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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. There were some significant developments over the weekend involving all three branches of government in the battle to restore funding to the New York City public schools funding that's scheduled to be cut for the new school year because of declining enrollment by tens of thousands of students compared to before the pandemic. Some principals say they've already been forced to drop teachers and end some programs in their schools because of the cuts.

Negotiations between the mayor and city council had reportedly been close to an agreement to restore the funding at least for this coming school year, but on Friday, WNYC and Gothamist education reporter Jessica Gould, will join us in a second, reported that the talks have hit an impasse over the prospect for future cuts if enrollment remains down and if special federal pandemic funds dry up as expected. That was one development on Friday and then a New York state judge stepped in and issued a restraining order that blocks the cuts from taking effect at least until next month when the court holds a hearing on whether the cuts would violate state law because of how they were adopted.

Now, there is even disagreement over how deep the cuts actually would be. The mayor says $215 million out of the approximately $31 billion education budget. New York City comptroller Brad Lander says the real number is much larger $372 million in cuts. On this show on Friday, some of you heard it, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams claimed that the issue isn't the budget number at all, but that the department of education misled them on how the budget money would be distributed.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: We now know it's led to schools losing key staff and entire programs. The DOE's access to cut more from school budgets beyond what it indicated as savings within the city budget resulting from changing back to this policy demonstrates that it was policy on school budgets all along that was driving this not the city budget. The city budget by the way that we actually enhanced $700 million within this budget. That's why the council has been so strongly advocating for changing this policy decision.

Brian Lehrer: City council speaker Adrienne Adams here on Friday. Confused, I was, so we'll try to clarify that. We'll play another Adrienne Adams clip as we go, and we'll get the latest from WNYC and Gothamist education reporter Jessica Gould. Hi, Jess. Welcome back to the show.

Jessica Gould: Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a few steps back to start and explain the basics of this situation to everyone. First, how big is the decline in enrollment in the last few years? How many students last out of how many to begin with?

Jessica Gould: Sure. According to the DOE, the schools, and this is the traditional public school system, has lost 120,000 students over five years. They expect another decline of 30,000 students next fall, the school year starting next fall. In total, according to the Independent Budget Office, before the pandemic, it was over a million students. Now, we have about 919,000 students within the traditional public school system. I'm making that distinction because there are also charter schools which are public schools. Their numbers have increased slightly by about 10,000 students during the pandemic years. It's a much smaller proportion of students. It's 129,000 to 139,000.

Brian Lehrer: Some students have gone from traditional public schools to charters, but charters, as you say, are part of the New York City public school system. How many have left the system altogether?

Jessica Gould: Well, I guess if you do the math there, it's around 100,000 or 110,000 over five years.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, that's still a lot of students. Where have they gone? where are those 110,000 students gone?

Jessica Gould: There's no specific tracking mechanism for where families go, but we know that birth rates have been declining. It seems that families are choosing charters over traditional public schools more. I know anecdotally that there's been movement to private and parochial schools over the course of the pandemic because, in many cases, they were offering more in-person learning and didn't have the disruptions to the same extent that the traditional public school system had during the pandemic. I think affordability and people leaving the city either for quality of life or because they can't afford it is a big part of it.

I also think that there was a fraction of people who chose to homeschool or not have their kids in schools. We knew during the pandemic that there was a decline in the amount of kids in pre-K kindergarten across the country because it's not legally mandated that you go there. If you have a little kid, and you try to have them on remote learning, you know how hard that is. Some people were choosing different options during that time.

Brian Lehrer: I saw a map of schools that are losing students, and it looks like the Bronx was particularly hard hit by this. I would have guessed that the lower enrollment would largely be in higher-income neighborhoods because those families have more financial flexibility to put their kids in private school or move out of the city as some did starting early in the pandemic. What's the reality of who's leaving geographically or demographically as far as you can tell?

Jessica Gould: Yes, I'm looking at a map that the IBO, the Independent Budget Office, put together of enrollment declines. You're right. There are areas of the Bronx that are particularly hard hit in terms of kids leaving the system. Then there are also areas in Brooklyn and in some of the more affluent areas of Brooklyn that had a lot of decline. I think what you say is right that some people left areas like Park Slope because they went to other homes and then some of them are now coming back. I'm hearing from principals there that they don't think that their enrollment decline projections are accurate because there are families coming back.

Then, if you look at places like the South Bronx, I don't have specific information. Similarly, it's anecdotal, but I spent a year in the South Bronx or South and West Bronx last year embedding in a school. What I noticed was that there were a lot of families who chose to homeschool. There were also families who sent their kids overseas with relatives in other countries because they didn't have as consistent care. I would imagine that these areas that were hardest hit by COVID, some of those families were more concerned about in-person learning even going into this year and also may have struggled more with the childcare aspect of schools being somewhat unpredictable in the last couple of years.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, parents, teachers, principals, anyone else, call or tweet with your opinions or your questions on the school funding battle and the school funding situation in your school, if you want to give us a report from your local front, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. As I said on the air on Friday with the city council speaker, our phones exploded right away. We just asked for any questions on anything for the city council speaker. 9 of our 10 ten lines immediately lit up with people unhappy with the mayor, also unhappy with her for city council passing the budget with the cuts in the first place.

We can keep going. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, and tweet @BrianLehrer if you'd rather weigh in or ask a question that way with Jessica Gould, our education reporter. Jess, about the clip that we played of city council speaker Adrienne Adams and the claim that she made, is the issue the amount of education funding in this year's city budget as I think we've all heard, or as the speaker claimed? Is it just how the Department of Education allocates that money to different schools the way the mayor wants to do it?

Jessica Gould: My understanding is that it's both. There was an amount cut directly to schools. There was actually more than that cut from the education department as a whole. What we're talking about and what most parents care most about is the amount that was cut directly from schools because of enrollment. That was cut from the education department altogether, and that was outlined specifically for the council, the $215 million. There are reports that the council was told that that would just be made up of vacant positions being cut that there wouldn't be other positions eliminated. Then there's the amount that's being shifted around within the education department because of the enrollment declines. Now, some of that is because enrollment in some schools is going up, and so they're getting more money, and in some schools, it's going down, but that money can also be used for other parts of the student funding formula within the education department and for education needs within the budget. There are two things going on: there's the amount that was cut from the education budget as a whole and goes elsewhere in the city budget and then there's parts that are being cut from schools and moved around because they've got declining enrollment. Does that make sense?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. It does make sense, when you stated that clearly, as you do. Was that claim by Speaker Adams new to you when you heard it on the show on Friday? I'll admit, I was a little taken aback because media coverage all week had been about negotiations between the mayor and the council to restore a certain amount to the budget, but she said, "No, it's not about that at all."

Jessica Gould: Yes, I've heard her say that for about a month now since principals started getting their budgets and it became clear just how significant these cuts to some schools would be. I've heard the council saying that they didn't realize or know and it wasn't detailed for them how significant these cuts would be. I think you've noted that there's a difference between what the city has said they're cutting, and we know of the 215 million from the education department budget, and then what the comptroller has added together of sort of aggregate cuts, but there's not a lot of clarity about the specific numbers.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another clip of Speaker Adams on Friday show. This was in response to a listener who accused her of being a turncoat to family she claims to represent and the listener said they shouldn't just restore $250 million to the budget, but what the listener said was the real number needed of 469 million.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Here we go with the numbers again. We can talk about the numbers until we're blue in the face. The initial number that was under negotiation was $215 million. That is the number that was delivered to the council initially within negotiation and we had a problem with that. As I continue to say, we are still peeling back the onion on the DOE's numbers, on all of the numbers that are floating around out there to get to a real number, but what I would like to say is we continue to fight as we speak for resolution on how to fix this gap.

Brian Lehrer: As of this morning, that fight continues among city council, the mayor, and in the courts. Jess, now let's talk about the two developments since Friday's show with Speaker Adams. One is that despite all the talk of the mayor and council being close to a budget restoration, the negotiations hit an impasse, you reported. What are they hung up on?

Jessica Gould: The impasse is that the administration wants the council, according to sources within the council, to sign an agreement, a statement, that money will be restored this year, but if the schools continue to face declining enrollment or if enrollment stays at the level that it is now, which is lower than it has been without additional federal and state aid to make up that gap, that cuts will have to be coming and the council is balking at making that statement.

Brian Lehrer: Explain the court ruling that came late on Friday. Why is the New York State Court system involved here at all now?

Jessica Gould: Well, it's an effort by teachers and parents who are facing massive cuts at their schools to push back. There was a peculiar timeline for how the budget got passed as it relates to the education budget. Ultimately, the panel that is an oversight body kind of the vestige of the board of education that is supposed to sign off on the education funding budget didn't do so until after the city council voted to approve the budget.

The lawsuit is arguing that the city council didn't benefit from the public comment and from the input from this oversight body and then also, they're pointing to some of the murkiness around the numbers, that there's not been enough clarity around the numbers. I could go into explaining why the timeline was thrown off this year. It had to do with a dispute over the funding formula. Some people on the panel were trying to say this formula is terrible and needs to be reformed now and voted against it before they ultimately voted for it, which slowed things down. It's very complicated technical stuff.

