Throughout the United States, from coast to coast, states and cities are struggling to manage full-blown budget crises or ward off impending ones.
Revenue from sales and income taxes has fallen sharply because of giveaways to the rich and the downturn in the capitalist economy. The federal government, which is spending more than ever on war and repression, has used its power to push unfunded mandates onto the states, which then shift them to the cities.
Public education, usually a local respon sibility that serves mostly children from working-class families, is an easy target.
Federal money has been drying up at the same time that federal mandates--like expanded testing and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002--put more demands and financial pressures on school systems.
The result is growing chaos in the school systems.
California is facing a projected $26 billion to $35 billion budget deficit. Gov. Gray Davis proposes cutting $5 billion out of spending for education, even though California has lagged behind other states in this area.
What this means on a local level can be seen in Oceanside, near San Diego in Southern California. Oceanside has to cut $4.4 million from its budget. The school board is proposing to cut temporary teachers, program specialists, a district administrator, secretaries, custodians and a security officer--in the middle of the year. It will decide how to make another $12 million in cuts later in the spring. (San Diego Union-Tribune, Jan. 28)
Some schools in Oregon, another state with a big budget crisis, have shortened the school year.
In a proposal that is up for a final vote on Feb. 11, Minneapolis is planning to cut 289 teaching jobs and more than 100 administrative positions at the district level for the 2003-2004 school year. The district superintendent also wants to increase class sizes, cut back on district support services, reduce allocation for building maintenance and demand contract concessions. Most of the school districts in Minnesota have to cut millions of dollars from their budgets to adjust to reductions in state aid. (Star Tribune, Jan. 29)
Schools in Louisiana and Colorado have gone to a four-day week to stretch their dollars.
In New York state, Gov. George Pataki faces a projected deficit of $11.3 billion for fiscal year 2003. In a budget address delivered at the end of January, he called for slashing state aid to education--which has run about $14 billion annually--by $1.2 billion.
Money for schools, not war
Some education unions in the country are demanding that the money planned for war in Iraq go instead for teaching and other social needs.
Here in New York City, under Pataki's budget the city school system--with 1 million children it is by far the biggest in the United States--would be cut by $450 million. It is also undergoing the biggest reorganization in the past 50 years after being put under the direct control of billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The senior colleges of the City University of New York are funded by the state, while its community colleges are city-funded. Outside New York City the state also funds a university system--SUNY--consisting of both senior and community colleges.
Pataki's budget contains an $82 million, 12-percent cut to CUNY and an $184 million, 15-percent cut to SUNY operating budgets. The governor also demands that both hike tuition by $1,200 a year.
Shamsul Haque, a CUNY student trustee enrolled at Baruch College, says, "Students of the working class, minorities and immigrants cannot afford such a high tuition hike."
Pataki's budget was supposedly design ed to avoid state tax increases. But according to New York State United Teachers President Thomas Hobart, the cuts in education funding would force a 30-percent real-estate tax increase in some rural counties and 25 percent in Erie County. Without the added taxes, Hobart says, these school systems would shut down.
The United Federation of Teachers represents the 80,000 teachers and staff in the public elementary and high schools in New York,
The UFT has taken a very conciliatory attitude toward the reorganization plan. The union has invited the schools chancellor to speak to its delegate assembly and to have breakfast with the union's executive board.
The Professional Staff Congress represents 20,000 faculty and staff in the CUNY system. The PSC has endorsed the Feb. 15 anti-war march and will ask the 200,000 students in the CUNY system to march behind a banner reading "CUNY says: Money for education, not for war." The PSC's Delegate Assembly has also endorsed the call for day-after peaceful protests in the CUNY system or in the city if Bush does start the war. Beyond the February protests, it has scheduled a day of teach-ins and speak-outs for March 26.
