Parents at PS 889 in Brooklyn speak out against DOE refusal to allow them to lower class size which will lead to third grade classes of 33 students

Below are testimonies from last week's NYC Council Education budget hearings by two parents at PS 889 in Brooklyn, by Ro White and Jessica Kurtz, explaining how DOE has refused to allow the school to make any changes to their enrollment to enable class sizes to be lowered to mandated levels, despite requests of the School Leadership Team, the principal and the Superintendent to DOE officials.  Because of these refusals, their third graders are likely to be crammed into classes of 33 instead of the mandated limit of 23 students. Shared with their permission. If your school is in a smilar position, please email us at info@classsizematters.org.  thanks!  

Good afternoon. I’m Ro White, a parent at P.S. 889 in Brooklyn, in District 22, one of the 3 worst districts in the city for class size compliance. I want to take you on a tour of my kids’ school, a school where 53% of students are in economic need.

It’s been a long hearing. But I’d ask you to imagine being 7 years old, trying to focus at 2 PM when your lunch ended more than 4 hours ago because your school is so overcrowded that lunch starts at 10 in the morning. Imagine being 5 years old in kindergarten, in a class crowded far over the legal limit, and being told that is acceptable because a new school is “in the capital plan,” a school that will not open until you are in middle school.

Imagine being a teacher with 33 students in front of you. For perspective, that is more than all the City Council members in attendance throughout the day today and all the DOE and SCA staff on the dais combined. These are actual examples for my kids, their teachers, and their school. And while a few people mentioned that the chairs on the DAYis are uncomfortable, at P.S. 889 students take music and theater in a room with no furniture at all because of overcrowding.

Next year, unless something changes now, 3rd grade is projected to have 2 classes of 33 students each, when the legal limit is 23. DOE is requiring the school to admit 20% more students than the school has seats for.

Because this is a budget hearing, I ask the Council to press DOE on a basic question, using our school as a case study: how can DOE deny our school’s request for class size funding because of a lack of physical space, and at the same time insist that we continue to accept far more children than our school has seats and rooms for?

Our principal and superintendent both requested to reduce enrollment for next school year based on the building’s physical limits. Someone at DOE denied it. DOE also had a class size webinar and asked parents citywide to submit feedback on class size. Many of us did, and we never received even an acknowledgement of our messages. We emailed, we followed up, and I even wrote to the Chancellor directly. No response. 

So, Chair Dinowitz, I hope you will press DOE on this directly: who is responsible for monitoring ClassSize@schools.nyc.gov, and who is accountable for both denying schools class size funding because they do not have space and denying requests to reduce enrollment based on space? You asked today whether DOE needs more time for full compliance with the class size law, and you did not really get an answer. Surely there is a middle ground on class size that City Council can demand right now before releasing another dollar to DOE.

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Hello, my name is Jessica Kurtz and I am a PS889 parent in Brooklyn’s District 22, a school that is struggling to meet the class size mandate. 

I've been trying my hardest to get an answer on the question of why the enrollment office can send us more Kindergarten kids than our actual capacity allows (and beyond what the class size cap allows). 

The enrollment office is sending us three Kindergarten sections of 25 each (when the state law clearly caps at 20 students per classroom and our capacity can in fact only support two sections of 20 each... that's 75 students enrolled vs. 40 true capacity!) Our funnel is too big and once students reach the upper grades they are eventually consolidated into two overcrowded classrooms as a result. The enrollment office is basically creating the problem that we then  need to fix!

  

It's super frustrating and there seems to be little to no transparency or accountability for how those decisions are being made. And our superintendents are deemed powerless- Superintendent Bove reached out to the enrollment office in November to request caps to both our Pre K & our K programs and was denied. Can anyone help us get through to the DOE on this enrollment issue?

