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doomsday prophecy

Walcott outlines cuts that could take place without an eval deal

If the city and its teachers union do not agree soon on new teacher evaluations, class sizes will likely rise, teacher training suffer, after-school activities be eliminated, and guidance counselors cut, Chancellor Dennis Walcott predicted this morning.

Walcott spelled out the doomsday scenario during a brief talk about teacher evaluations at the Manhattan Institute this morning. He said he had called UFT President Michael Mulgrew — at 7:50 a.m. today — to say he wanted to conclude negotiations by Dec. 21, or two weeks from Friday and the last regular workday before Christmas.

Reaching an agreement by Dec. 21 would give state education officials, who have expressed increasing anxiety about the city’s timeline, nearly a month to review the plan and request any necessary adjustments before a deadline that Gov. Andrew Cuomo set last January.

State education law requires that districts adopt new evaluation systems when they next negotiate contracts with their teachers unions. But Cuomo vowed to withhold increases in state school aid from districts that do not have evaluation systems in place by Jan. 17, 2013.

In a statement, UFT President Michael Mulgrew said there was no need to commit to a Dec. 21 agreement and said politics were again impeding the union’s good-faith effort to negotiate new evaluations.

“Rather than establishing bogus deadlines and threatening parents with the loss of teachers and services, they should be focusing on reaching an agreement that will actually help make the schools better,” Mulgrew said about city officials.

The $250 million that Walcott said is on the line represents 4 percent of the nearly $8 billion that the city’s schools receive from the state each year. It represents a far smaller share — about 1 percent — of the city Department of Education’s total operating budget, which is about $23 billion annually.

Still, the amount is larger than in most rounds of budget cuts that the Department of Education has experienced in recent years. Those budget cuts led to a reduction in the city’s teaching force, larger classes in all grades, and cuts to extracurricular programming, according to a union survey conducted last year.

Exactly when and how deep the state’s cuts would come is not totally clear, but city Department of Education officials said the funds are already included in this year’s school budgets and would be cut midyear without a deal. Midyear budget cuts are doubly disruptive to schools because most expenses are fixed for the whole year, meaning that only certain costs, such as after-school programs or tutoring, can go on the chopping block right away.

Lawyers familiar with school funding are looking into questions about whether Cuomo can legally withhold the funds, according to David Sciarra, a lawyer who is representing city parents and advocates in a renewed push to secure funds for high-needs districts that the courts have said the state must provide.

But even if the threat turns out to be legal, it is unsavory, Sciarra said.

“At the same time that the state has walked away from its obligation to fairly fund the poorest schools in our state, including the schools here, to then turn around and use the threat of withholding funding for those very same programs that kids need — frankly it’s unconscionable,” he said.

Sciarra noted that the federal government is allowed to withhold Title I funding from states that do not comply with its mandates. But, he said, “they never do that, because they know when they cut that funding, the kids and schools that would be hurt the most are the most at-risk.”

Here’s what Walcott said in his Manhattan Institute speech about the possible consequences to city schools of losing out on the increased school aid:

While we will look for savings centrally, as we always do, we know we will not be able to absorb the entire $250 million.

If we can’t reach an agreement with the UFT, we will be forced to pass some cuts on to schools.

At this point, any cut to our schools is too much, especially when you consider the structure of our schools’ budgets.

Schools spend over 95% on personnel costs and the majority of the remainder on direct student services.

Any cuts will undermine exactly what we are trying to achieve – providing meaningful support and development opportunities to our educators and rigorous instructional programming to our students.

While principals would make final decisions about how to absorb budget reductions, we would expect that cuts would lead to fewer teachers being hired, which will probably lead to larger class sizes.

We would expect the elimination of professional development opportunities for staff and cuts to cherished after school activities such as music, art, and sports for students.

We would expect substantial reductions in guidance counselors, social workers, and other support staff who play a key role in our children’s social and emotional development.

We would expect schools to stop purchasing instructional materials such a library books and educational software.

This is an unfortunate reality and these cuts would be painful.

  • Juggleandhope

    Mulgrew’s reply seems pretty ideal to me.   DOE seems consumed with threats and bluster and less able to hold up their end of a meaningful conversation. 

  • BloombergMustGo

    These are all LIES.  The majority, if not all, of these funds will be quickly absorbed by the necessary changes in administering these “new” evaluations and by the need to create assessments in all subjects besides math and english. 
    The districts on Long Island are having these and more problems because of the ridiculous requirements imposed by the new evaluation systems.
    The DOE has no interest in creating a fair and useful system of evaluation.  They are rushing to implement any system that they can use as a blunt instrument to fire those with higher salaries and support more school closings.  Of course, this will all be done in the name of school reform.
    It’s all part of Bloomberg’s Last Gasp in his Reign of Destruction.

  • RThey4real

    Eliminate the Quality Reviews- $21 million/ Cut PSAL- $19 million/ Close Leadership Academy- $11 million/ Eliminate Learning Environment Survey- $14 million…I just saved $65 million and I am just warming up.

