Thread by @blissbroyard

Thread re: NYC Education Budget Cuts. I’m hearing there are still conversations happening at City Hall about education spending for next year, so let’s get more informed. To find out how these cuts will affect your school, you can look up your NYC public school’s budget.

Go to schoolsearch.schools.nyc. Find your school’s page. Click on “Reports” and then “Budgets and Finances” and then “Galaxy Allocation.” Galaxy is the bank account from which principals pay their staff and for their programming.

You can compare the amount allocated for 2023 with the previous year. You can also compare the Fair Student Funding, which comes from the state. Some City Council members who voted for the budget are saying the state is to blame for cuts bc it decreased the Fair Student Funding.

But at my kid’s school, the Fair Student Funding went up $300k and the budget was still cut by $1.5 million. That’s 17% less than last year’s budget. Chair of the Education Committee, @CMRitaJoseph, and @nycmayor have said that the budgets reflect declining enrollment.

Again, in my school’s case, enrollment went up. To find out if my school was an anomaly, I sampled schools across my district, D13 in Brooklyn, schools in @CMRitaJoseph’s district, & schools with rising enrollment (source bit.ly/3Oly2eQ from @ChalkbeatNY).

Here's what I found:

In nearly all cases, the state’s Fair Student Funding was flat or increased, while overall budgets went down significantly. Even in schools where enrollment was up 20% or more, budgets were cut. @NYCMayor and the City Council are balancing the budget on the backs of children.

Teacher morale is already low. At my child’s school, we were just starting to see students make up pandemic learning losses and beginning to feel safe and calmer and families were engaging again. And now the rug has been pulled out from under them. We have to fix it @NYCMayor!

Talking to principals over the years & staffers in City Council recently, my impression is that no one really knows how the school budgets are going to shake out from the different funding streams until they are released. The algorithm is like a slot machine & we got 🍋 🍋🍋.