Dear Colleagues,
We are done playing nice.
That’s why the cover of the latest issue of The Voice has a one-word title: Wrong.
In his Executive Budget, Gov. Cuomo seems to be pulling out the stops to undermine SUNY and the good work that our hard-working, dedicated members do to provide an accessible, quality education to New York’s students and the life-saving health care they provide at SUNY’s public hospitals.
The governor’s so-called “Opportunity Agenda” is an opportunity only for profiteers and corporations who would benefit from schemes that would have SUNY become little more than a trade school with a ready supply of trained workers.
Simply put, SUNY is under attack.
Our teacher preparation programs are at risk of being shut down. A miniscule 1 percent increase for SUNY is tied to a skewed proposed performance-based funding system would pit campuses against each other to fight for what little aid the state is offering to SUNY.
Once again, the governor has proposed to cut the subsidy to SUNY’s state-run hospitals, this time by more than 20 percent. He also wants to privatize the hospitals. To boot, he’s budgeted $700 million for a new Brooklyn hospital, but there are no restrictions on how or where it’s built or who does the work. There’s just one man who will control how that money is spent—the governor.
His student debt repayment plan does nothing to help more than 2.8 million New Yorkers struggling to pay more than $70 billion in debt. And to add insult to injury, there are bonuses for college presidents who attract new businesses to campus through START-UP NY.
We’ve had enough. And we’ve got a better plan, which you can read about in this issue of The Voice.
Please tell your members to read The Voice, which is available on the UUP website, at http://www.uupinfo.org. It should be in their mailboxes shortly.
And please urge your members to join us for HSC advocacy day on Feb. 25 and Student/Faculty Joint Higher Education Advocacy Day on Feb. 26. Both events are in Albany.
Click here to sign up for HSC advocacy day: http://goo.gl/yTkFMr
Click here to sign up for Student/Faculty Joint Higher Education Advocacy Day:
http://goo.gl/Qdqbrw
Call UUP Legislation at 1-800-342-4206 to get involved and for more information. We need your help to inform and press legislators to reject the governor’s plan and adopt the real opportunity agenda supported by UUP and its coalition partners.
In Solidarity,
Fred