Send a letter to Mayor now! and school reopening conference & task force

June 23, 2020

Friends — We are in the final week of the city budget negotiations. According to sources, the Mayor is holding fast and insisting on huge cuts to schools, which will prevent them from being reopened next year with all sufficient health and safety precautions and enough teachers and counselors that our kids will need.

Please send a letter to the Mayor and Chancellor today telling them that school budgets should be INCREASED not cut. Substantial funds can be found from cutting the NYPD budget, which the Mayor has already agreed to do, and cancelling the school bus contracts when schools were closed, which has already saved the DOE more than $600 million this year.

2. Thanks so much to those of you who participated in our conference on reopening schools. We had nearly 100 committed, passionate and incisive parents, educators, CBO reps and concerned New Yorkers who attended our conference Saturday , Sharing Ideas & Solutions for Reopening Schools: The Path Forward.   At the end of the conference, we presented our thoughts and ideas to Chancellor Betty Rosa and Regent Nan Mead, as well as State Senator John Liu, Council Members Brad Lander and Helen Rosenthal and DOE representatives. We will be writing up the results of the online survey and our discussions, and will share them with you and the Regents Reopening Schools Task Force later this week.

3. Speaking of the Regents Reopening Schools Task Force, I was appointed to the Task Force focused on NYC and Long Island, and we will be meeting tomorrow from 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM. You can watch the live stream of the meeting at 8:30 AM to 9:25 AM and again from 10:40 AM to 11:30 AM on the NYSED homepage at www.nysed.gov. Videos of the individual breakout sessions will be posted later this week on the Reopening Schools website.

But please send a letter to the Mayor & the Chancellor today!

thanks, Leonie