Another way to urge the Mayor and NYC Council to increase the budget for schools next year

June 26, 2020

Dear friends–

Thank you so much sending a message via Action Network to the Mayor & Chancellor to let them know school budgets next year must be increased rather than cut to ensure the health & safety of students and staff, and to provide smaller classes & sufficient support to kids who will need it more than ever before.   If you haven’t yet sent a message, the link is here.

Meanwhile, we have prepared another type of message you can send to the Mayor and the City Council, making much the same point via your own email account, by clicking here:

Click to generate a pre-filled email to Mayor de Blasio and the City Councilmembers urging them to increase school budgets.

You may need to disable your pop-up blocker if you have one. If the message doesn’t seem complete, you can paste and copy the following text into it. But in any case, please change the subject line and revise the message any way you like to make it more personal.

This method was very effective in generating thousands of personal emails to the Mayor and NYC Council on the issue of cutting the NYPD budget in recent weeks.

Thanks and please forward this message with others who care! — Leonie

The full text you can paste and copy is here, if it doesn’t entirely show up when you click the link above:

Dear Mayor de Blasio and NYC Council Members,

My name is [YOUR NAME] and I am a resident of [YOUR BOROUGH]. While the Mayor proposed a budget that slashes the education budget by at least $475 million, there is no way our schools can reopen next year safely and with the educational and emotional support that our students need with less funding, after this year of huge disruption and loss.

Indeed, schools will need more funding next year, to provide the teachers required for small classes and social distancing, the additional counselors to help students deal with their emotional distress, and the additional health and safety measures that the School Superintendents Association and the Association of School Business Officials estimate will cost $490 per student.

We urge you instead to INCREASE the budget allotted to schools next year, which would allow them to implement these programs, using a large part of the savings from cutting the police budget, as well as the savings made from cancelling the school busing contracts in mid-March of this year, which will yield the city more than $600 million alone.

Yours sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]