The Times delivers some pessimistic news to New York’s public school parents and kids. We’re bracing to find out how District 15 schools will be affected. This is bad news for schools all over New York City, which are already reeling from earlier budget cuts this year.

Some of New York City’s highest-performing schools could suffer
“painful” budget cuts as high as 6 percent next year, Schools
Chancellor Joel I. Klein said on Wednesday, blaming state rules that restrict how the city can spend state education money.

Calling
on Albany to loosen the rules, Mr. Klein said that if he had more
flexibility, he would cut school budgets uniformly, by 1.4 percent, so
as not to “destabilize” any schools.

“This is an effort to treat schools equitably,” Mr. Klein said at a briefing.

But
state lawmakers, as well as education advocates whose historic 1993
lawsuit is resulting in billions of extra state dollars for the city’s
underfunded schools, instantly attacked the chancellor’s proposal,
suggesting that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
use city money to fill any shortfall from the state. They said the
restrictions were designed to ensure that more money would go to
schools that were labeled by the state as failing or with high student
poverty rates. Under the current rules, some of those schools could see
their budgets grow by as much 4 percent.