Mayor Eric Adams has begun his plan to cut ultimately $2 billion dollars from the city. The cuts are in response to what Mayor Adams has called an overwhelming migrant crisis in the city.

Adams stated in his October speech that the budget cuts would “freeze police hiring” and close libraries on Sundays. Starting in 2024, we are going to witness history because the budget cuts, if followed through with, will bring the number of Police Department Officers below 30,00 for the first time since the 1980’s.  

There will also be cuts across city agencies as the migrant crisis comes with a financial backlash. This will lead to slowing tax revenues along with the ending of federal pandemic aid.

These cuts also affect the New York City Department of Education and NYC Sanitation. The cuts will take away $1 billion dollars over the two years in the DOE and will lead to the delay the rollout of composting in the Bronx and Staten Island. 

The mayor plans to make cuts to the massive free preschool program, to community schools that support families with out-of-school needs, and to the popular pandemic-era Summer Rising program.In addition, a big portion of this year’s savings will come through a hiring slowdown and the elimination of 432 vacant non-classroom positions.

Officials stated that this will lead to a combined $157 million in savings. As mentioned, a hiring freeze has been in place since this fall, but it has not been applied to teaching positions. We still don’t know how long officials will continue to spare teaching positions from the freeze.

Mayor Adams announced a plan to slash 5% of the DOE’s overall budget.

In total, the cuts consist of

• $120 million in cuts to 3K/pre-K programs
• $286 million in cuts to funded DOE positions
• $96 million in cuts to after-school activities and pay for substitute teachers
• Cuts to Summer Rising programs
• $109 million from 653 schools due to low enrollment

Adams plans to make an additional 5% cut and asked city agencies to submit plans for those cuts. He has threatened to make a third round of cuts of equal size before June.

Although this may not seem inconsequential to us at the high school level, Assistant Principal of Organization Mr. De Martini provided some insight on how we may be influenced by it.

He doesn’t believe it is right for the state to take away from the school budgets because it might cut valuable after school activities that keep students out of trouble and occupied.

With Adams’ proposed budget cuts, De Martini thinks that more fundraising may have to be done in order to maintain extra curricular events like the Sophomore camping trip.

De Martini acknowledges that the budget cuts may be necessary: “Although the budget cuts would be hard for schools, I don’t know that they are unnecessary.  The money has to come from somewhere; sometimes it comes from taxpayers like you and me when they raise taxes, and sometimes it comes from cutting services.  I would hope that the mayor might find funds from places other than schools’ budgets, though.”

That same UFT president Michael Mulgrew revealed on December 21st of 2023 that the union was in fact suing the mayor for cuts. He cites that the “the law does not permit school funding to be used as a political bargaining chip; and cutting essential services to the City’s schools is not a substitute for the mayoral leadership and advocacy on behalf of New Yorkers needed to obtain federal and state support.”

The strains that the migrant crisis are putting on budgets became even clearer recently with the one day closing of James Madison High School in Brooklyn.

On January 10th, Madison announced they would have teachers and staff engage remotely as almost 2,000 migrants needed shelter during a bad storm.  The housing that was being provided to them at Floyd Bennett field was not fit for severe weather, so in an abundance of caution, migrants were temporarily housed at the high school.

This move left some outraged, as they felt that student education was taking a hit due to the city’s poor management.

As we enter the last full year of the Adams administration, their relationship will be one to monitor with the education system as this could reach a boiling point, if it hasn’t already.