Charter leaders will ask City Hall for budget help tomorrow
Charter school heads will visit City Hall tomorrow to present Mayor Bloomberg with an audacious request: They would like him to go over state lawmakers’ heads and restore a funding freeze that Albany probably won’t.
This year, lawmakers froze charter schools’ per-pupil funding levels at last year’s level, denying school leaders almost $1,000 per student in an expected increase. Given the rotten budget climate, it’s likely the legislature will do the same to next year’s budget.
To fight back, charter school leaders tomorrow will meet with Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott — and, they hope, with Bloomberg, too — to suggest two possible solutions. Bloomberg can either “negotiate with Albany to remove the freeze,” as Charter School Center head James Merriman wrote in an e-mail last week. Or, Merriman wrote:
This year, lawmakers froze charter schools’ per-pupil funding levels at last year’s level, denying school leaders almost $1,000 per student in an expected increase. Given the rotten budget climate, it’s likely the legislature will do the same to next year’s budget.
To fight back, charter school leaders tomorrow will meet with Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott — and, they hope, with Bloomberg, too — to suggest two possible solutions. Bloomberg can either “negotiate with Albany to remove the freeze,” as Charter School Center head James Merriman wrote in an e-mail last week. Or, Merriman wrote:
he can substitute other funds in the City’s own budget.The latter plan would mean taking money from some source other than state funds earmarked for charter schools — some source that might, otherwise, go to district schools. That would be at a time when district
