A controversial New York City school funding formula was approved Wednesday, despite a stunning rejection last month at a governance meeting.
The unchanged agenda easily passed through the Panel for Educational Policy with 12 out of 14 votes in its favor — and with a promise from Schools Chancellor David Banks to rethink how school budgets are allocated for future school years.
“I’ve made an absolute commitment to fixing this,” said Banks.
“Passing it tonight does not mean that this is a chancellor who doesn’t give a damn,” he said. “Quite the opposite — I have to keep the system moving; otherwise, everything just shuts down.”
But the many families and advocates who spoke at the meeting were disappointed that any potential changes to the formula known as Fair Student Funding would be delayed.
“I’m glad that people listened last month and actually delayed this vote,” said Jennifer Hadlock, a parent of one current and another former student, and a substitute teacher in East Harlem. “But the fact that there isn’t any change doesn’t help me feel like there’s trust being built.”
School budget allocations stalled at the last PEP meeting when members of the panel and public noted that while it sends additional dollars to schools serving kids struggling on state tests, learning English or those with disabilities, it lacks enough support for other vulnerable students, including those who are homeless or in foster care.
The vote may have also been impacted by a lack of mayoral appointees at the last meeting, where one member was absent and another had yet to be chosen. The panel, which is mostly comprised of picks by the mayor, usually adheres to City Hall directives. Adams made his final pick on Wednesday, just hours before the group convened.
At the meeting, members who had previously nixed or abstained from voting on the formula helped pass it on its second go-around, with the promise of a working group to revise the Department of Education’s approach.
“Because we have received this commitment from our chancellor, as well as our first deputy chancellor, and we’ve gone over this several times — trust me folks, we’ve talked a lot — our office will be voting yes,” said Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, who represents Manhattan and was appointed by its borough president, Mark Levine. “But I hope you know that we will be holding you accountable if we don’t see significant changes.”
Salas-Ramirez and others, including Thomas Sheppard, who is elected by parents to the panel and voted ‘no’ on the matter, want the DOE to go further with an independent commission with experts that can do a “true financial analysis” of the formula.
“This will take some time to resolve — it’s not going to take years, but it’s going to take some time,” Banks told the PEP members and dozens of speakers at public comment.
“I’m prepared by next week to start to organize and plan to fix this mess,” he said.
After bringing back an identical formula to the one that was rejected less than a month ago, the chancellor asked the public to trust his commitment to do right by the system.
“I’m not a bureaucrat,” Banks said. “I’m not a person who just sits here, and is going through the motions. That is not who I am. That’s not how I lead.”