Municipal Tuchis Leching

The good folks at class size matters highlight the free ride bloomklein has gotten in the latest school budget fiasco and urges folks to email the daily news
over their tuchis leching editorials as quoted below

Stop the school scare Friday, May 30th 2008, 4:00 AM NY Daily News
Facing an economic downturn, Mayor Bloomberg has asked city agencies to trim spending. His plan calls for, manageably and relatively painlessly, nicking the budgets of every public school by just a hair over 1%. The response by education advocates has been outrageous. They are running hyped TV ads that predict whole programs will vanish, accusing City Hall of balancing the budget "on the backs of kids" and of "breaking faith" with children and parents.
Even worse, the City Council has descended into demagoguery, stopping just
short of accusing Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein of child abuse and of waging war on the poor. Meanwhile, restrictive funding formulas imposed by the Legislature threaten to whack as many as 500 of the city's best-performing schools with truly
debilitating budget cuts. Among the formula's architects was Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver,who has cast himself as a leading figure in a drive to push Bloomberg to
exempt schools from belt-tightening.
What Silver doesn't say, and what the Council and none of the advocates explain, is where they want him to get the money. From ordering the NYPD to cut patrol levels even more? From forcing libraries to shut their doors? From raising real estate taxes?
They all need to face facts, and the facts are as follows: - Since 2002, the schoolsbudget has jumped 63%, more than $8 billion - with the city kicking in far more than the state. Bloomberg is proposing to increase spending in the coming year, but not by
enough to cover all rising costs, such as teacher salaries. Thus, he's
asking schools to tighten up. - After cutting $200 million from the bureaucracy, Klein has developed a plan to shift $63 million among schools so they would each take an average hit of a doable 1.4%.- State law bars Klein from making those shifts. When Albany came through with a big aid increase a few years ago, the Legislature imposed mandates that drove the money overwhelmingly to high-needs schools. That's a great intention, but the mandates bar reducing spending in high-needs schools in tight times. - Unless Albany changes the formula, all the cuts will fall on 500 schools
that are not classified as having high needs. Some of the most successful -
Bronx Science, Stuyvesant,Midwood,Townsend Harris - would suffer hits of as much as 6%.Albany must ease the rules so a huge system can absorb what are essentially
minuscule trims. In fact, the Council should be pressing Silver to scrap the
rules entirely. On that point, lawmakers should listen to fellow Democrat and potential mayoral contender Rep. Anthony Weiner.
No fan of the chancellor, Weiner told us, "I side with Klein on this fight."He said "aspirational" parents could be driven out if their schools are hammered by budget cuts, and he added: "The much higher virtue here is the city have some independence from the clutches of Albany."
The advocates, including Silver, must recognize that the mayor needs the authority to manage and that Bloomberg and Klein have a prudent plan. As for the Council, it's time for Speaker Christine Quinn and colleagues to put up and shut up.
All the more power to them if lawmakers can find money for schools without
sacrificing cops or other vital services and without hiking taxes. Then,
they'll be in for a rude awakening because Albany will dictate how the funds
are spent. And that's nuts.