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Winter 1999 (v3#3)

Governor’s Budget Threatens Small Classes

Governor Pataki proposes to renege on the promise of smaller classes for New York City’s youngest schoolchildren. The next few months will be critical in terms of determining whether and how the all-important class size reduction program for grades K-3 is carried out, the best hope in a generation to significantly boost the lagging achievement of public school students in New York City. At the end of January, Governor Pataki proposed that the funding for the program, along with the Universal Pre-K initiative and several other critical categories of state aid, be canceled, and replaced with a block grant of a much reduced amount.

Skimps on Education
Despite another expected record surplus, the Governor’s Executive Budget proposes a meager $154 million net increase statewide for education next year. This represents a mere 1.3% increase, less than the rate of inflation, over the 1998-99 school allocation. For New York City, his plan is even worse, offering a net raise of only $17.75 million, less than 12% of the statewide increase.

The Governor’s proposals for New York City include, among other things, eliminating the already planned $57.98 million that was to go towards expanding Universal Pre-K and the $47.9 million slated for the first year of the three-year Early Grade Class Size Reduction program. He would also eliminate grants for Bilingual Education ($6.5 million), Categorical Reading ($29.95 million), Improving Pupil Performance ($36.20 million), and Minor Maintenance ($33.33 million). This totals more than $200 million in cuts for New York City alone. Instead, he recommends the creation of a $200 million Educational Improvement Block Grant to provide "flexible" funding to districts statewide, of which New York City would receive only about $77 million. [Addendum: In response to criticism, the Governor proposed a mid February amendment adding a $115 million grant for the Big 5 cities to fund a literacy program for second, third and fourth graders. This new proposal would boost the statewide increase to $269 million or 2.3%. While New York City would receive $58 million of the new monies, it would be restricted and could not be used for class size reduction, pre-k or any of the other threatened programs.]

While all these cuts are unacceptable, his attempt to cancel the class size reduction initiative is especially outrageous, and could not have come at a worse time. Particularly with the end to social promotion, the move to impose higher standards for graduation, and the increased mainstreaming of special education students into the regular classroom, all legitimate reforms being pushed by the State Education Department and the Chancellor, smaller class sizes are absolutely mandatory if teachers are going to be able to give New York City schoolchildren the skills they will need to succeed.

Chancellor’s Capital Plan
To their credit, the New York City Chancellor and the Board of Education recently came out with an ambitious capital plan to spend $11 billion over the next five years, about $6 billion of which would be city funds, to build new schools and classrooms in order to reduce overcrowding, accommodate the expected growth in enrollment, and reduce most K-3rd grade classes to an average of 20 students per class.

The Board of Education five-year Capital Plan calls for creating 75,600 new seats, in part to be able to reduce 75% of K-3 classes by the year 2004, and eventually, 100% of early grade classes by the year 2010. In doing so, the plan relies on a mixture of federal and state money to hire more teachers. Yet neither source of funding is at all secure. The federal class size reduction appropriation of $1.2 billion, which includes $60 million for New York City, was originally supposed to be for seven years, but President Clinton could get approval from Congress for only one year thus far. And although in next year’s budget the President has proposed extending the class size reduction program by spending another $1.4 billion, $200 million more than this year, the political fate of the program remains in doubt. The state funding, which would reduce only about 55% of New York City K-3 classes after three years, is in even greater peril, as the Governor’s recent budget proposal makes clear.

Moreover, no matter what the future is for the federal and state funds to reduce class size, the facilities issue still remains a deeply problematic one for New York City, because of the sorry state of the city’s dilapidated and badly overcrowded schools.

Facilities Roadblocks
While the 1997 school year began with the defeat of the School Construction Bond Act, which would have provided $2.4 billion statewide for school facilities, the 1998 fiscal year ended with Governor Pataki’s veto of $500 million of additional funds to go to school facilities, known as RESCUE, which was desperately needed to repair, construct, and renovate classrooms, especially given the state initiative to reduce class size.

Though the New York City Board of Education and the Chancellor should be lauded for their relatively ambitious capital plan, the $11 billion they call for spending on school construction and rehabilitation is only about a third of what is really needed to expand and bring the school system into an adequate state of repair, according to a recent report by the City Comptroller’s office on the city’s capital needs. Moreover, the Capital Plan relies on quite a few assumptions which may or may not come to pass, including providing more than 14,000 of the new seats through year-round schooling, a recommendation which has so far not passed the State Legislature.

This year, once again, the Governor and the State Legislature will have the opportunity to make up for past omissions. Rather than cancel the long-planned and critical class size reduction program, they should instead make the plan truly universal by appropriating sufficient funds to reduce 100% of K-3 classes by the fourth year. They should also seriously address the all-too-apparent facilities gap. $25 billion over 25 years, or about $1 billion per year, is likely to be awarded New York State as a result of the settlement with the tobacco companies. The Mayor has proposed spending part of the city’s share on school construction. So should the Governor, who in this year of budget surpluses, has even fewer excuses than ever before to neglect his responsibilities towards the schoolchildren of New York.

In terms of facilities, city and state officials may not be acting alone. In the final days of last year’s negotiations over the Federal budget, President Clinton lost the fight to provide funds for school construction, but has taken up the proposal once again in his budget for FY 2000 - to give tax credits to pay the interest on nearly $25 billion in bonds to build and modernize more than 5,000 public schools nationwide. This year’s Congress will take this issue up once again and will hopefully finance these critical needs, as well as extend the funding for the class size reduction program for the entire seven years.

Luckily, for supporters of public education and smaller class sizes, the results of the midterm elections across the country were extremely heartening. The new governor of California, Grey Davis, ran on a platform of improving public education and broadening the class size reduction program in California already in process, while his opponent, who supported publicly-funded vouchers, was soundly defeated. In Oregon, a ballot proposal to provide vouchers was beaten. Candidates who won governorships in the South put emphasis on providing more resources for public education, and, for the first time, education ranked as the number one priority of voters nationwide, with the issue of class size reduction polling extremely high among Republican and Democratic voters alike. Many successful candidates ran specifically on the issue of lowering class sizes, including Jesse Ventura, the new governor of Minnesota, and the newly elected Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer. Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani, both reportedly looking at higher national office, should take heed.

Largest Classes in the State
Children in New York City schools have long been disadvantaged by being jammed into the largest classes in the state, with an average of 28 per elementary grade classroom, compared to 22.6 in the rest of the state. Thus, the state aid program to lower class size represents the first really equitable educational funding for the city in many years. Moreover, smaller classes remain the best hope New York City schoolchildren have to receive the education they deserve, and a better chance to excel and go on to become contributing members of society. As the business community has long argued, this city will not have a future unless it starts doing a better job educating its children. In a time of record budget surpluses, the question is not whether we can afford to reduce class sizes in New York City, but whether we can afford not to.

School Facilities: Classroom Crisis
Governor's Budget Threatens Small Classes
Education Higher Standards: The Need For More Time and Money
Standards Delivery
Community Mobilization: Moving Parents To The Front Lines On School Funding Reform
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