If you are like me, your head is spinning about the conflicting signals about New York City’s public schools. The state legislature voted to mandate smaller class sizes, which will cost money, but the City Council voted to cut the schools’ budget.
Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, encourages everyone to fight back. She has spent more than 20 years arguing for reduced class sizes as the most effective reform for schools.
Here is her message:
Dear folks –
Sadly, late Monday night the NYC Council agreedto a city budget that will make at least $215M in cuts directly to schools, by a 44-6 vote. These egregious cuts, the largest since the Great Recession of 2007-2008, were made despite billions more in the city’s reserve fund, an expected city budget surplus of more than $1B next year, and nearly $5B in unspent federal stimulus funds meant for our schools. These cuts will likely cause class sizes to increase and the loss of critical services for kids, who are still recovering from the disruptions caused by more than two years of the pandemic.
There are three things you can do now to help us fight back:
1.Sign our petition to Gov. Hochul, urging her to sign the new state class size bill, S09460/ A10498,as soon as possible, passed by the New York State Legislature on June 3 by a vote of 147 to 2 in the Assembly and 59 to 4 in the State Senate. Once she signs the bill, it will give us a legal avenue to try to reverse or limit the damage of these inexcusable cuts. The petition is co-sponsored by NYC Kids PAC, AQE and the Education Council Consortium.
2. You can also let DOE know directly how you feel about these cuts at the final C4E hearings tonight, Wed. June 15. You can sign up here, starting at 5 PM; the hearings begin at 6 PM. The public comments are required to be summarized, posted and sent to the NY State Education Department to help them decide whether to approve the city’s C4E plan. It goes without saying that “Excellence” will be harder to achieve than ever in our schools, given these devastating cuts. Some additional talking points are here.
3. Please also attend our Annual Skinny Award celebration, on Monday June 27, in which we will honor the state leaders who made the new class size bill possible. You can find out more about our honorees and how to purchase your tickets here. This is the first fundraiser Class Size Matters has held in three years — and we can really use your support. The education leaders who will be there to receive their awards also deserve your thanks.
But don’t forget to sign our petition to Gov. Hochul today! I will be up in Albany tomorrow and will deliver it to her office if there are enough signatures by then.
Thanks, Leonie
Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
phone: 917-435-9329
leonie@classsizematters.org
www.classsizematters.org
Follow on twitter @leoniehaimson
Subscribe to the Class Size Matters newsletter for regular updates at http://tinyurl.com/kj5y5co
Subscribe to the NYC Education list serv by emailing NYCeducationnews+subscribe@groups.io
Host of “Talk out of School” WBAI radio show and podcast at https://talk-out-of-school.simplecast.com/
Diane Ravitch's blog 
For all of you who think “Defund the Police” is a bad idea, how do you feel about “Defund Education”? “Defund Housing”? “Defund Healthcare”? Because that’s exactly what’s happening. Meanwhile, the NYPD budget, already larger than most countries’ military budgets, is being further expanded,
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Defund Education and Defund Healthcare and Housing are terrible ideas. Defund the Police is also a terrible idea.
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NYPD budget has increased substantially every year for decades to the point that, as I said, it is larger than most countries’ military budgets. Do you feel safe in all parts of NYC? Is that money well spent? Or do you think it could be better spent for education, housing, healthcare, etc.?
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I live in NYC. I walk my dog at all hours. I feel safe.
I would not want to defund the police.
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If you knew of someone who couldn’t afford to properly feed, house, educate and medically provide for their kids because they’re spending all their money on AR-15s and other “security” items, you’d think they were a horrible person and parent and their kids should probably be removed from their custody, right? (And I would agree with you.)
So how is it different that NYC (and other major cities, Chicago, included), constantly cut back on education, housing, healthcare and other social goods while they constantly increase police budgets?
What do the police do? Among other things, they sweep homeless camps – wouldn’t that money be better spent, I dunno, HOUSING THE HOMELESS? They spend a lot of resources policing minority schools – wouldn’t that money be better spent providing better opportunities for minority students and families? They spend a lot of resources dealing with addicts and people with mental health issues – wouldn’t it be better to treat (or even prevent) addition and mental health issues?
I don’t have an issue with families spending money on security – cameras, door locks, maybe even weapons depending. But when it gets out of control, it actually makes the family less safe while negatively impacting other necessary areas of health and well-being for the family. At that point, the sane thing to do is spend less on “security” and thereby make themselves more secure.
Similarly, if NYC and other major cities would spend less on police and more on social services, etc., they would actually be more safe. It’s not anti-police (who have a legitimate function), it’s pro-sanity.
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You live on Long Island. No one doubts that is safe. What about Harlem? The Bronx? Would you walk your dog there all hours?
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I live in Brooklyn.
