Pressure's mounting on budget-cutting mayor

Posted by Philissa at 9:50 AM

Mayor Bloomberg has got to be feeling the pressure to restore education funds to the city's budget. On Wednesday, parents gathered at City Hall to urge City Council members to vote down the proposed budget. This morning, State Assembly leader Sheldon Silver presented the mayor with an assembly resolution asking him to restore school funding. Anti-cut rallies are scheduled for Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx in the next week. (See the Insideschools calendar for details about dates and locations.) And the Keep the Promises Coalition has just launched a new TV spot urging New Yorkers to call 1-800-961-6198 to tell the mayor to fund the schools.
Some kind of changes may be brewing. Patrick Sullivan reported last night on the NYC Public School Parents blog that the DOE has delayed the Panel for Education Policy's vote on the executive budget, originally scheduled for Monday, saying that it is working on reducing the impact of cuts to schools. Of course, it could be that the DOE needs time to fix serious inconsistencies in the proposed budget -- Eduwonkette's noted one and it's not hard to find others.