City Unions Pleased With State Budget;

Aids Schools, Hospitals
City Unions Pleased With State Budget


City unions reacted positively last week to the State budget agreement as the massive increase in education funding remained intact and the $32 million in cuts to city hospitals were rescinded.

'STEAMROLLER' TAKES SLIGHT DETOUR: Governor Spitzer, after contentious battles with state legislators, particularly Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, emerged with an on-time budget that preserved most of his priorities - particularly in the area of education - while rescinding some of his planned cuts in health care.

Helps Cut Class Size

United Federation of Teachers officials applauded the final plan, which included language requiring the city to decrease class sizes. The budget does not, however, mandate an amount of money to be spent or include target numbers for class-size reduction.

Although the UFT had objected to Mr. Spitzer's plan to increase the cap on charter schools, the city will not be the chartering entity for its 50 new schools, and all new charters that have more than 250 students within the first two years will have to be unionized.

The new education funding formula also partially addresses the historic inequality in spending for the city and high-needs school districts, identified by the 14-year-old Campaign for Fiscal Equity legal case.

"This is a tremendous victory for public education in New York City," said UFT President Randi Weingarten. "It is a great breakthrough for CFE and class size to be a part of the Governor's new foundation funding formula."

The new budget increases education spending by $1.76 billion, more than Governor Spitzer originally requested, bringing total state spending to almost $20 billion. The city will get an increase of $3.3 billion over the next four years, which will come in addition to a promised $2.2 billion in city dollars. This year state aid to the city will increase by $712 million, $73 million more than in Mr. Spitzer's initial proposal.

City Fought Off Mandate

The Governor emphasized the need to reduce class size in his original budget, but the Assembly, backed by the UFT, sought to require the city to bring city class sizes down to the state average within four years.

Officials involved in budget negotiations said that the city fiercely resisted the requirement, and worked with Senate Republicans to block it.

The final compromise mandates that high-needs and overcrowded districts lay out a five-year plan to reduce class sizes and gives the State Education Commissioner the right to review progress and order remedies for violations of the deal. It also ensures that averages are separated by grade - from pre-k to third, fourth through eighth and for high schools.

Charter Schools Double

The addition of 50 new charter schools in the city would almost double the current number, but still would comprise less than 3 percent of the city's total. Currently only 8 of the city's 58 charter schools are unionized, two of which are run by the UFT.

It is unclear what impact the unionization requirement for schools with more than 250 students within two years will have. Many charter schools begin by filling one grade each year, and they often have fewer than 100 students in each grade level.

The Governor's budget at first gave Mayor Bloomberg the power to approve charters for new city schools. But the UFT scored a partial victory with the final deal, which keeps the chartering authority with the trustees of the State University of New York, who are appointed by the Governor, and the State Board of Regents, which is mostly controlled by the Democrat-dominated Assembly.

The new budget also increases state aid for universal pre-kindergarten by about 50 percent, to $438 million.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver praised the final deal. "New York is well on its way to achieving historic reforms in the way we fund the education of our children," Mr. Silver said in a statement, "and the delivery of health care for the elderly, the sick, the disabled and hundreds of thousands of children."

An Island Retreat

The Governor had originally tried to wholly reform the education funding formula, which has for decades favored wealthier districts. Reports from Albany indicated that some progress was made in pushing money to high-needs districts, but that Senate Republicans succeeded in preserving aid for wealthier Long Island communities. Mr. Spitzer had proposed that Suffolk and Nassau counties receive 8 percent of new aid, but the final deal maintained the 12 to 13 percent those areas usually receive.

The Governor was forced to back off about a third of the cuts he wanted to make to health care spending, but those reductions affected primarily nursing homes and private hospitals.

The city's public hospitals, managed by the Health and Hospitals Corporation, were spared any cuts to their operating budgets.

"Our position has always been that anything that's good for HHC, where so many of our members work, is good for us," said District Council 37's chief spokeswoman, Donna Silberberg.

Spitzer: Met Key Goals

Although the Governor made a number of compromises, he contended that the budget addressed "virtually all of our top priorities this year." Some lawmakers complained that in the last-minute rush to finalize the deal, they were forced to vote without seeing the fine print.

"This budget is very good for the State of New York," Mr. Spitzer said in a statement. "Obviously, however, the process that produced the budget was flawed. Next year, we will be able to start the process sooner and have the time to seek greater input from lawmakers and the public."

The final 2007-2008 $120.9 billion budget increases overall spending by 7.3 percent.