School staff layoffs

Good morning Chairman Jackson and Chairman Recchia and to all of the members of the Education and Finance committees. My name is Michael Mendel and I am the Secretary of the United Federation of Teachers. On behalf of our members and our President Michael Mulgrew, I thank you for the opportunity to testify on this critical issue.

We believe that the New York City Department of Education (DOE) layoff plans for up to 765 school support employees represented by Local 372 of District Council 37, AFSCME AFL-CIO, will have a negative residual effect on our city’s public schools. We also believe that the layoffs reveal a disturbing pattern — a disproportionate share of the city’s most vulnerable students are attending the schools where these layoffs will be most prevalent.

Most unfortunate, we believe the DOE has alternatives, but it’s settling for expediency. We are asking this body to work closely with the mayor and the DOE to come up with an alternative plan that saves these important jobs. This is the time to apply some pressure and help the administration create a different solution that doesn’t further harm children.

Our union is realistic. We understand the real economic challenges facing our city. We know we need to generate more revenues. We recognize that local budgets are tight and we know that we no longer have the federal stimulus money that helped in prior years. At the same time we have witnessed City Hall move the target on where the budget really is. Over the last several years this administration has projected billions of dollars in budget deficits. But at the end of the day, it somehow ends up with billions of dollars in surplus. Finding the surplus however, did not stop the budget ax from education cuts. And over the same three year timeframe, some 1,600 school aides, health aides, parent coordinators, family assistants and other valuable support service positions were eliminated. Our children cannot afford a fourth year of cuts.

The city says it is asking schools to trim an average of only 2.4% from their budgets. But when you have schools that are struggling to get by on bare-bones budgets, that extra 2.4% means you are cutting to the bone. Our kids and their families deserve better, just as those affected school staffers do.

These cuts translate into critical losses at the school level. Principals are forced to cut programs and services that help stabilize struggling schools and help children who are at risk. Students are already experiencing the impact from skyrocketing class size system-wide. They’ve already felt the brunt of a shrinking teaching force and the relentless DOE austerity measures. On the one hand, City Hall and the DOE claim that every student must be college ready. Yet, the other hand keeps cutting the educational budget. Okay, college ready is a noble goal, but it takes real resources to make it happen. Talk is cheap.

Even more troubling, as we all know by now, the bulk of the layoffs will hit the communities least able to rebound from severe cuts, including: East New York, Brownsville, Williamsburg, Washington Heights and the South Bronx. So effectively, these cuts end up hurting the very children that need the extra help and assistance to succeed.

P.S. 156 in District 23’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville community lost 5 of 12 school aides in two rounds of cuts. The impact is creeping. First, the school escorts for pre-K children who arrive late. When there’s no dedicated staff to accept the children, parents and children end up roaming the hall — control becomes an issue. More help is needed in the lunch room. There are over 300 students during each lunch period. Keeping an accurate count of these young children and maintaining order is critical. Just the loss of one or two school aides during the lunch period is significant. Safety becomes an issue. There was an aide positioned near the security desk in afternoon. This aide was essential. This allowed the safety agent to walk the perimeter. It prevented older children from getting in and helped prevent small thefts and property losses. Someone was at the gate. This is just one school in one district that can’t afford another cut.

At another elementary school in Ocean Hill-Brownsville serving high needs students, there were four family workers. Three were assigned in the school helping in the pre-K, the cafeteria and the office. Due to the number of school children without permanent homes, the remaining family worker has been assigned to the local shelter. Now they are down to the one staffer stationed off-site and one remaining aide trying to supply the services of three family workers at the school. The pre-K and the cafeteria fell victim to the cuts.

The DOE is going in the wrong direction here. These workers perform valuable services that enable teachers to focus on instruction. And they help keep parents engaged and informed and help keep our children safe. The School Aide/Health Aides, School Lunch Employees, School Crossing Guards, Community and Parent Coordinators, Community Assistants, Associates and other staff are crucial to the home-school-community partnership, and they facilitate public schools’ ability to offer students and parents the high-quality education they deserve.

As I mentioned earlier, we believe there are alternative ways to reduce costs and add revenues to the school system. The DOE should review its internal roster of highly paid, non-educator bureaucrats and numerous overpaid private consultants. And we have often cited the millions of dollars paid out in no-bid contracts that are susceptible to corruption, such as the vendors associated with Verizon. We also agree with parent leaders who believe there may be revenues generated by levying rent on privately operated charter schools.

Equally important, we are willing to join with the mayor and the chancellor to help fight for the millionaire’s tax and bring desperately needed revenues into our school system.

The mayor wants to blame DC 37 for not agreeing to proposed contract concessions, but that just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Where is the administration’s accountability here? The DOE and the mayor have a responsibility to the people that work for them and have been their partners in helping educate the city’s 1.1 million children. The toll that these layoffs have on the aides and their families must also be taken into account. These planned layoffs and further budget cuts are just the city’s way of looking for a quick and easy solution to its budget woes. And it is being proposed with no apparent regard for the damage it will inflict on schools with the greatest needs and fewest resources.

The city needs to stop being pennywise and pound foolish and instead make the investment in education that will help keep the staffers our schools need to be their best. Anything less is accepting failure as an option, and we must never settle for that kind of a future for our children, especially the neediest.