As part of ongoing budget negotiations with the City Council, Mayor Adams has agreed to stave off some of his most controversial education cuts, including a large funding reduction for public schools with declining enrollment, sources familiar with the matter told the Daily News late Monday.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preempt the announcement, said the mayor will formally unveil the budget cut reversals Tuesday morning.
The most significant cut the mayor has agreed to address relates to the “hold harmless” funding pot, which ensures individual schools with declining student enrollment don’t see budget cuts.
That pot was created with federal stimulus funds during the pandemic that are expiring this year, and advocates have feared the lapse could jeopardize principals’ ability to hire teachers.
According to the sources, Adams has now agreed to inject $75 million into those school budgets, as it was deemed the funding expiration could have resulted in learning losses for kids and uncertainty for school leaders.
New York City School Children Return To In-Person Classes
Michael Loccisano/Getty Images City students in class at Yung Wing School P.S. 124 (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
Additionally, the mayor has agreed to restore $20 million in funding he previously slashed from Summer Rising, the city’s free summer camp program for public school kids, according to the sources. Should that cut have remained, Summer Rising would not have been able to provide middle school students with programming at all on Fridays and cut every other weekday short at 4 p.m.
Lastly, Adams has agreed to back off a combined $32 million cut to some other initiatives previously bankrolled by COVID aid, including restorative justice programming, the “Computer Science for All” and “Civics for All” programs, and efforts related to teacher recruitment, the sources revealed. It was not immediately clear how much each of those programs will get restored.
Word of the cut reversals come as Adams and the Council continue to negotiate a budget for the 2025 fiscal year, which starts July 1. They must reach a deal on a final spending plan by June 30.
The mayor’s budget proposals this year have included deep cuts not just to education efforts, but to libraries, social services and other city government funding pots as well. He says the proposed spending reductions are necessary to offset expiring federal funding streams and the billions of dollars the city has spent on the migrant crisis.
The Council’s Democratic leaders have for months countered that most of the mayor’s cuts can be averted by using better-than-expected tax revenues they say the city’s on track to rake in. The mayor’s team has released tax revenue projections that are not as rosy as the Council’s estimates.
Adams’ concession on the education cuts is likely to fuel the Council’s argument that there is enough money to reverse more cuts.
Major education cuts still remain, including a $170 million reduction in funding to the city’s 3-K and pre-K programs that Adams implemented last year.