My statement to Cathie Black last night

See video below of last night at the Panel for Educational Policy, my statement to the new Chancellor Cathie Black.

To address the need to reduce overcrowding and class size, she should immediately call a halt to all co-locations and school closings, which only lead to conflict, bitterness and more overcrowding. Each new school sharing space with an existing school sacrifices about 10% of precious classroom space to create administrative and cluster rooms.

And she should immediately re-allocate the $1 billion to be spent on new technology next year in the capital plan to building and leasing more schools. These are not "Sophie's choices" -- these are choices that would benefit all our kids.



For more on the $1 billion extra the DOE wants to spend on new technology, see today's NY Post. Typically, the city wants to blame this on the state and the feds mandating online assessments. This doesn't fly; nowhere else in the country are they spending these kind of dollars for this purpose. Instead, the real reason is they want to expand online learning and further degrade the opportunity for our children to receive instruction from a real live teacher.

Another excuse by the DOE and another way in which they are evading their own accountability for the massive waste that will result.