Principals Union Officials Fume Over Cuts

Top officials at the city principals union are fuming over a decision by the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, to push budget cuts down to the school level — without yet telling principals that they are going to have to make cuts.

Mayor Bloomberg's proposed budget, released last week, asks schools to cover $99 million of $180 million in cuts to the Department of Education this year. Principals would have to cut an estimated $70,000 on average per school by June 30.

The department's deputy chancellor for finance and administration, Kathleen Grimm, said last week that her staff began brainstorming cuts about two months ago, in November.

No principals have yet been informed of the cuts.

A Department of Education spokesman, David Cantor, said they would be informed in the next few days.

In a letter to members this week, the president of the principals union, Ernest Logan, said he was "deeply troubled" by Mr. Bloomberg's budget proposal.

"So many costly initiatives and no-bid contracts have been rolled out in recent years," Mr. Logan wrote. "It simply makes no sense that despite all the progress we've made that schools will have to bear the brunt of this economic downturn."

In an e-mail message to Mr. Klein yesterday, another union leader, Brian De Vale, decried the cuts.

Mr. De Vale, a principal at P.S. 257 in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, said he learned that he would have to make budget cuts by reading newspaper reports over the weekend. He said he was particularly enraged by a statement from Mr. Klein that after-school programs might be cut.

His letter listed several multimillion-dollar expenses the Department of Education might cut from its central office budget instead, including ramped-up testing; a new data warehousing program called ARIS, and a process of reviewing schools through an outside contractor based in Britain. The ARIS system is costing the Department of Education $12.2 million this year, and the review process is costing $5.9 million, Mr. Cantor said. The new interim tests were to cost $80 million over five years.

To save money, Mr. Bloomberg's budget calls for scaling back the tests to four a semester from five. Mr. Klein hails all three programs as innovations that put New York City schools ahead of the country in terms of their ability to individualize teaching.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. De Vale, whose school received an A grade on its progress report, said the emphasis on data did not match his priorities. "We don't spend our day looking at flow- charts," he said. "My priority is keeping kids off the street."

The criticisms come a week after Mr. Klein released a survey showing wide approval among principals for the programs Mr. De Vale disparaged.

The survey was given anonymously, and about 70% of principals responded.

Mr. De Vale said the results were distorted because many principals were not under the impression that their answers were actually anonymous.

"This is a climate of fear," he said. "Principals don't speak the truth."

A historian of the New York City public schools, Diane Ravitch, reached a similar conclusion after giving a speech to a group of more than 500 principals on Saturday.

She said the principals applauded loudly when she criticized Mr. Bloomberg's education record. Puzzled, she asked some principals afterward why the survey results had been so positive.

"They said, 'Everybody is afraid to say that they're dissatisfied,'" Ms. Ravitch said.