  

There's also no plan in sight for the long term solution, which is that we ultimately need more physical space. I attended a February CEC22 meeting & the SCA gave a presentation- in that presentation they presented the five year capital plan and only two schools in D22 were included in the capacity projects (P206 + PS197). If my math is right, that leaves about 16 D22 schools with insufficient space to lower class size and no budget or plans from the SCA to address it. Including PS889 (and our co-located middle school MS890). And yet luxury builders scoop up prime lots across the street from our school on Coney Island Avenue and Hinckley Place.

 

I understand the Superintendent is trying to assess opportunities for extensions/ annexes and parents continue to send leads on vacant buildings in the area but these conversations have been going on for years and we still have no concrete space, plan or timeline. How do we move this forward from good intentions to action?

 

My daughter's reading has improved tremendously since the beginning of the school year. I credit this to the individualized attention she has been able to receive (from her fabulous teacher Mrs. Williams!) in her well proportioned class of 19. Now her second grade class is at risk of being collapsed into two sections of ~30 next year. I understand the challenges in meeting this mandate but truly believe it will lead to the best educational outcomes for all students once fully implemented. 

Thanks for your time & consideration on this matter.

 

Why bills restricting protests around schools are unwise and unfair by Rasheedah Brown-Harris

 Below is the testimony of Rasheedah Brown-Harris, a Bronx parent leader, against the recent rash of bills introduced in the City Council to limit the rights of protesters by creating perimeters around schools and churches, at a distance  determined by the NYPD, and providing more city funding to reimburse private and charter schools for the cost of video surveillance cameras.  Here is an article about recent hearings on these bills, here is a piece about how University faculty unions and the New York Civil Liberties Union opposition to these bills.

SUBJECT: Opposition TO ALL BILLS:

 

●   Int 0001-2026)

●   Int 0175-2026)

●   Int 0327-2026)

●   Int 0388-2026)

●   Int 0022-2026)

My name is Rasheedah Brown-Harris, and I am submitting my written testimony in opposition to the proposed legislation that would create police-enforced perimeters around every entrance and exit of educational facilities across New York City.

Student safety is a shared priority. However, this bill raises significant concerns about constitutional rights, civil liberties, and the disproportionate impact of expanded policing on Black and Brown communities. 

Schools have always been spaces where civic engagement happens, where families gather, where students speak out, and where communities advocate. Creating fixed police perimeters triggered by broadly defined terms like “intimidation” or “interference” risks restricting lawful protest on public sidewalks and streets. In a city shaped by student activism, from our public high schools to CUNY and Columbia, this approach could chill protected expression. 

This legislation also grants sweeping discretion to law enforcement to determine where and when these perimeters are imposed, without clear transparency or oversight. In a city with well-documented racial disparities in policing, expanding discretionary enforcement near schools will not land neutrally. Students of color already experience disproportionate discipline and surveillance. Extending police authority beyond school doors risks deepening those inequities. 

Parents, caregivers, faith leaders, and community members regularly gather outside schools to support students and advocate for change. Turning those spaces into controlled police zones will create fear, particularly for immigrant families and those with prior harmful experiences with law enforcement.

Real safety comes from investment in mental health supports, restorative practices, and community-accountable safety strategies. Broad police perimeters are a blunt instrument. They risk suppressing lawful expression without clear evidence that they will improve safety. 

If illegal actions are taking place in a house of worship we should be able to gather near peacefully in opposition of such actions.  

We should NOT be reimbursing private schools for their security cost. The private schools are private and should use their own private funding. 

We should build and support existing platforms that already exist to report hate crimes and discriminatory practices.

 We should also, build, support and expand existing platforms, and orgs who are already in existence to help youth learn about social media and internet use and put the proper structures in place to support the youth and community versus just print outs.

 I urge the Council to reject all these bills to pursue solutions that protect students, community members, places of worship, education facilities, etc. while safeguarding civil liberties and advancing racial equity for all.

 

Thank You! 

