Council Joins Unions
Press Mayor on School, Day-Care Funding Cuts

By MICHELLE FRIEDMAN

City Council Members Bill de Blasio and Robert Jackson announced April 30 that they had 45 co-sponsors for a resolution calling on Mayor Bloomberg to restore almost $540 million in proposed cuts to the city schools budget.

The Chief-Leader/Pat Arnow CAN'T GET A HEARING: District Council 1707 Executive Director Raglan George outlined a plan he says could preclude the need for the city to close more day-care centers, but he has been kept off an Administration for Children's Services task force on the issue and can't get a meeting with Commissioner John B. Mattingly.

Differ on What's Integral

The Council Members, along with members of the Keep the Promises Coalition, urged the Mayor to rescind the proposed cuts in his Fiscal Year 2009 Executive Budget. The Mayor announced $324 million in cuts to the Department of Education in January, and an additional three percent cut in March.

In unveiling his Executive Budget the following day, Mr. Bloomberg contended that the city would actually be spending only "$400 million-odd less than we could have spent." He said those reductions were integral to his efforts in "aggressively reining in city spending" to cope with a worsening local economy. And despite them, he said, a combination of added state and city aid to education will provide $200 million more to the Department of Education for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

"Every single agency," he noted, had been required to cut its budget.

The Bloomberg administration and the Council must agree on a new spending plan by early next month.

Plan to Regain Funding

During the press conference, District Council 1707 unveiled an itemized plan to get Administration for Children's Services day-care centers fully funded again. It focused on resuming the ACS Massive Admissions Campaign and providing parents with a directory of ACS centers by zip code. The plan also called for a reorganization of centers through raised income ceilings to allow children already in the system to remain there, getting the child support requirement rescinded to allow single parents to return to centers, and restructuring centers' age-groupings so they serve the age groups that are most in need of care.

"We hope the administration takes this plan as seriously as they should," said Council Member de Blasio. "We have a real plan to protect these centers; a serious plan that looks out for the taxpayers. Child-care centers subsidized by the city are tremendously successful. You will not find anyone in New York City that says that these centers are not working for kids. How do we protect these centers?"

Members of the Keep the Promises Coalition ridiculed the city government for failing to maintain its financial commitment to education in the city, while praising New York State for increasing school aid, as mandated by the 2006 state Court of Appeals order resolving a lawsuit brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

'City's Turn to Meet Challenge'

In a letter to Mayor Bloomberg displayed at the rally the Keep the Promises Coalition wrote, "It is now the city's turn to rise to the challenge and keep its promise. The state budget cuts for the schools did not materialize. The state set an example in recognizing that a generation of New York City's public school children had already paid with their futures, and that this long-overdue investment in education must be exempt from the economic downturns."

Advocates contended that there was no way to make the proposed budget cuts without risking the quality of education. United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten asserted that, "All sorts of planning for next year's programs were cut," pointing to cuts in special education programs and those for students with disabilities.

"They are only going to see the problem when it can't be restored."

A statement from Mr. de Blasio added, "Due to this sudden loss of funding, our public schools are already being forced to cut back after-school programming, trim tutoring hours, cut costs on books, and decrease professional development opportunities."

A Failure to Communicate

The press conference also included a moving plea from the more than 200 children in attendance to preserve day-care centers. "The children wrote letters to the Mayor about how they want to stay in day-care," said Rosemary Hines from the YWCA Richmond Early Learning Center on Staten Island, surrounded by her pupils.

Neal Tepel, a DC 1707 spokesman, lamented in a phone interview, "There has been no communication between DC 1707 and the ACS. We don't know what they are working on, and they don't know what we are working on."

He called ACS's decision to leave DC 1707 Executive Director Raglan George off the child-care task force a "great misstep."

"I am dissatisfied because what they did was create animosity on a number of different levels," Mr. Tepel said. "They made a decision to slight a major union in the development process, and by doing so they closed off an avenue of communication. Instead of saying 'we should have invited them,' they continue to say that they don't want Raglan there because sometimes he is critical of their plan."

Urges Mattingly to Meet

Mr. Tepel called for ACS Commissioner John B. Mattingly to meet with Mr. George.

He noted that New York City was the first city in the United States to implement a city-wide public child-care system.

On May 2 Commissioner Mattingly, testifying at a State Assembly Children and Families Committee hearing, defended Project Full Enrollment as a way to keep centers open and financially viable. He said that closing centers would occur only as a last resort.

"Up until now, the city has paid each program based on its contracted capacity, regardless of whether the program is serving the number of children that they are contracted to serve," ACS Deputy Commissioner Melody Hartzog testified. "Through Project Full Enrollment, center-based child-care contracts will be modified to compensate each program for the actual number of children attending each program," not closed when the center is not fully enrolled.

'Pay Based on Enrollment'

"Children's Services will work with programs in phases to shift toward a system where programs will be responsible for ensuring that they are serving the maximum number of children, and the city will pay centers based on the number of children enrolled in the program and attending child care each day," Ms. Hartzog continued.

ACS has also developed a Community Needs Assessment which will be rolled out over the next several weeks, providing New York City parents with a directory of child-care centers, as requested by DC 1707. "We are very proud of this work because it is the first time New York City has provided this level of detailed demographic data by zip code, neighborhood and borough," said Ms. Hartzog.