With the proposed UFT contract settlement eliminating many uncertainties, Mayor Bill de Blasio on May 8 presented a balanced executive budget for next year that included significant new funding for arts education and after-school programs as well as universal full-day pre-kindergarten, reflecting a strong commitment to education.

“We have a budget that works for labor and for the whole city,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew. “To us, the children of New York came out ahead.”

In presenting the $73.9 billion spending plan, the mayor said, “This budget in every way makes our children a priority.” He ticked off $145 million to fund 43,000 new middle school after-school slots and expanded summer programs, an amount that rises to $190 million the following year; a $20 million commitment to improving arts education in city schools; and $300 million in new state spending to pay for universal pre-K.

With a state funding increase of $490 million in addition to the pre-K dollars, the city will boost education spending by a total of $880 million, or 4.5 percent, in the 2014–15 fiscal year.

The budget projects that the Department of Education will add arts educators, special education teachers, paraprofessionals and school nurses, as well as pre-K teachers. The DOE also plans to spend money to support English language learners with translation services and new curriculum materials.

In addition, the city’s proposed capital budget funds efforts to reduce school overcrowding and to cut the number of classroom trailers. Twenty-six new district schools and 15 new charter schools are planned for next year.

A ‘promising start’

Because the previous mayor let all 152 city labor contracts expire and set aside very little money in reserve for pay increases, the cost of funding raises for city workers has been the major question facing de Blasio.

Calling the UFT tentative contract deal a “very, very promising start” to negotiating the many remaining labor contracts, the mayor said that the four years of the new financial plan fully funds comparable raises for the other city unions.

The plan puts the cost at $13.4 billion for all city workers, including retroactive pay for those, like UFT members, who did not receive the two 4 percent raises in 2009 and 2010 that other city workers received and seven years of raises for the entire city workforce mirroring the UFT pay raises for 2011 through 2018 in its tentative agreement.

The city budget office said that it expects the economic recovery to continue, if unevenly, over the next several years.

One City Council initiative that was not funded in the executive budget was universal free school lunches, a measure that the UFT supports. The mayor cautioned that such a measure could reduce the federal funding for city schools and the city had to be “very careful.”

The mayor called his budget both “fiscally prudent” and “progressive,” saying the city will bring up the wages and benefits of low-income and middle-class New Yorkers with a huge investment in affordable housing and infrastructure improvements that create jobs.

The City Council and the mayor have to agree on a final budget by July 1, the start of the city’s next fiscal year.