CUNY Needs a $198 Million Increase | CUNY Rising Mayoral Forum

PSC leaders are in Albany early this week for the NYSUT Higher Education Policy Council and the Joint Legislative Budget Hearing on Higher Education. They will be lobbying and testifying in support of the PSC’s $198 million state budget platform for CUNY. Enacting the platform would cover year one of a five-year plan to fund the New Deal for CUNY and fill other critical budget needs.

On Wednesday, about 350 students, faculty and staff from CUNY and SUNY will rally with legislators inside the State Capitol to call for increased funding for New York’s public university systems, broader access to free tuition, and more financial aid. After the rally, we’ll disburse to meet with more than 100 legislators about a joint platform of higher education investment.

Watch the PSC’s social media feeds and the next This Week for more news about our state budget campaign.

Dozens of community groups gathered on the steps of the Tweed Courthouse last Wednesday, February 19th to launch the People’s Budget Campaign and to call out the Mayor for his self-serving failures of leadership and his appeasement of President Trump.

The event marked the beginning of a five-month campaign to reject the Mayor’s repeated budget cuts and push for real investments in pre K-CUNY education, housing, public safety, immigrant support, and public services.

PSC First Vice President Jen Gaboury spoke for the PSC. “Before Mayor Adams sold out the city for his own selfish gain, he abandoned CUNY,” she said. Watch her full statement.

The Trump Administration’s racist scapegoating of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts is an existential threat to CUNY, our students, and PSC members. The Department of Education’s February 14 Dear Colleague letter is one of many attacks we will face in the coming months and years. The letter distorts the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling on race conscious admissions policies to falsely claim that federal law prohibits any consideration of racial inequity in “hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.” It uses the threat of federal funding cuts to attempt to force acquiescence.

But since the founding of the Free Academy of New York with its mission to educate the “children of the whole people” CUNY has aspired to be a force for equity and inclusion. No university system has a more diverse student body. To protect our students, our mission, and our jobs, we’ll need a strong union and the courage to confront lies with our truths.

Share your true story of the work you do at CUNY to uphold diversity, equity and inclusion. Be part of a growing story bank demonstrating the value of our collective work to address racial inequities in our society and educational system.

SHARE YOUR STORY

The City’s most active labor unions and community coalitions are mobilizing a mass show of force against right-wing politicians and the unelected billionaires who empower them. The oligarchs and their politicians are moving forward with devastating proposals to cut over two trillion dollars from Medicaid, Medicare, housing and food assistance, student loan support and other vital programs to fund a massive tax giveaway to the wealthy and corporations. Unelected billionaires have been given free rein to shut down services, force layoffs and access the financial information of hundreds of millions of Americans for their own ends. Sign up here to march with the PSC and thousands of our fellow New Yorkers tell Washington: No cuts to working people to fund tax breaks for billionaires and corporations!

I WILL BE THERE MARCH 15

The next immigrant solidarity working group meeting will be held at 4:30pm on Friday, February 28 in the PSC Union Hall. Please register here. Registration is required to be admitted to the building; all active PSC members are welcome to join so if you are not yet a dues-paying member please join here. On Friday, we will be hearing a brief contextual framing for the work of this committee and then move into a rapid response training, which will be the focus of the meeting.

On Wednesday, February 19th, dozens of PSC members gathered with fellow researchers and academic unionists from across the city to resist federal cuts to our research funding. The protest was part of a national mobilization, coordinated by Higher Education Labor United, to defend public funding for research in the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive reductions in NIH grant funding. It was powerful to connect with directly impacted scientists, many of whom do crucial, life-saving research that is now seriously jeopardized. Threats to grant funding are threats to our jobs and to our communities alike, and the PSC will continue to fight to defend our members’ crucial work and to stand in solidarity with our union siblings.

The courts are still temporarily blocking President Trump’s attempt to cut indirect cost funding for National Institutes of Health grants, but the NIH has frozen new grant applications.

If your research is being undermined by President Trump’s cuts to NIH funding, tell us here, so we can put your story to work in resistance.

PSC members also rallied with federal workers in Foley Square last Wednesday, February 19 to say NO to Elon Musk’s push to gut federal services and impose mass layoffs. The attacks by Musk and Trump on federal workers are an attempt to break the system of checks and balances on autocratic power and funnel resources for massive tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. The rally was part of a nationwide day of action organized by the Federal Unionists Network. Read about it in The City.

PSC members may be eligible for a state-funded union-designed child care subsidy that can save parents an average of $15,000 – $18,000 per year (per child).

The program, developed by a committee of the PSC’s city-wide affiliate, the NYC Central Labor Council (NYCLC), aims to make quality child care more affordable for families in New York City with children up to 13 years of age. Parents must be working, live in New York City, and meet income restrictions (e.g. under $108,636 for a family of four).

To learn more about the subsidy, you can read this fact sheet and fill out a pre-screening form. PSC members can also attend an online information session hosted by the PSC at 7PM, Monday, March 10th. Register here for the Zoom meeting.

RSVP: Zoom Childcare Meeting, 3/10