenthal (both Manhattan), Mark Weprin (Queens) and Karim Camara (Brooklyn.)
State predictions about future revenues are also gloomy. Paterson is projecting an $11.1 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning April 2010, with an additional $15.5 billion deficit for the following year. The city is projecting a $5.5 billion hole for its next budget year, which begins in July 2010.
