In a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Council Member Oliver Koppell vigorously protested the mid-year cuts to schools that will reduce funding by 1.7 percent, an average of $70,000 per school, as well as the proposed $324 million cut proposed for the 2009 budget.
“I am calling on the mayor to restore these midyear cuts,” Koppell wrote. “Teachers have already been hired, school schedules planned and commitments made for academic intervention services, enrichment programs and after-school activities. Forcing principals to scale back or eliminate valued programs will seriously undermine their efforts to provide students with the sound, well balanced and well rounded education the Department of Education’s ‘Children’s First’ Initiative proclaimed was their right.”
In addition to the mayor’s cuts, Governor Eliot Spitzer announced the state was also trimming its education budget by $200 million.
“The extent of both the city and state cuts to education will be devastating,” Koppell wrote.
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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.