Hello friend,
Please sign our petition to tell Mayor Linda Tyer and the Pittsfield City Council to FUND SCHOOLS, NOT COPS. And share widely!
The budget that Mayor Linda Tyer and the Pittsfield City Council has proposed for 2021 marks a 2% decrease in funding per student, and a 20% increase in funding per police officer over the past five years.
Measured against 2016, the proposed budget would award the Police
Department a 30% increase in funding, but provides the School
Department only a 10% increase, thus threatening our hard-working
teachers with at least 140 job cuts.
As #BlackLivesMatter has demonstrated, it is time to dedicate our
public resources to services and programs that directly serve our
communities, especially Black and Brown communities. We recognize that
COVID-19 has impacted budgets and has presented some hard choices. This
is not one of them. Our children come first.
Berkshires DSA calls on Mayor Linda Tyer and the Pittsfield City
Council to get their priorities straight: fund schools, not cops!
Pittsfield City Council will hold a public comment session on Monday, June 15, at 7p. Here's
how to participate. For more information on this issue, please see the work of the group
Invest in Pittsfield (unaffiliated with DSA).
In solidarity,
Sidney Rothstein
Co-Chair
Berkshires DSA
