Snap Schott Issue 3

By Paul Kane
Thursday, January 29, 2009; Page A01
Washington Post Staff Writer

The House approved an $819 billion stimulus package on a near party-line vote yesterday, a plan breathtaking in size and scope that President Obama hopes to make the cornerstone of his efforts to resuscitate the staggering economy.

Obama engaged in an all-out lobbying push for the bill, which is among the most expensive pieces of legislation ever to move through Congress, and marked a big victory for his presidency a little more than a week into his term. He will now turn his attention to the Senate, where Democrats are scheduled to begin debate on the measure on Monday and the price tag is likely to reach $900 billion.

Larger than the combined total cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan so far, the two-year stimulus plan would provide up to $1,000 per year in tax relief for most families, dramatically increase funding for alternative energy production, and direct more than $300 billion in aid to states to help rebuild schools, provide health care to the poor and reconstruct highways and bridges.

But Obama's personal salesmanship effort failed to secure a single Republican supporter for the spending plan, which passed on a 244 to 188 vote. Just a day after the president spent more than an hour behind closed doors at the Capitol seeking their support, all 177 House Republicans opposed the measure, arguing that it would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on initiatives that would do little to stimulate the economy. Eleven Democrats opposed the bill.

In a statement issued after the early evening vote, Obama said he was "grateful" for the House action.

"There are many numbers in this plan," he said in the statement. "But out of all these numbers, there is one that matters most to me: This recovery plan will save or create more than 3 million new jobs over the next few years."

While Obama made no mention of the unanimous Republican opposition, a top adviser immediately warned of the political fallout GOP lawmakers could face from constituents struggling in tough economic times.

"There will be people in districts all over the country that will wonder why, when there's a good bill to get the economy moving again, while we still seem to be playing political gotcha," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in an interview.

Some moderate Republicans who opposed the bill left open the chance of supporting the final version if the White House and Senate address their concerns about spending. And Democrats remain hopeful of securing a more bipartisan result in the Senate, where committee action has driven up the cost as the amount of tax relief has increased, something Republicans have demanded before they will consider offering their support.

In addition to other tweaks to the tax portion of the package, the Senate Finance Committee added a $70 billion fix to the alternative-minimum tax to the chamber's version of the bill, a provision aimed at preventing the tax from being applied to middle-class households, pushing the total cost to at least $890 billion.

The Finance Committee also added a provision that would reduce taxes on businesses that buy back their own debt at a discount. Senators in both parties were readying amendments to make further changes, including a proposal that would dramatically reduce taxes, from 35 percent to 5.25 percent, on corporate profits earned abroad and brought back to the United States.

Advocates say that the measure, sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.), would prompt companies to "repatriate" hundreds of billions of dollars, money that could be used to expand domestic operations and save jobs. Supporters estimate it could increase federal tax revenue by as much as $40 billion.

Housing advocates complained that the package would not provide $10 billion for a trust fund to build affordable housing that was created last summer but never funded. Labor unions complained that the plan would put too little money toward construction projects to create jobs. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce complained that the measure would do too little to relieve the tax burden on businesses struggling to avoid layoffs.

But such additions might increase the already staggering cost of the legislation, which could risk solidifying Republican opposition and losing more votes among the fiscally moderate coalition of Blue Dog Democrats.

By early afternoon, House Republicans knew they would be united in their opposition to the plan, aides said. As he walked to the chamber floor for the 6 p.m. vote, Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) touched his finger and thumb together, flashing a zero to indicate the number of GOP votes the bill would receive.

Democrats noted that they allowed Republican amendments, both at the committee level and on the House floor, a more open process than most legislative fights conducted over the past two years. After meeting with Republicans, Obama coaxed his fellow Democrats into dropping some controversial spending provisions that even they acknowledged would do little to create jobs, including funding for a family-planning program and $200 million to refurbish the Mall.

But Republicans continued to press to have more of their proposals included. Rep. Eric Cantor (Va.), the House minority whip tasked with rounding up the opposition, said the vote delivered a message to Obama: "Tell Speaker Pelosi to begin to work with us."

Some Democrats questioned the need for Obama to continue pursuing a bipartisan victory on the final product if Republicans were entrenched in their opposition.

"I think the president went the distance, and I applaud him," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.). "Everything was done to be inclusive in this process."

Undeterred, Obama greeted Boehner and other congressional leaders, along with their spouses, at the White House last night for a bipartisan cocktail party -- the fourth time GOP leaders have had a private audience with Obama in the past three weeks.

The stimulus debate comes on the heels of congressional action in mid-January that released $350 billion to Obama's new Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, for use in the effort to free up the credit markets, part of the massive financial rescue package approved last fall. Held days before Obama was sworn in as president, that vote also fell largely on party lines, as just six Senate Republicans joined 46 Democrats in supporting the release of the money.

Hours before yesterday's House vote, Obama told a group of about 100 business leaders that Congress must not delay efforts to restart the economy and put people back to work.

At a White House gathering this morning, he said: "The businesses that are shedding jobs to stay afloat, they cannot afford inaction or delay. The workers who are returning home to tell their husbands and wives and children that they no longer have a job, and all those who live in fear that theirs will be the next job cut -- they need help now."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) heralded the legislation -- $275 billion in tax cuts and almost $545 billion in domestic spending -- as the first down payment on Obama's pledge, made in his inaugural address, to provide "bold and swift" action to revive an economy that is losing more than 500,000 jobs a month, including 65,000 layoffs announced just this week.

"He said he wanted action, bold and swift, and that is exactly what we are doing," Pelosi told reporters before the vote.

A $475 billion Republican alternative, which focused heavily on reducing individual and business taxes, failed.

After Democrats initially estimated their plan would cost $825 billion, the Congressional Budget Office announced this week that the total cost was $816 billion, with about 65 percent of that amount expected to be spent by September 2010. During debate, lawmakers added $3 billion for mass-transit programs.

School districts, colleges, and early-childhood programs would receive some $125 billion in one-time emergency aid under legislation aimed at jump-starting the sluggish economy, agreed to by the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee today.

Republican members voiced misgivings that the package was crafted without GOP input and would have little immediate impact on the dismal economy. Still, the committee approved the $365 billion measure—the spending portion of an $825 billion stimulus bill—by a vote of 21-9. Some moderate Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, crossed over to vote with the Democrats.

