What the real choices are for Cathie Black and NYC kids

With all the furor over Cathie Black's comments about “birth control” and “many Sophie’s choices” in relation to school overcrowding, I hope the larger issues are not ignored.

There is a huge school-age population explosion in downtown Manhattan, not because people are reproducing like rabbits, but because of the rampant development that Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials have encouraged.

(For information about the downtown population explosion, see this presentation, Why downtown's kids need to keep Tweed, by Eric Greenleaf, NYU professor and public school parent; it was in response to Eric's projections, which have been right on the mark that Cathie Black made her joke about birth control.)

The DOE has failed to build enough schools to accommodate these kids, as well as throughout the city, and has repeatedly underestimated the need for new seats. Yet instead of saving critical space within its headquarters for downtown Kindergarten students, the Department of Education has decided to donate space in Tweed to a charter school for middle school students, run by a for-profit company headquartered in Sweden.

This is no "Sophie's choice," but a deliberate decision to benefit a charter school over neighborhood children. The charter operation is run by Kunskapsskolan, or KED, which had revenue of more than $37 million in the third quarter of 2010, and could afford to build its own school, or lease space elsewhere. But instead, KED is not only getting free space, they are being given it right inside the DOE's headquarters, which represents tremendous advertising and promotional value to the company. (For some of the reasons this charter school should never have been authorized by SUNY in the first place, see our comments to the SUNY Charter Institute.)

So why would DOE prefer to give space to a Swedish charter school, rather than provide for the needs of the downtown community, and the wishes of their powerful Assemblymember, Speaker Shelly Silver? Because KED is an online charter school, and right now, DOE officials are hugely enamored with the potential of virtual instruction.

Here is how one of KED’s Swedish schools was described in the British paper, the Telegraph:

It’s 10 o’clock at Kunskapsskolan Nacka, a Swedish school for 12 to 16 year-olds, and no one seems to be working. One pupil plays Nirvana on a guitar. A second walks about barefoot eating an apple. Two more sit on desks, chatting. Suddenly the head enters. One might expect rebukes, or reprimands. None come. Instead, the head, Lotta Valentin, smiles and ruffles the hair of a nearby pupil. ''I really enjoy walking about the school and seeing the children at work,’’ she says.

One supposes that they also spend some time at computers.Get a Professional QualificationChoose from more than 40 courses from the UK’s leading home study college and start gaining new skills today!

As Elizabeth Rose of DOE's Portfolio planning explained at an earlier meeting, they intend to tear down walls within Tweed and install glass, so that all the educrats in the building can observe these students walking around and receiving virtual instruction online.

The population explosion is occurring not just downtown, but all over the city, as a result of Bloomberg's policies to encourage development, rezoning 76 neighborhoods, and in many cases, allowing more density and high rises to be built. Many other factors have also contributed to the citywide increase in the public school population, which the DOE’s “expert” consultants said would not occur until 2016 or 2017, but began as early as last year – and in most districts even earlier than that. These include a rise in the birth rate, the closing of many parochial schools, and the tendency of families to stay in the city longer, because of lower crime rates and the perception of an improved overall environment.

Yet city officials have carelessly failed to plan for the school population that would be generated. (For a good article on this, see the NY Magazine article from last year.) This, despite numerous warnings in reports detailing the population boom that was imminent, from Class Size Matters, the City Comptroller’s office, and the Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.

So what can be done? Again, there are several decisions that should be made –not difficult ones for any rational policymaker, but so far for DOE.

First of all, the Chancellor should call a stop to all the co-locations, which not only cause intense conflicts within buildings and communities, but make overcrowding worse, since every new school that is inserted into an existing school subtracts valuable classrooms to make room for administrative and cluster spaces – with an estimated 10% loss of capacity each time.

