Cuomo’s Denial: Urban School Districts’ Disaster

A letter to the NY Times editor re: 11-29-11 NYT article
by Dr. Fred Marshall, University of Rochester

Dear Sir/Madam-

I have re-written your recent editorial, entitled Germany’s Denial: Europe’s Disaster, changing some of the dramatis personae, but cleaving closely to the structure and often the actual words of your piece.  I acknowledge that this is likely too long for your consideration, but thought you might enjoy (and agree with) the parallelism of the argument:

Each day our urban school districts inch closer to full meltdown, but Governor Cuomo of New York is still blocking what is needed:  a real bailout of New York’s poorest districts by their richer neighbors and the wealthiest New Yorkers who enjoy endless extensions of their tax cuts.

Mr. Cuomo and his team have had more than fair warning of the disaster to come, including the possible loss of a generation New York’s urban and rural public school students, who will lack the capacity to successfully compete for jobs in a globally competitive 21st century market place.  And it should be utterly clear that no New Yorkers – including the wealthy financiers of Westchester County and Long Island, or the down-to-business suburbanites of our decaying upstate cities – are immune.  If we cannot provide an educated work force, we cannot attract business, and everybody loses.

The State has been compelled to sweeten the pot to get businesses to locate here by offering tax breaks and economic development dollars in desperate efforts to attract “job creators”.  The crisis is now spreading, with more and more rural districts lacking the resources to offer a sound basic education.  The tax-payer funded prison industry has been one of the only growth industries in upstate communities for more than a decade now, and the flow of prisoners from downstate communities to upstate prisons is the single biggest reason there was not an even larger loss of upstate population in the last census.

New Yorkers have clearly figured out that a meltdown of urban and rural public education imposes an enormous human cost.  But the governor and state officials are still insisting that these underprivileged communities need to pay for their sinful ways (through draconian school closures and staffing layoffs) – and that New York’s virtuous “job creators” (the wealthiest and most privileged citizens and communities) will not be made to foot the bill.  Until recently, New York’s leaders argued that they could quell the crisis with stiff austerity policies imposed on poor districts to re-establish their worthiness.  But New York’s families are unpersuaded, and the crisis keeps spreading.  New York City schools actually won a court battle mandating equitable state-funding, but the state has failed to fund the district, and massive layoffs and inadequate schools are the result.  Within a mile or two of the Lauder estate on Park Avenue (see NYTimes Sunday Cover 11/27/11), that multi-billionaire has poor neighbors whose public-school children must share text-books that are torn, defaced and decades out of date.

A lot more money is needed to finance districts that lack the resources to provide a sound basic education.  Urban and rural districts have had little luck in their efforts to improve schools by cutting staff and resources to the bone, and there is little data to suggest that the for-profit private sector (or the not-for-profit charter school movement) is solving the crisis.

What makes this even more absurd is that New York has the resources – if Governor Cuomo would drop his objections.  New Yorkers with means – like the denizens of Wall Street, Westchester, the Hamptons and numerous other “outer-ring” suburbs, whose own children enjoy some of the finest public and private schools in the United States, need pony up only a tiny fraction of their wealth to fully fund our urban and rural districts currently incapable of funding themselves.  In the long-term interest of the state as a whole, Albany must take responsibility for distributing resources where they are desperately needed.  That would insure excellent educations for all of New York’s children, who will in turn become magnets for global business in search of the best educated work-force.

Instead, Mr. Cuomo’s idea to restore “market confidence” is to call for the forced expulsion of 99% protestors and continue to protect the tax advantages of the 1% -- to perpetuate unsustainable state mandates on local districts and fail to comply with previous court orders calling for adequate funding of poor districts to insure a sound basic education for all our children.

Urban and rural districts must be brought into balance over the long term.  And New York’s schools will need much more fiscal coordination to survive.  But right now, the only way to stem the crisis is to give weak communities more cash and room to recover.  More than a generation into our education crisis, it should be obvious that forcing poor districts to keep slashing their budgets will only make things worse – tipping them into deeper privation and educational austerity that makes it even more difficult for our urban and rural communities to grow, raise living standards, attract employers, and ultimately pay for themselves.

New Yorkers have the resources to bail out our weakest districts and thereby save our cities and hamlets – and ultimately our suburbs and wealthiest enclaves.  What we cannot afford is another lost generation.