NEW YORK \u2014 New York City schools with falling enrollment will not face budget cuts this fall, continuing a policy that guarantees each school in the system receives at least as much funding as it did the year before, even if they\u2019re expecting fewer students.<\/p>\n
Staring down a multibillion-dollar budget gap, Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced pressure this year from fiscal<\/a> watchdogs<\/a> to rein in costs associated with the push known as \u201chold harmless,\u201d which was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure financial stability during a crisis.<\/p>\n Mamdani was ultimately able to avoid those contentious cuts with the help of Gov. Hochul, who provided state aid and budget flexibility for the city.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to ensure that our schools are well-funded, despite the fact that we\u2019ve seen enrollment declines,\u201d Chancellor Kamar Samuels told the City Council on Monday during a hearing on the education budget.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we do remove our hold harmless funding, it would be a huge whiplash effect to schools that would have to really contend with a lot of concerns about the budget, and in some of our most vulnerable communities, they would feel the brunt of the issues,\u201d the schools chief added. \u201cAnd so, I think we are proud to for this year be able to hold our schools harmless, to make sure that they are stable.\u201d<\/p>\n Seritta Scott, chief financial officer of the public schools, declined to share an estimated cost of the policy, citing ongoing quality assurance checks, though she confirmed it was \u201con par with over hundreds of millions of dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n The decision was first reported by the local education news source Chalkbeat<\/a>, which obtained a Sunday memo to principals.<\/p>\n Education advocates say to end the push now would pull the rug out from under schools, and force principals to let go of teachers and cut programming, such as arts or school libraries. But budget hawks claim it\u2019s not sound policy and could shortchange schools that most need the per-pupil dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the city were to resume funding schools based on the number and needs of the schools\u2019 students, it would likely save $400 million annually<\/a>, the amount allocated to schools as \u2018hold harmless\u2019 funding in school year 2025-26,\u201d read testimony earlier this year by the Citizens Budget Commission.<\/p>\n Public school enrollment was down 2.4% this year, and is also expected to shrink by another tens of thousands of students<\/a> in the next decade.<\/p>\n \u201cHold harmless\u201d was initially put in place with federal stimulus dollars. As those programs expired, former Mayor Eric Adams tried phasing out the additional support, but found it was too politically unpopular to double back. The ex-mayor faced protests over the cuts and damaged his relationship with the City Council, which approved the budget before members went on to apologize for their votes<\/a>.<\/p>\n During Monday\u2019s hearing, some Council members voiced support for continuing the policy.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no budget that\u2019s more important to me than the 40-odd schools that are in my district,\u201d said Councilman Lincoln Restler, a progressive Democrat from Brooklyn. \u201cSo, we want to make sure that we\u2019re doing everything we can to protect them and fill in gaps for them.\u201d<\/p>\n But asked by Restler if the system could claw back funding from schools midyear if fewer students than projected eventually enroll \u2014 as it used to before the pandemic \u2014 the chancellor was non-committal.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, we have held initial budgets harmless,\u201d Samuels said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to have conversations about the sustainability.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Councilman Phil Wong, a conservative Democrat in Queens, suggested the time to end the policy is now.<\/p>\n \u201cThe COVID lockdown has been lifted since 2023 February,\u201d Wong said. \u201cMy question to you is, why are we still holding schools harmless? Why are we funding empty seats?\u201d<\/p>\n Initial school budgets are set to be released early next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 New York City schools with falling enrollment will not face budget cuts this fall, continuing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[301,101093,9,19440,56,63,65,64,70916,101094,82],"class_list":["post-259919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-city-council","tag-hold-harmless","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city-schools","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-public-school-enrollment","tag-school-libraries","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}