Fight over school budget cuts continue- POLITICO – POLITICO

Welcome to the Monday edition of the New York Education newsletter. We’ll take a look at the week ahead and look back at what you may have missed last week.

New York Mayor Eric Adams and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams had an early budget handshake and the majority of City Council members approved it despite initially opposing $215 million in cuts to school budgets next year.

But the Council is now requesting that the Adams administration reverse the very cuts it voted to approve — cuts that were included in the preliminary budget in February — as well as look into allocating federal stimulus dollars directly to schools, POLITICO’s Madina Touré reports.

Council members also called on the administration to update the Fair Student Funding formula, which was created in 2007 as serves as the primary source of funding for individual schools’ budgets.

“That distinction is critical, because the fiscal year 2023 city budget actually invested over $700 million more in city funds for DOE than the previous budget, bringing total city funds spent on DOE to the highest level that our city’s history has ever seen,” said Adrienne Adams, who voted to pass the budget, during a Council hearing last week. “Yet some of our individual and local schools are facing budgets that are drastic and different for the next school year.”

Ahead of the hearing, the speaker, City Council education chair Rita Joseph and oversight and investigations chair Gale Brewer — along with teachers union leaders and other Council members — rallied against the cuts.

Asked why they are rallying against the cuts now as opposed to February, they said they now have information they didn’t have at the time.

“I wasn’t aware that it would produce this insanity of so many layoffs and so many excesses,” said Brewer, who also voted to approve the budget. “We didn’t have all the facts that we needed, and we do now.”

And it’s clear that school leaders, parent leaders, families and advocates are not giving up the fight over the cuts.

At the monthly meeting of the Panel for Educational Policy, the Department of Education’s governing body, on Thursday night, attendees packed the public comment period to decry the school budget cuts as well as the revelation that the DOE used the FSF formula to reduce per-student funding, Madina reports. They urged PEP members to reject the of DOE’s estimated budget.

“Chancellor Banks, you failed our students, you failed New Yorkers,” Mark Gonsalves, a parent, said during the meeting. “I call on the City Council’s Committee on Oversight…to further investigate this fraud.”

Schools Chancellor David Banks said the vote is a legally required procedural action and does not impact school budgets or DOE’s overall budget. He also said he’s working with the Council to see how they can mitigate the effects on schools with low enrollment.

“The budgets have already been approved by the city,” he said.

The panel passed the estimates by a vote of 10-4. The borough president appointees for Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn as well as the parent-elected member voted against the estimates.

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SEX MISCONDUCT AT QUEENS HIGH SCHOOL — New York Post’s Susan Edelman: “A second teacher was removed from a Queens high school this month amid accusations of sexual misconduct with students. Scott Biski, 48, a music teacher at Jamaica Gateway to the Sciences HS, was rubber roomed last week after accusations surfaced that he had a sexual relationship with a former student, officials confirmed. ‘This alleged behavior is absolutely reprehensible and will not be tolerated. This employee was removed from the school and students,’ Department of Education spokeswoman Jenna Lyle told The Post. ‘The Special Commissioner of Investigation (SCI) for city schools is probing the allegations, officials said.”

LONG ISLAND LIBRARY REVERSES LGBTQ BOOK BAN — ABC7: “A library board on Long Island reversed a decision to ban all Pride-related books and displays from its children’s sections after it was hit with swift backlash. The Smithtown Library Board held an emergency meeting Thursday night to address the new ban, resulting in a reversal with a 4-2 vote. ‘Earlier this evening, the Board of Trustees from the Smithtown Library rescinded our earlier decision to remove Pride displays from our library’s children’s room,’ the Smithtown Library Board of Trustees said in a statement.”

PUSH FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2022/6/24/23182154/restorative-justice-covid-nyc-school?_amp=true","_id":"00000181-a57e-d1d9-a79f-adfe1b1b0004","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000181-a57e-d1d9-a79f-adfe1b1b0005","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>PUSH FOR RESTORATIVE JUSTICE — Chalkbeat’s Alex Zimmerman: “Martin Urbach began a recent morning by meeting with the parents of a student who threw a book out of a fourth floor window, nearly hitting a woman pushing a stroller. Not long after, Urbach, the restorative justice coordinator at Manhattan’s Harvest Collegiate High School, dispensed advice to a distraught student who camped out in his office instead of going to class. That afternoon, he was off to lead a mediation with a group of boys who had been displaying behaviors more common to middle schoolers, including pulling each other’s pants down during a recent field trip.”