Brian Lehrer: The court is ruling on technicalities in the law, primarily. We'll see what happens, I guess, after that August 4th hearing and whether the court becomes a major player in this. Explain the mayor's position briefly before we take some phone calls. Partly, it's that he's not making cuts to any student's education because the funding per student remains the same. Is that true on paper and is it true and its impact?

Jessica Gould: It's true that the per pupil funding is the same or even more than it was a couple of years ago, but there are fewer pupils. They're also making the argument that all schools for the first time have been getting what's considered their full funding amount according to this formula that I was talking about before that there are concerns about because the state has increased funding for schools. Schools are getting funded at 100% of their formula, but with fewer students, that can mean far fewer dollars for certain schools.

In addition to that, there's the argument that the city is not making the schools face the full amount of their funding cuts yet based on their enrollment because they've been phasing in the cuts using some federal stimulus money to soften the blow. Now, advocates say, "Well, if you have federal stimulus money and there are billions of dollars in federal stimulus money left to soften the blow, why don't you soften it all together so that my music teacher and my social worker aren't cut or my class doesn't go from 23 to 31 in first grade?"

The city says that this federal stimulus-- this is true, that the federal stimulus dollars are-- it's a finite amount and they will one day run out. If they don't start getting used to this reduction now that they will face a fiscal cliff going forward. The question is whether their enrollment projections are accurate. A lot of principals say that their enrollment projections are too low and thus their budgets are lower than they should be.

Brian Lehrer: Few more minutes with our education reporter Jessica Gould as we try to make sense of and figure out what can happen next with these cuts to New York City public schools that apparently will affect some schools much more than others, even though there is not a reduction per student citywide. Kaliris in East Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hello, Kaliris.

Kaliris: Hi, I'm Kaliris Salas. I'm actually one of the members of the Panel for Educational Policy. Thank you, Jessica, for all the work that you have done to report this. Several of us actually voted no on this estimated budget, particularly those of us that are pro-president appointees because we do see some irregularities, as Jessica said. On the ground when we talked to principals, they actually say that even though there is an issue with fair student funding, they're still seeing some really significant cuts. In Manhattan, I have a ton of principals that say that the projections are often--

Michael Elsen-Rooney very eloquently reported last week that the projections have been off actually for several years. I think this administration might be taking advantage of that and actively, intentionally disinvesting in our schools, so super important for us to continue to push back and to hold the mayor accountable. He has asked for mayoral accountability and so now is the time to do that and to invest in our children as they're still living in a pandemic and we still need those resources in order to address instructional loss in our communities.

Brian Lehrer: Kaliris, why would you be suspicious that Mayor Adams would want to disinvest in the public schools? At the heart of his campaign for mayor and things that he said since he was elected, he always repeats the line, "If you don't educate, you will incarcerate." He makes it sound like education is the road to a less violent city, to less violent crime in addition to more opportunity for the students. Why think that this mayor wants to disinvest in public education in general?

Kaliris: I think he's absolutely right. If we support children, that is actually how we address the systemic issues that we have in our societies and our community a 1,000%, but the Department of Education is one of those places where funding is a little mucky and it's a little complicated. It would be one of those places where you could be like, "Oh, maybe I can cut here and cut there. Maybe nobody will notice." Yes, we are seeing a decrease in under-enrollment. What I am concerned about is that principals are reporting that a lot of those kids that they lost register from are coming back to school. They are kids that were homeschooled, they're kids that went to charter schools because charter schools offered a remote option or maybe even children that left the city whose families are coming back. Those are the things that are not being taken into account. I'm talking about 20, 40 kids total in schools that are coming back where you need another teacher, where you need another special education supporter, where you need interventionist. Those are the conversations that we're not having. I think there's this dire narrative that we're so drastically under-enrolled and that's not what I'm hearing from principals.

Brian Lehrer: Well, if I understand the mayor correctly, and maybe you as a member of the panel on education policy have a different understanding of this, but if I hear the mayor accurately, he says the funding is per student. That's the old formula that he says he wants to stick to. He says if enrollment is more in the fall than has been anticipated, or than there was in the spring and individual schools, then that funding would be restored school by school, student by student. Is that not your understanding?

Kaliris: Yes, totally a student by student, but what they're not openly telling us and they're not disclosing, although I will say Susan Edelman and Caleb Berger from The Post report is that per student, another thing that's taken into account is teacher salary. When you take into account average teacher salary, we had so many teachers leave our schools and we had veteran teachers retire that that then results in a $25 reduction.

