City School Stories

Notes from the Field

Submitted by Frank Murphy, June 8, 2011

Last Thursday I published a post in which I requested that Arlene Ackerman listen to the voice of reason concerning her budget priorities for the upcoming school year.  Specifically, I suggested that she redirect the Title One funds targeted to support an eighteen-day district wide summer program, to restore funding for a full day kindergarten program.  Interestingly enough, the next day (to the surprise of Mayor Nutter and Ackerman’s other political supporters) she decided to use Title funds to do so.

Now that was an easy solution.  It was so easy in fact that you have to wonder how many other of the radical cuts she has proposed could be restored by her merely reordering her spending priorities.

Many of the teaching positions that Ackerman has targeted for elimination could be saved if she would simply rethink how she intends to spend our limited tax dollars.  In fact, Ackerman could restore more than a hundred million dollars to important budget items by cutting unproven programs and unnecessary contracts.

The elimination of the extra funding that Ackerman intends to direct towards her experimental Promise Academies could easily save 300 teaching positions.  She could also put an end to the pricey benchmark testing contract, and every other vendor contract that is legally possible.  This would result in at least a $100 million in savings that could be used to restore another 1,000 teaching positions.

Putting money into maintaining an effective teaching staff rather than into purchasing canned instructional programs and services of outside consultants is a choice that makes sense in the long run.  It will require that immediate sacrifices be made. For the next school year, district staff can make do with the books and materials they currently have.   Most of the contract services that are  budgeted could be deferred for a year without causing any great harm.

If getting by with what we  have now will help to ensure that we don’t lose a significant number of good teachers, then that is what we should do.  In a successful school there isn’t anything more important to student success than an effective teacher.  To sacrifice as many teachers as Ackerman is proposing in order to maintain her legacy reform projects is unconscionable.

By restoring full day kindergarten last week, Arlene Ackerman demonstrated that she could hear the voice of reason.  She should continue to do so in the weeks and months ahead.  The well being of the people she has been chosen to lead is in her hands.   We continue to hope that she will not let them down.