TESTIMONYOF THEUNITED FEDERATION OF TEACHERS MICHAEL MULGREW, PRESIDENT BEFORE THE

ASSEMBLY WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE &THE SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE

EXAMINING THE EDUCATION FUNDING PROPOSALS IN THE 2010-11 EXECUTIVEBUDGET FEBRUARY 2, 2010 Good morning, Assemblyman Farrell, Senator Kruger and members of these distinguishedcommittees. My name is Michael Mulgrew, and I am the president of the United Federation of Teachers. On behalf of our two hundred thousand members, I thank you for this opportunity totestify today on the Governor’s proposed budget. It was just one year ago that

New York City schools were facing seemingly insurmountable odds: $1.5 billionin budget cuts and 15,000 layoffs, the equivalent of every first, second and third year teacher. Schools were literallybracing themselves for 8 to 12 percent cutbacks.

In the face of adversity, however, something amazing happened. Instead of giving up, peoplestepped up. Strong leadership and a willingness to collaborate by you and your colleagues in theLegislature made the difference. We teamed up to secure federal stimulus funding. Wecollaborated on a progressive income tax. We joined forces to prioritize spending that directlyaffects classrooms.Working together, we were able to whittle that deficit down by more than two-thirds.

A year later, the economic landscape is still murky and the deficit is still very real.

New York Cityschools are facing another proposed major cutback in state school aid somewhere in the range of $500 milliondollars for the 2010-2011 school year. Mayor Bloomberg says that will translate into thousands of layoffs, and hespeaks as if there is nothing else that can be done.

Don’t believe the rhetoric. We are at the beginning of the budget process, and the UFT willcontinue — as we have always done — to work with you and your colleagues here in

Albany aswell as the City Council and others to protect classrooms as much as we possibly can.

We view the proposed state budget as exceedingly unfair to

New York City, and in particular itsconsiderable disinvestment in education. We can’t ignore the realities of our struggling economy, of course, and I’mcertainly not going to minimize the difficulties ahead. But our job now should be to work together and shieldclassrooms from the brunt of these cuts. And we will work with the Mayor to accomplish this if he is willing towork with us.

We made a promise to every child in our city and state – all of us did – that each and every oneof them would get a quality education. So make no mistake. We owe it to our students to findsolutions and minimize the impact on the services and programs on which they depend. If wedon’t then our school communities will be devastated. It took decades to reverse the damagecaused to schools during the 1970s when funding and personnel were severely cut. We cannot letthat happen again.I want to lay out a few ideas that will help us move forward and lessen the blow to schools. Asyou will see, solutions are within our grasp. There are three priorities in the 2010-2011 budgetthat I want to talk about today:

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Keep Classrooms Whole

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Keep the promise of CFE

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Support Teacher Centers

KEEPING CLASSROOMS WHOLE

You don’t need to be standing in front of a blackboard to know what massive cutbacks to schoolswould mean. The loss of hundreds of millions at the beginning of this current school year hasalready translated into fewer programs and services for kids. Not just sports, clubs andextracurriculars, mind you, but also the academic intervention services and tutoring that canmake or break a child’s future. When you’re trying to engage hard-to-reach and at-risk children,you need those types of programs. You need the arts. You need the smaller class sizes that allowyou to watch over those students more closely and give them individualized attention. And whenthose programs and services are lost, so are the kids. First and foremost, we are calling for the creation of a retirement incentive, which would potentially save $300 million or more. Educators have a salary structure that is unique among public employees in that entry-level salaries are less than half of the maximum educatorseventually reach near retirement. To give you an idea about what this means, consider this: for every eligible educator who takes advantage of a retirement incentive, we could effectively savethe cost of two new teachers’ salaries. An incentive is not only the right way to take care of this;it is also the smart way. To give you an idea of the numbers we’re talking about, there are approximately twenty-fivethousand (25,000) UFT members in the Teachers Retirement System (TRS) that would beeligible for an incentive. If an incentive is implemented correctly and relatively soon, the schoolswould have ample time to make the necessary adjustments and ensure that schools andclassrooms are properly staffed for the fall. Incentives were offered twice during the 1990’s and both were successful.Here at the state level, I also believe we need to raise additional revenues and find additional costsavings. Cutting the Empire Zone Program, for example, could save the state approximately$600 million a year. Closing corporate loopholes and reducing the state’s use of high-pricedconsultants could save hundreds of millions more. Even using the state’s purchasing power tonegotiate prescription drug prices for civil service employees could save $100 million a year and,in the process, could help local governments as well.