On Oct. 30, Mayor Bloomberg spoke before a warm and welcoming audience at PS 24. The event, held in the school's auditorium, inspired him to touch on some of his successes in education. If the folks in the audience had known about the mayor's plans for the Riverdale schools, they wouldn't have been so warm and welcoming.

First, let's look at his comments about what the city Department of Education (DOE) calls its "Fair Funding" plan. The mayor presented it as a win-win proposal for schools, with the goal of equity funding for all schools. What he didn't tell the audience, and what no one in the audience questioned, was the detail that in two years, PS 24 is slated to lose close to $1 million under fair funding. Look it up on the DOE's Web site at www.schools.nyc. gov/AboutUs/BudgetsFairStudentFunding/ YourSchoolBudget/ SchoolBudgetOver view. htm?schoolcode=X024. It's the "held . . . harmless" amount at the bottom of the screen - the amount that will, under the mayor's plan, vanish from PS 24's budget the following year.

The three Riverdale schools, in fact, will lose a total of more than $3 million under "fair" funding (look it up!).

The mayor - and Chancellor Joel Klein's - plan would put stable schools at a disadvantage because of their more experienced staffs. In two years, any school with a staff of experienced teachers will have to shift money from other services to cover the higher salaries of those teachers. That means less money for support staff, afterschool activities, supplies - any expense considered the principal's responsibility, since the DOE is no longer footing the bill. For PS 24, that will mean $947,487 less, to be exact. For the David A. Stein Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy, MS/HS 141, the total actually exceeds $1 million - look it up!

Another consequence of "fair" funding: In two years, when an older, experienced teacher retires, the school would lose the extra money allotted to cover that teacher's higher salary. As a result, principals would focus their hiring on the young and inexperienced teachers, who would cost fewer dollars to employ and thus leave more money in the kitty for other needed services.