The education provisions in the bill are similar to those in legislation approved by the House Appropriations Committee last week. That measure is slated for floor action tomorrow.

During the markup, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawaii, the committee’s chairman, sought to alleviate concerns expressed by some congressional Republicans that it would be tough to scale back the record increases in the bill for programs, including special education and Title I aid for underprivileged children, after the economic outlook brightens.

“The funding provided here is targeted,” Sen. Inouye said. “Increases for programs as varied as food stamps, loan guarantees, and education, for example, are being made available with the clear understanding that the level of resources provided in this measure are to respond to this crisis and will not be sustained in the future.”

But on a day when President Barack Obama made an unusual presidential visit to Capitol Hill to talk with Republicans on behalf of the stimulus package, a number of GOP lawmakers argued that the bill would add to the federal deficit without providing an immediate jolt to the economy.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., a deficit hawk and the former chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, contended that the bill doesn’t do enough to quickly spur economic growth.

“My main concern with this bill is that so much of it is not structured around creating stimulus for the immediate future,” Sen. Gregg said. “Stimulus bills need to be targeted and they need to be temporary. … [This bill] builds dramatically the baseline of the government, which I think is going to be a problem for President Obama” in the future.

Increased Education Aid

Like the House version, the Senate bill would provide an extra $13 billion spread over fiscal years 2009 and 2010 for Title I grants and for students in special education. The Title I program received about $13.9 billion in fiscal 2008, while the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which governs special education, received $10.9 billion.

And, as in the House version, $39 billion in local and state aid would be provided to help schools and colleges avert layoffs and programmatic cuts. There would also be $15 billion for incentive grants for states that met certain performance measures.

Another $25 billion in state and local aid would be more flexible. It could be used for state and local priorities, such as public safety, but could also go to support schools and colleges.

The Senate bill also includes one-time provisions on “maintenance of effort,” the requirement that states provide a certain amount of their own funding for programs based on past years’ allocations. The one-time provisions are intended to give states and districts additional flexibility on how to spend the education funds, Democratic congressional staff members say.

The Senate bill also includes $16 billion to repair, renovate, and construct public schools to make them more energy efficient and expand access to information technology. That’s a little more than the $14 billion in the House measure. The measure would also appropriate $1 billion for education technology, such as classroom computers.

The bill would allocate $100 million for the Teacher Quality Enhancement grants, which help foster partnerships between districts and teachers’ colleges to train new educators. The House bill would provide the same amount for that program, but would also provide $200 million for the Teacher Incentive Fund, which doles out grants to districts to develop alternative pay programs. The Senate bill does not include new money for the TIF.

The Senate measure also would appropriate $2.1 billion for the Head Start preschool program and $2 billion for the child-care development block grant.

Though President Obama voiced optimism after meeting with congressional Republicans about the stimulus package, it appears he still has plenty of work to do in that area.

Just yesterday, Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of California, the top Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, lambasted the education provisions in the House bill, saying that much of the money is directed to favored Democratic constituencies, not to economic relief.

“American workers, families, and businesses desperately need an economic-stimulus package. Unfortunately, that’s not what congressional Democrats are offering,” said Rep. McKeon. “Instead, their package is nothing more than a mega-sized supplemental spending bill that will saddle future generations with almost unimaginable debt.”

Leaders in a handful of school districts are pondering the idea of “front-loading” teacher compensation by paying novices more than they would typically earn under traditional salary schedules.

Boosting new teachers’ salaries, officials in Denver, the District of Columbia, and New York City contend, would increase the applicant pool and help school systems recruit higher-caliber talent. Coupled with other changes designed to improve teacher effectiveness, the practice also could help reduce costly attrition rates among rookies, they say.

“You want to allocate your money in a way that attracts new talent and rewards excellence,” said New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, who has extolled the concept in recent public appearances. “The two things most school systems pay for are longevity and seat time, neither of which has had any proven value.”

The approach taps into a movement by districts and their administrators to align “human capital” elements in the profession—teacher recruitment, compensation, evaluation, and administrative supports—strategically with goals for raising student achievement.

“The bottom line is that [the compensation system] was developed in the era of the rotary phone and the typewriter, and in the era we’re in now, we’re having to think about how to make the money move in different ways,” said Brap Jupp, the senior academic-policy adviser for the 74,000-student Denver district, which recently moved to increase salary incentives for newer teachers.

Research Mismatch

Research on the teacher-quality continuum shows that the learning curve for new teachers is steep but compressed. Teachers tend to improve rapidly during the first three to five years on the job. A teacher’s performance continues to improve after that point, but at a much less dramatic rate.

Traditional salary schedules, on the other hand, base pay on seniority and education level. Teachers’ wages begin low and increase slowly over time, topping out only after many years of service.

Economists who study teacher compensation say most salary schedules, combined with defined-benefit pension plans, tilt compensation strongly toward veteran teachers regardless of those teachers’ effectiveness at raising student achievement.

Low starting pay, they argue, discourages talented individuals who might otherwise consider teaching from giving it a try. And lock-step salary increases can drive away young teachers who feel they aren’t earning what they are worth.

The driving idea behind front-loaded pay systems is to bring the teacher-development and -compensation trajectories together, thus giving beginning teachers the opportunity to win high salaries sooner, and by extension, improving districts’ ability to recruit and retain teachers.

“The advantage of having a bigger applicant pool is that there’s more cream to skim off the top,” said Jacob L. Vigdor, a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private, nonprofit research organization with headquarters in Cambridge, Mass.

The tricky part lies in how exactly to accomplish the goal of overhauling the salary schedule.

The 3.2 million-member National Education Association supports one approach: reducing the number of salary “steps” to 10 or fewer.

“If you stop the salary schedule earlier, you have more opportunities to improve the schedule itself, and more money to put toward the beginning teachers themselves, so the step costs don’t take them up,” said Bill Raabe, the director of collective bargaining and member advocacy for the NEA. The savings, he said, could also be directed to incentives for teachers who take on tougher assignments.

In a recent article in the journal Education Next, Mr. Vigdor suggested that higher salaries for new teachers should be paired with an overhaul of the costly practice of putting teachers with advanced education degrees into a higher salary tier. Little research correlates advanced degrees in education, by themselves, with improved teaching effectiveness.

