Opposition To the Mayor’s School Funding Plan: Total Incomprehension

Mayor Bloomberg has proposed a simple formula that allocates funds to schools based on the number of students and their needs, replacing a complex formula that often provides higher funding to less needy students. I’ve been left with a double shock. First, I’m shocked that the city itself has a formula that does exactly what the state formula, the subject of a decade-plus long lawsuit, does: uses complexity to allocate school funding based on political pull and the number and pay level of employees in the place they choose to work, regardless of the number of needs of the children. Why did the Mayor wait five years to point this out? Second, I’m somewhat shocked, and certainly disappointed, that groups which purport to be concerned with the needs of the children, and in particular disadvantaged children, and the quality of education object to changing this. I’m more disappointed than shocked by the opposition of the Teacher’s Union. I’m surprised that an organization called the Educational Priorities Panel objects. But I can’t help but feel total incomprehension at the objections of Michael Rebell, the co-counsel for the Campaign for Fiscal Equity in its lawsuit against New York State.

Under the current system, it seems, money follows the employees. So if those teachers from Ronkonkoma, having gotten through the initial years during which they don’t know what they are doing, are unable to secure a job in the suburbs, they can at least move to a school with fewer troubled and disadvantaged students. There, the most experienced teachers can be paid more to provide children from better off families with smaller classes. Meanwhile, poor children experience a churn of green rookies and, if their neighborhood has a growing number of children, larger classes. It doesn’t always work this way. Often better schools attract more students from more advantaged backgrounds, leading to larger class sizes. But why should it ever?

In opposing the Mayor’s plan, the teacher’s union shows it certainly isn’t concerned with the needs of children, and doesn’t even represent most of the teachers. Just those with a good deal and one foot out the door. Let’s say the money followed the children, as the Mayor proposes. A school with few disadvantaged students and many experienced teachers would have to meet its budget by having fewer teachers, and thus relatively larger classes. A school with many disadvantaged students and few experienced teachers would have more money available. It could try to attract experienced teachers, but if none would go there, it would at least be able to have relatively small classes by hiring more teachers. Shouldn’t everyone have small classes? Sure. But regardless of what the level of funding is, and the average class size is, more difficult to teach children require smaller classes.

In my view, no first-year teacher should have more than 15 students in a class – 12 if they don’t come in with full certification including student teaching. Not only to give the teachers a good start and less pressure during a difficult first year, but also to limit the number of children exposed to poor teaching. As someone whose children had the same third grade teacher in her first and third years or teaching, the difference is clear. I also believe those who teach in tougher schools should be paid more. But to the union, the Mayor’s plan would mean that those with seniority could no longer have the triple-best deal – higher pay, smaller classes, and easier kids – and those with less seniority the triple worst. The union seems to have a problem with that.

What about a half-empty school, which under the Mayor’s proposal would have to cover the cost of its building and administration with fewer students? Well, what about a half empty school district in the suburbs or Upstate New York? Shouldn’t its employees get to keep their jobs even if there are fewer students to teach? And if the economy is going down, shouldn’t they get to hire more employees to provide jobs? And shouldn’t the state direct funding to that “need,” rather than to New York City’s children? That is what the state did — holding “harmless” places with falling enrollment to preserve jobs, at the expense of fair funding for New York City.

Yes, some people would have to change jobs or workplaces if money followed the children. But there is another alternative – attract more children. Instead of luxuriating in a diminished workload relative to budget, schools with falling enrollment would, under the Mayor's plan, have an incentive to try to attract more children. That would mean children would have value! Even New York City children! Even poor and minority New York City children! I've often said that no one who matters is going to give a damn about those children until they have a dollar sign on their forehead.

The inequitable funding of New York City’s schools has been very sophisticated in this sense – the state and city have bought off the best off city parents and children by providing them with the best of what little was available. That buying off has taken the place of both adequate and equitable funding. Hence the teacher’s union’s comment to the “damn the poor kids” New York Post: “The union, she said, supports infusing cash into under-performing schools, but she charged the proposed changes would siphon funds from high-quality schools.” Say what? We are talking about an increase in $2 billion or more in funding, on top of increases that have already occured. Was the union banking on all of it going to earlier retirement?

And this from the “Educational Priorities Panel” to the New York Times: “the changes would be harmful long term by making it overly expensive for schools to retain veteran teachers.” It prefers a system “that seeks to calculate a school’s staffing needs and then provides the dollars to meet them.” Come on. Someone is going to employ veteran teachers. The only question is where they go and, as above, whether their class sizes are higher or lower than those of new teachers. Who does this group represent? From its website “Thank you to all who have contributed to EPP. Without your financial support, EPP could not continue to provide accurate, up-to-date school budget information and conduct in-depth studies which result in reports on important issues facing the NYC public schools.” Let me guess: not many contributions from East New York.

The biggest disappointment is Michael Rebell, though perhaps it shouldn’t be. Despite “fiscal equity” in the group’s name, its strategy has always been to allow a huge gap in funding between the best off kids and the worst off kids in the state to be maintained, in order to limit opposition. Give the city’s kids more money, it seemed to say to its “supporters” in the school districts in the rest of the state and the teacher’s union, and we’ll give everyone else even more money. The concern: unless the state is bankrupted by spending vastly more on everyone, the disadvantaged kids are sure to lose out once politics intercedes. To the Daily News: “Cincinnati has implemented a system that provides just 5% extra for students from poor backgrounds, and 29% extra for the gifted and talented students.” But where is such an inequity more likely to reside? In an upfront formula everyone can see? Or in a Byzantine formula designed to reach a pre-ordained conclusion? I thought the CFE was against a complicated formula that is used to cover up an injustice at the state level.

What have these supporters done for the city's kids. The school districts in the rest of the state got STAR. The teacher's union got the big 2000 pension increase, and a big retirement "incentive" back in the 1990s. The city's kids are still waiting. And forget the nonsense about dodging “the biggest funding problem currently facing our public schools – the lack of adequate funding overall.” The goal here is to have whatever money is available go to those who need it most. Who could object?

What Mayor Bloomberg has proposed at the city level is exactly what ought to happen at the state level. If he is to be criticized at all, it is for not doing this five years earlier. Why? Perhaps because he, like Rebell, was unwilling to challenge the power of those who benefit from things as they are. So if resources were inadequate overall for the city’s schools, it is the most disadvantaged students who, politically, had to be hurt. Perhaps he has proposed this now precisely because overall funding may rise, and the children of the college educated will not have to face cutbacks.

In any event, I seem to just not “get it.” Perhaps this would make sense to me if I just repeated two things over and over:

1) The purpose of taxes and public spending is not to provide public services and benefits, it is to provide money to organized interest groups; and

2) The children of two college-educated, motivated parents count. The children of immigrants, whose cannot vote, and single parents, who often place a low priority on their children’s future relative to their other needs, don’t.

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