Latest school cuts grieved
Brooklyn high school principal Alona Cohen managed throughout the pandemic to keep track of nearly 200 students struggling with medical crises, competing job responsibilities and remote learning snags because of a team of extra school counselors funded through a city program called “Learning to Work.”
Now that program is getting cut by $10 million, some of those counselors could lose their jobs, and Cohen worries about losing track of her most vulnerable students.
“The staffing and the support kids are getting on a day-to-day basis, I can’t tell you how much that has been the difference between staying connected with kids and losing kids,” said Cohen, whose school, Brooklyn Frontiers, enrolls students who are older and have struggled in traditional high schools.
“The thought of breaking those connections, we’re literally going to lose [the students], like not able to locate them,” she said.
Officials announced Thursday that the Learning to Work program that funds paid internships and additional counselors for roughly 16,000 students at city transfer and night schools would be cut by $10 million for the remainder of the year — 25% of its overall budget.
Education Department officials said the cuts could’ve been as deep as $30 million and maintained they’d done everything in their power to restore funds to program like Learning to Work.
But students, advocates and educators met news of the cuts Friday with grief and disbelief — arguing even the reduced slashes would sever a critical lifeline for students barely hanging to school amid the pandemic.
“I feel grateful that some funding has been restored,” said Ferid Hesham, the principal of Dunbar Middle School in the Bronx, one of the city’s community schools that gets additional funding to hire extra counselors and connect students with services like food pantries and medical help. Community schools were slashed by $3 million, down from a feared $9 million.
“But I worry we are viewing this funding our most vulnerable youth as a one-time funding thing,” he said.
Educators pointed out that the cuts are coming two months into the year, when a chunk of the budgets have already been spent, making the impact that much greater for the rest of the year.
They also said the new cuts come on top of years of disinvestment in programs like Learn To Work, which has a lost significant amount of its budget since the program started in 2005.
The Education Department’s budget sustained more than $1 billion in cuts across fiscal years ’20 and ’21 as the city weathered the pandemic-induced fiscal crisis. Officials say two-thirds of the cuts have come from central offices and programs and the agency is “doing all we can to shield our classrooms and children from bearing the brunt of these difficulties.” Cuts to the community schools and Learn to Work programs were decreased from an expected $39 million to $13 million, officials added.
But advocates pointed out the city managed to find the funds to purchase its largest private school bus provider for a still-undisclosed amount.