Fight for Full City Funding of CUNY FY2024

PSC Statement on Mayor’s Executive Budget; Cutting CUNY Undermines New York’s Communities, Workforce, and Economy.  

In an April 27, 2023 response to Mayor Eric Adams’ Executive Budget, PSC President James Davis wrote “As a double graduate who has marched with students and staff to oppose past budget cuts to our university, Mayor Adams knows the life-changing, economy-boosting power of the City University of New York.  CUNY graduates strengthen the City’s workforce and contribute $4.2 billion annually to the state economy, most of it here in our city.  No university system lifts more students and families out of poverty and into the middle class than CUNY. Yet the mayor has proposed repeated rounds of unsustainable cuts to CUNY….”  Read the full statement.

Strong Support from the City Council

The NYC Council’s  Fiscal Year 2024 Preliminary Budget Response calls on the mayor to restore and baseline $36.9 million in funding for programmatic initiatives and $10.5 million in funding for Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE), a program shown to increase graduation rates. It also calls for a new $35.5 million investment to hire 264 new academic advisors and $5.8 million to restore and expand CUNY Reconnect, a program that supported the re-enrollment of more than 16,000 former students in CUNY colleges.

In his statement about the budget response, PSC President James Davis said, “the Council wants exactly what CUNY needs.” Read the full statement.

Before the mayor’s third round of PEGs 

In addition to the PEG cuts, funding is not continued in the Mayor’s Preliminary  for the following programs:

• CUNY Reconnect ($4.4 million);
• Developmental Education Programs ($2.0 million)
• Food Insecurity ($0.9 million)
• Child Care ($0.6 million)
• Vallone Scholarships ($15.8 million)
• Research Institutes ($4.5 million)
• Citizenship Now ($3.0 million)
• CUNY School of Labor ($1.2 million)
• CUNY Diversity Incubator ($0.5 million)
• City College STEM ($1 million)
• Technology Incubators ($1.4 million)
• Care Workers for our Future ($0.4 million)

Actions

• Send a letter: Write to Mayor Adams and your NYC Council Member. Tell them to reject tuition hikes and additional cuts to CUNY.

Resources

• PSC’s NYC Budget Priorities 
• PSC Testimony on the NYC Preliminary Budget for Higher Education, March 14, 2023

Timeline

• 5/11/2023: Elected Leaders Join Hundreds of PSC CUNY Members & Students Rallying for Investment in CUNY
• 5/9/2023: March and Rally at CSI for a fully funded CUNY
• 5/8/2023: Testimony from Board of Trustees Queens Borough Hearing
• 4/27/2023: PSC Statement on Mayor’s Executive Budget
• 4/4/2023: Statement on the NYC Council Budget Response
• 3/20/2023: PSC Members Testify at the Board of Trustees Brooklyn Borough Hearing
• 03/7/2023: The Peoples Budget Campaign Launch

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Published: March 20, 2023 | Last Modified: May 18, 2023