KINGSTON – Thousands marched statewide for public education Saturday afternoon, including almost 500 down Broadway in Kingston. Other rallies were held in Buffalo, Rochester, Schenectady, Syracuse, New York City, and Wyandanch.
Event organizers included Alliance for Quality Education, Citizen Action, Metro Justice, Long Island Progressive Coalition, New York Communities for Change, plus hundreds of co-sponsors.
Called the “Peoples March for Education Justice,” the crowd described itself with repeated chanting and acclamation, as resistance movement education warriors.
Accompanied by marching bands, puppets, and speakers from the educational field, participants braved brisk, windy weather to demand that funding for public education remains intact.
Frigid temps didn’t keep people away from the Kingston protest
Threatened by the chopping block this year are school lunch programs, pre-K, special education, music and arts, reading programs, and foundation aid, which equalizes revenues for impoverished school districts, said Steven Spicer, principal of John L. Edwards Primary School in Hudson.
“Privatizing our school system, giving tax breaks for Wall Street, and crumbs for the rest of us, is not fair education for all; it’s the Hunger Games,” Spicer said.
Noting that $4.3 billion was withheld in foundation aid over the past decade, Spicer called on Governor Andrew Cuomo to “cash that check.”
Other speakers also took aim at Cuomo. “When it comes to public school systems, Trump and Cuomo are one and the same,” said Kingston High School teacher Luz Christina Ramirez Mooney. “In Cuomo’s budget that he just released, he wants to eliminate that foundation aid, not even be held accountable to it.”
James Shaughnessy, a member of the Kingston City School District Board of Education, observed that on a federal level, privatization through charter school vouchers threatens public education, via House Resolution 610, which replaces traditional funding with block grants.
Shaughnessy also indicated that school lunch programs are constantly under attack, along with costly special education programs. As expenses rise, funding sources become more limited, making budgets impossibly tight, he said.
For example, the property tax cap limit increase for Kingston schools is currently $1.3 million. “Our increase in health insurance costs alone is projected to be $3 million,” Shaughnessy said. “There’s a big gap, and that’s what we’re all here for.”
Kathleen Tobin, a former member of the New Paltz Central School District
Board of Education, urged parents to opt-out of “unfair state mandated
testing,” which she said skews grades and funding for public schools.
She also bashed “harmful” state and federal policies which
discourage graduates from entering the educational sector.
Protesters peacefully marched down from Academy Green to the high school, accompanied by a police escort. A Resist and Rebuild public education forum will be held Thursday March 9, 6:30 p.m., at the SUNY New Paltz Lecture Center.
