Testimony to the New York City Council Education Committee’s Oversight Hearing on the NYC Department of Education’s Spending of Federal COVID-19 Relief Funds

My name is Michael Mulgrew, and I’m the president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). On behalf of the union’s more than 190,000 members, I would like to thank Chair Rita Joseph and all the members of the New York City Council Committee on Education for holding today’s public hearing on the New York City Department of Education’s spending of federal COVID-19 relief funds.

As I testified earlier this year, the UFT and other education advocates fought for New York City public schools to receive $7.7 billion in federal relief funding during the pandemic, and we also fought for and secured a commitment from Albany to fully fund the foundation aid, which will bring an additional $1.3 billion in school aid to New York City every year once it is fully phased in. This funding is intended to help our students and our school communities recover from the devastating effects of the pandemic and to lower class sizes, improve Fair Student Funding allocations and pursue other equity-focused policies – all key elements of the resolution of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity funding lawsuit.

But this past June, rather than continue to draw down the federal education funds for what they were designed to do — help our students recover from the pandemic — the DOE cut school budgets and instructed school principals to increase class sizes to their contractual limits. The latest analysis from both the Independent Budget Office and the City Comptroller’s Office show that even as the city forced budget cuts on schools, it has yet to spend $2.6 billion of the $7.7 billion in federal COVID-19 funds for schools. Of that $2.6 million, the DOE has yet to allocate $280 million.

The schools chancellor and DOE officials suddenly appeared to change their tune: While refusing to reverse the earlier budget cuts, they said they wanted to "hold schools harmless" for any mid-year enrollment drops.

They need to start spending the federal money they have on the needs of our students now. It is unacceptable that billions of dollars has been set aside to spend on DOE-run programs in future years rather than helping our students and our schools with their current challenges.

Despite the availability of this federal funding, we have heard from schools that the DOE’s flawed budget allocations forced school leaders to cut staff and programs even as they struggled to address the academic and social-emotional needs of their school communities. Now schools are waiting for the new mid-year budget recalculations to hopefully bring them back to the funding levels that they need and deserve.

The situation is especially dire at the scores of schools across the city that have welcomed the 6,000 migrant students from asylum-seeking families who were bused to New York City from Texas this summer. As the city comptroller recently noted, the DOE’s decision to allocate $2,000 per new arrival is far less in many cases than what these schools would have received for each migrant student had their initial Fair Student Funding amounts accurately reflected actual student enrollment. What is more, the DOE has prohibited principals from spending these additional funds on hiring new full-time staff to work with these students, even though additional bilingual staff is what is most needed.

Before the situation gets any worse, the comptroller should do a full audit of current DOE spending of federal COVID-19 relief funds, including examining whether any portion of these funds was used inappropriately to supplant regular education expenditures that are the responsibility of the city.

With these federal relief funds and the historic increase in state school aid, we can squarely address the learning loss and social-emotional toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also have a once-in-a-generation chance to lower class size and improve other teaching and learning conditions in New York City public schools. We must make sure that the city and the DOE do not squander that opportunity.