At the behest of Mayor Eric Adams, New York’s City Council passed a horrifying budget last week that slashes public school resources while fattening the police force. Only the socialist members voted no.

The episode shows that it’s not enough to have good liberals in government with nice values who can talk left. It doesn’t necessarily even matter how sincerely they believe what they’re saying. There’s no substitute for socialist leaders accountable to grassroots and socialist organizations.

The budget cuts targeted at schools come to $215 million. Teachers, parents, students, and school principals are reeling from the news. With many schools seeing their budgets drop by as much as a million dollars, principals are saying they could be forced to lay off teachers and go without social workers, art, music, and even paper. Other likely casualties are science, after-school activities, and intervention for special needs kids. Class sizes will get larger, even though the state government actually allocated funding to shrink class sizes this year.