The Times Fernanda Santos profiles five New York City schools to give us some lessons in austerity. Though there are not a lot of new ideas ? lay off teachers, lay off teachers, lay off teachers ? the fact that principals have some autonomy about how they tighten their belts is good news.? With budgets cut over two percent, Santos writes,
To make ends meet, principals have trimmed after-school programs, shrunk their support staffs and tightened their schools' use of things like printing paper, markers and Post-it notes. They have dismissed coaches who used to help teachers prepare for their lessons, and teachers whose salaries they could no longer pay.
The best part of the story is the sense of ownership of the challenge on display. Everyone is upbeat! Principals and their assistants are rolling up their sleeves and getting back into the classroom and the hallways.? "I don't need anyone walking the halls," says one principal. "I can do that myself." If they can keep the kids learning, we may be on the right track. And New York continues to show us how to transform a school system into a system of schools.? Hopefully, these principals all have copies of Stretching the School Dollar.
--Peter Meyer, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow
