I feel like we've turned reporting on the shenanigans in the Big Apple into a weekly event. The latest? Overfunding schools that are slated to close in 2010. Sure, we can't just rip the mats out from under these schools as they head for the exit, but let's not also give them double the average per-pupil student funding. That's right, at least five schools are getting as much as $28,000 per kid . The NYC average is $14,000. According to the NY Post , all of this is due to some funding glitch that creates a lag in budget cuts for schools with declining enrollments to temper the shock. Adlai Stevenson High School in the Bronx, for example, kept an extra $2 million even though student enrollment dropped from last year's 687 to this year's 303. What are these schools doing with the extra dough? Spending it of course--on SMART boards, copies of Obama's memoir Dreams of My Father for the entire school, and a grand piano, to name a few. As one teacher put it, "I have no clue why this is going on." Neither do I.
