Giving Compass' Take: 

• Union officials are pushing back against Mayor Bill de Blasio's proposal to cancel funding for longer school days, saying that budget cuts should not interfere with children's learning.

• City officials say that despite the cuts to the extended school day, there will be continued funding for partnerships with nonprofit organizations and schools. Can donors help fill some of the gaps from insufficient state education budgets? 

• Read more about the New York City budget changes to school funding. 

A top union official criticized Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to slash funding for longer school days at dozens of struggling schools Monday, arguing that cuts to the department’s budget shouldn’t come at the expense of learning.

“I certainly think [the mayor] should have found other ways to make cuts without affecting schools or classrooms,” Mark Cannizzaro, head of the city’s principals union, said in an interview.

Last week, de Blasio unveiled a budget proposal that will eliminate $19 million in annual funding that lengthened the school day by an hour at 71 struggling schools as part of his hotly debated Renewal school turnaround program.

The decision to shorten the school day represents an about-face for an administration that has made flooding low-performing schools with new social services and academic coaching a cornerstone of its improvement strategy. Officials are technically ending the $773 million Renewal program, which has shown disappointing results, this year. But they are continuing most of its core elements — raising questions about why longer school days are on the chopping block.

City officials said they reached the decision to cut the extended day funding partly because they had been tasked with finding $104 million in trims to the education department’s $27.1 billion budget. But they also said the decision was based on conversations with principals who told them that “the most effective resources” through the Renewal program were larger school budgets and partnerships with non-profit organizations — both of which will continue.

The education department did not say how many principals were surveyed or offer any details about the cost-benefit analysis that caused them to cut funding for the program, which helped finance pay boosts for teachers and principals who stayed at school longer.

Read the full article about extended school days in New York by Alex Zimmerman at Chalkbeat.