More cuts to school budgets & Bloomberg push to raise the cap on charters!

March 22, 2023

Dear all–

During the NYC Council education hearings last week, the DOE finally admitted that the $800 million in reductions to DOE in the Mayor’s preliminary budget will cause school budgets to be cut again next year, though they refuse to say by how much. Instead, the Council should insist on restoring the hundreds of millions of dollars cut from school budgets this year, especially as the DOE is supposed to start lowering class size and our schools are due to receive another $568M in additional state Foundation Aid. This is the final phase-in amount of $1.3B in additional school aid resulting from the CFE lawsuit, in which class size was a central issue in the case

The DOE was asked at the hearings about whether they intended to comply with the law, and though they said yes, they couldn’t explain why they’re not just intending to cut school budgets but also the capital plan by over $2.3 billion, meaning the loss of 22,000 school seats, even though over 347,000 (38%) of students citywide were enrolled in schools over 100% last year, according to Blue Book.

In fact, Deputy Chancellor Weissberg said it would cost $30B-$35B in additional funds to provide the space for smaller classes, and though we don’t believe those estimates for reasons we explain in our testimony, there’s no doubt there needs to be an accelerated and expanded capital plan to meet the benchmarks in the law.

My testimony is here. The PEP is voting tonight on the estimated budget which contains these cuts to schools, but without revealing how much. You can speak out against the egregious lack of transparency before the vote, and the fact that they intend to cut schools AGAIN, by registering at starting at 5:30 PM at  https://www.learndoe.org/pep/mar22. For some additional points you can make, check our resolution against the budget cuts. For a briefing on these issues, please email us at [email protected]

2. Gov. Hochul is still pushing her proposal to raise the charter cap in the state budget, and as it was just revealed, our former Mayor and charter-loving Michael Bloomberg has put $5 million behind a shadowy organization to to pay for ads on Facebook, TV and mailers promoting her proposals, under the mysterious name “American Opportunity”.  Of course, these ads never mention charters directly because they are so controversial. Don’t be fooled! Instead, send a message to your legislators now, and/or even better, give them a call, to say NO MORE CHARTER SCHOOLS! DOE is already spending more than $3 billion per year on charters, and this proposal could actually triple the cost, as I explain here.

thanks Leonie