Tonight the City Council will vote to finalize a budget that cuts hundreds of millions of dollars from school budgets while our children are still suffering from almost three years in a pandemic. Local schools will feel these cuts directly, as listed here in this spreadsheet. Our kids deserve more counselors and social workers, restorative justice programs, smaller class sizes, and enough teaching staff to address their needs.
Instead, the city is planning to fund the largest NYPD budget in history, which includes hundreds of new police in our schools that criminalize students of color, hundreds of millions in annual NYPD misconduct payouts, ridiculous drones and a $225 million dollar new target practice range.
The city should be using the revenue from record profits on Wall Street to invest in our schools and communities, not to add to the NYPD's already bloated budget.