Cutting classroom hours is likely to generate a fight with the teachers' union -- one reason other states have avoided it, said Kathy Christie, vice president of the Education Commission of the States, in Denver.
"While the city is rolling this $2 billion surplus into the next fiscal year, it is unconscionable that the Department of Education is telling principals and staff and parents that there will be cuts to classroom services, cuts to after-school programs and cuts to supplies," Ms. Weingarten said.
Over the last five years, Lynch has reduced the budget by $15 million -- cutting corners and squeezing the margins in an effort to not cut into classroom teaching.
"When we say, 'Don't cut a classroom teacher,' that's what you end up with.
Mr. Bloomberg and other officials reiterated that because of the additional money there would be no cuts to classroom instruction, and that the school system would make necessary trims through administrative savings.
But William T. Cunningham, who is Mr. Bloomberg's director of communications, said that from the refinancing plan to pay off the city's 1970's debt, some relief of health care costs and other initiatives, the city would pretty much be able to assure that there would be no cuts to classroom programs or materials for children.
Assemblyman Steven Sanders, the chairman of the Assembly's Education Committee, said that he and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon S. Silver, had reached an agreement with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to restore all cuts affecting classrooms.
Over the weekend, Mr. Christie was caught on camera wagging his finger at a teacher who challenged his cuts to classrooms, a moment reminiscent of the presidential campaign of 2012, when Mitt Romney's advisers were alarmed by a video of Mr. Christie shaking an ice cream cone at a critic he encountered on the Jersey Shore.
(Daily Herald) 4. The funding cuts to classrooms are $68 million more than Chicago Public Schools said they would be.
