New York City educators are organizing a letter-writing campaign with Mayor Bill de Blasio to encourage city and state lawmakers to significantly fund the police department and, instead, direct millions of dollars to public schools.

Campaign launched by Michael Perlberg, director of Brooklyn MS 839 and before Chalkbeat has collected more than 600 signatures from school heads, teachers and parent activists.

The letter also recommends that the NYPD no longer employ and supervise school security agents. The NYPD took over school security in 1998, when school officials complained that they swept violent student incidents under the rug.

The letter comes because public schools face budget cuts because the coronavirus outbreak has made a huge $ 9 billion hole in the city’s finances.

Educators’ call to defend the NYPD is also following the uprising over George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police.

The educators said they also criticized the NYPD’s brutality against “black and brown New Yorkers” as well as its “simple history.”

“We want the governor, mayor and city council to go through a budget that puts children first in this important period. This means serious increases in public school and social service budgets and sharp cuts in NYPD’s budget. ”

At a press conference earlier Friday, De Blasio rejected calls to the police force that kept the city safe.

The mayor and council need to approve a budget for the new fiscal year by 1 July.