Mayor Bloomberg is going to go into detail about his proposal for how to cut the city’s budget at a press conference tomorrow. The cuts are expected to hit every city agency at a rate of about 2.5%. Details of what is in the mayor’s plan are starting to get leaked to some news outlets.
Here’s a sampling:
- Bloomberg News reports that the proposal will outline $1.5 billion in savings, including a suggestion to cut 3,000 city jobs.
- Newsday says that some of those jobs will be in education.
- The city’s budget deficit has risen to an estimated $4 billion from $1.5 billion, Reuters reports.
Everyone I talk to in the city education world says the budget is the number one issue on their radar screens. The main question is not whether there will be cuts to schools, but how they will be distributed. The thing to watch here is the ratio between cuts passed directly to schools and cuts made to the bureaucracy. I would be really surprised if teachers were laid off; the Newsday report on education jobs being sliced is a little shocking.