Such increases, Mr. Vigdor said in an interview, should be granted only to teachers who complete master’s-degree and professional-development programs with objective evidence showing, on average, they make teachers more effective.

Putting It All Together

Denver’s ProComp initiative is a complex compensation system combining a set base pay with bonuses based on teaching in high-need schools, raising student achievement, and taking part in professional development. Begun in 2004, it was among the first large-scale functioning alternatives to the traditional salary schedule. But by 2008, district leaders found that it suffered from some of the same problems.

“What we realized, partly at the union’s prompting, was that we are least competitive in the early and mid-years of a teacher’s career,” said Mr. Jupp, who was a union representative during ProComp’s birth and has helped lead the initiative.

Data from the first iteration of the program showed that one in four teachers, on average, in the first three years of teaching, left the district, while one in 10 teachers between the fourth and seventh years left.

After extensive negotiations with the Denver Classroom Teachers’ Association, school system officials raised the starting salary by 3 percent and also increased bonuses for teachers who take positions in high-need subjects, hard-to-staff schools, or who raise student achievement. Now, an average starting teacher can make about $7,000 in bonuses, for a starting salary of $42,000.

The higher salaries came at the cost of the potential salary earnings of more-experienced teachers. Teachers with more than 14 years of service, for instance, earn a one-off bonus for participating in certain kinds of professional development. But that activity no longer builds their base pay, as is the case for younger colleagues.

Crucially, Denver’s ProComp incentives are based on absolute dollar amounts—an approach that differs from across-the-board pay raises. Such raises are proportional to teachers’ current salaries, therefore concentrating more money in the hands of the veterans who already earn the most.

Political Challenges

Examples such as Denver’s are few and far between, partly because changing salary schedules without alienating veteran teachers can be difficult to do in a budget-neutral way, stakeholders say.

“It’s simply more costly if more people are reaching higher levels of pay earlier on,” said James R. Carlson, the UniServ director for the Kettle Moraine, Wis., local of the NEA-affiliated Wisconsin Education Association Council. UniServ staff members provide bargaining expertise and other services to local affiliates.

“You’re faced with this problem in that you’ve got all these veteran teachers who are nearing retirement,” he said. “You can give them no raises and front-load the settlement so the entry-level salaries go up, [but] it becomes difficult to ratify that.”

Denver had more maneuvering room than most districts in that ProComp, which is annually financed at $25 million in extra property taxes, had millions of surplus dollars in its account. Even then, the new-teacher-pay element was among the hardest for district and union leaders to agree on, said Kim Ursetta, the president of the DCTA, which favored an across-the-board increase.

The union didn’t oppose the idea of offering new teachers higher salaries, Ms. Ursetta said, but the loss of base-building incentives was troubling to members who had been promised that feature when they elected to join ProComp. “There’s definitely some resentment about it,” she said.

Teachers’ union composition has also been a subtext in the 78,000-student District of Columbia schools, another school system considering a proposal for front-loading pay. Michelle A. Rhee, the schools chancellor, last year recommended allowing new hires the chance to earn cash bonuses that would raise the starting salary of teachers demonstrating effectiveness to $78,000 from a starting salary of about $42,000.

The plan garnered attention nationwide, but was never brought to a vote by the Washington Teachers’ Union, after veteran teachers decried a provision that would require them to give up their tenure for a year in exchange for the opportunity to win the bonuses.

Publicly, Ms. Rhee has said support for her proposal does not break easily along generational lines.

George Parker, the president of the WTU, said all teachers, not just new ones, should be eligible for higher salaries.

He added, “Clearly, the sustainability over time [of higher salaries] has not been established,” referring to Ms. Rhee’s plan to pay for the raises with private-foundation grants.

Opportunities Await?

There is little evidence yet to back up claims about the effects of front-loaded compensation and retooled salary schedules on applicant pools and student achievement.

Still, officials such as New York City’s Mr. Klein argue that the time is ripe for experimentation.

As part of a reauthorized No Child Left Behind Act, he said, the federal government could offer incentive money to districts and localities that agree to rethink teacher-compensation systems.

Mr. Klein demurred when asked whether he would pursue such changes to New York City’s salary schedule in the future, saying only that responding to the state’s financial crisis—New York state will face a $13.7 billion budget shortfall in 2010 and state aid to public education is expected to fall by 3.3 percent—will probably be the top issue on the bargaining table. The 1 million-student district’s current contract with the teachers’ union expires Oct. 31.

But even in a time of tight budgets, districts could be more innovative in linking pay to human-capital strategies, said Tim Daly, the president of the New Teacher Project, a nonprofit organization that trains and places novice teachers and supports changes to teacher-compensation systems.

“Everyone on the surface agrees there are variations in performance,” Mr. Daly said. “It seems like we can do some really interesting t
hings to accelerate or decelerate progress up or down the salary scale.”

For example, he said, as a way of encouraging poor performers to leave the profession and of freeing up money for other incentives, districts could work to improve evaluations and withhold step raises from teachers who are repeatedly deemed ineffective.

Mr. Raabe of the NEA agreed that district and union leaders alike fail to take advantage of opportunities lying dormant in contracts.

“I can tell you there are hundreds, thousands of contracts that have language in them that says a step increase can be withheld for ‘just cause,’ and usually that is linked to performance,” he said. “Is it often implemented? Not that I’m aware of.”

Education and Training

As Passed By the Senate Appropriations Committee

In order to compete in the 21st century, Americans must have a well-educated workforce, capable of adapting to an ever-changing economic environment. Investing in education now will ensure that the next generation of American workers is ready and able to meet the challenge of global competition. In the near-term, millions of workers have seen their jobs disappear, and find themselves unable to match their skill sets with existing opportunities. Providing job training in new and expanding fields will help to lower the unemployment rate and help today’s workers better compete against foreign competition. Highlights include:

Top line spending of approximately $125 Billion

Education:
• $39 billion to local school districts and public colleges and universities distributed through existing State and federal formulas.

• $15 billion to states as incentive grants as a reward for meeting key performance measures.

• $25 billion to states for other high-priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include education.

• Title I: $13 billion to help close the achievement gap and enable disadvantaged students to reach their potential.

