The five myths of Mayoral control: my testimony before [postponed] Assembly Education hearings

The Assembly Education hearings on Mayoral control that were supposed to be held today were postponed last night because of snow. Given that the hearings were to be held remotely this is hard to understand. Perhaps the Assemblymembers wanted to enjoy a snow day, which unfortunately, the Mayor is not allowing NYC kids to experience. 

Here and below is the testimony I wanted to give and will hopefully be able to give some day in the future.

Mayoral control hearings - and the consensus that the current system doesn't work

The NY Assembly Education chair Michael Benedetto and other members of the Education committee held hearings today on Mayoral control which the Legislature renewed with minor changes last spring until June 2022.

Benedetto announced this was to be only the first of many hearings and roundtables they plan to hold to engage other advocates, academics, educators, etc.  Assemblymembers Mike Reilly of Staten Island and Alicia Hyndman of Queens, both former CEC Presidents, along with AMs Joanne Simon of Brooklyn and Harvey Epstein of Manhattan were there and asked lots of good questions.

Many CEC members and others spoke decried the lack of transparency, accountability, checks and balances, and real parent and community input into DOE decision-making.  No one testified strongly in favor of the current system except for Chancellor Carranza, who insisted it was the best system he had ever worked under because it allowed him to coordinate with other city agencies and make fast policy changes with little interference.

Council Member Mark Treyger testified that the Council should have a stronger role in making policy, perhaps by putting an appointed member on the Panel for Educational Policy.  Several of us suggested a Commission be formed to examine these issues more closely and gain more public input. I also proposed that the Legislature create the position of an independent DOE ombudsperson,  to respond to parent concerns.

My testimony follows, but in response to questions I also discussed many other issues, including the recommendations of the Parent Commission that we formed in 2008-9, school overcrowding, how DOE is shutting out parents by closing District leadership team meetings, their utter failure to respond to FOILs in a timely fashion, and more. Indeed, there can be no accountability without transparency and DOE gets an "F" in both.

If others have testimony to share, you can email it to the committee at whylandf@nyassembly.gov

Michael Duffy and Tweed: we don't listen and we don't care

Michael Duffy, head of the charter school office at DOE, in an interview said that he learned nothing from speakers at the hearings about the controversial expansion of Girls Prep Charter school:

"… I think, for my part, in a couple of hours of comments, I didn’t hear anything new from the public that wasn’t already known prior to the start of the hearing. I know it’s important that people have a chance to speak their mind, but I don’t think there’s anything that wasn’t known to the Department prior to the proposal for the expansion of Girls Prep."

Obviously he wasn't listening and doesn't care what parents or members of the community think. He is not alone.

Here is an excerpt from DOE's "amended" Educational Impact Statement for the proposed closing of Alfred E. Smith HS, summarizing the public comment so far:

Thirty-eight oral comments and 315 written comments regarding this proposal were received between December 3, 2009, and January 25, 2010. The comments came from current students at Alfred E. Smith, alumni from the school, teachers, community members, and companies that employ Alfred E. Smith alumni. All comments opposed the closure of Alfred E. Smith. At the January 11, 2010, joint public hearing on the original proposal, 100 members of the public noted their opposition.....One oral comment and sixty-one written comments were received between January 26 and February 23; all of these comments also opposed the DOE’s revised proposal.

More than four hundred people sent in comments opposed to the closing and not one in favor.

So did the DOE change its proposal in any way to close Alfred E. Smith?

No. So much for public process.

The final Assembly hearings on governance

There was a long line outside the New York Technical College in Brooklyn Friday morning, for the final New York State Assembly hearings on NYC public school governance and mayoral control. Hundreds of people from East Brooklyn Congregations (EBC), and a smaller group from Learn-NY, both groups closely allied with the administration, filled the sidewalk, sporting pro-mayoral control buttons and signs. There were also many parents, unaffiliated with any organization, who were far less enthusiastic about the current system, which leaves them without any input in how their children's schools are run.

Once inside, there seemed to be an unbridgeable chasm between supporters and opponents of mayoral control. But upon examination, there were few who didn't support greater checks and balances on the powers of the mayor and chancellor and increased parent input.

