Parents in New York City are pleading with Mayor DeBlasio NOT to cut the budget of the public schools. Please add your name to their petition to Corey Johnson, Speaker of the City Council.
All –
Please help NYC public school students by signing and circulating this petition directed to Corey Johnson, Speaker of City Council, to stop Mayor DeBlasio’s proposed 827 million dollar budget cut to NYC public schools. The idea that when our kids – and kids across NYC – return to school they will have even fewer resources than they had pre-COVID, at a time when so many need more, is simply wrong. After months of compromised learning and, for many students tremendous loss in their families and communities, children will need additional academic and socio-emotional support – but the proposed budget cuts will guarantee they get less.
There are many competing needs in our city right now. As public school parents and educators who have worked in and with high schools for over 25 years, we can confidently say that if school funding is not prioritized in the upcoming budget, it will be an unmitigated disaster – not only for the next school year, but for the long term. Please read this petition, sign it and circulate it far and wide. For this to make a difference, it needs to reach thousands of people.
Thank you!
xox,
Lori and Ben
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Signed and shared. And thank you, Diane, for doing this kind of thing, day in and day out, being the brilliant warrior that you are on behalf of students, teachers, and parents. May the good that you do, Diane, each day, for these folks return to you and those you love a thousandfold.
Likewise–signed. I also want to call attention to the efforts of Councilman Mark Treyger of Brooklyn to reduce the bloated ranks of the central administration in New York City: https://nypost.com/2020/04/29/in-nycs-coronavirus-budget-crunch-cut-schools-bureaucracy-first/
In the 16 years I taught in New York, I never ceased to be amazed by the administrative bloat both in schools and at the citywide level. The last school in which I served, the High School of Economics & Finance in Lower Manhattan, carried five administrators (a principal and four assistant principals, not to mention the various sycophants and personal friends these administrators rewarded with dubious “comp-time” positions that removed teachers from the classroom) for a student body of just under 800 students. We couldn’t get occupational therapy services for students who needed them, the guidance counselors carried untenably large caseloads, and our one music teacher, “excessed” (yeesh to that particular piece of bureaucratese, incidentally) for purely political reasons, was never replaced.
But, by god, we had a well-stocked “cabinet” (which is actually what these administrators call themselves as a group–I kid you not) of “leaders” who, it was well-known among the faculty because the administrators would gossip about each other to us teachers, loathed one another, quarreled constantly, and could accomplish nothing meaningful and useful.
So, by all means: let’s set aside the “bad teacher” narrative and carefully and at some length scrutinize both the number of administrative personnel in the system and their roles. My guess? There is a lot of dead wood that can be quickly pruned away.
New York City’s students will profit from such an endeavor.
Another petition:
https://www.change.org/p/mayor-bill-de-blasio-i-want-to-make-sure-mp1-grades-and-mp2-grades-count-for-high-school-only