Author: Noreen Connell

Publisher:

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 63

ISBN-13:

For more than a century, a succession of New York City (NYC) mayors have claimed that they were reducing administrative overhead in the school system and driving more resources to instruction. These claims have been dutifully reported by the press with rarely any effort to verify them. For the last 50 years, the salaries of teachers were increased through collective bargaining, so mayors were technically correct that "more funding" was going to instruction, but often the share of the school system's operating budget dedicated to instruction and programs for students did not change by much. The resumption of mayoral control of the school system has ushered in new claims, criticism of these claims, and even more difficulty in securing any press attention to budget patterns that provide a more realistic picture of how dollars are spent. This report was undertaken as part of an effort by the Educational Priorities Panel (EPP) to reconcile two very different perceptions of the first two years of school budgeting (FY 2003-04 and FY 2004-05) ushered in by mayoral control of the NYC public education system. During these two years, city and education officials were announcing a series of major initiatives, organizational restructuring, and additional staff and funding for schools. At the same time, EPP's office received a flood of reports by parents and school staff about widespread budget cuts at the school level that were resulting in larger class sizes, fewer courses at the high school level, a lack of services for special education students, and the elimination of Title 1 programs. This report consolidates a series of short EPP bulletins issued in 2005 and 2006 that were updated in the fall of 2007 to provide a four-year picture of public education funding under the new school governance system. Each section attempts to introduced the reader to a variety of ways in which funding can be evaluated, each one providing a different answer to the central question of whether there have been improvements in budgeting for NYC public schools under mayoral control. A summary of EPP's findings is presented. Twelve appendices are included: (1) Adopted Budget City Funds for the Public School System as a Share of Total City Funds, Including All Pension Contributions and Debt Service; (2) Adopted Budget City Funds for the Public School System Operating Budget as a Share of Total City Funds, Excluding All Pension Contributions and Debt Service; (3) Actual Expenditures City Funds for the Public School System as a Share of Total City Funds, Including All Pension Contributions and Debt Service; (4) Actual Expenditures City Funds for the Public School System Operating Budget as a Share of Total City Funds, Excluding All Pension Contributions and Debt Service; (5) Actual Expenditures City Funds for the Public School System as a Share of Total City Funds, Including All Pension Contributions and Debt Service but Excluding Other Categorical; (6) Actual Expenditures City Funds for the Public School System Operating Budget as a Share of Total City Funds, Excluding All Pension Contributions, Debt Service, & Other Categorical; (7) Year to Year Increases--Last Four Years & Projected CFE; (8) Comparison of Adopted Budget Appropriations (Does Not Include Pensions or Debt Service for Facilities); (9) Comparison of Year to Year Expenditures from NYC Comptroller's Annual Financial Statement, Schedule G5; (10) Summary of Ratio of Allocations for Base Teacher to Out-of-Classroom (O-O-C) Positions in Elementary Schools with TITLE 1 Positions and Total Positions (Base Teacher & O-O-C & TITLE 1); (11) Major Sources of Personnel Funding for Schools & Changes in Allocation Formulas; and (12) NYS Education Law Budget Language on Disclosure of Allocation of Funds. (Contains 10 tables and 36 footnotes.).