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:

 

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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.

"Conversations with the Chancellor" starting next week

Update, Feb. 24, 2026:   Because of the snow storm, the Manhattan event originally scheduled for tonight has been rescheduled for March 23 at 6:30 PM at the same location: Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, 260 Pleasant Avenue.

The new Chancellor Kamar Samuels  announced dates and times  for Our Schools. Our Future: Conversations with the Chancellor, a five-borough community engagement series, starting Feb. 10 in Staten Island. 

Here is the DOE description:  "The goal of this tour is for NYCPS leadership to engage with students, families, educators, staff, and community partners on critical school issues, and to hear ideas from families about how to better involve them in decision making processes. "

If you are interested in attending  any of these sessions, and would like to speak about either class size or privacy/AI, please email us at info@classsizematters.org  as this is might be a rare opportunity to make your voice heard on these important issues  You can register at  on.nyc.gov/ChancellorConversations  Click on the image to see which one you'd like to attend.  thanks! 

Craig Garrett on the need for human-centered schools rather than learning based upon AI.

 Craig Garrett is a parent leader in District 14 whose group, District 14 Families for Human Learning, has just created a new website here.  You can sign up for more info at the website.  Below are the comments that he delivered at the D14 CEC meeting last month.  If you agree, please sign our petition for a moratorium on the use of AI in schools here.

    Last night I delivered the following remarks at the end of District 14's CEC meeting, a few minutes after Superintendent Cintron glowingly described his forthcoming "AI vision statement". The first half of the meeting was spent prioritizing urgent funding requests from individual schools (a process one CEC member referred to as "the hunger games"). Mostly of those requests were about fixing problems like inoperable bathrooms and broken PA systems. It really underlined the absurdity of signing multimillion-dollar contracts for unproven ed-tech while our schools can't afford functioning bathrooms. 

    Let's all cast our minds back one year, to early January 2025. At Coney Island, long-shot mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was doing the Polar Bear Plunge in a suit and tie. At movie theaters across the country, kids were flocking to see Moana 2. And from every direction, we were hearing about a revolutionary new technology that was about to transform our lives.

 Back then, the tech industry's story about artificial intelligence was thrilling, provocative, and told entirely in the future tense. Business leaders and elected officials rushed to incorporate AI into their operations. There was a sense of urgency, an eagerness to get on board this magic technology that would solve our most stubborn problems and transport us to a brilliant future.

    Well, I'm here with a message from the present. The  flourishing we were promised has not arrived. We're waking up to the fact that this technology is NOT being developed to extend human capacity or expand human knowledge — because those are not the tech industry's priorities. In 2025 we saw the leading AI companies drop their commitments to democracy and equality,  dismantle their safeguards and moderation, and aggressively fight off any form of regulation, no matter how sensible.

    And unlike in January 2025, we now have real-world data on how their products are performing. In “AI-enabled” classrooms, students are experiencing isolation, cognitive atrophy, and loss of focus. Outside classrooms, LLMs are endorsing suicide, inducing psychosis, and empowering bullies. This is happening because tech companies have decided to prioritize user engagement over safety, dependence over efficacy. And it turns out those decisions are antithetical to human flourishing.

    Just three weeks ago, the Eric Adams administration tried to push four AI ed-tech contracts through the PEP. And they failed, to our great relief, saving NYCPS millions of dollars. Let's hope 2026 is the year our school leaders wake up to the fact that ed tech in its current form is a not just a waste of money, it's a direct threat to our values, our humanity, and our children.