Dear Speaker Quinn:
As constituents and parent leaders from throughout the city, we would like to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss our budget priorities, and to urge you to do everything you can to save the six thousand teaching positions that the mayor’s budget threatens to eliminate.
Every single teaching position, whether lost through layoffs, attrition or retirement, means a significant increase in class size – which our children, many of them already suffering from the largest class sizes in over ten years – simply cannot afford. This is particularly true as enrollment is growing fast throughout much of the city and is projected to grow again next year.
We believe that there are substantial savings to be made in several areas of the DOE’s budget, especially in testing, contracts, consultants, computers, and bureaucracy – areas of spending that continue to grow despite the DOE’s claims. We refer you to the attached list of budget options. Cutting the projected increase in contracts and consultants by two-thirds could save an estimated $400 million, enough to fund all six thousand teaching positions and more. One example of this wasteful spending is the $23 million annual cost of Acuity, yet these interim assessments have little value, according to most educators and parents, and their contract is due to lapse in August. Technology contracts are up 76%, and should also be cut back substantially.
The central administration at Tweed is still growing, and this year went over budget by $36 million in salaries alone. Field offices and the Children’s First Networks (CFNs) are also expanding, while school budgets have been cut by 12 percent over the last three years. Meanwhile, the DOE has hidden half of the cost of mid-level bureaucracy and the expense of the CFNs in the school-level budget code. Charging charter schools for space and services, as the DOE is supposed to do by state law, would save another $100 million.
Yet even if the DOE continues to resist cutting these wasteful programs, there are sufficient resources in the city’s reserve funds to prevent the loss of any teachers. The general reserve fund has $300 million, $200 million more than required by law; the health care reserve fund has $2billion, and is entirely optional. New York City survived for over two hundred years without a health care reserve fund; we can afford to borrow from it to avert this crisis and save our children from a fate that would mar their opportunities forever.
If there is a need to replenish the city’s reserves, as well as provide a more reliable source of revenue, we urge you to push for a tax hike on the wealthy, who are now paying a smaller share of their income because of the Bush and Cuomo tax cuts. There are other sources of revenue as well, that would together yield more than $1 billion. Because these would need state approval, they are more realistic for the following year.
This city does not lack for millionaires; in fact, we have nearly 700,000 of them, causing us to have the dubious distinction of the most inequitable income distribution in the nation. What we do lack is equitable opportunities for children, with the largest class sizes in the state. What will drive families out of the city are not increased taxes but even higher class sizes and Kindergarten waiting lists.
One of the ways in which a city determines its future and reveals its soul is by the way it treats its children. We urge you to work with us to ensure that no teaching positions are cut next year, and to meet with us as soon as possible so we can directly communicate our deep concerns on these issues.
Yours sincerely,
Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters and D2 parent
Shino Tanikawa, CEC 2 member and PS 3 parent
Camille Habacker, PS3 PTA Co-President
Alison Nelson, PS 3 PTA Co-President
Noah Gotbaum, CEC 3 President
Ann Kjellzer, PS 41 parent and Public School Parent Advocacy Committee
Michael D. Markowitz, P.E., Member CECD2 member and PS 41 parent
Lisa Donlan, CEC1 President
