The announcement by the Board of Education that it will have to cut back $45 million in services for the rest of the school year has shocked the city. The freeze on maintenance and repair alone must inevitably lead to school closings since disrepair creates physical danger. The dismissal of 6500 teachers regularly employed in the schools and another 5000 per diem substitutes who replace absent teachers cannot be viewed as just another governmental economy move. The damage resulting from this move could very well mark the end of our public school system. Should the cutback occur, there would be:
(1) Massive disruption for students. Every school would have to be reprogrammed next week. Most- students would find themselves in larger classes with different teachers and different classmates. There would be a great waste of instructional time in making the adjustment, and, since different students would be coming from classes in which different parts of the curriculum had already been covered, it would be impossible to maintain an intelligent continuity of instruction.
(2) Soaring school violence and drug abuse. Some of our schools are now on the verge of collapse. With a loss of 20 to 30 teachers in each high school, as required in the cutback -plan, the remaining staff would find it impossible to maintain even a semblance of order in the schools. School economy might turn out to be very expensive as the 11,500 dismissed teachers are replaced by huge numbers of policemen.
(3) Permanent impairment of the ability to staff schools. This year is the first in over 25 in which we have not been faced with a shortage of teachers. Union, benefits and the new image of education as a center of social importance have attracted thousands of talented college graduates. Now they will be turned away and permanently lost to the school system. Furthermore, many of these new teachers are black and Puerto Rican. Because of their low seniority, they will be among the first to go. The result will be exacerbation of existing racial tension.
The sense of outrage, among teachers, students, parents and community groups was heightened by the fact that the educational cutbacks were announced at the same time that the city found money to lend to the off-track betting agency, found $24 million for the purchase of Yankee Stadium and was prepared to find another $180 million in retroactive pay to the uniformed services as a result of the court decision on the pay-parity issue. Whatever official explanations emerge as to how the city was able to find these funds, the man in the street gets the message: The city finds the money when it wants to or has to.
To add to the disaster of the cutbacks are the ironies inherent in the total situation. First, there is the irony that, while decentralization as first proposed under the Bundy Plan would have given the Mayor major power over the school system through his appointment of members of the central board and community boards, our present decentralization law has resulted in a central board which for the first time in history has demanded the right to spend its budget and has rebelled against a tradition requiring that large sums be left unspent and returned to the city. Second, there is the irony that the UFT contract, which has been portrayed in some quarters as the instrument by which teachers protect their selfish interests, has provided thus far the only protection for parents and students against huge increases in class size. Third, at a time when everyone recognizes the need for innovation and creativity in building a better school system, we ourselves in a crucial battle merely to hold on to existing services for children. Finally, there is the irony that decentralized community boards, which were supported by many as a vehicle for fighting against teachers and their union, have in the face of the calamitous cuts joined together with-the unions and parents to provide a new base of power to fight City Hall.
It is too early to tell whether this coalition of community boards, unions and parents will outlive the current crisis. The recent past has shown that, when these groups are pitted against each other, there is chaos in the schools, and the political authorities use the conflict as an opportunity to reduce school expenditures. If this crisis results in a permanent partnership, one with sufficient political muscle not merely to avert cutbacks but to secure improvements, there is New Hope for our schools.