Comptroller William Thompson and a representative from Borough President Marty Markowitz started off the hearing by declaring themselves strong supporters of mayoral control. But having made that statement, each followed with recommendations that were similar to—if much weaker than—those of the Parent Commission on School Governance and Mayoral Control; for example, to support a more independent school board, with members with fixed terms to replace the current Panel on Educational Policy, stronger roles for Community District Education Councils (CDECs), and an independent body to audit test scores and graduation rates.

Thompson proposed a model like that currently used in Boston, in which the Mayor appoints members from a group of candidates first screened by a committee made up of stakeholder groups. (Brooklyn Congressman Anthony Wiener made a similar, if less specific, statement later on.)

The EBC spokesperson, Rev. David Brawley, testified to the improvements in the schools in his community that he said were brought by mayoral control. But, when pressed for what changes he would like to see, he suggested an independent parent advocacy center, similar to the Parent Commission's proposal for an Independent Parent Organization (IPO) and affiliated Parent Academy. An IPO was also the centerpiece of a proposal from former Congressman Major Owens and his Central Brooklyn Martin Luther King Commission.

A number of sincere speakers from charter schools testified about the educational opportunities these schools offered students who would otherwise languish in their neighborhood public schools. But none of them asked why these opportunities, including smaller classes, are only available in charter schools and not in our regular public schools, or even why continuing mayoral control is necessary for these programs to continue. By pitting charter school parents against opponents of mayoral control, the DOE has cleverly divided parents into two camps that are fighting each other instead of an administration that refuses to provide a quality education to all NYC public school children.

As a representative of the Citywide Council on Special Education, Parent Commission member Patricia Connelly spoke early, to great effect. After describing the especially dismal situation that exists for students with special needs and the lack of a voice for parents of these children, she also described how the DOE routinely makes decisions about opening and closing schools without community involvement. "The Parent Commission rejects the condescending autocracy that currently masquerades as parent engagement," she stated.

A number of other speakers referenced the Parent Commission's recommendations, including several CDEC members. By the time our panel got a chance to speak at 6:30 PM, we were rushed a bit, but other members of the Parent Commission had already had a chance to fully present our proposals in the Bronx. All in all, the Parent Commission seems to have made quite an impact.

As this was the first of any of the five Assembly hearings I had attended, I was most interested to watch the various members of the Assembly Education Committee in action.. They spent a huge amount of time fiercely questioning the speakers from the Department of Education, including Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott; Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning Marcia Lyles, Eric Nadelstern, Chief Schools Officer; Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf; James Liebman, Chief Accountability Officer, and Martine Guerrier, Chief Family Engagement officer. Even though many of the DOE officials had clearly been prepared in advance (and Cerf carried a thick white binder entitled “Briefing Book” on his lap), they seemed strangely unprepared for many of the specific questions asked.

For example, Hakeem Jeffries asked for the black male graduation rate—a figure the DOE had not include in their testimony and that none of them appeared able to provide, even though graduation rates was supposed to be the focus of their testimony. Jeffries himself supplied the shocking figure of 32%.

Alan Maisel asked how many principals had been trained, to what effect , and at what cost by the Leadership Academy. Cerf and Nadelstern could offer no specific numbers, but claimed that the Academy had produced “hundreds of people” who were doing great work.

Nick Perry called the controversial practice of “credit recovery” the “dirty little secret” of schools, in which students who otherwise failed their courses could “catch up” by attending a few weekend sessions. Hakeem Jeffries followed up by asking DOE officials how many students graduate from high school as a result of credit recovery. Nadelstern said that the number of students benefiting from this policy was “impossible to calculate,” but claimed that the practice was long-standing.

Deputy Mayor Walcott made the unconvincing argument that though they might not have all the data available, at least with Mayoral control, “you know where to get the answers”(!!) Several legislators talked about how unresponsive the DOE had been in keeping them informed. Michael Benedetto complained that an elementary school in his district that he had once attended was being closed and turned into a charter school with little or no advance warning. Nick Perry recounted how he had tried to get Martine Guerrier to return his phone calls to no avail.

Jim Brennan questioned DOE claims of achievements that had actually started before their tenure (he has released a report on this subject). Mark Weprin lit into the DOE for appearing to deny the extent of test prep occurring in the schools, instead of true teaching.

Daniel O'Donnell described the letter grades schools receive on their Progress reports by the Yiddish word “fakakta ,” saying that no parent believes them. He asked why DOE was not following the law by failing to establish an “audit committee”– as had all other school districts throughout the state. He questioned why charter schools are not educating their fair share of special needs students or English Language Learners (and he returned to this question with every charter school provider who testified).

