Comments on the first edition of "Council Insider": "Demystifying the City Budget: Education"
Did it achieve its goal of “demystifying the city budget [on] education.” My conclusion: no.
On Monday, June 17, 2024, the NYC City Council live streamed its first “Council Insider” show entitled “Demystifying the City Budget: Education.”
Although the substance of the show is worth voluminous comment, I will be discussing whether it achieved its educational mission of “demystifying the city budget [on] education.” My conclusion: no.
This was the first installment of “Council Insider,” and the next one will be on housing and the budget (timely!).
The participants
Three members of the New York City Council: Justin Brannan, Finance Chair, CD-47; Rita Joseph, Education Chair, CD-40; and Eric Dinowitz, Higher Education Chair, CD-11
Michael Rivadeneyra, the YMCA of Greater New York
James Davis, President, PSC-CUNY
Who is the show’s audience?
The show’s title and various comments made during the stream made it seem like this is aimed at the general public.1 And while that might have been the intention, the general public would not be able to understand this show at all.
The participants mentioned too many policies and too many components of government, too quickly, for any lay audience member to follow (Carter cases, community schools, CUNY Reconnect, PEG cuts, just to name a few). And the lay audience member wouldn’t even know the role the City Council in the budget to begin with.
If the session’s goal was to speak to people who already understand how the city’s budget, education policy sphere, and current budget debates work—it was a fine discussion. They wouldn’t have learned a lot, but they’d get a quick overview of where the participants stood with regard to a ton of policies.
But it was an advanced policy discussion for advanced, involved practitioners. It was not a talk aimed at the general public.2
My only critique of the show, even assuming it was for an advanced audience, is that no one ever mentioned top-line education budget numbers. None of the numbers mentioned in the show were a denominator, only a numerator.3 Anyone watching this is constantly left asking “out of how much educational spending total?” Without a denominator, the “cuts” that the Council keeps talking about have no context.
If you’re curious, I discuss those top-line numbers in this post:
So how was the show?
These kinds of talks are fine to have, but every time I watch one I’m reminded of a problem: elected officials hardly ever engage in serious governmental education of the general public—although in that they are not alone, because most colleges and schools don’t either.
When they do speak to the general public, they fall to the curse of knowledge: they forget what it is like to know nothing, and they almost always fail to convey durable, meaningful information. Their starting point is already much too advanced for most people.
The bottom line: this live stream likely didn’t demystify anything. Those who require no demystification could follow the conversation just fine, everyone else would remain in the mist.
This doesn’t mean the show was inherently bad, just that its audience (intended or not) was not the general public. But if anyone intended this to be for the general public, they need to recognize the andragogical reasons why the show would be confusing and frustrating to that group, at best.
If the show is pitched to the general public, but it’s not really for them, they will likely get further disillusioned with government. The show will reinforce their idea that the city is a black box they can’t approach.
What kinds of knowledge would you need to follow this show well?
The internal structure of the city education system
The external structure of the city education system4
A basic primer on the CUNY system
The current state of education policy advocacy, lobbying, and debate (this is the big one, but current budget debates too)
The budget process and budget basics
Top-line budget numbers (thank you, IBO)
“Folks like us who don’t follow this [policy area] every day, and have to live our lives” by CM Brannan (21:39-21:43 of the video)
I wrote something similar for an overview of a 2022 Citizens Budget Commission panel on land use: “The panel discussion about this report is even more difficult in this regard, because most panelists are speaking in a technical manner to a sophisticated audience; they reduce the names of laws and city agencies to quick-spoken acronyms, and it can be very unclear what the relationship between city and state law is if you don’t already know. If you were a lay member of the public expecting to comprehend the panel discussion, you would probably not.”
Also, when I heard CM Brannan say the phrase “…our reality and OMB’s reality” (1:39-1:41 in the video) I knew there was no way this could be for a lay, general audience.
You could say that CM Joseph’s comments about Carter cases being $2.2 billion (9:50-9:53 in the video) is a domain-specific top line, but even so, out of how much spending total? If we don’t know the total, we don’t know whether that is a big deal.
This chart was presented at Who Is in Control? A History of School Governance in NYC, on Tuesday, January 9, 2024.