Special education teacher Edelma Perez was one of several educators picketing outside Public School 150 Tuesday to protest program cutbacks.Teachers and parents at Queens schools have erupted in protest over Mayor Bloomberg's citywide budget cuts after school administrators began scaling back classes and programs.
Supported by the United Federation of Teachers, educators have set out on a warpath against the ill-timed cuts in recent weeks.
Many schools opted to drop specialized education classes, some cut out enrichment or arts programs, and others axed the use of all substitute teachers. None of the options is reasonable, teachers argue.
Teachers at Sunnyside's Public School 150 picketed Tuesday after the cut of a substitute teacher forced an entire second-grade class to crowd into other classrooms. A staff teacher is on maternity leave.
"Finally, after many years, we were able to have a smaller class sizes," said Joanne Rodeschin, a fifth-grade teacher at PS 150. The city's efforts to reduce class sizes whittled down her normal class size of 30 to just 23 this year.
A budget crunch zaps such extravagances, she said.
"The mayor [said in a Jan. 31 comment] any organization can absorb 1.75%," said the 13-year teacher. "But he didn't eliminate it from any organization. He eliminated it from children."
Students for whom English is their second language - who make up half the 1,200 students at PS 11 - also may be a casualty of the cuts, said teachers who picketed outside the Woodside school on Feb. 15.
Academic Intervention Services, which offers individualized help to new English learners, will sacrifice lessons when the specialized teachers, like Katherine Kurjakovic, are used to cover for an absent teacher.
"Students we are supposed to support lose consistency" when specialized teachers are moved, Kurjakovic said.
The pain of the cuts was widespread: Middle School 67 in Little Neck cut a literacy coach and ballroom dancing. PS 26 in Fresh Meadows will stop all academic intervention services April 1.
Students at High School 620 in Jamaica - an engineering and technical trades school - might get no classroom time, said health teacher Vivian Esposti, 54, because teachers "must be licensed in a given technical area to even work in that classroom.
"Our students will have to go to the library or auditorium [to be taught], and they lose out on that portion of their learning."
At Long Island City High School, which lost $303,000 in the cuts, nearly all the classrooms are overcrowded, said Ken Achiron, a 30-year veteran health teacher.
Cutting substitutes left behind 24 teacherless classrooms because of absences, sabbaticals, maternity leaves and other issues.
Cuts were made "where it was able to be done as decently and expeditiously as possible," Achiron said.
"Would you like me to cut off my left hand or my right hand?" jwisloski@nydailynews.com
