To improve New York City’s public schools and with the children’s best interests at heart, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the City Council, the Department of Education, the United Federation of Teachers and parents put aside their differences and collaborated on the Fair Student Funding initiative the DOE implemented earlier this year.
The plan was developed by the education department to “correct historic inequalities in school funding,” and to ensure accountability for student and school performance, according to the DOE.
But, initially, members of the UFT and some parents rejected the plan and claimed DOE Chancellor Joel Klein did not consult them before employing changes. Parts of the plan, they said, would do more harm than good.
“The bottom line is how we help kids,” said UFT President Randi Weingarten. “Listening to parents and teachers is the vehicle to accomplishing that.”
The Department of Education agreed and took into consideration some of the concerns UFT and parents expressed. It decided to join forces with them to refine trouble spots in a range of issues, including funding, teacher tenure, class size and parent engagement.
In order to equally distribute funding to all City schools, the DOE would have to cut funding from successful schools to increase the budgets of schools in need. But strong opposition to this caused the DOE to rethink the process.
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