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Topics in the News:
federal funding
“The mayor seems to be lost in his own fantasy world of education, the one where reality doesn’t apply,” declared UFT President Michael Mulgrew in response to the mayor’s State of the City speech on Jan. 12, in which, among other proposals, he threatened to fire half the staffs in 33 schools receiving federal School Improvement Grant support.
The UFT on Jan. 13 asked the state’s Public Employment Relations Board to order mediation to bring negotiations on a teacher evaluation system for 33 restart and transformation schools back on track, after the city walked out of the talks during the Christmas break week.
The collapse of the bipartisan congressional supercommittee’s effort to agree on a plan to slash the federal budget deficit isn’t just a defeat for congressional Republicans who, as AFT President Randi Weingarten said, “insisted on protecting the 1 percent from any additional taxes.” With no better legislation in sight, it bodes ill for school funding, too.
This “Seeing is believing” infographic illustrates how the poor and the middle class are carrying the taxload in this state, and the rich are paying less than ever.
New York City education administrators should try to learn from the mistakes of their counterparts in Tennessee where a rush to implement a complicated new teacher evaluation system has overwhelmed administrators with paperwork and demoralized staff members concerned about being improperly and unfairly rated.
Republicans on Oct. 21 scuttled a bid by Senate Democrats to spend $35 billion to save the jobs of teachers, police and firefighters. To pay for it, they proposed a 0.5 percent tax hike on income over $1 million. The proposal was an attempt to salvage a popular element of President Obama’s American Jobs Act, which had failed to make it to the floor of the Senate for a vote.
Just over a week after President Barack Obama unveiled his American Jobs Act in a nationally televised address to Congress on Sept. 8, UFT President Michael Mulgrew joined city and national political leaders for a Sept. 16 City Hall press conference in support of immediate passage of the bill.
Labor unions are giving their strong backing to President Obama’s proposed American Jobs Act, which will cut payroll taxes for workers and employees and provide funding for school modernization, infrastructure projects and teacher hiring. Obama proposed funding the $447 billion jobs package largely by raising taxes on wealthier households.
Another school year begins. Unfortunately this is not a year of hopeful, new beginnings. Our brothers and sisters still in the classroom have escaped threatened layoffs but face budget cuts that mean soaring class sizes, supply shortages and scores of unforeseen problems.
The 10-year caps on federal spending imposed in return for GOP support in the House of Representatives for raising the debt ceiling will be ruinous for schools, a coalition of 85 education groups said.
Seeing “no clear path” toward reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind education law, the Obama administration announced on Aug. 8 that it will unilaterally issue waivers to states, exempting them from some of the law’s regulations.
After intense negotiations, the UFT and the city’s Department of Education reached a groundbreaking agreement on July 15 that will spare 33 city schools on the state’s “persistently lowest achieving” list from possible closure while securing additional state funding to provide resources to help them improve.
The Food Bank for New York City has received $5.2 million in federal nutrition education funding to put the popular citywide CookShop program back on track to provide 30,000 low-income children with nutrition education in their classrooms.
There will be no more grocery deliveries to the 1,300 elementary classrooms citywide where 31,000 students and their parents have been learning about good nutrition and healthy food choices. UFT Vice President Karen Alford called the cuts devastating.
At the urging of the UFT and parent advocates, Mayor Bloomberg agreed on Jan. 18 to add $10 million to this year’s schools budget to help struggling students. Some 100,000 city students in grades 3-8 fell below proficiency on the tougher 2010 tests after passing in 2009.
In an unusually impassioned budget speech, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Feb. 1 called on legislators to get a broken Albany budget process under control this year, and proposed a $1.5 billion — or 7 percent — cut to state education aid. The education cut is part of a proposed 2.7 percent reduction for next year, which if enacted would be the first time the state budget has been lower in 10 years.
The $10 billion that Congress authorized in August to save some 145,000 educators’ jobs, reduce classroom crowding and restore programs cut from state budgets isn’t necessarily going to the classroom in some places. In a number of states it’s going to close shortfalls, will be shunted into school construction or even used to reduce state aid to school districts by the amount received from the feds.
The Abyssinian Development Corporation and Lutheran Family Health Centers have won federally funded planning grants to provide cradle-to-career services to children.
New York is poised to receive millions of dollars in much-needed school funding thanks to the passage of a critical $26 billion federal jobs bill in Congress on Aug. 10.
The measure, which was approved by the U.S. Senate the previous week, is designed to prevent the layoff of tens of thousands of teachers and other government workers, as well as help states offset cutbacks to schools and other vital public services.
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