Rasheedah Brown-Harris

 

Hearings and testimony on need to reform Mayoral control from Diane Ravitch, parents, and advocates

Above is a video of the City Council hearing last week on Mayoral control, also available here.  There were incisive questions from the new Education Committee Chair, Eric Dinowitz, as well as from several other council members.  Also impressive were the oral testimonies of many parents, advocates and former students about how this governance system without any checks and balances  at the local level or community input was inherently undemocratic and had led to unjust and damaging  policies.   

Dinowitz expressed skepticism of claims of learning gains under Mayoral control, given the lagging results in the NAEPs-- the only reliable data on achievement, as opposed to the state test results which are erratically designed at best.  He also pointed out how  graduation rates can be artificially inflated through the use of credit recovery and the like.  He was also critical of HMH Reading, the most commonly used of the mandated box curriculums.

He asked about the DOE contracting process, which over the last 23 years under Mayoral control hashas wasted millions of dollars on useless or corrupt products and vendors, and whether it was true that the Panel for Educational Policy's Contract committee had been dissolved -- which in the past had provided one of the few occasions where the DOE was forced to explain the rationale for proposed contracts before the PEP meeting at which they will be voted upon.  Now PEP members are briefed privately on proposed contracts, and are told they are not to reveal what they haave been told to any member of the public.

DOE officials seemed confused as initially claimed that the Contract Committee still existed, until they conceded that indeed it had been eliminated, but refused to say that they would support such a Committee being restored and mandated in  law.   

There was also some confusion as to whether PEP members were sent resolutions by DOE that CECs had passed on relevant proposals they would be voting on, such as co-locations and school closures.  It turns out they are not, though Katie Jedrelink of DOE  said that CECs could send them directly to the PEP members if they liked. I subsequently pointed out that for years, the DOE website lacked the names of many members of the PEP, and  in even more frequently their email adddresses, making it impossible for the public to contact them.  This lack of information provided for members of the school board of the nation's large school district exists no where else in the country, to my knowledge.  After years of complaining about this matter, I was informed the day before the hearings that they had finally posted all the names and the email addresses of  PEP members, though I have heard from several that it is difficult for them to access their DOE emails, for reasons I don't understand.. 

Other Council Members also asked good questions, including former Education Chair Rita Joseph, who asked them what would be done to improve parent participation, given that only 2% of parents had voted in the recent CEC elections, and also how mistakes had been made in the process, including names of candidates omitted from the voting website.  CM Carmen de la Rosa also had particularly pointed questions related to the lack of adequate space planning by the DOE to allow schools to lower class size in compliance with the state law.  

Below are five of the written testimonies, first from  NYC school historian and education advocate Diane Ravitch, followed with my testimony for Class Size Matters , then  Jonathan Greenberg of the Educational Council Consortium, Naveed Hasan, PEP member and parent leader, and Naila Rosario, President of NYC Kids PAC.

All five of us pointed out the deep inherent flaws with what is essentially dictatorial, one-man rule, and the Mayoral majority on the Panel for Education Policy should be eliminated, to make it less of a rubberstamp.   Each of us also  proposed other reforms.  Check them out! 

 

 

In my testimony, I provide a list of major, multimillion dollars examples of waste and corruption under Mayoral control -- in the text and in the Appendix. Just two days after the hearing, yet another major scandal erupted: Kevin Taylor, the head of the School Safety division was indicted for bribery along with the CEO of the SaferWatch company, who had paid Taylor as well as Terence Banks, the brother of Chancellor Banks to promote the device to DOE, although Terence Banks has not been indicted. 

 See this story here and the indictment here. 

 

Here is the written testimony of Jonathan Greenberg of the Educational Council Consortium, which represents many leaders of Community Education Councils. 

 

Following are the views of Naveed Hasan, a Manhattan parent representative on the Panel for Educational Policy.

 

Finally, last but not least, the testimony of Naila Rosario, the President of NYC Kids PAC, who points out how Mayor Mamdani has left his supporters in the lurch, by reversing his position on mayoral control, one of his central education positions, without explaining why.