Chair Cathy Nolan expressed her understanding, as a public school parent herself, of how the DOE's parent surveys were constructed to manipulate a favorable response, and ended the DOE questioning with a comment on how the administration appears to be creating a “two tier” system that “smacks of triage,” allowing charter schools to provide smaller classes, while refusing to allow our regular public schools to do the same.

It seems clear that the Education Committee is prepared to make major changes in school governance, even if mayoral control is not rejected outright. Mark Weprin said that the only question was what changes they would recommend. Of course, how this will play out in the Senate and with the Governor is yet to be seen.

When I left at 7:00 pm, a large and vocal contingent from the Campaign for Better Schools had recently arrived. With only an hour left in the hearings, less than half of the remaining 50 or so people who had signed up to testify—largely parents and teachers—had yet had a chance to speak. Clearly, many parents are fed up and wanted to take advantage of the rare opportunity of these hearings to have their voices heard, especially as the legislators appeared interested in what they had to say. This was a refreshing contrast to the hearings held by the administration, in which they make it very clear that could care less what we parents think. --- Ellen Bilofsky

Check out the news stories about the hearings here: A Diverse Set of Voices Struggles to Be Heard on School Control (NY Times);State Assembly Holds Final Hearing on Mayoral Control of Schools (WNYC radio); Thompson Calls For Changes To Mayor-Controlled Schools (NY1); City Controller William Thompson's control issue (Daily News); Thompson: Let mayor keep school control, but limit his options (Gotham Schools)

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Assembly hearings in the Bronx: the Parent Commission makes their debut

There were hundreds of parents, advocates and union members filling the seats at the Assembly hearings on governance at Lehman College on Friday. The morning started off with a bang with testimony from a panel of Parent Commission members, putting forward their proposals on how the current governance system should be reformed.

Monica Major, president of Community Education Council 11 in the Bronx, Don Freeman, former principal in the Bronx, Lisa Donlan, president of CEC 1 in Lower Manhattan, Josh Karen of CEC 6 in Upper Manhattan, and Vern Ballard of Community Board 9 testified; a position paper is posted here. Class Size Matters is a member of the Commission and has endorsed these proposals.

The theme of the Parent Commission’s recommendations is the need for a real partnership and collaboration with parents rather than Mayoral dictatorship. We are proposing that the Chancellor and his policies be subject to both state and city law – and that there needs to be a truly independent and responsive Board of Education to provide necessary checks and balances. The Board should consist of 15 members, including six parent representatives, elected directly by Community Education Council members – who themselves will be elected directly by parents in each district. The Mayor will have three appointees, the City Council and the Public Advocate each one, and together the Board will appoint four more members to build up their expertise in specific policy areas, like the needs of ELL and/or high school students. It is our hope that the process of coming together to appoint more members will act as a consensus building exercise.

The Parent Commission also recommends the formation of an Independent Accountability Office, a truly independent Inspector General, answerable to the public, and an Ombudsperson, to respond to and resolve parental complaints. We have also put forward reforms on restoring the role of school districts, strengthening parent input, improving special education, and forming a commission to create a Constitution for the NYC school system. Check our position paper here; the full report will be out next week.

Following the Parent Commission panel, the DOE testified, with Maria Santos the head of Office of English Language Learners leading off. Despite the fact that Assembly member Carmen Arroyo accused Santos of being a liar, I thought Santos’ testimony was among the most honest of any from the DOE in years. Santos admitted that the achievement levels of middle school ELL students has been stagnant, and that graduation rates among this population has been flat. She did not try to spin the data, and twice said smaller classes would be necessary to improve results for this high needs population. (Indeed, the much-praised NYC International High schools for ELLs offer classes much smaller than the city average.)

Santos’ frank testimony was quite a contrast to the arguments of her fellow panelist in the Bronx, Chris Cerf, Deputy Chancellor, who consistently downgraded the importance of class size, criticized class size reduction as too expensive, (citing an hugely inflated estimate of $800 M for a 10% reduction) and said that this reform was not a top priority for the DOE -- despite the state law that mandates a move towards smaller classes in NYC.

