Levy Rips State, City Pols
A visibly angry Schools Chancellor Harold Levy, in perhaps his most emotional outburst since he took the job 16 months ago, yesterday blasted City Hall and state lawmakers for failing to provide enough financial support to the school system to "give kids half a chance." In uncharacteristically blunt language, Levy put the politicians at City Hall and in Albany on notice that he will not take the blame if students don't meet expectations because of budget shortfalls. The chancellor even referred to the board's $12-billion budget as a "shoestring." "I'm angry no one has paid adequate attention to this," Levy said after touring a summer school program in Brooklyn. "We're letting this train ride down the track and pretending no one sees it. I'm angry we haven't adequately addressed the issue of what do we do with children who don't speak English and come to our shores with the expectation they'll get a fair education. I'm not going to give up, quite the contrary. I'm not going to drop this; I'm going to get even." The professorial Levy, usually somewhat reserved and circumspect in his public comments, yesterday clearly had lost his patience for niceties. The school system is facing a budget squeeze from the federal government, the state government and City Hall. Though he never mentioned Mayor Rudolph Giuliani by name, Levy was clearly upset that the city seems reluctant to send $20 million to the board to fund the chancellor's revamped bilingual education program, which would provide substantially more training for bilingual teachers, in addition to making it easier for parents to opt out of bilingual education for their children. Levy said the board was promised $20 million by the city and $50 million by the state, in addition to another $5 million from the federal government and other sources, and none of the money has materialized. Giuliani questioned how Levy is unable to find $20 million in the school system's annual budget. "If they can't figure out where to find $20 million in a $12.3 billion budget, maybe this is worse than the overspending they did on construction," Giuliani said, referring to the recent revelation that the board had a billion-dollar shortfall in just the second year of its five-year capital plan. Levy listed the severe problems facing the system: possibly more than 100 principals retiring this summer; as many as 9,000 new teachers starting in September; a lack of money to spend on improving student math performance, and a new federal Title 1 county-based funding formula that forces the board to move millions of dollars away from children in the Bronx and Brooklyn to less needy children in Queens and Staten Island. "I didn't take this job and come from the private sector to watch people nibble away at the edges and say, 'Chancellor, how come it isn't working?'" said Levy, an attorney and former high-ranking executive at Citigroup. "It isn't working because there's not enough money and we got the wrong people in the classroom in a lot of places. Until we fix that, my answer is it's not going to work." |