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Students from IS 171 in Brooklyn

Teachers and students at last week’s massive rally against budget cuts said they were braving the cold out of fear that they could lose their jobs, have their after-school program closed, or miss out on the chance to help decide how the city’s stimulus funds are spent.

Here’s a sampling of what students and teachers from across the city told me last week when I asked them why they had come to the rally:

• Meredith Jacks, a middle school teacher at PS/MS 126 in Chinatown: ”We just want to have a say in how this [stimulus] money gets used. It could do nothing or it could do a lot.”
• Sharon Stolberg, a retired teacher from Queens who in the 1970s was bumped from school to school because of budget cuts: “I had kids sitting on radiators, 38 kids in a first-grade class. We cannot afford that again.”
• Josh, a second-year teacher at a Bronx school: ”Teachers in their first three years could be laid off. But that’s less likely than cuts to programs that benefit our neediest kids.”
• Gabriel Saez, a sixth grader at IS 171 in Brooklyn who came with dozens of his classmates: ”We are here so that they won’t shut down our after school. We heard that might happen.” (more…)