Skip to main content
Full Menu Close Menu
UFT Testimony

Testimony regarding the FY 2017 city budget

UFT Testimony

Testimony of UFT President Michael Mulgrew before the New York City Council Committees on Education and Finance

Good afternoon. My name is Michael Mulgrew, and I am testifying here today about the Fiscal Year 2017 city budget on behalf of the United Federation of Teachers and its 200,000 members. We believe in our students and in their ability to achieve academically, and we believe in the power of public education to transform children, families, and neighborhoods.

I want to begin by thanking Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Council members Julissa Ferreras-Copeland and Daniel Dromm, and members of these two distinguished committees for the invitation to speak today. Likewise, I also want to thank you for your involvement with the schools in your districts. We sincerely appreciate your tireless commitment to supporting educators and strengthening public education.

This year, the UFT has celebrated the “Passion and Promise” of New York City’s public schools. This campaign has been a tremendous success, full of inspirational stories and creative initiatives. We have the largest, most diverse, most challenging school district in the country. We take great pride in tackling the challenges presented to us each year. Together, we are moving our children in the right direction, on the road to a fulfilling life.

As we look at this fiscal year, we have many reasons to be optimistic, beginning with the fact that Albany lawmakers came through with funding increases that will have a real impact on our schools. The state budget included an additional $525 million for New York City public schools. The deal also ended the Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA), which, with the increases, frees us to push the state to make good on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) settlement. Although we appreciate this year’s support from the state, we can’t ignore the fact that the state still owes New York City and schools statewide $2.6 billion. We will continue to work toward getting that money.

The City Council has been a strong ally in our work at the state level. We ask you to build on your past support of schools in our continuing mission to improve education, increase equity and provide opportunities for all. Our priorities for 2017 would put more resources into our classrooms to maximize the effect of every city dollar.

We want to get books, computers and materials into each and every student’s hands. We want more professional development for our teachers, administrators, and school staff. We want to ensure that every laboratory has the equipment our students need, and that every library is filled with the books and technology inquiring minds must have.

Restore Teacher’s Choice Funding

A few weeks ago, we surveyed teachers at our annual Spring Education Conference about how often they spend their own money on classroom supplies. Fifty-five percent of conference attendees told us once a week; another 31 percent told us they do so at least once or twice a month.

This, of course, comes as no surprise to anyone who knows a New York City teacher, and it has been par for the course as long as I have been in schools — and probably far longer. The average teacher spends more than $500 a year on his or her students, with many topping $1,000.

We are not just talking about glue sticks, crayons, markers and construction paper. Teachers buy printer cartridges, children’s headphones, flash drives and computer software. Teachers help students with their personal expenses. I know of dozens of teachers who have bought students coats, shoes, and food. No one asks us to spend our money. We just know it’s the right thing to do.

One teacher told us that he bought wood all year for his wood-working classes. Another bought a telescope for students to observe the night sky. A third told us that she buys all the materials that her class needs to create a community quilt. And another bought plant-growing kits for her botany lessons. These are not extraneous expenditures. These are educational tools that make the classroom experience special and memorable.

For two decades, the City Council has acknowledged these acts of generosity through the Teacher's Choice program, which this year reimbursed teachers with up to $122 for their out-of-pocket expenses. With our teaching force growing in recent years due to an increase in Universal Pre-K, the money has been divided among more teachers. In the past, in better financial times, the city reimbursed at a higher rate; 10 years ago, teachers received up to $250. As I have said, many teachers spend far more, but we would love to see $250 restored next year, now that the city’s economic outlook has improved. This would mean so much to our members, as I have heard from so many educators countless times.

Support the Positive Learning Collaborative

Schools must be a safe place for students. In a system as large as New York City’s, we know we will always face challenges. We commend the educators and school safety personnel of Teamsters Local 237, who must balance the needs of individual students with the needs of a school community.

We all want to reduce suspensions and create safe, orderly classrooms where all children can learn. That is why parents and educators are clamoring for restorative justice programs, which allow students and adults to work through issues in a safe space. A growing number of schools have reported a reduction in bullying incidents and disciplinary actions by increasing tolerance and understanding, the two main principles of restorative justice programs.

The Positive Learning Collaborative (PLC), a program jointly developed and administered by the UFT and the New York City Department of Education, is a program with a successful track record. The objective of PLC is to improve student achievement and social/emotional competence by providing schools with a systemic approach to understanding, assessing and supporting positive student behavior. An increased emphasis on proactive approaches, in which more socially acceptable behaviors are taught directly and practiced often, can shift reactive interventions to proactive efforts. The PLC whole school approach focuses on teaching reflective and restorative practices to all school staff while developing the systems needed for sustainability.