Secondly, she should immediately re-align spending priorities. In November, the DOE added a billion dollars to the school capital plan, to be spent on technology, in addition to the $800 million that was already in the plan for that purpose. Why? So virtual learning and the “Izone” experiment can be inserted in 200 more schools over the next two years, and 400 schools thereafter. They want to proliferate these programs rapidly, supposedly to “personalize” instruction (ironically, by means of computers) without any independent evaluation of the success of the Izones that have already been implemented. (Here is a dizzying presentation of the theory behind this.) And they want to spend all this billion dollars in one year alone, over the next school year.

With all the millions that the city has misspent and wasted on high –tech projects in the last few years, from ARIS, the $80 million super-computer super-boondoggle that never lived up to expectations, to the bloated contracts of Future Technology Associates, to the ongoing scandal that is City Time, none of these can compare to the potential for waste involved in the DOE’s new proposal to spend one billion dollars in one year, amidst all the other budget cuts – on online learning.

These funds should instead be spent on leasing or building new schools, including some of the 27 parochial schools closing this year in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island, and the 19 closed last year in Brooklyn and Queens, to alleviate overcrowding, allow for smaller class size, and actual “personalized” instruction – with real teachers, in real classrooms, instead of subjecting kids to an an expanded online system, with unknown risks and benefits, and the potential of a billion or more dollars down the drain.

How the DOE missed the boat on enrollment growth, leading to inequitable budget cuts

See this article in today’s Daily News – showing that the DOE now is going to impose even bigger mid-year budget cuts than the maximum of 1 percent promised, to the 740 schools where enrollment increased – despite their supposed “fair student funding” formula. I have posted the memo here.

Here is an excerpt:

“For schools experiencing growth in enrollment, given the mandates related to special education, we will fund 100% of the increase in dollars related to an increase in special education enrollment. However, given the decline in the overall DOE discretionary budget and the decrease in the percentage of dollars returned by the schools with enrollment declines, we can only fund 55.5% of the increase in FSF attributed to the increase in general education enrollment.”

In other words, schools that have growing enrollments are getting screwed.

The even more critical issue is DOE’s explanation for this situation: that citywide, enrollment is growing this year for the first time since 2002 – not even counting charter school growth, which has been rapidly expanding.

“For the first time since 2002, enrollment has increased. During the current school year, NYC public schools saw an increase in total pupil enrollment of about 1%. This means that in addition to the annual redistribution of dollars from schools with register losses to those with register gains, we will need to add dollars to the FSF budgets.”

Overall, according to sources, there are about 10,000 more students than last year. Yet the DOE hadn’t budgeted for this, even though we’ve been warning them to expect this for years.

Actually, elementary and middle school enrollments started growing last year, according to our calculations -- if charter schools in DOE buildings are included.

Indeed, many public officials, parents and advocates, including the City Comptroller and the Manhattan Borough President, warned them of imminent enrollment growth, based on higher birth rates, more development, and families wanting to stay in the city, because of the lower crime rate. This, we warned, would likely lead to even worse overcrowding, given the inadequate capital plan, rather than the mere “pocket overcrowding” that DOE educrats love to describe.

We also told them that the enrollment projections provided by their consulting firms – Grier Partnership and Statistical Forecasting – should not be trusted. FYI, the latest Grier report predicts that enrollment would not increase in NYC schools until 2017, and SF until 2016 – at least seven years away.

Here is what we wrote in our report, A Better Capital Plan, in October 2008:

"Although a detailed demographic analysis is beyond the capability of this report, there are signs that especially in the early grades, increased enrollment and overcrowding may already be upon us, and this trend may worsen over the coming years."

And yet as usual, the DOE ignored what we were saying. The mismanagement, incompetence and unfairness of all this cannot be understated. And it prefigures even worse conditions in our schools for years to come.

The high school space crunch

Even as the Bloomberg administration pushes ahead with plans for a lavish Police Academy on a sprawling high-tech 30-acre campus, public school students are packed like sardines without any relief in sight. For high schools, the situation is critical. As Leonie reported on this blog back in November:

For high schools, the undersupply of new seats is even more shocking: though there is a need for at least 90,000 new HS seats, the plan would provide only about 2,600 IS/HS seats. Not a single new high school is proposed for Manhattan or Staten Island…… In the Bronx, not a single new HS seat is proposed …..