Assemblymember Aurelia Greene of the Bronx and Education Chair Cathy Nolan were both very piercing in their questioning of Cerf, and asked him repeatedly why the DOE had failed to reduce class size, and indeed why class sizes had increased this year. Nolan asked him whether he thought the program was voluntary. He admitted it was not, but did not explain if DOE intended to improve their compliance in the future.

Other highlights included the questioning of Cerf and Deputy Mayor Walcott by AM Daniel O’Donnell of Cerf about their policy of replacing the neighborhood zoned schools with charter schools. He honed in on PS 241 – a school in his district, with 45% special education and ELL students, that DOE intends to replace with a branch of Harlem Success Academy, a chain of charter schools which as of this year according to state data had only two ELL students.

Cerf claimed that charter schools have high proportions of Hispanic students, and that DOE didn’t care about what kind of school was offered, as long as it has results. Later Luis Reyes offered testimony that while the NYC public schools have 14% ELL students, charter schools enroll only 4% ELLs, according to data provided him the City Comptroller. (Not surprisingly, the DOE does not make this information available to the public.)

Both AM Mark Weprin and AM Ruben Diaz Jr. were critical about the amount of testing and test prep in our public schools. AM Michael Benjamin asked about the decline of minority students at Bronx Science, his alma mater, and the other specialized high schools. What was interesting is that among the ten or more Assembly members who spoke, there did not appear to be a single one who supported the administration’s policies or Mayoral control in its current form unchanged. Where the Mayor will obtain backing for his continued chokehold on our schools is unclear – but perhaps he is relying on a backdoor deal.

There are accounts of the hearings in the NY Times blog; Gotham Schools, and WNYC radio. On each you can leave comments. Also, check out the Parent Commission website here.

Leonie's testimony

A debate on Mayoral control

A real debate on Mayoral control at the Assembly hearings on Feb. 6 -- between two middle school students, Daniel Clark Jr. and LeiShawn McClean, both from Democracy Prep Charter school. Here, here! Now this is democracy.

Video thanks to Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools.


Democracy Prep Charter School Students Testify on Both Sides of Mayoral Control Debate before New York State Assembly from Elizabeth Green on Vimeo.

Maria's testimony on school governance

Good Morning. My name is Maria Dapontes-Dougherty. I am the President of District 30 Q Presidents’ Council and also currently the Corresponding secretary of CPAC.

I have been an involved parent and advocate for our parents and especially the students in the NYC public school system for the past 12 years.

When mayoral control first came upon us I was enthusiastic and hopeful. I truly believed that holding one person responsible with the active participation of parents, teachers, administrators and Board of Education personnel would lead to the success of our massive education system. I WAS WRONG. The years of mayoral control of our schools have been a nightmare.

I will begin with the topic of parental involvement, which is the closest to my heart, and of which I truly believe that the strength of the home school partnership is the key to the success of our children. Under mayoral control parents are philosophized and politicized as a vital component of the system, but are blocked any time they voice an opinion or try to participate. Schools cannot be run exclusively like a business, in, as the "products" of this business are the future minds of our country. They are our children!

The new regulation Chancellor’s A655 on School Leadership Teams tried to decimate the parental voice, parents spoke out that these changes were against NYS law and no one listened It took a legal complaint and a recent decision by State Education Commissioner Mills to confirm what parents already knew that parents must be involved in setting schools’ goals and strategies for meeting those goals. Currently SLT’s are dysfunctional and DLTs are orchestrated by Tweed. Teachers and parents have become the required bodies present and nothing else.

District 30 in Queens has been one of the most overcrowded districts in our city. This year class sizes went up in all grades except for the 7^th grade. Statistics show the city plans to build only about one half of the new seats we need to eliminate overcrowding and reduce class size. Since mayoral control we have opened one school, which was overcrowded on day one. This school being built was a result of the previous administration. Lockers for the children still sit unused in as there are not enough for the overcrowded building in which they sit.

We saw the past Capital Plan from this administration showing new seats that never happened. SCA could not find proper spaces, but somehow was able to place Charter Schools. Our legislators found spaces and strongly supported us, but were ignored. We now see the same seats in the new plan, but hold no hope. We still have overcrowded classrooms in aging buildings. Reports show that this administration has created the least amount of seats across the city for our children. Nothing has changed, but the DOE and the mayor continue to spin-doctor.