• Special Education/IDEA: $13 billion to increase the Federal share of special education services to its highest level ever.

• Pell Grants: $13.9 billion to increase the Pell Grant maximum award and pay for increases in program costs resulting from increased eligibility and higher Pell Grant awards.

ALBANY — If Gov. David Paterson's proposed cuts to schools are enacted, there will be layoffs of hundreds of teachers, larger classes and a reduction in after-school programs, educators, advocates and union leaders said at a budget hearing Wednesday.

The governor has recommended $20.7 billion in school aid, $2.5 billion less than funding was projected to be in 2009-10. At $20.7 billion, the state would spend $698 million less than the current year. School districts would receive reductions of between 3 percent and 13 percent, depending on their wealth.

The state's economic problems — it faces a potential $15 billion budget deficit for 2009-10 — are interfering with a four-year plan to boost education aid by more than $7 billion. The plan was adopted in 2007 after many years of litigation over education equity and funding for New York City schools. Its purpose is to increase funding in high-poverty school districts.

Major actions in Paterson's proposal include eliminating $28 million for teacher centers and $7 million for the teacher/mentor intern program, in which veteran teachers help beginning teachers. The governor wants to eliminate $7 million for after-school programs and $13 million for libraries.

"I think that today's hearing shows that the governor's budget proposal would have an unbelievably dramatic impact on schoolchildren unless the Legislature says no to the education cuts," said Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education. "You're talking about thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of layoffs around the state."

Yonkers has predicted the layoff of at least 600 teachers and aides, and Rochester has announced 500 possible layoffs. The Greece school district has also announced that it may need to cut 100 jobs.

Lawmakers have the final say on the budget, which they are supposed to finalize by March 31. The Legislature usually adds more education funding than is in the governor's budget.

The governor's budget would reduce aid to Rochester schools by $10 million, which would result in a projected budget gap of $61 million for 2009-10, according to Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard, who was not at the hearing but submitted testimony.

Good morning Chairman Kruger, Chairman Farrell, and Vice-chairwoman Krueger. First, I’d like to congratulate the new chair of the Senate Finance Committee and the Vice-chair on your recent appointments. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to comment on the 2009-10 Executive Budget Request. I am joined by our Chief Operating Officer Photeine Anagnostopoulos.

There’s no way for me to sugarcoat our budget situation. As economic conditions deteriorate, New York City schools will have to cut approximately $1.4 billion from our budget in the next school year. We project that this will force our schools to let go of roughly 15,000 school-based personnel, predominantly educators, in the next year.

We must do everything in our power to protect our schools and keep our country’s financial crisis from turning into a crisis in our classrooms. To that end, I know you want to work together this year as partners on behalf of our kids.

In today’s testimony, I’ll describe our budget situation and then discuss six specific ways you can help to make this tough time more tolerable for our schools and students.

OUR BUDGET SITUATION

The Governor’s Executive Budget Proposal represents a real cut of $700 million for New York City schools for the upcoming school year. This total includes a $306 million reduction from this year’s funding levels and $97 million from a shift in costs from the state to the city in mandated pre-k special education, The Governor has also proposed eliminating the State’s commitment to give New York City a $293 million increase under the Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement. For this school year, there is a proposal to shift $84 million of costs in pre-Kindergarten special education.

All together, between the $700 million cut for next school year from the State, the City’s $500 million cut, and $200 million in uncovered increases in nondiscretionary costs—due to growth in labor prices and special education mandates—New York City schools face a hole of $1.4 billion for the 2009-10 school year.

As the economy has weakened, we have implemented four separate cuts in the last 12 months. As we plan our budget for the next year, the State cut will bring that total number of reductions to five—removing a total of $1.9 billion from our school system in just over a year.

We have worked hard in the last year to shield schools from budget hardship. Between City FY08 and City FY09, we reduced administrative spending by 14%, compared to a 4% reduction in school budgets. This dramatic administrative reduction followed a five-year effort to slash bureaucratic spending that sent more than $350 million in savings to schools and classrooms. Today, the DOE’s administrative costs make up just 3% of our overall budget.

Also nearly half of our $21 billion budget cannot be reduced because of fixed costs like pensions, debt service, special education mandates, energy, and leases. We have $11 billion that are available for reductions, but 90% of those funds are tied up in compensation.

What does this mean? It means we have no choice but to cut back on core school operations to fill this year’s budget hole. As a result, the New York City Department of Education’s overall budget for the 2009-10 school year will drop by 8% while the schools’ total budgets excluding federal aid, where we are able to make cuts, will drop by 18% .

The impact of the cut’s size is exacerbated by the restrictive nature of school funding. For example, the Governor’s Deficit Reduction Assessment (DRA) would allow a New York City school’s Contracts for Excellence (C4E) money to be cut by only 5% while the rest of the school’s budget would be cut by significantly more than 18%. The effective result is that schools with a lot of C4E money experience smaller cuts compared to schools with little or no C4E money. Effectively, the Governor’s proposal would transfer more than $70 million worth of cuts from supplemental Contracts-funded programs to our core instructional services.

If President Obama’s proposed Federal Stimulus package comes through, the situation will be better, but still very tight, and many disparities would remain because a significant portion of these Federal funds will be restricted in terms of how they can be distributed and are largely tied to Title I and special education.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

There are six ways you can help us to minimize the impact of this situation on our students:

Give each school more flexibility to spend resources on the core instructional services that students need.
Help us make school cuts more even, so some schools aren’t saddled with even worse burdens.
Enable New York City to use pre-Kindergarten funds for full-day pre-K.
Do not allow a budget cut in the middle of this school year by stopping the $84 million pre-K special education cost shift.
Implement special education mandate relief.
Support the Governor’s pension reform proposal and eliminate the Board of Education Retirement System (BERS).

First, at a time when funds are scarce, it is critical that we give principals the flexibility they need to spend their resources on the core instructional services that students need.

Because the Contracts for Excellence law restricts how much money schools can cut from “Contracts” programs, principals will soon be in a position of needing to eliminate core instructional services while maintaining supplementary programs. Many of these supplementary programs are valuable and important, but they are not more important than having teachers in our classrooms. This is not an abstract problem. It will affect real schools and real students.

