Update on Parent Opposition to Bloomberg's Schools Restructuring

Earlier, we posted resolutions against the latest Department of Education restructuring issued by Community Education Council in District 1 and the Citywide Council of High Schools. These bodies, elected by parents and mandated under NY state law and Department of Education regulations to represent parents, felt strongly enough to issue formal statements itemizing their objections to the restructuring and how the critical needs of their schools are being ignored by Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein.

Recently, more CECs (community school boards) and Presidents Councils (comprised of PTA presidents) have passed resolutions of opposition. Below is an updated list with links to resolutions where available:

District 1 Community Education Council (Manhattan) click here
District 1 Presidents Council (Manhattan)
District 2 Community Education Council (Manhattan) click here
District 2 Presidents Council (Manhattan)
District 3 Presidents Council (Manhattan)
District 4 Presidents Council (Manhattan)
District 6 Community Education Council (Manhattan)
District 24 Community Education Council (Queens) click here
District 26 Community Education Council (Queens) click here
District 27 Presidents Council (Queens)
District 30 Community Education Council (Queens) click here
District 30 Presidents Council (Queens) - the first to act
Region 6 HS Presidents Council (Brooklyn)

These bodies represent parents across the city:

Citywide Council on Special Education click here
Citywide Council on High Schools click here
Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council click here

Many PTAs have also passed resolutions, including those at PS 3, PS 41 here, PS 116, PS 150, PS 290, Clinton Middle School, School of the Future (D2), PS 166 (D3), Middle School 210 (D27), and the following high schools: Manhattan Center for Science and Math, Stuyvesant, James Madison and Port Richmond.

If parents know of other PTAs, CECs or parent groups that have passed resolutions or are considering them, please leave a comment below or send us an email.

Parent Opposition to Restructuring

Tuesday's Daily News editorial contains more of the same anti-teacher and anti-parent ranting we’ve come to expect from the News editors. As an alternative viewpoint, we thought parents should hear from an elected parent leader. Below we offer some insights from David Bloomfield, President of the Citywide Council on High Schools. From David’s testimony on the restructuring before the City Council:

Many, many questions exist regarding the recently-announced restructuring of our public schools. All we have are speeches and press releases from which to divine the new direction. And surely there is much to look forward to in a system that promises accountability, principal discretion, central support rather than micro-management, assurances of greater teacher quality promoted through rigorous tenure review, and funding equity that encourages enrollment of students who might otherwise be marginalized. I and many others might get behind these changes if they were more thoroughly explained, if weaknesses were discussed in good faith, and if we thought this restructuring was more than the reform-of-the-day. The caprice with which these changes seem to have been formulated and peremptorily announced leaves many stakeholders on the sidelines when our hearts and minds are needed to move the system forward.

More recently, David testified on the Empowerment Schools aspect of the restructuring:

In their zeal to wring quick rewards from worthwhile reforms, the Mayor and Chancellor do themselves, their initiatives, and students great harm. To prevent organized opposition, they shut out parents and the larger community. They deride cautionary advice from educators as incrementalism. They do everything in their power to evade checks and balances, whether it is sole source contracting or telling this very body that it has no power to legislate on education.

Parent leaders like David are deliberately ignored by the editorialists at the News and Post, whose agenda is merely to blame the teachers union for everything wrong with our schools. For David's full testimony see these links on restructuring and empowerment schools. The CCHS passed this resolution in opposition to the restructuring on March 14^th.

High School Parents Reject DoE Restructuring Plan

The Citywide Council on High Schools (CCHS), the elected representatives of parents and the entity mandated to advise the Schools Chancellor, passed this resolution March 14th in opposition to the proposed restructuring:

WHEREAS, having considered and reviewed the Department of Education’s Children First restructuring and Fair Student Funding Plan;

In view of the fact that the proposal focuses on overall structure rather than proven initiatives that directly impact the classroom, such as smaller class size;

Given that many details of the plan are still being determined;

Bearing in mind that the pilot Empowerment Zone is less than a year old and there has been no evaluation of the impact of creating Empowerment Schools on students’ academic achievement or on the funds available in these schools for teachers and academic programs;

With concern that restructuring of the entire school system following so soon upon the restructuring of 2003 will create destabilization and hardship for parents and students trying to obtain services similar to the chaos experienced at that time;

Noting that weighted student funding, as constituted in this plan, will create competition for scarce resources in the schools such that schools will have an incentive to hire lower-paid, inexperienced teachers and that other implications of the plan for schools’ budgets are not clearly spelled out;

Noting with regret that there was no input from parents or teachers in the planning of this proposal;

Therefore, be it RESOLVED that the Citywide Council on High Schools rejects the DOE Children First Proposal and calls upon the Mayor and the Chancellor to postpone implementation of this plan and immediately call public hearings on the priorities for education spending and restructuring of the New York City Public Schools.

Council Hearing on Empowerment Schools

The City Council Education Committee held a hearing yesterday on empowerment schools with testimony from Eric Nadelstern, CEO of Empowerment Schools. Under questioning, Nadelstern, a veteran NYC administrator, resorted to the familiar DoE tactic of laying down a smokescreen of obfuscation. Today's NY1 and NY Times coverage give some sense of the Council's frustration but leave out important points made at the hearings.

Councilmember John Liu was the sharpest in his criticism. Nadelstern, despite assertions that empowerment schools have much better results in terms of graduation rates, dropout rates and college placement than other schools, couldn't say whether those schools were better before they joined the empowerment zone. Liu's response: "How can say you don't know these numbers when you testify they are improving?" and again "We never get straight answers." Councilman Dan Garodnick, one of the more lucid of the city's politicans, asked a simple question about what distinct services would empowerment schools provide compared to the two other support models being offered to schools, Learning Support Organizations and Partnership Support Organizations. In response, Nadelstern droned on and on, never answering the question. After two more attempts at asking the same question, Garodnick gave up.

Most ominously, David Bloomfield, President of the Citywide Council on High Schools, and himself a parent at an empowerment school, testified on the weaknesses of the DoE plan. Ten years ago, working with the NYC Partnership and the School Governance Task Force, he helped draft a plan that is conceptually very similar to the empowerment initiative. The key difference is that the task force report called for "real authority" to be vested in school leadership teams. Yesterday, David testified on how that essential ingredient is completely missing from the Empowerment Schools we have today: "Parent after parent after parent after parent has complained that Empowerment Schools lack functional School Leadership Teams."

Update: Councilman Garodnick's office shared his excellent letter to the Chancellor.