CUNY Budget Request for 2020-2021
PSC officers, union members and student leaders testified on Monday night at a Board of Trustees hearing on CUNY’s University Budget Request for academic year 2020-2021. The University is requesting an additional $277.4 million above the current operating budget, a 7.5% increase. The proposed increase in the operating budget would be funded by increases from the State, the City, and CUNY students. A $200 per year tuition hike at both senior and community colleges is proposed, along with a new $120 “Health and Wellness” fee.
President Barbara Bowen urged the Board to stake out a different position demanding full public funding for CUNY, no tuition and fee increases, structural elimination of the TAP gap, and a plan for adding the number of full-time faculty and counselors that CUNY actually needs. “The damage of more than a decade of underfunding . . . must be undone by public investment, not by shifting more of the costs onto students and their families. The strategy of privatizing costs reinforces the class and race oppression CUNY at its best claims to challenge,” she testified.
Click here for more analysis of the budget and more testimony.
Join the PSC Campaign for a Fully Funded CUNY
Sign Up Now for Lobby Days Scheduled in February and March
The union’s campaign for a major increase in State and City funding enters its next phase in January and February, when the PSC is partnering with NYSUT, United University Professions (UUP) and student organizations like NYPIRG and USS to organize meetings with lawmakers about the need to increase funding for CUNY and keep college affordable. Three actions in Albany are already scheduled:
• Monday, February 3 and Tuesday, February 4. Register by Friday, January 4 for NYSUT’s statewide Higher Education Lobby Day.
• Thursday, February 27: coalition action by CUNY and SUNY faculty, staff and students
• March 2-3: NYSUT Committee of 100 Lobby Day.
• Transportation, food and hotel costs will be covered. Click here to register and for more information.
Public Advocate’s Report Calls for Increased City & State Investment in CUNY
A report released last week by NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams warns that “Funding challenges threaten to stall a major engine of mobility, innovation and economic support that the City University of New York represents for its students and the city of New York.” The report, Addressing the Underfunding of CUNY, New York’s Engine of Mobility, Innovation and Economic Support, calls on lawmakers to “work towards financing a true universal free college program for all students that incorporates financing for non-tuition expenses.” It also makes a series of specific recommendations to the City, State and Federal policy makers, which the PSC supports.
2020 PSC Chapter Elections
Fourteen PSC chapters are scheduled to hold elections in the Spring of 2020. They will elect chapter officers, delegates and alternates to the PSC Delegate Assembly, along with representatives to the PSC-CUNY Welfare Fund Advisory Council. To vote in the Spring 2020 PSC elections, you must have signed a PSC membership card before December 2, 2019. The deadline for filing the Candidate Declaration Form is January 06, 2020. Click here for the list of chapters that will hold elections, the election rules and other deadlines.
Labor Goes to the Movies Presents Airplane! —Fri., Dec. 13
This Friday, December 13 the PSC will present Airplane! in the PSC Union Hall, 61 Broadway 16th floor, as part of a series on humor. Airplane! is a parody of the disaster film genre using fast-paced slapstick and punning to a degree rarely found in postwar American cinema. Roger Ebert describes the film as “sophomoric, obvious, predictable, corny and quite often very funny.” Doors open at 6:00 PM. Suggested donation of $4. Light refreshments served. Watch the trailer.