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No, I would be afraid to walk my dog in parts of every borough. Those neighborhoods want to see the police even more than I do. They need safety.
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dianeravitch
You “would feel unsafe in parts of every borough”. Interestingly enough the parts of the City you would feel unsafe in have a higher Police presence. And the worst parts of those neighborhoods are within blocks of the Precincts. Of course that may be because the Precinct was located there because of the crime rate . So we could argue (might not be right) that the higher Police presence prevented more crime than already occurs.But we have no argument that the Police presence made those neighborhoods safe.
Curiously enough if you go through the NYC Police Department Crime statistic of 7 major felonies most categories were lower in 2021 then in various years between 2016 and 2019. When you probably felt safe walking your dog . Murder on the other hand you have to go way back to 2012 when Bloomberg was calling NYC the safest big city in the Country and everyone felt safe .
But here is the thing. In 2020 murders went up significantly from 319 to 468 (still lower than 2012 at 519). There was no de-funding of the NYPD that year. In 2021 deBlasio with a lot smoke and mirrors may have cut the NYPD budget a little(maybe not) . Murders rose by 20 to 488 in 2021(again still lower than Bloomberg’s safest big City in 2012). But here is the thing from June to December 2021 when the effects of a cut to the Department would be felt, murders actually declined by about 55. And from January till this week by another 25 . So it would seem that cutting the police budget had a positive effect.
That was a lot of wordiness to say that more police does not necessarily mean less crime and more safety. To say that we have little evidence as to what caused the dramatic decrease in crime from 93 on. And even less crime in this City when Stop and Frisk (which was a dramatic police presence in high crime neighborhoods) ended,is an understatement .
What the people in those high crime neighborhoods also don’t want is repeated unpleasant encounters with law enforcement. They would love to be handed a mask during a Covid lock down as was done in Central Park on the trendy West Side. Instead of being tackled on their doorstep. Love to be able to hand their teen son the car keys and only worrying about auto accidents, not being stopped while Black . Love as Michelle Alexander points out ;to not be victims of the” New Jim Crow “. Over Policing which leads to arrests a life of low wages and crime in their neighborhoods.
Tell the Joe Scarborough and Al Sharpton crowd to shove it. Nobody is defunding the Police and defunding is not responsible for the small crime increase we have seen in our City. Nor the huge increase we have seen elsewhere.
Meanwhile we wind up with Eric Adams as Mayor and budget cuts to Education.
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I hope you did not misunderstand me, Joel.
I think NYC is safer than the perception.
I don’t know of anyone who wants to defund the police.
The police don’t have a big presence in my neighborhood. I live in slow-crime neighborhood.
Eric Adams was elected by promising to cut crime. At the same time he wants to lure people back as residents and tourists.
I haven’t written aboutAdams other than to note that he was funded by some of the most anti-public school, pro-charter billionaires.
I am not impressed thus far by any action he has taken on any front.
In my view, he is in way over his head.
We will see.
The problem with the slogan “Defund the Police” is that Republicans use it to smear Democrats as radicals.
I remember Lamar Alexander saying that Democrats can’t win in Tennessee because they want to defund the Police.
I say that’s rubbish.
I doubt that any Democrat opinion Tennessee ever said that.
But it’s a great talking point for GOP, like the bogus CRT scare and the allegation that teachers “groom” kids to be gay or trans.
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dianeravitch
We actually agree, what I don’t know is what the proper response to the right should be. What Democrats have done since forever(!!!) is run from their principals instead of confronting the Right. They lose the culture and economic wars by not fighting those wars. When I hear Democrats running on cutting taxes and crime I vomit. My taxes are low as is crime. There is that something, that guy Truman said about the people picking the real thing every time.
And then we have the never Trump Republican crowd in the media who are trying desperately to re-elect Donald Trump . Whether the issue is crime or the economy they shape Public perception. They helped elect Adams in NYC with the crime hysteria. Adams by the way also had support from the billionaire Real Estate developers in this City and dollars not crime was their concern.
The media has sacked Biden with the issue of inflation. Finding the one Gas Station with $7.59 cent gas way back in October. When the National average was $2.41. As the media almost dismissed the lowest unemployment rates with the strongest labor market in over a 1/2 century . Why who needs Fox when CNN , MSNBC and the NY Times do your dirty work.
Inflation affects everyone they tell us. Unemployment only a few percent . Of course that is not quite true as the workers at the bottom of the wage ladder have seen the largest increases in wages actually their wages are ahead of inflation. And I didn’t need a new or used car last year so there goes 1/3 of CPI (pre Russia.)
But “6 million workers lose or change there Jobs each month 70 million people a year (minus repeats ) I bet to that very large segment of the workforce it is very important that unemployment is at historical lows” (Dean Baker )
You would never know it from Joe Scarborough and Steve (the crook) Rattner. Two never Trumpers at the supposedly liberal MSNBC.