DOE’s indifference to the need for more high school seats is no news to students and parents at Stuyvesant High School, where overcrowding is threatening not only the students’ well-being and education but also their safety. Should you visit Stuyvesant High School during one of the many events DOE likes to stage there, you might admire the airy 10-story building with stunning river views, impressive granite-clad lobby and soaring atrium and conclude that Stuy kids are pampered indeed. But come back when school is in session and you’ll see a very different picture: dozens of students socializing, studying and even eating while sitting on the floor-- the landing of the grand staircase and the second floor hallway are so crowded that you literally have to pick your way through the students and take care not to step on a hand or knock over a drink. Go to the cafeteria, and you won't see a single empty seat; students have taken to sitting on the radiators even when they’re hot. Space--for classrooms as well as for kids to eat lunch or hang out during free periods-- has been a critical issue at Stuyvesant for at least three years.

Built to house an average class of about 700 students (2,835 in total, according to the Blue Book), Stuyvesant has been forced by Chancellor Klein--over the principal’s strenuous objections--to take increasingly larger classes. Enrollment is currently about 3,240; with next fall’s incoming class of nearly 900, it will climb to 3,350; if the trend continues, Stuyvesant may eventually house 3,600 students.

Overcrowding is impacting education as well as quality of student life: next fall, much of the library will be gone to make way for a classroom, and each period will be reduced by one minute to allow students sufficient time to pass between classes. Without space for new classrooms and a 4% budget cut in the face of increased enrollment, class size can only go up, of course. Class size at Stuyvesant is already among the highest of any public school: global history, government, physics, math B and geometry have more than 33 students on average, with several physics and geometry classes already maxed out at 35. Only the English department has kept average class size below 30 thanks to an initiative, recently extended with CFE money, to improve writing by capping composition classes at 25. It is often said that Stuyvesant students teach themselves—that will serve them in good stead, as they will not get much individual attention from teachers. It’s a pity guidance and college counseling are not self-service departments; at a minimum, students will still need teachers to write letters of recommendation for college—an issue that has already provoked much discontent and dissension as teachers feel overburdened by the numbers.

Equally worrisome from a parent's perspective is the issue of safety. Although it’s relatively easy to maintain order under normal circumstances, evacuating 3,300 students from a 10- story building in an emergency will be a challenge, and notifying parents in a timely fashion will be impossible (the auto- dialer system already takes 2-3 days to reach all the families).

Why is Stuyvesant so crowded? It isn't because NYC children have gotten smarter. Contrary to popular belief, there is no particular SHSAT score that will get a child into Stuyvesant-- the cut-off is set only as a function of how many students the Chancellor dictates the building can accept. This year’s freshman class may well have been enlarged to accommodate parents who can no longer afford private school, but Stuyvesant was already at 110% of capacity in 2004, when the principal, taking his own empowerment seriously, capped the entering class at 700-- and promptly got in trouble for it.

Overcrowding at Stuyvesant is a product of DOE's failure to tackle the need for more high school seats. Even as the Chancellor trumpets higher test scores, DOE has failed to plan for what to do with all those much-improved eighth-graders. What we need are more academically solid high schools with thoughtfully designed programs—the hugely popular Beacon comes to mind—in new buildings. Chopping up existing buildings into small schools with grandiose names that seldom match the reality of their programs, and stuffing more and more children into already crowded good schools such as Stuyvesant does not create additional capacity. We need a better capital plan NOW.

The city's capital plan for schools -- breathtakingly awful!

The new proposed 5-yr. capital plan for schools is posted here. This administration has once again surpassed any reasonable person's expectations in terms of the meagerness of their response to the ongoing crisis of overcrowding in our schools. City officials clearly do not care enough about providing our students with a decent education, from the evidence provided in this plan.

