In New York City, public school funding is tied to student enrollment, and students have been leaving city schools in droves for years. But during the pandemic, school budgets remained largely untouched, supported by federal aid.
Now, the city says schools must make cutbacks to account for the precipitous declines — amounting to more than $200 million — and prepare for even stronger cuts next year. That largely means culling teachers.
Nearly 77 percent of New York City’s district schools, about 1,200 of the 1,600 in the system, have seen their enrollments plummet and face budget cuts after Mayor Eric Adams and the city council agree on a city budget for the fiscal year beginning. on July 1. The budget has reversed a policy under previous mayor, Bill de Blasio, to keep funding for individual schools stable during the pandemic.
Hundreds of teachers are fired or “over the top” by school principals and placed in a district-wide recruiting pool — sparking an outcry among parents, educators and even some of the elected officials who voted for the reduced budgets.
Mariscelle Bautista, a mother of two public primary school students, said in public testimony last week that the city’s decision to “cut back” public schools was “outrageous” and called on parents to mobilize and “ultimately vote all these people out.” “.
The cuts to school budgets would damage the programs and services that have helped students affected by school closures and learning loss during the pandemic, Ms Bautista said, including her own children.
New York City school chancellor David C. Banks promised Monday, the last day of the school year for students, that most, if not all, teachers will be forced because of enrollment-based cuts in their schools to take a position within the system before the next school year begins.
Mr Banks, who has been at the helm of the country’s largest school system for just six months, said that “no teacher in the entire school system will lose their job as a result of this proper grading.”
Teachers who have too much will be placed in the city’s reserve pool and will be considered for jobs at other schools. Mr Banks said the number of teachers likely to end up in the reserve pool this year is similar to the number after the pre-pandemic years. And with a mandate that schools hire those teachers first before taking new teachers into the system, “we expect all those redundant teachers to be rounded up,” Mr. Banks said.
“We have several thousand teachers for hire this year and we will hire them,” he said. “You don’t come back in September and see dozens of people still hanging out.”
But Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the New York City teachers’ union, said the decision to move teachers between schools based on a “false narrative” of necessary budget cuts was “unacceptable.”
He said the city has $4.6 billion in unspent federal pandemic aid. “Those funds should be used to give our students the learning conditions, including smaller classes, that they need to recover,” said Mr. Mulgrew. “Our students need stability.”
Mr. Banks’ assurances that teachers will remain employed in new schools will not negate the destabilizing impact on students, said Crystal Hudson, a Brooklyn councilor who was among 44 of the 50 city councilors who voted in favor of the budget deal that passed the United States. budget cuts.
“It is also time we rethink a system that allocates resources not on the basis of a qualified assessment of need, but rather on a persistent belief that faltering schools should languish,” she said in a statement, “whereby our poor and working class black and brown are punished in communities, while those with resources are wealthy.”
Mr Banks argued Monday that adapting funding to a school’s enrollment changes is nothing new, adding: “I was principal for 11 years, the first thing I did was check the budget.”
But the idea that austerity was a normal part of the budget cycle did little to appease parents, educators and elected officials, who expressed their dismay at protests, on social media and at a Thursday meeting of the Education Policy Panel, a local government consisting of appointees, usually appointed by the mayor.
Jessica Beck, a seventh-grade teacher at Morton Middle School 75 in Manhattan, testified during Thursday’s panel, saying she was overwrought earlier this month when the school budget was slashed by 43 percent.
Ms. Beck spoke about how, in addition to teaching, she has helped students buy art supplies, lunches and even books they wanted to read. “And during the month of June, I wiped their tears and assured them that the future is hopeful, even though I told them I’m leaving,” she said.
She added, “When I think about how relationships are important to our students, I can’t help but think how insignificant and insignificant we have been when this government was making budget decisions.”
Under the established budget, schools that lose money will see an average of $402,000 cut in their budget, said Brad Lander, the New York City auditor.
“These cuts could mean going from four sections of a class to three, increasing the class size from 25 to 32, or losing their only art or music teacher,” Mr. Lander said. “While not every individual overworked teacher will be out of work, schools will lose the small class sizes and enrichment programs students need to thrive.”
New York state lawmakers passed a bill this month that would require the city to reduce class sizes. Doing this typically requires adding more teachers, and this would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, city officials said, which could lead to cuts in programs such as dyslexia screening and school nurses.
“Make no mistake, it will lead to major cuts in these critical programs,” Mr Banks said in a statement at the time. “This shouldn’t be a choice school leaders have to make.”
