The Panel for Educational Policy, the governing body of New York City’s public schools, blocked the city’s proposed formula to determine how much money each school should receive — a move that will “detonate the entire system,” the chancellor of the school, David C. Banks.
Wednesday’s vote marked the second time the education panel has opposed proposals from Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, a sign that it is ramping up its independence after two decades of largely approving the mayor’s policies. The panel failed to pass the formula over concerns that it was not properly funding certain groups of students, such as people with disabilities and those in shelters.
The formula that failed the panel must be approved before allocating $10.5 billion in state and local funds for about 1,500 individual schools. The funding accounts for the bulk of the city’s school budgets, said Lindsey Oates, the finance director for the education department. About 95 percent of the money goes to staff.
“We are disappointed with the outcome of this vote and it may slow school budgets and preparations for the upcoming school year,” said Nathaniel Styer, a spokesman for the education department.
Mr. Styer added that the department is committed to a review of the formula, “but that review, in the interest of our students, cannot be rushed into a matter of weeks or months.”
The 15-member Education Policy Panel, which includes nine mayoral appointees, has been in existence since 2002, when the mayor first took control of city schools and the old Board of Education was abolished.
The motion took eight votes to pass. It got seven, all from mayor appointees. All five members appointed by the borough presidents abstained, and Thomas Sheppard, a panelist named by the presidents of the 32 local education councils, voted against. An appointed mayor was absent, and another of Mr. Adams’ appointees was removed after she was accused of anti-gay statements. She has yet to be replaced.
The panel first voted against Mr. Adams in March, when it rejected an $82 million contract to fund temporary staffing services. (It later approved the contract.) It also voted against Mr. Adams’ predecessor, Bill de Blasio, when it nullified a test contract for the city’s gifted and talented program last year.
The failure to approve the funding proposal comes as the mayor fights to retain control of the nation’s largest school district. During his “State of the City” address on Tuesday, the mayor made a plea to state lawmakers, who will vote on continuing mayoral control this summer: “Give us mayoral responsibility!”
It is highly likely that the mayoral oversight will be extended before June 30, when it expires, but the state legislature may seek to extract key concessions from the Adams administration during the process.
The formula that Mr. Banks suggested and blocked the panel for the 2022-2023 school year was unchanged from 2021-2022 and included resources for students in a number of specific categories, including those in special education and Anglophone students.
A number of education leaders, including parents, expressed concern during Wednesday’s meeting that the formula was not adequately considering the system’s most needy students.
“We’re urging you today to take a stand and vote this out, and let’s get back to the drawing board,” said NeQuan McLean, the president of the Community Education Council 16, which represents public schools in the United States. serves the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.
“If you don’t vote for it now, the whole system is going to blow up,” said Mr. Banks during the meeting.
Mr McLean said during Wednesday’s meeting that he had been appointed by Mr de Blasio to be part of a task force to study the matter. The group worked for nine months and wrote a 20-page report of proposed changes to the formula.
The task force recommended giving more money to students with disabilities, said Mr. McLean. It also suggested more money for students in all secondary schools, for students in temporary housing and for students in foster care.
But the task force’s report was never made public.
Efforts to update the formula are not new, said Sarita Subramanian, the deputy director of the education team at the New York City Independent Budget Office.
“I feel like it’s a formula worth revisiting and really assessing and questioning whether it meets the needs of students,” said Ms. Subramanian. “I will say that the timing of this vote is not ideal as it puts schools in a very challenging position when planning for next year.”
Schools typically receive their budget allocations in May, and receiving them later can have major consequences. There have been delays in the past two years. The budgets were released in mid-June last year and in 2020, schools received their allocations in July due to departmental cuts amid the coronavirus pandemic, Ms Oates said.
“It resulted in shorter leases for schools and, frankly, resulted in a major battle leading to reopening in the fall of 2020,” Ms Oates said at Wednesday’s meeting.
“There are many problems with this Fair Student Funding formula,” said Mr Sheppard, who voted against the measure. “It doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do, the way it’s supposed to do it. We have been talking about that for years.”
Gregory Faulkner, an appointed mayor, said he was concerned about funding the formula for students living in homeless shelters, but voted yes anyway.
“I think there is a commitment from the administration to work on this and move forward,” said Mr. Faulkner. “I didn’t want to risk that we could do something that would harm schools and the children.”
The panel is likely to vote again on the formula at its next meeting on May 18.
But that timing doesn’t work for schools, which “must receive their budget by mid-May to avoid disrupting the entire system,” said Mark Cannizzaro, the chairman of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the school principals’ union.
Mr Cannizzaro said it was “just too late” to start discussing changes to the formula.
It was unclear if there would be a new mayor on the next vote. “We’re narrowing down to a few promising candidates that reflect the diversity of our great city and the voices of parents,” said Amaris Cockfield, a spokeswoman for City Hall.
