Thousands showed up to a protest in front of City Hall yesterday to decry budget cuts to city schools, according to The Times. In January the city and state forced schools to slash 1.75 percent of their current budgets, and bigger cuts are expected next year. Last year, however, the Department of Education pledged to dramatically increase school funding, a promise it appears to be reneging on. This is all parents talk about, said Alicia Cortes, the parent coordinator at Intermediate School 302 in Cypress Hills, which had to reduce the scope of its after-school programs after it lost $107,000. We have been getting better for a while, and we thought there was a way to progress, and then all of the sudden there’s these cuts. You can’t cut off people’s legs and then expect them to succeed. The Bloomberg administration, however, is quick to point out that it has increased education spending 72 percent since 2002. Many Brooklynites are protesting the cuts, including The Windsor Terrace Alliance, which has put sample letters to elected officials on its website so parents can easily write to officeholders to express their displeasure with the funding measures.
Thousands Protest Budget Cuts Aimed at City Schools [NY Times]
Sample Protest Letters [Windsor Terrace Alliance]
Photo by wallyg.