A PLC behavior specialist provides on-site coaching and intensive training in crisis prevention, positive behavior support systems, and restorative practices for the entire school staff. The program teaches students to treat each other and the adults in the building with respect and to build relationships with one another. Teachers learn strategies to manage stress and calm a situation before it spirals into crisis. The staff bridges misunderstandings using constructive techniques rather than relying only on punitive measures.

An important part of the initiative requires schools to collect data on students. Staff members regularly review this information, so they understand their students and the challenges they face at home and in the neighborhood. Preventing violence is always better than having to punish a student later.

Fifteen schools are participating in the program this school year, and dozens more are on the waiting list. The six schools that started the PLC program two years ago have experienced a reduction in suspensions and violent incidents, while at the same time dramatically increasing school climate scores. We see restorative justice methods as the way to decrease the number of students removed from a school, a practice that has disproportionately affected students with disabilities and students of color.

We are thrilled with these results and want to spread the good work, but to do so, we’ll have to provide schools with more money, and provide school personnel with state-of-the-art training. 

The mayor has allocated $5.4 million for restorative justice programs in 20 schools struggling with suspensions and arrests. With another $1.5 million, the PLC could expand by 15 additional schools, and provide additional training in collaboration with the DOE. Our staff of experts is uniquely qualified to do this important work.

Invest in Community Learning Schools

At the beginning of the month, we proudly showcased five of our 27 Community Learning Schools as part of our citywide “Celebrate Schools” campaign, and I’m so glad many of you participated in those events and saw the great things we’re achieving.

The CLS model is among the most exciting innovations taking place in our schools today. The UFT’s network has grown from six schools to 27 since we began this important work four years ago, and with good reason.  We’re giving our teachers more support and more tools to help their students in a holistic way. Among the dozens of new services are food programs, health and mental health services, dental and optical exams, college and career counseling and programs for parents.

A recent study of the impact of Community Learning Schools in Boston looked at data collected from first-generation, immigrant children. The study found that students who attended a CLS gained more ground than those who did not, so much so that their scores were statistically indistinguishable from native English speakers. The study also found that the more time these children spent in school with intervention services, the better their achievement. 

We are looking forward to opening two new school-based health clinics next fall at PS 18 in the Bronx and PS 188 in Brooklyn. These clinics are made possible thanks to the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio, this Council, state lawmakers, especially Sen. Jeffrey D. Klein, Borough Presidents Eric L. Adams and Rubén Diaz, Jr., the DOE, the School Construction Authority, and our partners in these efforts — NYU Lutheran Medical Center, Montefiore Medical Center and OneSight.

For the first time in New York State, our school-based health clinics will provide vision exams and thousands of pairs of eyeglasses to the students at each school and in neighboring schools as well. When a student can see a blackboard and hear a teacher and isn’t in pain from a toothache, wonderful things can happen in a classroom.

We are lucky to have had the Council’s support in this endeavor, and we’re asking you to help us expand and enhance the initiative. An additional $1.5 million would allow us to hire more resource coordinators, the critical point-person at each school who assesses a school’s needs, finds partners and money to fix problems, ensures the solutions are integrated into the school’s normal operations, and collects data to track a program’s success in meeting its goals.

With a resource coordinator focusing on wrap-around services and academic enrichment programs, teachers and administrators can focus on teaching children the skills they’ll need to succeed in life.

Expand Career and Technical Education

For more than 50 years, the UFT has been a leading advocate for the city’s Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, a powerful way of improving college and career-readiness among our high school students. We have more than 50 New York City high schools dedicated to CTE, and more than 80 that offer CTE programs. More than 25,000 students attend CTE schools full-time, and more than 120,000 take at least one CTE course during the year.

We commend the Mayor and the Chancellor for their commitment to CTE programs. Exciting new initiatives such as Skills USA, Team Robotics, MENTOR Moot Court, and Virtual Enterprise are showing promising outcomes for students from Brooklyn’s Maxwell CTE High School to the Bronx Design and Construction Academy.

We can help to continue this success story with more resources and training. Our CTE educators need professional development on 21st-century technologies so they can teach their students what they’ll need to know to be competitive in the job market. City schools need to update equipment and facilities.