Perhaps I have been in the wrong parts of NYC because I have felt as safe as ever. Actually I never felt unsafe working in the South Bronx or East NY in the 90s . I wasn’t dealing or buying drugs !!!.
And while we are talking crime . Columbus Ohio has seen a 50% drop in murders this year after record highs last year . Does Adams commute or was there something about the Pandemic that caused the spike we have seen having nothing to do with policing .
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I wanted to make the point that the “Defund the Police” slogan is a gift to the radical right. It allows them to smear all Democrats as anti-police.
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Correction the National average of gas was $3.41 in October not 2.41.
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Lol, today I learned that the South Bronx and East New York were perfectly safe in the 90s.
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Thanks for your sane and sensible comments on this thread, Diane.
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Mayor de Blasio did a pilot program in one Brooklyn neighborhood where LOTS of money was directed toward social services instead of police. Crime went way down.
It’s a shame that so much of this is semantics. If you talk to the police in private, they will tell you they don’t want to be social workers. It would be better if the police could spend their resources policing instead of dealing with social issues and jails were for real criminals, not people who commit crimes because they are addicts or mentally ill without good services, or are homeless or hungry. And if there was no easy access to guns, police would be wearing stab vests instead of bullet proof vests and we would all be better off.
I do blame the Republicans which are not interested in solutions, just keeping things bad enough so that they can convince the most gullible and ignorant people that they are offering solutions. They never are.
For all the attacks on Democrats, with very few exceptions most of them actually want to make things better. They may disagree about policies or (more frequently) disagree on what is “possible” and whether to make compromises to get a little something better even if it is far from being enough.
But those are disagreements that are the beginning of addressing these problems.
The Republicans make it far worse by offering nothing but vague claims they can solve these problems – usually by giving rich people a big tax break and starving the government of funds, which always, always makes it worse, and leave the Democrats left trying to fix an even worse problems. And being blamed for not fixing them.
The Republicans make these problems ten times worse, the Democrats only make them a tiny bit better.
Guess who gets the blame?
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FLERP!
What you learned is that I worked the Eastern Parkway and Nostrand Avenue lines from 82 -86 . The Metro North lines through the Bronx in 87-88. The A line from 59th street to 207th street from 88 to 93 and the J and M lines from Jamaica station to the Williamsburg Bridge from 93 to 96 . Followed by the Franklyn Avenue shuttle in 98-99 and the Grand Concourse Line in the Bronx 2002 -2005 ….. Some of the poorest high crime neighborhoods in NYC . Drove to and Left different stations at different times of the Night and Day was never mugged or bothered by anybody. Nor were any of the hundreds of different men who worked for me in that 20+ years ever mugged . I thought my car was stolen once but it was towed .
That is not to say that I never saw an incident in 20 years or an occasional bouquet of flowers. They were few and far between. All as far as I knew involved drug dealing. Perhaps Workers and especially White Workers are not the smartest targets in these neighborhoods .
Of course somehow that is not your experience in upscale Midtown Manhattan where two Bedroom rents start at 5k -6k a month.
Crime has been over hyped. Most people never experienced violent crime in the 90’s and far far less today.
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Joel, I have lived in NYC for 60 years—excluding hubby’s army service for a year in the 60s and my two years in DC. I never—thank God—experienced serious crime—or any other kind. Our car was stolen once, many years ago. But that’s it.
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and the same across the nation: defund the massive policing budgets means “think how to best re-distribute” and yet it gets no traction
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I agree.
It’s crazy because the fact that the population of students has declined has made it the PERFECT time to have smaller class sizes! It is outrageous that the decline is being used to justify cutting budgets, when it should be invoked as the reason it is now POSSIBLE to have smaller class sizes without having to create 33% more public schools out of thin air!
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It is noticeable how all the corporate “reformers” are closely guarding mountains of money while they wait for a recession likely to hit by the end of the fiscal year so that they can cut instead of spending. We’ve seen their playbook and know their game plan. Watch them bury their heads in the sand during summer, when there are no teacher strikes possible. By spring of 2023, there will be layoffs and class size increases. Teachers unions must walk softly but carry the threat of work stoppages in the fall. Parents must stand with teachers. Class sizes and raises are needed now, right now.
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There is no magical switch that will turn off crime because there are fewer cops on the street. I hear people crying for more police presence with every shooting that takes place no matter the demographics of the surrounding community. Change takes time; redeploy resources incrementally. We do need a lot more attention paid to social services of all sorts. Police budgets seems like an easy target especially because of the high profile abuses that have been documented on camera in recent years. Somehow putting fewer or more poorly trained cops on the street does not seem like a particularly effective antidote to crime. Simplistic slogans can be powerful, but they need to be aimed at workable solutions.
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