Protesters Target School Budget Cuts

With negotiations over Mayor Bloomberg's proposed school budget cuts locked in a stalemate, more than 1,000 public school students, parents, teachers, and principals marched around City Hall Park yesterday to urge Mr. Bloomberg to refrain from cutting their budgets.

They came in busloads from public schools across the city, carrying signs and chanting as they circled City Hall and the Department of Education's Tweed Courthouse headquarters.

One of the largest contingents was a group of students at the prestigious Townsend Harris High School in Queens, which is slated to receive one of the largest cuts in the city.

The Townsend Harris students wore matching green T-shirts and created their own chant: "Not the Budgets — Cut the Crap."

The Bloomberg administration is saying that the larger budget cuts at schools such as Townsend Harris could be drastically reduced if Albany lawmakers loosened restrictions on a pot of state money intended for poor-performing and struggling schools. But Governor Paterson and the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, are showing resistance to that idea, and the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, is saying schools should be completely insulated from cuts.

The Townsend Harris students said they are most concerned about after-school programs.

A sophomore on the swim team, Jenny Zhang, said she is worried about the team's three-year run as city champions. "We're creating a dynasty here, and they're cutting our budgets," Miss Zhang said.

"What's bubbling up is all of the anger because the cuts are starting to hit schools," the teachers union president, Randi Weingarten, said.

"Somebody just said to me, 'Why don't we have a strike in September if the budgets aren't restored?'" she added. She did not say whether she would consider the idea.

Ms. Weingarten, along with the leader of the principals union, Ernest Logan, has been working with officials at the City Council and the education department to resolve the issue, but talks are at a stalemate.

School officials said the city is keeping its promise to public schools. By 2011, they said, city spending on public schools will have increased by $6.3 billion since 2002.