Engineered and promoted by brand-new Governor David Paterson, CC ’77, and passed by the New York State Assembly on Wednesday, the 2008-2009 state budget includes a windfall $1.75 billion increase in state education funding.
New York City schools will now receive $534 million, a fact which has prompted education campaigners to press ahead and call on Mayor Bloomberg and city schools Chancellor Joel Klein—this year’s class day speaker—to change their budget proposal as well.
At the end of 2006, then-Governor Spitzer agreed to a four-year plan which would increase education funding by $5.5 billion, $2.35 billion of which would go to city schools, according to Geri Palast, executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity. The CFE. led by then-lead plaintiff, current City Councilman Robert Jackson (D-West Harlem and Washington Heights), was involved in a 14-year legal battle over funds, won by the CFE and which resulted in the Contract for Excellence, an agreement between the city and state.
But Spitzer, citing a downturn in the economy and a need to streamline the state budget, proposed to cut ’08-’09 funding off of the agreed four-year schedule. Jackson said this year is different. “It [the contract] was in jeopardy, but the state [under Paterson] kept its promise,” he said.
Now that the state has held up its end of the bargain, Jackson said the heat is on for Bloomberg to increase education funding. “There’s no reason why Bloomberg, when he comes out with his executive budget about a month from now, cannot keep the promise,” Jackson said.
Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, an organization associated with the CFE, noted that “there has been a groundswell of demand across the city for the restoration of funding promised by the state. Now we need to take our momentum and focus our attentions on the mayor to put the money back in.”
One problem has been an ideological difference between the Mayor and Chancellor’s offices and the CFE camp. The former tend to reward high-performing schools with more money, while the latter promote putting money into lower-performing schools in hope of increasing quality. The 2006 contract “required that the majority of the money be spent on high-need kids in low-performing schools, and the city did not do that last year,” Palast said.
Transparency and accountability, particularly with the Chancellor’s office, are other parts of the contract. Jackson in particular has questioned Klein’s methods, saying that they indicate Klein is “just a point person for the mayor” and not committed to the schools. “If you’re not communicating what you’re doing, you’re not standing up for the children of New York City,” Jackson said.
In response to these criticisms, Klein told the New York Times: “I have no apology to make for my leadership. This city has added $4 billion; that is a product of the mayor’s leadership and my leadership.”
At the end of the day, the budget victory for the CFE seemed to be but one battle won in a long and weary war. When asked where she would be going from here, Palast replied, “Right now I’m going home and going to bed.”
zack.hoopes@columbiaspectator.com