Take Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay High School as an example. Sheepshead Bay receives the vast majority of its funding, about 88%, from City tax levy dollars, and approximately 97% of those dollars are tied up in personnel costs. There is simply no way Principal Reesa Levy could absorb over a 18% budget cut without reducing staff. She estimates she could have to lay off at least 10 teachers to balance her budget. As a result, she could no longer provide the same level of support for her students, many of whom are at-risk for dropping out. The school also receives more than $1.5 million in C4E money. Principal Levy says she would have to use those dollars to continue to fund after-school or enrichment programs at a time when she’d be forced to lay off social studies and English teachers.

At IS 231 in Queens, Principal Emmanuel Lubin is in a similar situation. Close to 90% of his budget is tax levy dollars, and all but about 2% of those dollars go to paying teachers and other school employees. Mr. Lubin would have to lay off several teachers in order to have enough money to meet the budget cuts and operate. IS 231 also receives about $493,000 in Contracts money. Last year, the school used some of that money to hire a coach and mentor for his newly hired teachers. Under the current scenario, the school could be forced to fire the new teachers the mentor and coach were hired to help but, under Contracts regulations, he would have to continue to pay for the mentoring program or some other supplemental program.

You can help to solve this problem by changing specific sections of the contracts law.

Today, as I said in my introduction, the DRA allows principals to cut C4E spending by only 5% in FY10. At least under decreasing budgets, principals should be afforded the flexibility to distribute the funds to the programs and activities that are most needed in their classrooms. In FY11, the Contracts bill requires that spending on Contracts programs return to school year 2008-09 levels , even if we do not see a return in funding. This is not fair to principals because they will probably be forced to spend money on supplementary programs while laying off more teachers or further reducing other core services.

Second, it’s important for you to help us make school cuts more even, so some schools aren’t saddled with unmanageable burdens.

Just as schools need flexibility to spend money on the core services that students need, we need more flexibility to distribute money—and reductions—more evenly to schools. Today, some schools are funded almost entirely with unrestricted City tax levy dollars. Others are funded with upwards of 40% of their budget from restricted dollars like Title I or Contracts for Excellence. Without more flexibility to allocate money to schools, the schools with more unrestricted aid will face cuts of 20% to their budgets excluding federal aid. Schools with a large portion of their dollars coming from C4E and other restricted aid will see reductions as low as 12%. We should not allow arbitrary funding formulas to mitigate the burden on some schools while harming others.

For the 2009-10 school year, you can help alleviate this by lifting the distribution requirements of the C4E law. In the years after, we need to be treated the same as other districts in New York State. You can do this by changing the maintenance of effort requirements and by increasing our inflation factor. Maintenance of Effort regulations in the Contracts law treat New York City unfairly compared to other districts in the State. Maintenance for other districts is capped at 35% of their C4E funds while New York City is capped at 25%, or $30 million, whichever is lower. In the current school year, for instance, we have an effective 8% cap, or $30 million on $385 million of C4E funds.

Today, our inflation factor is the lowest in the State. This becomes even more important given that the Governor’s proposal calls for slowing down the phase in of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement. Given that the inflation factor defines the size of unrestricted aid, a smaller inflation factor on a smaller dollar amount means a significantly smaller amount of dollars to use to restore the schools’ instructional programs and personnel. If we received more unrestricted aid from the State and less C4E aid, we would be able to more evenly distribute the burden on schools.

Giving school systems and school leaders more flexibility in how they can use their budgets is not the same as handing over a blank check. New York State and City are already monitoring how well schools are doing and holding them accountable for their results. Our accountability system ensures that the lowest performing students receive the resources they need to improve and succeed. This means that as principals move resources, there are measures in place to ensure they will do so equitably with a concern for all of their students. In any case, I see no justification for a policy that requires us to cut some schools by 20% and some by 12% or a policy that forces principals to fire teachers while maintaining supplementary educational programs.

The third way you can help us is to enable us to use a portion of Universal Pre-Kindergarten funds for full-day pre-K.

We can use universal pre-K funding only for half-day programs, even though there isn’t enough demand for these programs. Especially as parents work longer hours in this hard economic time to support their families, we must be able to provide full-day pre-K programs. We cannot expect our families to cover the cost of childcare. And—try as we might—and let me assure you we have tried—we cannot force more people into half-day programs. We need to be able to use the funds for full-day pre-K in order to serve our most disadvantaged students.

Fourth, do not allow an $84 million pre-K special education cost shift in the middle of the current school year when there is no money to fill the hole.

I want to draw your attention to one element of the Governor’s budget that we literally cannot operationalize. He proposes a shift in special education pre-Kindergarten costs from the State to the Counties during the current fiscal year. New York City is five counties and a school district, so the shift comes directly out of our school budget. Because of the way we are required by state law to do our budgeting, this would mean $84 million would be cut from this year’s school budget. This means that we would have to cut programs that are literally happening as we speak—as well as staff on the job right now.

The Governor’s proposed education budget recognizes the extreme difficulty of making any cuts to the current school year at this point in time. The changes to the proposed education law that would enact the governor’s proposed budget has a provision that does not allow the Regents to require implementation of unfunded required programs if the requirement was established after the school district’s budget was set. This same framework should apply to the Governor’s proposal on pre-k special education.

Fifth, you should urge the Board of Regents to relieve some special education mandates. This wouldn’t cost the State anything and would put more money into our classrooms where it could help our students.

We should urge the Regents to provide districts with relief from State mandates that are not required by the Federal IDEA. The Legislature should work with the Regents to eliminate the requirement for an arbitrary minimum level of special education services such as speech therapy and the maximum student caseloads for special education service providers. In addition, other districts around the State have the ability to add between one and three students to classes with poor attendance. New York City is not allowed to do this. This exception should be lifted. These decisions should be based on the individual needs of students and schools rather than across-the-board rules. I want to be clear that I am not talking about diminishing services that students need. Rather, we need local flexibility to make decisions that will improve student outcomes.

As the Mayor said, you should support the Governor’s proposal for a new pension tier. This action would save taxpayers more than $7.4 billion over the next 20 years. Another smart idea that would save money without costing the State is to eliminate the Board of Education Retirement System and merge its members into the New York City Employees Retirement System and the Teachers Retirement System.

CONCLUSION

Why is it important to take these steps?

What’s happening in our economy is not our kids’ fault and they should not bear the brunt of it.