Only a measly 25,000 new seats are offered – over five years -- with 8,000 of those seats rolled over from the previous plan, when we know according to their own current data, we need at least 165,000 -- at least five times as many.

This needs assessment provided in our report, A Better Capital Plan, based on the figures in the DOE’s own Blue Book – adjusted to estimate the number of seats needed to eliminate existing overcrowding and lower class size to the goals in the city’s class size reduction plan.

At least 40% of students are in overcrowded schools according to their own statistics – and about 70% are in schools where the class sizes are larger their stated four year goals.

Compare the meager 25,000 seats to the 66,000 new seats in their last plan – which still was inadequate to meet the need. Despite the fact that at yesterday’s press conference, the Mayor acknowledged that “"We don't have enough classroom space for the number of students we have” and even, that it was likely to get worse as new families moved to NYC – the plan is astonishingly bad.

If you count the seats rolled over from the last plan, this means the city proposes creating only 17,000 new seats, compared to 66,000 when the last plan was introduced; only about one fourth as large.

Even the last plan was insufficient to meet any of its stated goals: to provide enough new seats to alleviate overcrowding, eliminate trailers and other temporary spaces, and reduce class size in all schools to 20 or less in grades K-3.

The above figure of more than 160,000 new seats does not even count the many areas of the city which are experiencing rapid growth, and where schools are already becoming even more overcrowded– without any attempt to create new space in schools --nor does it address the way in which the current utilization figures understate the actual level of overcrowding at many schools.

According to a survey, half of all NYC principals say that the DOE's utilization figures at their schools understates the actual level of overcrowding at their schools; 51% say that overcrowding sometimes led to unsafe conditions for students or staff; more than one fourth (26%) of all middle and high school principals said that overcrowding made it difficult for their students to receive the credits and/or courses needed to graduate on time, and 86% of all NYC principals said that they were unable to provide a quality education because of excessive class sizes.

The administration does not seem to be ready to honestly address the issue of overcrowding, no less provide our children with a decent education. The proposed new capital plan undercounts the need for new seats in elementary and middle schools in Manhattan by nearly 5,000, in the Bronx by more than 16,000; in Brooklyn by more than 13,000; in Queens by more than 15,000; and in Staten Island by more than 4,000 seats.

For high schools, the undersupply of new seats is even more shocking: though there is a need for at least 90,000 new HS seats, the plan would provide only about 2,600 IS/HS seats. Not a single new high school is proposed for Manhattan or Staten Island, even though there is a need for 12,000 new high school seats to eliminate overcrowding and reduce class size in Manhattan, more than 4,000 in Staten Island.

In the Bronx, not a single new HS seat is proposed, even though, there should be more than 16,000. In Brooklyn, there are only 1200 IS/HS seats proposed in the plan, while more than 27,000 HS seats are needed, and in Queens, while nearly 30,000 new HS seats needed, only one IS/HS is proposed – with only 4,679 seats.

Nowhere in the plan is it laid out what the actual need is to address overcrowding, reduce class size, and be ready for the enrollment growth that it already started to be experienced by neighborhoods all over the city – and that is likely to continue, as the population grows by a million over the next twenty years.

Compare the total amount spent on new capacity in Manhattan and the Bronx of $660 million – which is considerably less than the $800 million proposed for more technology.

To add insult to injury, the city expects the state to finance half of this plan up front and is planning to spend only $2.8 billion on new capacity over the next five years. With half of this paid for by the state, this means the city would be spending only $1.4 billion on school construction. Amortized over 30 years, this amounts to only $152 million a year, with half of that paid by the state – according to the state reimbursement formula.

Which means the city would only be paying out about $75 million annually for all new capacity. Compare that to the $302 million we are paying this year for charter school tuition; or the $423 million DOE projects for charter school payments for FY 2010.

The city has been devoting a rapidly shrinking share of its capital funding to schools over the last four years, as our report points out, and this trend would mean that this share would drop much lower still.