Now, that might not seem big when you're talking about, 10, 15 students, but we're talking about hundreds of students, thousands of students in particular schools. That ultimately has a dramatic impact on how that formula affects the school budgets. In addition to, in terms of the Stimulus Funds, we are being impacted. Now a lot of that stimulus money while it's being used for recovery services with students with IEPs, it's also being used for G&T. It's also being used for summer rising. It's covering some other gaps and not covering programming in our schools during the year. That in turn has also impacted the funding that's coming to our schools.

Brian Lehrer: When the mayor warns of the inevitability of cuts in the coming years, because we're going to see budget deficits, we've had budget surplus in the city for years and years and that's been maintained even during the pandemic because of federal funding. Now they expect revenue shortfalls in the next few years between that and the potential declines in enrollment. I guess the mayor is saying we have to start adjusting to the fact that there's going to be a little less for the schools than there was. Do you at the PEP see any way out of that if the revenue is going to be less?

Kaliris: As of right now, the revenue has been the highest that it has been historically. I think he has 1.5 billion. There's another reserve which can resolve some of these cuts. We have spoken about how federal aid and stimulus funding will be reduced by a quarter for next year. Those are things that we have to adjust, which really difficult for me to understand is why are we using this stimulus money on programs that are supposed to be funded forever, for example, 3K and some rising? There has to be a better analysis on where we're going to put that funding and how we're going to continue to advocate for federal funding for our schools.

Brian Lehrer: Let me put you on the spot, if you don't mind, as a member of the Panel for Educational Policy. In one other way, there's a conservative take on this whole thing that I saw in the New York Post editorial that ran today or over the weekend that says there is so much money in the New York City public schools that people are making much too big a thing over this small cut. They'd say the overall cut if it's $2-400 million on a 31 billion annual school budget, that's less than a 1% cut overall, so it's not so consequential.

They also point out that if the city spends 31 billion for about a million students, that's around $30,000 per student per year, which stacks up very well against other major city school systems in the country. They lay it on the teacher's union. I'm sure that's too simplistic. What do you say to that general math that would say compared to almost anywhere else, certainly, in urban school districts, maybe not to the wealthy suburbs, but that there's a lot of money in the New York City public schools? What would you say to that critique?

Kaliris: I think it was two weeks ago, and I've been really thinking about that editorial quite a bit. It's funny because the Daily News actually came out with a counter saying now is not the time. While it may seem that we are investing a lot of money into our public schools, we also have OTs and PTs that are not getting a fair contract. We also have significant openings in terms of mandated services. About a third of these appeals that are being submitted to the Department of Education are appeals for mandated services for children.

We have a formula that isn't addressing some of our most marginalized students. While it may seem like an insane number, there are so many children that are being underserved. That's why this conversation on the fair student funding formula is absolutely critical. That's why this conversation and how we're going to continue to fund schools are absolutely critical to address what the money that we're not going to be getting from Federal Stimulus Funding because we still have a large number of students that are not receiving the support that they deserve.

It's about busing. It's about co-locations. It's about how many charter schools we have co-located with a public school. We have yet to address some very simple needs like reading and writing and math that we still need to address in our schools because the resources are going to be so significant at this point, particularly, children that have lost instruction during this time that we need to invest in our schools and now is not the time to right size as the mayor says. Now, it's the time to invest, so we can later address our other social systemic issues that we have in the city.

Brian Lehrer: Kaliris in East Harlem, a member of the mayors, though I gather you are a borough president to pointee both the mayor and borough presidents get to appoint members to the panel on education policy, thanks for calling and chiming in. We returned you from a caller into practically a second guest in this segment. We really appreciate you staying with us.

Kaliris: Thank you so much for giving [inaudible 00:26:57] Bye.

Brian Lehrer: Our education reporter, Jessica Gould, as we wrap this up, any thoughts on anything from that exchange with Kaliris or maybe as the last thought to weigh in on why charter schools keep coming up in this conversation? Since charter schools are part of the New York City public school system, they're not subject to the usual union rules and other regulations but they are part of the system. Why do we treat that as if it's not part of the same budget conversation?

Jessica Gould: That's a really good question. I don't know the specifics of how charters spend their money versus how the traditional public schools spend their money. The issue here is the funded cuts that are affecting the traditional public schools based on their enrollment decline. I can't speak to that specifically, but as it relates to the numbers, the amount that students are funded in the traditional public schools, I looked it up. I talked to the Citizens Budget Commission and yes, the DOE traditional public schools get about 30, ooo to 35,000 per student based on need. It fluctuates a bit and that's way higher than the national average but lower than Westchester, Long Island, which are up to like 40,000 and more per student, so something to keep in mind.

Brian Lehrer: Jessica Gould, WNYC and Gothamist education reporter. Keep up the great work. You're really informing people as a tremendous service, Jess. Thanks for coming on today.

Jessica Gould: Thank you, Brian.

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