In 2002, you granted the Mayor control of the City’s public schools, and we thank you for that. Since then, our students have made historic academic gains in math and reading, and our graduation rate, which was stagnant for decades, has jumped by more than 10 points (or 20 percent). More than 11,000 additional students are now graduating each year with skills they need to compete in the 21st century economy. Our neediest students have made the largest gains.

We—all of us—want to keep this progress going and to do everything possible to shield our students from potential harm. Please join me in making our difficult budget situation as tolerable as possible for our students. The best possible solution is to eliminate the reductions to the largest extent possible. We support the Regents in their call for restoration of funds.

However, I understand the State’s current financial predicament and that is why I have come here today with a variety of suggestions that won’t cost the State and taken together would significantly help our bottom line.

Thank you for your time and attention and I welcome your questions.

By JAMES PARROTT
First published: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 - Albany Times Union

Both fairness and sound economics should play a role in closing New York's budget gap.

Gov. David Paterson's budget proposal shows that the top 5 percent of New York taxpayers had 59 percent of all income in the state in 2006. That's one and a half times the combined income of everyone else. However, if you put this together with the income numbers from 2002, and with the budget's projections for 2009, a curious picture emerges.

Even allowing for some slippage in high incomes in the recession, all of the income growth between 2002 and 2009 will go to the wealthiest 5 percent. The other 95 percent of households taken together will have about the same income this year as in 2002 (and that's without adjusting for inflation.) The incomes of the top 5 percent will have doubled over that period. That's a $200 billion income gain.

That's a staggering set of figures, even to those of us who have been shining a spotlight on income polarization for years. No income growth for 95 percent, double for a handful.

New York City could receive at least $3.4 billion in federal aid as part of an economic stimulus bill being considered by Congress, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other officials announced during a news conference at City Hall on Sunday night.

The aid would be financed through a federal stimulus package, which President Obama has named the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, that is expected to be as large as $825 billion.

New York City’s slice of the package could include $1.8 billion in Medicaid savings and at least $1.6 billion in education aid, officials said on Sunday night
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At the news conference, Mayor Bloomberg, Senator Charles E. Schumer and Representative Charles B. Rangel said the aid would help to stem a growing city deficit that is estimated to rise to $11.3 billion over the next two years. More specifically, the bulk of the money would help defer the cost of the city’s Medicaid contribution and would also be earmarked for building and repairing city schools and other education-related initiatives, they said.

“It’s not going to solve all of our problems, not by a long shot,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “It’s not going to eliminate all of the tough budget decisions we still have to make. But it will go a long ways toward avoiding some of the most drastic options that we would otherwise be facing.”

The bill includes legislative provisions that would ensure that the city receive added financial relief for Medicaid programs. New York is one of 17 states where local governments share the Medicaid burden with the state, officials said. New York counties contribute about $7 billion to the state’s Medicaid program, roughly 32 percent of the nonfederal share of the costs.

In echoing the mayor’s statements, Senator Schumer said of the bill, “It’s not a panacea, rather a silver lining in the dark economic cloud looming over our city and our metropolitan area.”

Across the nation, the bill is expected to distribute about $86.6 billion in Medicaid relief as well as $40 billion in education aid, officials said.

The stimulus package is expected to head to the floor of the House of Representatives this week, and the Obama administration is pushing to have the bill passed by the middle of next month.

State Senate President Therese Murray and other Senate leaders accused Governor Deval Patrick yesterday of crafting spending plans that are too speculative, too reliant on federal aid, and do not cut deeply enough, striking a note of discord among Beacon Hill Democrats a day after Patrick unveiled emergency spending cuts and proposed a variety of new taxes
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Murray criticized the governor for including revenue that would flow from new taxes the governor is pushing but that have not been approved by the Legislature and for relying on federal stimulus money that has yet to be approved by Congress.

"We don't want to count our chickens before they're hatched," Murray said in an interview in her office. "He's based [the budget] on some things that we don't have in hand. That obviously concerns us."

"Last year, he put casino gaming money in there, and we never got casinos," she added. "We're reluctant to put things in there that we don't have in hand."

House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, who spent much of his first day in office holed up in meetings, avoided any criticism of Patrick and appeared open to the $587 million in new revenue proposals put forward by the governor. He also said that the state could not absorb any more cuts than Patrick has already proposed.

"It's very easy for me to take a shot and say, 'Oh, he took too much money here,' " said DeLeo, who is intimately familiar with the state budget from his previous role as House Ways and Means chairman. "But this is a very difficult budget. When we get our shot, there aren't going to be any miracle solutions, no matter who does it. The revenues have to come from somewhere."

DeLeo also said he was "willing and pleased to discuss" a resort casino proposal or installing slot machines at the state's four racetracks, which he said would be "an immediate form of revenue."

That is a big change from his predecessor, Salvatore F. DiMasi, who killed Patrick's plan to license casinos last year. Patrick has not revived his plan this year, but DeLeo's position may give it a prominent place on this year's agenda.

Patrick announced a series of far-reaching plans Wednesday to address the worst economic crisis to hit the state in decades, calling for a range of new taxes on such items as alcohol and soft drinks and higher fees at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. His plan also included deep cuts in local aid, education, and healthcare that will probably trigger layoffs across the state.

But the budget proposal relies heavily on the state's reserve account, with a proposal to drain a total of $913 million from the rapidly shrinking fund. He also put into the budget $1.2 billion from a federal stimulus package that has not yet been approved by Congress.

"He made a lot of assumptions, and you know what they say about assumptions," said Senate majority leader Frederick E. Berry, a Peabody Democrat. "They don't always come true."

But administration officials said that their calculations of federal stimulus money were conservative and that the state could get more money. They also said that if the Legislature didn't want to increase taxes, it could come up with an alternative.

"Federal stimulus had to be a part of this equation, given the enormity of the challenges we are facing," said Cyndi Roy, a Patrick administration spokeswoman. "We're not using these revenues to build our budget. We're using them to prevent calamitous cuts."

But Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos, the top budget writer in the Senate, said the governor did not go far enough in making cuts to the current fiscal year's budget, which could hamstring the state if revenues do not bounce back dramatically next year.

"We were expecting a much larger total cut," Panagiotakos said. "It didn't even break $200 million. We were thinking it would be double that."

State Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill said he was concerned about the governor's reliance on the state reserve fund and criticized his proposals to increase a range of taxes.

"It doesn't help grow the economy if you're taxing restaurants and meals and businesses," Cahill said. "It's not going to help businesses, and it's not going to help cities and towns as much as they think."

By Scot Lehigh
January 30, 2009

IT'S ONE significant step for education reform, one giant leap for Governor Patrick.

This week, the state's CEO acknowledged the obvious: some charter schools are delivering impressive results - and the state needs more of that kind of school.

"We need help closing the achievement gap," Patrick said. "Charter schools have in many cases - not all, but in many cases - been an important element in helping to address the achievement gap."

That message is all the more important because as a candidate courting the teachers unions Patrick had been cool toward charters, saying he wanted to resolve tensions over the funding formula before considering lifting the charter cap. More recently, he had declared that he wanted to focus instead on readiness schools, his charter-lite alternative.

But with the state's fiscal problems stalling his readiness project, on Wednesday the governor gave the idea of more charters his blessing, proposing to lift the charter cap in 50 districts whose students had the lowest performance on the English and math MCAS.

Now, the charter success story has become hard to ignore, particularly since a careful new study concluded that a number of Boston charters had done remarkably well in lifting student achievement.

Still, Patrick deserves credit for being open-minded enough to change direction.

Coincidentally, his charter course correction comes even as Bill Gates has offered a strong endorsement of the innovative academies. Reporting on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's nine-year effort to help create better high schools, Gates, in a letter excerpted in the Washington Post, said that many of the foundation-funded schools hadn't significantly improved student achievement; those tended to be places that hadn't taken radical steps to change their culture, Gates wrote.

"But a few of the schools that we funded achieved something amazing," he wrote. "Almost all of these schools are charter schools that have significantly longer school days than other schools."

Noting that many states have put limits on charter schools, Gates offered this conclusion: "Educational innovation and overall improvement will go a lot faster if the charter school limits and funding rules are changed."

So there's a double dose of good news for charter advocates this week.

But there's also a catch: the conditions Patrick would attach to any new charters.

Charters would be granted only to schools that commit to having four-fifths of their students come from the following demographics: low income, limited English proficient, special education, and dropouts or potential dropouts. New charters would also have to have at least 5 percent more special education or limited English proficient students than the district.

"Our focus in this particular initiative is on the achievement gap," says Secretary of Education Paul Reville. "We are only going to do it where the need is urgent."

But if your child is stuck in an underperforming school, you rightly see the situation as urgent, regardless of whether he or she falls into one of the governor's categories. Given the importance of education, charters should also be an option for those families.

Further, it's hard to see how the governor's desired demographic balancing can be achieved given that charters pick their students through random lotteries. Marc Kenen, executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, offers an interesting counterproposal. To ensure that all students have an equal chance at a charter slot, districts should be required to provide lists of families they serve; charters would be obligated to send information about their school and its enrollment lottery to all those families, and in their primary language.

Finally, the administration has proposed funding changes that do a lot of rearranging to little important purpose.

One effect, however, would be to isolate a significant chunk of charter school money in a single budgetary line item. Proponents worry that would make charter funding a tempting target for charter opponents. I'd dismiss their concerns as overwrought - if charter foes hadn't already staged a legislative ambush on charter funding back in 2004.

But even with those reservations, if the governor is sincere, his proposal marks an important development in the debate.

Governor Deval Patrick, who has consistently opposed raising the cap on the number of charter schools, will dramatically change course in the budget he releases today, allowing for more charters in low-performing districts as long as these new schools try to help the most vulnerable students.

The reversal was fueled by a desire to shrink persistent achievement gaps in those districts, Education Secretary Paul Reville said in an interview with the Globe yesterday afternoon. The new schools would be required to cater primarily to those who traditionally struggle the most: special education students, English language learners, low-income students, and those on the brink of dropping out.

But gaining legislative support for the proposal could be difficult at a time of dwindling state resources; local districts lose a portion of state aid for each student who attends a charter school.

"There are mixed feelings," said Reville, noting that the proposal includes charter school funding revisions that could offer relief to local districts. "There is a lot of sympathy on Beacon Hill for local communities having state aid cut, but there is also sympathy for students experiencing deep achievement gaps."

Charter schools were created as part of the 1993 Education Reform Act as a way to develop new teaching strategies that could be adopted by public schools. The 61 schools operate under looser state regulations than traditional schools, have mostly nonunion teachers, and are run by independent boards that report directly to the state. They have been popular in urban districts among parents and students frustrated with traditional schools, and several charter schools in Boston are among the state's top performers.

But unions and many school districts have fought the charter movement passionately, contending they divert resources from the students in traditional schools. Raising the cap has been a deeply political issue that has frequently divided the Legislature and cropped up as a volatile issue at election time.

Patrick has been steadfastly against raising the cap, making him a target of charter school advocates who chide him for failing to embrace innovation and bowing to demands of the powerful teachers unions. Last summer, when Patrick unveiled his sweeping 10-year overhaul of public education, the governor said he wanted to try a new kind of school - modeled after charters but with union teachers and overseen directly by local districts - before entertaining raising the charter cap. As recently as this month on FM-WTKK, Patrick called the issue of raising the cap "a total red herring" because "we are not at the cap."

The state places a limit on the number of charters allowed as well as limits within individual school districts. While about 60 more charters can still open statewide, many urban districts such as Boston are near the local cap, which limits each school district's spending on charter tuition at 9 percent. The governor's proposal would increase the cap to 12 percent in the 50 lowest performing districts, creating 4,500 new seats as more than 20,000 students statewide are on charter school waiting lists.

If approved by the Legislature, the change would offer the most immediate relief in 12 districts closest to reaching the cap: Boston, Holyoke, Lowell, Fall River, Somerville, Randolph, Salem, Everett, Malden, North Adams, Revere, and Cambridge.

The Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, which would like the cap raised to 20 percent of net school spending, welcomed Patrick's willingness to begin moving in that direction. "It's a huge step forward for education reform," said Marc Kenen, the association's executive director. "It will create more educational opportunities for thousands of students across Massachusetts."

But others denounced it.

"Draining more money from school districts is not productive or helpful," said Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.

