Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña used her March 20 budget testimony before the City Council Education Committee to map out her administration’s new priorities: middle school after-school programs, a thousand more pre-K teachers for September, more guidance counselors and speech teachers, more art instruction and better professional development.

Fariña said she is leading a shift to a more school-based, teacher-to-teacher model of professional development. And she told the Council she is reinstating the Department of Education’s Division of Teaching and Learning to oversee professional development, instructional support, and Common Core and college-readiness initiatives. “Educators have clamored for more support and sought ways to hone their craft, and we’re going to deliver for them,” she said.

The actual money to pay for some of these initiatives remained up in the air since the budget from the state, which provides about 46 percent of the city’s education funding, remained unsettled 10 days before the April 1 deadline for finalizing it. Still, the city is forging ahead.

Mayor de Blasio’s proposed tax on the wealthy to fund universal prekindergarten appeared unlikely to get Albany’s approval, but pre-K classes were thoroughly mapped out in the city’s expense and capital budgets. Similarly, the city’s proposed budget included dedicated funding streams for after-school programs in middle schools.

Meanwhile, the city’s draft five-year capital spending plan dedicates an additional $520 million to creating thousands of new pre-K seats and another $490 million to reducing class sizes.

Thanking the Council and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito for their efforts in these areas, UFT President Michael Mulgrew, in testimony submitted to the Council, welcomed the change in tone and priorities.

“What a difference a year makes,” he said. “This is the time to reinvest in our schools and those who work in our schools in a fiscally responsible manner that does right by both the taxpayers and the school communities.”

Mulgrew urged the Council education committee, headed by former teacher Daniel Dromm, to review hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts that the DOE made with outside vendors over the past 10 years. “Any programs that are found to be wasteful, inefficient or of no direct benefit to students should be reconsidered,” he testified.

The city’s expense budget, including the proposed $20.5 billion for education, must be finalized by June 30.

UFT Vice President Richard Mantell applauded the administration’s new $12.8 billion five-year capital plan in testimony before the Council on March 18. It would commit funding for 32,293 new classroom seats in 58 new buildings.

“The UFT still believes the unmet need for seats is far greater than the number being funded,” he testified, but the draft plan, which increases capital spending by nearly $1 billion over the previous one, “represents a turning point from years past.”

Under the new capital plan, $210 million that was previously earmarked to build charter school facilities is reallocated to create more pre-K classrooms. “This is a welcome shift in resources that will benefit tens of thousands of additional 4-year-olds,” Mantell told the Council.

The de Blasio administration has also committed $480 million to getting rid of all the trailers that now serve as classrooms. “Getting these displaced students seats in actual classrooms must be a priority,” Mantell told the education committee. “We strongly encourage the DOE and the School Construction Authority to outline their plans for the removal of the current classroom trailers and develop a timeline to complete the work.”

He also emphasized the importance of upgrading wiring in school buildings, improving science labs and replacing temporary boilers in Hurricane Sandy-damaged schools.

The money for all these competing priorities would be available, according to Mulgrew, if Albany complied with the court-ordered Campaign for Fiscal Equity school funding settlement of 2006.

Echoing him, Chancellor Fariña testified that the city was due an additional $2.7 billion under that long-ignored settlement. “Our students deserve what is rightfully and constitutionally theirs,” she said.

Read the UFT's expense budget testimony.