By Jennifer Glickel
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — Stuyvesant High School, one of the city's top public schools, has become eligible for Title 1 federal funds that are appropriated for schools with a large percentage of low-income students, according to the New York Times.
Last year, city officials changed the requirements for schools to receive Title 1 funding. Previously, at least 60 percent of students had to be eligible for free or reduced lunches in order for the school to receive federal funds, but now the threshold was lowered to 40 percent of students having to meet this criteria. The change made it so that all but a few of the city's public schools could receive Title 1 funds.
While Stuyvesant typically receives about $30,000 from parent donations, that money comes in from approximately one-third of the parent pool, as the other two-thirds simply do not have the funds to contribute.
“Many of the parents are first-generation immigrants, and they are struggling to get by,” Larry Wood, the co-president of the parents' association, told the Times.
Stuyvesant, like other city schools, is facing a 4.9 percent budget cut, so the possibility to receive federal funding with the change in the Title 1 threshold spurred the school's parents association into action, the Times reported.
The group urged and reminded parents to fill out and return the free and reduced-price lunch forms, as well as provided forms translated into Chinese and Korean.
The parents' association's efforts paid off, as they sent a memo out last week informing parents that Stuyvesant may receive up to $1.5 million in federal funding, which will help make up the money that will be lost in budget cuts.
That said, the funding is meant to be used to help struggling low-income students, rather than close schools' budget gaps. The Times reported Wood as saying the school's administration will likely have a plan for allocating the funds by the end of the month.