Reville said the governor warmed to raising the cap within the last week, as he realized the state's dwindling revenue would reduce the ability to open a new kind of school - known as readiness schools - which would require districts to spend on converting existing schools.

Under the proposal, the new schools would have to enroll 5 percent more special education students and English-language learners than the average for the local school district; 80 percent of the students would have to fall into the four targeted categories.

"We have a sense of urgency to do better with these populations," Reville said.

Although Kenen said he shares the governor's goal of focusing the new schools on those student groups, he questioned how charters could guarantee a certain percentage when charters admit students by lottery.

The association, he said, also objects to a funding change in the proposal that would create a separate pool of money to fund a portion of charter schools instead of diverting state aid directly from the school districts. He said a separate line item could put charters at greater risk of state budget cuts.

Koocher, on the other hand, said the funding change does not go far enough in addressing school district concerns about lost revenue, especially as districts prepare for possible teacher layoffs and school closures.

Despite today’s expected announcement of devastating state budget cuts and probable layoffs, Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration has told department heads they can give some union employees 4 percent pay hikes over the next two years, according to an internal memo obtained by the Herald.

One fiscal watchdog blasted the pay-hike memo, saying any raise during the state’s fiscal meltdown could prove disastrous.

“We really can’t afford any salary increases over the next few years,” said Mike Widmer, executive director of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation. “The next few years are going to be brutal, because we’re going to use up all our reserves and federal money this year.”

In the memo, department heads are told they can raise salaries by a minimum of 1 percent in next years’ budget, and by 3 percent in fiscal year 2011. If revenues exceed $20.3 billion, the memo says, they can add another 1 percent.

Patrick finance spokeswoman Cyndi Roy pointed out that wages already have been frozen for this year.

“Given the economic conditions we face right now, the wages have been frozen this year at a zero percent increase,” Roy said.

The suggested raises were reduced from a 6 percent raise over the next three years and include all new costs, including cost-of-living adjustments or any step raises.

The memo, sent out earlier this month, highlights higher education employees but was also sent to other state departments. Roy didn’t know how many state union employees were covered in the collective bargaining memo.

Roughly 90 percent of the state workers in the executive branch are unionized, according to the state’s human resources Web site.

Widmer predicted extreme cuts the fiscal 2010 budget because of revenues aren’t expected to top $19.5 billion - and that number may be an overestimate by as much as $1 billion, he said.

Telecommunication tax – eliminate a tax exemption for telecommunications companies, which would raise about $50 million.

Last year marked an unforgettable chapter in black leadership, nationally as well as locally.

It was the year that a black man was elected to the highest office of our land. It was the year of intense scrutiny of Boston’s black leaders, not only from the FBI, but also from the mainstream press who pitted black leaders and generations against each other, just when they were poised to unify and rebuild the black community.

Right after Barack Obama was elected president, and City Councilor Chuck Turner and former state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson were charged with bribery, local reporters started asking the question, “Who is the next black leader in Boston?” — as if there were only one to begin with. And to add insult to injury, they painted this “next black leader” as a colorblind young person determined to rule the city by kicking older black leaders to the curb.

In December, the Boston Globe published an article headlined “Insiders seek to recast black politics in Boston,” which highlighted young black leaders and made older black ones seem irrelevant.

Black leadership in this town is far more complicated and nuanced than recent headlines suggest. The local media bring out one “community” photo to publish or, if generous, a few elite blacks to write about, then parade their personae and organizations in front of Boston. The media choose the black community’s next leader, and the resources and power flow abundantly their way.

Blacks play into the “single black leader” mythology, too. We take our cues and leaders from the national scene, from MLK and Malcolm to Jesse and Sharpton, and now Obama. Our national leaders, like our local ones, usually fit an established profile — a religious figure or politician, male, over 40 — and they don’t share the stage at the same time.

Local black clergy and public officials will play a crucial role in shaping the community, but hopefully more than one will get the spotlight this time around. And community, philanthropic, business and college leaders should be recognized for their role in effecting change, too.

Black women are trying to take guns off the street, educate their children and end poverty. They are running community organizations, working out of church basements or organizing local meetings. They aren’t sitting at the “power” table with prominent decision-makers, but they are sitting at the community table getting the work done on a shoestring budget. They don’t get the press, and they certainly don’t get the glory.

On the other hand, talking about the next generation of young black leaders is all the rage, and in the most detrimental ways. The 20- and 30-something black leaders in Boston are taking major roles in civic and social circles, but not by ignoring the legacy of past leaders.

A transfer of knowledge and leadership from black elders to the younger members of the community is under way, but it was happening well before the media turned their attention to Wilkerson and Turner. People of my generation are meeting regularly with this city’s seasoned black leaders to figure out ways to rebuild the black community. We are planting the seeds to launch programs to support emerging black leaders, to encourage black candidates to run for office, to hold public officials accountable and to tackle pressing issues like the struggling economy, education, youth violence, CORI reform and civic engagement.

My generation of leaders will not ignore racial inequality, despite suggestions by some that we are entering a utopian “post-racial” Obama world. Racism is persistent; in comparison to whites, blacks still end up on the bottom of every quality-of-life measure, from education and health outcomes to violence, employment and poverty. No one president is likely to change these conditions, even Obama, who shares my mixed ancestry and good intentions. Institutional racism is a tough nut to crack.

Instead of focusing on one shiny and new black leader, we should be asking who are the black leaders (plural), organizations and coalitions that will come together in this next decade to improve the conditions affecting black people. How can all of us step up in this time of great opportunity and pain to strike a final blow against inequality, poverty and injustice in the black community?

We need a multitude of black leaders from various generations, genders and socioeconomic backgrounds to rebuild this community. We can make bold changes by engaging others to take action and cultivating civic power. We will need to be strategic, collaborative and relevant, and we will need to show results instead of headlines. To do this, we will need resources. At the charitable foundation I lead, Access Strategies Fund, we took a hard look at ourselves and realized that we were not investing in the black community at the level we should. We turned that around, but we need more funders joining us.

In 2009, it will be everyday citizens, activists and funders engaged in captivating campaigns that will make progress for the black community, not just the one or few leaders chosen for us.

Kelly Bates is the executive director of Access Strategies Fund, a charitable foundation that supports organizations with resources to help diverse communities access the democratic process.