Read it and weep: see today’s post on the Inside School’s blog:

You must be living under a rock if you haven’t heard about the
significant school budget cuts that the DOE made last week. In addition
to the $324 million that schools will need to cut from their budgets next year,
principals were also lost 1.75 percent of this year’s budget — before
they could even stop to think about where to find the money.

As
of early last week, the DOE hadn’t actually told principals that they
would each have to cut a total of $180 million from their budgets;
principals had to learn about the plan from the newspapers. I spoke to
a principal on Friday who said she received an email at night informing
her that she would have to cut $125,000; when she woke up in the
morning, the money was already gone.

While the DOE will be
making some cuts centrally, most of the reductions are being passed
down to individual schools. The Times reported that the cuts will range from $9,000 to $447,587; for many schools, it’s possible that the cuts will undo the Fair Student Funding gains they might have seen earlier this year.