Parents of students at Brooklyn Technical High School said at a meeting this week that the school has been struggling for years with limited funds, as students fix broken equipment and parents strive to to keep clubs and other programs afloat through fundraising.
But chronic budget shortfalls have crossed a line, they said, where they are affecting both the academics and student life at school.
"When my daughter started there were a lot more extra-curricular opportunities," said Elissa Stein, the P.T.A. co-president. "Every year they did an elaborate spring musical. They did a fall play. Last year they just didn't have a fall play."
Stein and more than a dozen other parents and students took their concerns straight to the chancellor this week, at Wednesday's Panel for Educational Policy meeting.
They told her the school had to cut certain advanced math classes and Advanced Placement courses in computer science, psychology and French. The 1,400 seniors at the school share just two college counselors. Computers and SMART boards were glitchy or flat-out unusable.
As one of the city's eight specialized high schools requiring a single exam for admission, Stein said that Brooklyn Tech must offer these high-level courses, along with functioning labs and equipment.
"There really needs to be more support, especially in a school where kids are really doing such advanced work," she said.
The parents began voicing concerns late last year, after collecting thousands of signatures on a petition asking for more equitable funding among the specialized high schools. Brooklyn Tech, they said, was funded at the lowest level of the group.
The city's Department of Education allocates resources to all schools through a "fair student funding" formula, based on the number of students and individual student needs — such as English language learners or students with disabilities.
On average, schools do not receive all of the fair student funds they are entitled to, because there just isn't enough funding to go around.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Brooklyn Tech is funded at 87 percent of its fair student funding compared to the the average for all city high schools which is 89 percent. But parents said they took issue with the disparity in funding between the specialized high schools: Brooklyn Tech is funded at the lowest level. It and Bronx Science were the only two specialized exam schools funded below 90 percent.
Meanwhile, four of the specialized exam schools are funded at or above 100 percent.
"I feel like [Tech] has become the ugly stepchild," said Cindy Kue, who has two sons at Brooklyn Tech. Kue is also an alumna.
Department officials acknowledged the disparities, and said the city was working to close the funding gap.
On a related note, city officials have proposed raising the floor of fair student funding to ensure that schools receive at least 87 percent of the dollars they are entitled to — what Brooklyn Tech receives currently — up from the current 82 percent.
It's a change that would help more than 460,000 students, none of them at Brooklyn Tech.