Here are some news clips: With Budget Shrinking, Schools Will Get Fewer New Buildings (NY Times); Ed Dept. plans 50% slash in new seats for students (Daily News); SCHOOL BUILDING IN DETENTION (NY Post); Less money for new schools in capital plan released today (Gotham Schools).

How to create A Better Capital Plan

A new report released today by the Campaign for A Better Capital Plan, the Manhattan Taskforce on School Overcrowding, Class Size Matters, the United Federation of Teachers, and The Center for Arts Education concludes that the new five-year capital plan for schools, due to be proposed next week, should aim to eliminate existing overcrowding and reduce class size to the levels in the city’s state-mandated class size plan, be proactive in planning for growth, and create enough space for arts, science and other activities needed for a well-rounded education.

The DOE and School Construction Authority (“SCA”) should be able to explain, in detail, how a fully funded capital plan would be able to achieve all of these objectives, phased in over a reasonable amount of time– not just as citywide or district averages, but in every neighborhood in the city.

Among the findings of the report, “A Better Capital Plan”:

• Based on the DOE’s own data, approximately 167,842 new school seats would be necessary to eliminate trailers and other temporary spaces, relieve overcrowding and reduce class size to the goals in the city’s state-mandated class size reduction plan. The cost of creating these seats would raise the estimated share of the city’s capital spending on schools to 20% -- still significantly below the 23% average during the period 2000-2007. The report includes a breakdown of the need for seats by school type, borough and district.
  

• The capital plan should prepare for growth by incorporating a neighborhood analysis of housing starts, birth data, pre-K enrollment and other information to more accurately project future enrollment and capacity needs. Already, there are signs that enrollment citywide will not continue to decline indefinitely. Kindergarten enrollment has risen two out of the last four years, the DOE’s budget projections show no drop in the number of Kindergarten students, elementary schools grew more overcrowded last year, and City Planning predicts an increase in the number of 5-9 year olds over the next ten years.

• The methodology for calculating school utilization should be completely revised, by aligning it to the city’s class size goals and by more accurately assessing the need for dedicated spaces for art, science, libraries, cafeterias and gyms and special services. This will require a new reporting process that involves administrators, educators and parents at the school level.

So can we afford to build enough schools, in the midst of this economic meltdown? As Patrick Sullivan, representative to the Panel on Educational Policy and co-chair of the Manhattan Taskforce on School Overcrowding said:

“In his recently published letter to the president-elect, Mayor Bloomberg asserts that ‘a bold infrastructure plan will help put Americans back to work.’ Before we urge others to take action, we need to lead by example and make the most important infrastructure investment there is -- schools to educate our children. For too long school construction in New York City has taken a back seat to stadiums, office towers and endless residential development. A crisis born of poor planning is upon us. Already we see children turned away from neighborhood schools. We urge the mayor and chancellor to listen to the concerns and suggestions in this report. Only with a transparent, thorough, and open system of planning can we hope to provide the schools necessary for a sound basic education for every child. The future of our children is at stake and public school parents will hold the administration accountable.”

Here is an article in today’s Daily News about the report’s findings: City classrooms packed, expansion slows in Mayor Bloomberg era ...

According to Gotham Schools, Joel Klein’s response to the report today was to claim (inaccurately) once more that this was “the most robust capital plan the city has ever seen.”

Rally to demand A Better Capital Plan

Thanks so much to all of you who were able to attend our rally on school overcrowding on Friday morning.

We filled the steps of City Hall, nearly 300 impassioned parents, advocates, children and elected officials.

Among those who spoke included Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Cathy Nolan of Queens, chair of the Assembly Education Committee, Assembly member Deborah Glick, Council Members Robert Jackson, chair of the City Council Education committee, Jessica Lappin, chair of the subcommittee on public siting, and David Yassky of Brooklyn. Rich Farkas, the VP of the UFT also spoke, as well as Manhattan BP Scott Stringer, who orchestrated the entire proceedings with his usual flair.