CUNY FAILS TO REDUCE EMISSIONS","link":{"target":"NEW","attributes":[],"url":"https://insideclimatenews.org/news/26062022/when-it-comes-to-reducing-new-york-city-emissions-cuny-flunks-the-test/","_id":"00000181-a57e-d1d9-a79f-adfe1b1b0006","_type":"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_id":"00000181-a57e-d1d9-a79f-adfe1b1b0007","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>CUNY FAILS TO REDUCE EMISSIONS — Inside Climate News’ James Pothen: “On East 68th Street, tucked away on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the Thomas Hunter Hall building slowly hums a sigh of relief. The Hunter College students have graduated, leaving the neighborhood to chic elderly residents, doctors and nurses in scrubs, and construction workers busy renovating the subway station. The people outside the building’s impressive facade have no idea that it is one of the worst emitters of greenhouse gases, in the city agency with the worst record for emissions reduction.”

DISTRICT ACCUSED OF FAILING TO PROTECT STUDENT FROM RACIST BULLYING — NJ.com’s Anthony G. Attrino: “The mother of a Black girl bullied over her race and physical appearance has filed a lawsuit against the Montclair Public Schools, saying district workers neglected to protect her child, who is now under costly psychological care. The lawsuit, filed June 17, claims fellow students made fun of the girl’s hair texture and body type, and mocked her talents after she sang a tune while visiting a Dunkin’ coffee shop. The girl lived with her mother and attended the Buzz Aldrin Middle School beginning in 2018, according to the suit, filed in Superior Court of Essex County.”

NJ MAYOR SPARS WITH SUPER OVER ARMED SECURITY — NJ101.5’s Rick Rickman: “The mayor of Somerset County’s second-most populous municipality is targeting the local superintendent over a plan for armed security in schools. In an email to residents, which was also posted on Facebook using the township’s official page, Moench criticized the school district’s plan for not including the use of actively serving Bridgewater police officers.”

COLLEGES NOT READY FOR ROE OVERTURN — POLITICO’s Bianca Quilantan: The Supreme Court’s dismantling of abortion rights Friday will likely expand the nation’s ranks of pregnant students — and colleges aren’t ready. Rolling back Roe v. Wade — allowing for broad restrictions on abortion access in at least 20 states — will likely lead to an increase in the number of college-aged students stuck with two choices: raise children on college campuses or abandon their hopes of earning degrees.

SMALLER SCHOOL MEAL EXTENSION — POLITICO’s Meredith Lee: Congress on Friday approved a bipartisan, three-month extension of universal free school meals, just days before current funds expire June 30. The final measure cleared the House by unanimous consent. It now goes to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature. The bill will provide free summer meals for about 30 million kids, regardless of income.

CALIFORNIA DISTRICT MISHANDLED TRANSGENDER HARASSMENT — POLITICO’s Bianca Quilantan and Blake Jones: A Northern California school district “repeatedly failed to respond promptly and effectively” to a student’s complaints that she was bullied and harassed for being transgender, according to an Office for Civil Rights investigation released Friday. Under a resolution agreement, OCR is requiring the Tamalpais Union High School District in Marin County to review its policies for dealing with sex-based discrimination, and to offer to reimburse the former student for up to $5,000 in counseling costs…

INSIDE THE SEXUAL ASSAULT SCANDAL PLAGUING A HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT — Vice News’ Carter Sherman: “Myers Park High School is nestled in an affluent, suburban-esque oasis of a neighborhood…It is also a school in a district, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, that the federal government has recently investigated at least three times over its handling of Title IX, the civil rights law that protects against sex discrimination in education. One of those investigations stemmed from an incident in November 2015, when a Myers Park student said she had been sexually assaulted by a classmate in the woods surrounding the school.”

LATIN AMERICA’S KIDS STRUGGLE DUE TO PANDEMIC","_id":"00000181-a081-d618-a99d-e1f77bd90000","_type":"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>LATIN AMERICA’S KIDS STRUGGLE DUE TO PANDEMIC — Reuters’ Steven Grattan and Monica Machicao: “Bolivia’s highland city La Paz, Maribel Sanchez’s children spent much of the last two years huddling over a small smartphone screen to attend online classes amid a lengthy lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic. The two boys, aged 11 and eight, frequently missed lessons when their timetables collided as the family had no computer. Bolivian school children only finally returned to in-person classes in March this year, many still not full time.”

A first-generation student celebrated her immigrant mother at her graduation at Harvard University.