The city is cutting education funding by $99 million this year, with high-performing schools taking the hardest hit. The city blames the state for the shortfall, because much of the state funding is restricted to troubled schools. Hoping the state will lift the restrictions on how the money is spent, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is withholding $63 million of state aid.
But Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is not about to change his mind. The restrictions come from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit settlement and are designed to help students who need extra help to overcome obstacles of language and poverty, Silver said. The state is giving the city an additional $620 million in education funding this year, while Mayor Michael Bloomberg cut the city’s education budget by $400 million, Silver said.
“The only reason there’s a need to cut anybody is because the mayor is proposing a $400 million cut,” Silver told Downtown Express. “It has nothing to do with restrictions [on state funding].”
In Lower Manhattan the largest cuts will be at Millennium High School and NEST, which are both slated for 5 percent reductions.
The Department of Education still hopes to distribute the remaining $63 million in state aid without regard for the restrictions. By giving the money to high-performing schools, not low-performing ones, the city could level out the cuts and ensure that every school in the city sees a 1.4 percent funding reduction. Under that scenario, the schools would actually receive more money than they got last year, but since costs rise each year, they would effectively receive a small cut.
However, if the state stays resolute on devoting the funds to low-performing schools, the city says some schools will actually see budget increases, while others will lose 5 percent or more of their funding.
Silver said the city is trying to shift responsibility onto the state for what is essentially the city’s own problem. He called Klein’s description of the situation “absurd” and a “bait-and-switch tactic.”
“I told the chancellor he is an advocate of the children, not the mayor,” Silver said. “His twisted logic doesn’t make sense. The way to avoid cuts in the school system is to have the mayor keep his promise, instead of trying to justify the cut the mayor proposed.”
David Cantor, a Department of Education spokesperson, said Bloomberg has increased school funding by $4.6 billion since he took office and will add another $1.6 billion by 2011.
The dispute is reminiscent of a fight Silver had with Klein and Bloomberg over Downtown school funding in 2006, when the mayor withdrew an administration promise to fund a school on Beekman St. Klein said he spent the money on other projects because the Beekman school was always dependent on additional state funds, but Silver said the chancellor was lying. The matter was resolved when Gov. Pataki agreed to additional state funds and Bloomberg renewed his pledge.
–Julie Shapiro
