Don't Cut the Core: How Did We Do?

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While recently adopted City and State budgets contained substantial reductions in human services, UNH’s “Don’t Cut the Core” advocacy, done in partnership with UNH members and colleagues resulted in some important restorations:

• Preserving child care classrooms: $11.62M from the City Council.
• $2.75 million for pre-kindergarten classes for more than 1,600 children.
• Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP): State SYEP, slated for elimination, was restored to $15.5M.  $23.6M from the City will allow for 36,000 SYEP teens in 2010, 19,000 more than what was expected when Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg unveiled their budget proposals in January 2010. 
• Saving after school for 12,200 City children.
• $25M in Title XX for 110 senior centers and 5,500 meals for seniors each day.
• $9.5M for senior centers and home delivered meals.
• $5M for adult literacy programs and restoration of $4.5M for the City’s Immigrant Opportunities Initiative that provides ESOL, legal services and citizenship assistance.

UNH’s advocacy helped to assure that any remaining funding reductions were implemented in a rational manner.  For example, UNH worked with the Department of Youth and Community Development to develop a strategy that allowed high quality programs to be sustained, rather than implementing across the board cuts for all after school programs.