We also ask that the council look to support A.3885 (Nolan)/S.3697 (Ritchie), legislation that would increase funding for career and technical education and A.9757 (Nolan) that would require the Commissioner of Education to collect data on the number of 9th graders attending career education program. This data will be used to support expanding access to CTE programs.

We also believe that our schools need a full-time CTE coordinator, similar to the resource coordinator position in Community Learning Schools. That coordinator would build relationships between the school community and potential employers, bringing in programs and developing internships and apprenticeships. Business and industry have a unique role to play in our schools.

Breakfast in the Classroom

The UFT supports the innovative Breakfast in the Classroom because children can’t concentrate if they’re hungry. However, the training, implementation, and rollout were problematic.

It’s a complicated, messy process to feed breakfast to 25 or more children. Students spill orange juice on their desks, chairs, and themselves; they drop jelly on the floor and step in it. They want seconds, sometimes thirds. The younger children need help opening packages. They all need help cleaning up. Teachers are spending way longer than the 10 to 15 minutes it’s supposed to take.

Then there’s the food. Students complain about cold and frozen pancakes and waffles, or stale muffins and croissants. We’ve even had reports of rotten products. It’s unacceptable to promise a wholesome meal to our children and provide unhealthy offerings.

Another problem is that few principals have taken advantage of the workshops and training that the DOE has offered schools. We don’t understand why. Everyone in a school knows how difficult it is to serve hundreds of breakfasts a day. You’d think that school leaders would seize every opportunity to figure out how to do this better so that teachers can get on with their important work: teaching.

School Construction

This year, the Capital Plan seems aligned to tackle some of the school system’s most intractable issues. The $1.4 billion proposed increase brings the five-year spending total up to $14.9 billion. With this money, we can make some progress towards alleviating overcrowding and reducing class size; increasing the number of pre-kindergarten seats; introducing more “green” technology into our buildings, and continuing to remove PCB-laden lighting fixtures. We could also bring modern laboratories and increased access to the Internet to our schools. 

With that said, the whole process of siting and designing schools hasn’t worked well for at least 20 years, and continuing with the current method is a losing proposition. We need to change the entire process.

Mayor de Blasio’s administration has pushed ahead with its five-borough, 10-year plan to build and preserve 200,000 affordable apartments. The zoning overhaul has been hailed as a major accomplishment, and as the leader of a union of middle-class workers, I can attest to the fact that my members need more options for where they can live. But now we hope that the de Blasio administration turns its focus to the critical work of overhauling where and how we build our schools, especially in over-enrolled school districts.

We understand that the DOE and SCA are working together to identify schools that need overcrowding relief. We are especially encouraged to see that relief is coming to PS 19 in the Bronx, which is at 147 percent capacity; East New York Family Academy in Brooklyn, which is at 164 percent, capacity; and PS 131 in Queens, at nearly 200 percent. But even with the city’s plan to add 44,000 seats, we still need an additional 38,000 seats.

Protect Home-Based Child Care

Home-based family child care is a crucial component of New York City’s subsidized child care system, which serves thousands of children. This type of care allows hard-working, low-income families, predominantly people of color, to hold jobs outside the home. Additionally, and just as important, children are better prepared to enter and succeed in school when they are given access to early education through our committed child care providers.

Recently the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant program was reauthorized. One overarching concern is the logistics of ramping up in a timely and effective manner to comply with the benchmarks set for provider training, on-site inspections, and background checks. The UFT naturally supports compliance with the new federal mandates under the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program. But unfortunately, compliance will be compromised unless we add considerable funding. For instance, mandating provider and staff fingerprinting at a potential cost of a $100 processing fee per individual is prohibitive for our home-based family child care providers. They simply don’t have the money.

This is why we are asking for the council to look into covering the cost of background checks and other unfunded compliance costs. In many cities all across this nation, child care providers face a paradoxical challenge. They provide families with high-quality child care but can hardly provide for their own families due to their extremely low wages. New York City is no exception, and the UFT represents 15,000 home-based family child care providers located in all five boroughs, many of whom are paid far less than the state’s new minimum wage of $15 an hour, slated for Dec. 2018.

Closing Thoughts

New York City’s public schools are moving forward and our teaching force is good; however, there is always room for improvement. It takes time, energy, collaboration, and skill. This has only been possible with the critical support this legislative body has provided us over the years. We deeply appreciate your commitment to our students. We look forward to working with all of you to make this a better city for all our children, who are today’s students and tomorrow’s productive citizens.

Related Topics: Education Funding