  • Tim

    Don’t forget the $80 million for ARIS.

    Getting rid of the PSAL and the only meaningful tool average parents have to evaluate their children’s schools — way to look out for the children!

  • Biggie

    RThey4real comments below make me wonder if there is some online spreadsheet that outlines how the NYCDOE budget is allocated?

    Tim I think we lost that $80 million already, question is, what are the annual maintenance costs? ( I also wonder how much is spent annually by schools who “lease” a private Student Management System like Skedula? )

  • I noticed that…

    Don’t forget to reduce the DoE’s legal department from 300 to the pre-Bloomberg size of 12.  That another cut of $21 million (based on $75,000 per shyster).  Get rid of those ridiculous Acuity and Predicative Exams – another $10 million.  Get rid of the consultants – $1.5 million. 

    If anyone else has some other Tweed cuts, please post.

  • Former Turnaround Teacher

    Stop Holding Our Schools Hostage!

  • BXTeacher

    What about the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to “professional development” from organizations such as Teacher’s College and AUSSIE? We have had those in our school and they are useless wastes of money.

  • Budsky

    Every NYC teacher needs to immediatly open their window and yell at the top of their lungs: “DON”T SELL US OUT MULGREW!”

  • A.S.Neill

    let’s see if I got this right. No raises or new contract for going on five years, during which teachers endure non-stop stream of negative propaganda from NY Post.  Now either teachers accept a flawed evaluation model that risks their careers or Walcott loses $300 mil to spend on support staff and more PD.

    “Puts data into spreadsheet with complex equations flashing at the speed of light for two hours”. Bing. Sorry Walcott, seems you lose.  

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    Any sources on this?

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    “RThey4real comments below make me wonder if there is some online spreadsheet that outlines how the NYCDOE budget is allocated?”

    You can google up various measures of this, but it takes some work to get a really granular snapshot, and then even more work to follow it back in time.  This has been a side project of mine but I’ve been too busy to make any progress for the last few months.  But your instinct to ask for actual budget data is commendable, though not shared by anyone else here as far as I’ve seen.

  • I noticed that…

    Mr. Fler,
    Do you have sources yourself to add? 

  • BloombergMustGo

    Skedula – On average $15,000 a year.

  • Guest

    Cut acuity tests…waste of time and money

  • Biggie

     So that would be apx. 15K X 500 schools using it =7,500,000 annually. There are probably other annual services the NYCDOE and schools purchase like iLearn, etc. Plus the amount associated with maintaining ARIS since Wireless Generation has that contract. Incredible.

  • RThey4real

    R U 4 Real? The Learning Environment Survey is the most manipulated popularity contest ever devised and a true waste of school and central efforts. PSAL-a bloated conspiracy for PE teachers and retired ones to get per session ad infinitum. Wake up Tim. There’s a lot more that can be cut but these two are prime examples of BS in action at VERY HIGH costs.

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    I generally only provide a source when I’m making a factual assertion.  But I guess I’ll take that as a no.

  • I noticed that…

    Flerico:  prove my information wrong by posting your facts.  There are many, many, many lawyers working in the DoE.  I’ve read that there are close to 300.  You know the Acuity and Predicative Exams are not costing in the thousands nor in the 100 thousands, but in the millions.  The consultants, do you think they are working for minimum wage? 

    So go head and place your facts, the info, the numbers, the sources, the …

  • NYCparent

    Evidence
    that “teacher evaluations” and other ALEC/Gates/USDOE-driven corporate
    reforms are more likely to bankrupt school districts than to improve them:

     

    “Race-Top-costs-leave-schools-behind” 

    http://www.lohud.com/article/20120129/NEWS02/301290044/

    Excerpt:

    But of 54 districts in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties,
    eight got no federal money. And 31 districts received grants of less than
    $50,000.

    At the same time, school officials are finding
    they will have to spend significantly more — perhaps 50 to 100 times as much,
    in some cases — to meet Race to the Top’s demanding requirements. These include
    the rapid development of a new teacher and principal evaluation system that
    many educators oppose and preparation for the adoption of new national learning
    standards, known as the Common Core, by 2014.

    “No one did the
    math,” said Ken Mitchell, South Orangetown’s superintendent. “Race to the Top
    was fast-tracked, and there was no discussion about the costs.

     

    And
    on the equally specious SIG (School Improvement Grant) funding:

    Cost
    doesn’t spell success for Colorado schools using consultants to improve
    achievement – The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/investigations/ci_19997418#ixzz2EEawYvP3

    Excerpt:

    The federal School Improvement Grant program
    “is likely to go down in the annals as one more pretty expensive, failed
    initiative,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies for the
    American Enterprise Institute, an independent public-policy think tank. He
    called the amount spent on lightweight, seminar-leading consultants
    “ludicrous.”

    “What’s being done with this money is
    unimpressive,” Hess said, adding that the rush to spend it “really
    lends itself to a lot of fly-by school improvement.”