Tweed touts accountability, but it does not exist. They flip flop their opinions on who is responsible for our schools from whether it be the auspices of the state or the city, at their whim, and whichever fulfills their choice at the moment. A critical example would be the cell phone lawsuit. It is a sad day when parents whose post 9/11 children are traveling across the city are denied the right to communicate to their children, because the mayor has a pet peeve about cell phones. Ah an example of the spin doctoring: The phones are used for cheating. Hmmmm cheaters existed long before the mayor’s ban and will still exist long after. A cheater is a cheater no matter what era we are in.

Since Mayoral control our Schools Safety Agents are under the jurisdiction of the NYPD. We have children that are being policed and arrested. The NYCLU has fully documented these unacceptable actions in its "Criminalizing the Classroom" report. CPAC seeked advice on what the rights and responsibilities of Safety agents were and we were told that the NYPD would have to answer. The Chief of School Safety of the NYPD refused our requests. We have instances of 5 year olds being handcuffed and arrested and are not provided with the framework of rules that affect our children.

The system is not transparent and there are no checks and balances. The PEP, theoretically the body that would facilitate accountability, transparency and checks and balances is powerless. It is comprised of mayoral representatives and Borough President appointees that are fired if they do not agree with the mayor’s beliefs. This is not an example of a democracy; it is a dictatorship.

CECs, Presidents’ Councils, and CPAC are powerless. These bodies are micromanaged and their valuable input is dismissed. Our legislators are ignored. Our Superintendents have a title required by state law, but are sent to schools across the city and are powerless in the districts they represent. The press is influenced by our wealthy and powerful mayor and his cronies. The revelation of the power of data is only a tool to doctor the numbers to the benefit of the administration and the unknowing public.

I participated in the original hearings on mayoral control and remember how important it was to the members of that panel that parents and the community be engaged. Years and countless reorganizations later our system is more dysfunctional. Graduation rates are still dismal. Classrooms are still bursting at the seams. The bureaucracy, cronyism and entrenched interests we believed would be dismantled have been replaced by SSOs, multimillion dollar no bid contracts and partnering with private groups that only care about profits.

I plead that you bring the “public” back to public education.

Please send your testimony to leonie@att.net.

Assembly hearings on school governance; please RSVP now!

The Assembly Education committee will hold hearings on School Governance and the future of Mayoral control, beginning in Queens on Thursday, January 29, 2009. More information is here; the full schedule is below.

The hearings in each borough will begin at 10 AM, but if working parents reserve a slot after 5 PM, by phone or email, you can be sure that you can speak at that time – but you must reserve the slot in advance. It is important that as many parents as possible come, but if you cannot attend, you can email your testimony as well.

To reserve a speaking slot, just email storellicastron@assembly.state.ny.us; or call (518) 455-4881. Included in the official notice is a description of some legislators' concerns:

As the law is set to sunset on June 30th of this year, the Assembly Committee on Education is interested in hearing about the impact of mayoral control on the City's school system and how modifications to the law could address concerns and improve the current governance structure. For example, questions have been raised regarding the development and execution of a five-year capital plan that still leaves many schools overcrowded and New York City with some of the largest class sizes in the state. There has also been persistent concern about the lack of access to information by parents and the community. Mayoral control has also had an impact on many other areas over which it has authority, such as student achievement. Therefore, the Committee anticipates hearing testimony regarding the effect the change in governance has had on this area, including the delivery of educational services to English language learners and students with disabilities, as well as on the other areas that have been affected by mayoral control of the New York City schools.

QUEENS
Thursday, January 29, 2009
10:00 a.m.
Queens Borough Hall
Meeting Room 213
120-55 Queens Boulevard
Kew Gardens, NY

STATEN ISLAND
Thursday, February 12, 2009
10:30 a.m.
College of Staten Island Center for the Arts
Williamson Theater
2800 Victory Boulevard, Building 1P

MANHATTAN

Friday, February 6, 2009
10:00 a.m.
Assembly Hearing
250 Broadway, Room 1923
19th Floor

BRONX
Friday, March 13, 2009
10:00 a.m.
Lehman College
Lovinger Theatre
First Floor Speech and Theater Building
250 Bedford Park Boulevard West

BROOKLYN

Friday, March 20, 2009
10:00 a.m.
New York City Technical College
Klitgord Auditorium
285 Jay Street