Special thanks to the 5th graders at PS 3 who brought wonderful signs, including, “Sardines have more room” and “Bloomberg: give kids more room to bloom!”

Here are just some of the news clips: NYC schools are packed beyond capacity (WABC- TV): New York City schools suffer massive overcrowding, statistics show (Daily News); Parents: NYC School Overcrowding A 'Crisis' (WCBS - TV); NY schools are packed beyond capacity (AP) New York City Parents Sound Off on Crowded Classrooms (WNYC radio); School overcrowding to go under microscope (Staten Island Advance); For Downtown Primary Schools, Ever Less Wiggle Room (NY Times); Parents, elected officials urge better education capital planning (Gotham schools).

Gotham Schools has photos of the rally and I have uploaded more here.

It was a day of both highs and lows, since the Council hearings that followed featured the usual DOE spin. Deputy Mayor Walcott, Deputy Chancellor Grimm, Garth Harries, and Liz Sciabarra were out to convince skeptical Council members that everything was rosy.

They kept on droning about “pocket” overcrowding, as though this problem was limited to isolated neighborhoods – rather than the systemic crisis revealed by their own data – showing that more half of million students are in classes exceeding the targets in their class size reduction plan, and according to the DOE "Blue book", 38 percent of NYC students attend overcrowded schools Not to mention that according to our survey, half of all principals say that the capacity figures for their own schools are inaccurate, and understates the extent of overcrowding at their schools.

Council members repeatedly tried to get real answers – or at least get them to concede that a serious problem existed, but no such luck.

Deputy Mayor Walcott testified that because of past mismanagement, 20,000 seats out of 60,000 seats in the previous five year capital plan were never built. He omitted the fact that nearly half of the 63,000 seats in the current capital plan will probably not be completed when this plan concludes in June.

When Garth Harries, Chief Portfolio Officer, was asked when they would be able to reduce class size to 20 in grades K-3 in all elementary schools – more than 60% of whom are still in classes of 21 or more -- as the city originally promised would occur by June 2009, he responded that he was unable to say.

When Kathleen Grimm was asked when they would be able to eliminate trailers and TCUs, another goal they originally promised would occur by June, she replied that many principals like their trailers and didn’t want them removed. (!!) She also said that overcrowding at District 2 schools like Salk and Clinton middle schools were the result of their being too popular with parents– as though nearly every other middle school in D2 wasn’t severely overcrowded as well.

When Dennis Walcott was asked how many additional seats would be needed to meet the city’s goals in their state-mandated Contract for Excellence plan, (20 students per grade in K-3 and 23 in all other grades), he responded that this “depended on one’s mindset.”

When Walcott was asked about the results of our principal’s survey, which showed that 86% of NYC principals said that they were unable to provide a quality education because of excessive class sizes, and that 50% reported that overcrowding made it unsafe for students or staff, he shrugged this off, and responded that of course, all principals would like to have more room.

It was a typical administration performance, full of obfuscation and excuses, an attempt to define the problem away or blame others rather than confront the problems directly or provide any real answers.

Following several hours of this, MBP Scott Stringer finally got a chance to testify, as did State Sen. Liz Krueger, both of whom gave strong statements about the need to build more schools and reform the planning process.

Other speakers included Prof. Emily Horowitz, who summarized the results of our principal’s survey, and Doug Israel of the Center for Arts Education, who spoke about the need for more art and music rooms. I had to leave at 2 PM before the hearings were completed so I don’t have a complete list, but I know that other parent leaders testified as well.

Meanwhile, please see the press release along with the ABC letter, with its impressive list of signers -- including prominent advocates and elected officials from the city, state, and federal levels.

Here is also an updated copy of our principal survey report, as well as the CSM testimony, complete with charts.

Don’t forget to send a fax to the Mayor, demanding a better capital plan; just go to the UFT website today!