NYC Education Dept. will have $500M in stimulus funds that could offset school budget cuts: Comptroller Lander

The city Education Department will have at least $500 million in unspent federal stimulus funds left over from last school year — enough to offset budget cuts to schools that lost enrollment, according to a new analysis from city Comptroller Brad Lander.

As of June, the Education Department had spent roughly $2.3 billion of the $3 billion in federal pandemic recovery dollars for the last fiscal year, Lander’s analysis found. The department still has until September to spend the rest, but Lander concluded that more than $500 million of that sum is still “uncommitted.”

That’s enough to reverse controversial budget cuts to schools that lost students during the pandemic. The comptroller says the cuts will subtract $470 million from the budgets of more than 1,100 schools.

“It makes no sense for City Hall to cut funds to our schools,” said United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew in response to the new analysis. “City Hall and the [Education Department] need to come up with a long-term, transparent plan to support and help our children overcome the impact of the pandemic. The money is there. They need to act.”

Lander’s office last measured the Education Department’s federal stimulus spending in April, finding the agency had spent only $1.4 billion of the $3 billion planned for last fiscal year. The federal government issued the money in 2020 and 2021 to school districts around the country as they reeled from the effects of the pandemic.

The agency spent nearly a billion more from March until June, the new analysis found — but was still nearly $700 million short of its annual target.

The new analysis released Monday didn’t outline which specific initiatives saw spending shortfalls. The Education Department outlined its stimulus spending plans for the last fiscal year in October 2021, projecting a $1.3 billion outlay on reopening costs and nearly $1 billion on academic recovery initiatives, among other expenses.

All in all, the agency has about $4.4 billion left in federal stimulus money to spend before the money expires in 2025, according to Lander.

A spokeswoman for Mayor Adams said adding $500 million in federal funding to next year’s budget would make the fiscal cliff steeper when the money runs out in 2025, and that all of the Education Department’s stimulus money has been assigned to “critical programs and needs.”