OAN’s Brooke Mallory
12:58 PM – Friday, December 22, 2023
The New York City Teachers Union is suing to stop the city’s public school budget cuts from being implemented. The organization claims that Mayor Eric Adams’ drastic budget cuts would undermine crucial education initiatives, inhibit teacher incentives, and would violate state law overall.
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However, Adams (D-N.Y.) has been arguing for months that cutting city expenditure is required to meet the mounting expenses of New York’s ongoing immigration issue.
This includes a $550 million drop in financing for education.
The United Federation of Teachers claimed in a state court case on Thursday that the mayor had fabricated the city’s financial problems to justify the imposition of an unwarranted and unlawful “blunt austerity measure.”
The state statute that limits New York City’s ability to cut education expenditure, unless overall revenues fall, is the basis for the case. The lawsuit claims that the mid-year education cuts, which would especially negatively impact special needs students, universal pre-kindergarten, and after-school programs, are unlawful since the city exceeded income projections for this fiscal year.
“This is going to become difficult and ugly,” asserted UFT President Michael Mulgrew on Thursday. “We have never had an administration try to cut their schools when they have historic reserves and their revenues are all up.”
Among other reductions in municipal services, the decrease will result in fewer hours open at public libraries, the elimination of parks and sanitation programs, and a freeze on police recruiting.
With crime rates only rising, and asylum seeker-related chaos occurring more prevalently in the city, informed New Yorkers are not pleased with the announcement. His popularity has plummeted to an all-time low since he assumed office over two years ago.
To halt the layoffs, DC 37, the largest public sector union in the city, is also suing him separately right now in another case.
Adams attempted to minimize and downplay the cases at a press conference on Thursday by highlighting his close ties to the two political unions.
“From time to time, friends disagree,” Adams said. “Sometimes it ends up in a boardroom and sometimes it ends up in a courtroom.”
Although he has previously admitted that the cuts would cause “extreme pain to New Yorkers,” Adams still urged citizens of the city to demand that the White House provide more help to handle the immigration situation.
Additionally, he has issued a warning that “even more drastic cuts would be required” to close the budget deficit, which he predicts will total $7 billion in the upcoming fiscal year.
Meanwhile, a recent report from the Independent Budget Office seems to support the unions’ argument that the city’s financial problem is not as serious as the mayor has made it seem in public speeches. The organization projected that the city will have a $3.6 billion budget surplus at the conclusion of the fiscal year in June, which will result in a far more manageable budget shortfall the following year of $1.8 billion.
The estimate is used by the teachers union in the lawsuit as evidence that Adams’ “calculatingly foreboding” assessment of New York City’s financial situation is unfounded and baseless.
“The Mayor’s recent actions,” the suit states, “are driven more by a ‘crisis’ of budget management, leadership and problem solving, as opposed to an influx of migrants to New York.”
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