    Education-reform experts say “external
    providers” can play an important role in turning around failing schools,
    and that viewing schools with an outside, higher-level lens can lead to more
    radical reconstruction, but they are disturbed that neither the federal government
    nor the majority of states keep track of this spending. And an
    estimate of 25 percent — more than $1 billion nationwide — is outrageous, some
    said.

    “There is not $1 billion worth of good
    consultants; there aren’t enough good consultants in the country,” said
    Van Schoales, chief executive of the education advocacy nonprofit A+ Denver.

     

    [PHOTO]

    Fourth-grader Omar
    Ponce de Leon, 9, plays at Greenlee Elementary, the recipient of federal grant
    money to help it turn around. The school, which failed to meet targets for
    reading in 2004 and for math in 2005, has hired a new principal and recruited a
    mostly new staff. (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post)

  • Vote NO!

    I’ve  been  posting  about  the  untold  costs  of  this “piece  of  garbage”  legislation  since  the  day it  was  passed.  Expect  a  tremendous  effort  statewide,  to  use  the  APPR   as  a  mechanism  to  fire  as  many  veteran  teachers  as  possible  in  order  to  alleviate  the  costs  of  its  implementation.  Of  course,  the  firing  of  that  many teachers  will  have  catastrophic  costs  for  the  state,  and  society  in  general.

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    Not interested in proving you wrong. No sport in that. More interested in seeing I’d younstumbled in some non-trivial numbers. No such luck.

  • the truth shall set you free

    OR: you could simply cut the $250 million from the bloated SCA(school construction authority ) budget–it would hardly be a dent. OR:the $250 million could come out of the $1 BILLION that Klein transfered to SCA for 200 new IZone schools–OR……….

  • Tim

    I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the budgets for SCA’s projects are padded or bloated, but do you have any proof of this? Keep in mind that real estate isn’t cheap here, even in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and that costs are escalated by some of the nation’s most onerous workplace rules and labor prerequisites.

    And I feel as happy about your proposal to halt construction work that would improve schools and add badly needed seats as I suspect you would feel if I proposed to make up $250,000,000 by asking all DOE employees and retirees to pay a mere 5% of their health insurance premiums for a single year. 

    True, I suppose we don’t have a collectively bargained and constitutionally protected right to clean and functional school facilities that aren’t bursting at the seams, sports programs for our kids, or a system for collecting parent and teacher feedback on how the schools are performing, but when the department is consuming $22,000 per kid every 365 days, I assume you can understand why  I don’t consider these things to be expendable luxuries. 

  • NYR683

    what is this puppet s aying that we would lose social workers and guidance counselors????we already have hundreds of social workers and guidance counselors sitting around “excessed” through bloomdoes woeful policies….so now walcott says if we dont get the money then we will lose social workers and guidance???We ALREADY HAVE THESE PEOPLE (550) EXCESSED SITTING AROUND WASTING AWAY GENIUS

  • Nyr683

    BLOOMDOE had a total of 12 lawyers at the DOE when bloomdoe took office.  Today, there are over 300 lawyers working at the doe!!!!!!  can you believe this people…READ THIS PEOPLE do you see this corruption all around us!!

  • Tim

    Can you cite a source for this claim? 

  • Nyr683

    look it up dude,,why are you surprised??

  • Tim

    Yeah, I’m not having any luck with Google. Since it’s so easy to look up, how about just dropping a link on us right here? 

  • Nyr683

    you can just tell that its not walcotts words but rather bloomdoe using strings and in the background like the wizard of oz…lol

  • data loving parent

    current staffing.  looks like closer to 150 legal w/i DOE.  there are also law department lawyers who work on DOE cases but they presumably aren’t in DOE budget.  http://seethroughny.net/adv-downloads/

  • Nyr683

    GOTHAM NEWS,,WHERE ARE ALL THE BLOGGERS…DOES ANYBODY READ THIS STUFF….THEN WE ALL WONDER WHY WE GET STUCK WITH POLITICIANS LIKE BLOOMDOE AND KLEIN AND WALCOTT POODLE….WHERE ARE ALL THE READERS…DOES ANYONE HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY

  • Tim

    Thanks, data loving parent. 

    It’s also possible that 150 lawyers represents a consolidation and reduction of the total number employed by the DOE — who knows what was going on in the Wild West of autonomous districts and regions. 

  • Mr. Flerporillo

    One of many ironies at the intersection of the debates about funding and evaluations is that it takes lawyers to bring 3020-a proceedings.  The argument that there is already a mechanism to terminate “ineffective” teachers (and that it is the city’s fault, and only the city’s fault, if it chooses not to bring proceedings) depends on the assumption that the city has the staffing to use that mechanism.

  • Cannibal

    Mulgrew you pussy. You had better secure a contract for the teachers before you ever agree to any evaluation system, because if you don’t you will have sold us out completely.
    Be a man and tell Bloomberg and his little puppet Walcott NO CONTRACT – NO EVALUATION. Grow a set big guy and let go of Weingarten’s apron.

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