Teacher-Union Lies on School Cuts

Mayor Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks are being entirely rational in the fight over school funding. The thunderous complaints are absurdly dishonest and largely self-interested.

United Federation of Teachers puppets on the City Council have joined in demanding Adams “immediately restore” some $215 million that the council voted to slash when it passed the city budget last month.

The modest cut — 0.69% of the Department of Education’s $31 billion-plus budget — is the result of 1) the winding down of $7 billion in federal COVID relief, 2) falling student enrollment and 3) the need to rein in years of off-the-charts spending (with no gains in citywide student achievement).

So Adams is entirely right to stay the course, and to slam the protesters who disrupted an unrelated town hall as “clowns.”

As Banks told NY1, the schools facing cuts have lost enrollment, and “it’s not feasible to continue funding schools as if they haven’t lost students.”

The UFT agenda here has nothing to do with teaching kids; it’s all about keeping up the ranks of its members even as families flee the regular public schools. (Same goes for the UFT drive for a state NYConly law mandating class-size reductions.)

Banks must look out for the system as a whole. Notably, Politico reports that the popular 3K preschool expansion is heading toward a fiscal cliff, even as the Legislature refused to include state funding for the UFT’s class-size measure.

Record inflation, a looming recession and a city economy still in recovery mode oblige Adams and Banks to find prudent spending trims — not burn billions on the new hires the UFT wants. Don’t fall for this latest UFT campaign of lies.