Chancellor Carmen Farina has informed principals that there will be no increased funding to their tight budgets for the next school year as she continues the Bloomberg Era funding that has seen the average school budget reduced by 14% since 2008. The Chancellor's decision not to increase school budgets is very disappointing in light of the City's improved economy and the additional education funds coming from New York State.
The City has reported over a $4 billion dollar budget surplus for this and next year while the State has earmarked an additional $730 million dollars for education the next school year. Unfortunately, the Chancellor has decided that none of the extra education funding will go to the classroom. Instead the Chancellor claims the money will go for pre-kindergarten, arts, and after school programs. Principals were hoping that the extra funding would go to the schools to reduce class sizes, add teachers and other staff, or to provide extra programs but the Chancellor's decision means its business as usual at the DOE.
The failure of Cahancellor Carmen Farina to increase school budgets can be directly traced to her refusal to "clean house"at the DOE, the continuation of the useless and money-sucking Children First Networks, and her continued use of the badly flawed and biased "fair student funding" program that forces principals to hire the"cheapest" and not the "best teachers" for their students.
Chancellor Carmen Farina has been a major disappointment for not giving the schools a much needed increase in their tight budgets and her failure to reduce the bloated DOE bureaucracy. The result is the continuation of the Bloomberg Era's "education on the cheap" policies that has resulted in flat student academic achievement and an ever widening racial/income academic achievement gap.