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Council Member Rita Joseph's opening remarks on SCA's capital plan and DOE's preliminary budget
5:10:38
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Council Member Rita Joseph opens the education committee hearing focusing on the School Construction Authority's (SCA) $20.5 billion capital plan for fiscal years 2025-2029 and the Department of Education's preliminary budget. She highlights key increases in funding, particularly for new capacity to comply with class size reduction laws, while also noting areas that still need attention, such as school accessibility.
- The plan includes a $2 billion increase for new capacity funding, aiming to add 10,000 new seats to comply with class size reduction laws.
- Additional funding is provided for swimming pools, athletic fields, and capital improvement work.
- Joseph expresses concern over insufficient funding for full school accessibility, with the current $800 million investment falling short of making all schools 100% accessible.
Rita Joseph
5:10:38
Good afternoon and welcome to the education committee hearing on school construction authority fiscal twenty twenty five to twenty twenty nine capital plan and the fiscal twenty twenty six preliminary capital budget and commitment plan for the Department of Education.
5:10:54
Today's hearing we will primarily focus on the 20,500,000,000.0 proposed in February's amendment to the fiscal twenty twenty five to twenty twenty nine capital plan.
5:11:04
SCA's capital plan is an important element of the city's education programming as it provides an infrastructure for learning, extracurricular activities, enrichment that our students crave, every new playground, classroom, cafeteria, and environmentally friendly educational space is step is a step towards a better learning environment for our city students.
5:11:28
SCA's proposed plan includes important increases in funding to a number of key areas compared to where the plan was last year at this time.
5:11:37
Most notably 2,000,000,000 was added for new capacity funding that will fund roughly 10,000 new seats to help reach the goal set forth in the state's class size reduction law.
5:11:48
This funding is necessary to get closer to compliance with the class size law, although it will not get us all the way there without additional investments.
5:11:59
We were also happy to see that the additional funding provided for swimming pools, athletic fields, and capital improvement work, which are all essential projects to update our educational facilities.
5:12:10
In all, the plan is 3,500,000,000 larger than the one that SCA presented at the fiscal twenty twenty five preliminary budget hearing.
5:12:19
Still other areas has not seen new funding.
5:12:23
Accessibility sits at 800,000,000, an investment that will bring much needed projects to school but it's not sufficient to bring all schools to a % accessibility.
5:12:34
Meaning we are still many years away from reaching full accessibility.
5:12:38
Too many of our schools are still not accessible to all and this plan does not change that.
5:12:45
We look forward to getting updates on important capital projects like internet speed upgrades, facility enhancement, the status of removal of temporary class units, and status of new construction projects on many new schools across the city.
5:13:00
We will cover these issues and others and hope to get some additional transparency and guidance on how to best support SCA in their work.
5:13:09
I would like to recognize my colleagues, now that I'm here.
5:13:17
I would like to thank the administration for coming to testify before the committee today.
5:13:21
We will hear their testimony after committee counsel swears them in.