Council Members Dromm and Treyger urge Congress to make sure while funding schools, NYS and NYC can't pull back their support at the same time

See the letter below, sent late last week from Council Members Danny Dromm and Mark Treyger, chairs of the Council Finance and Education Committees to New York Senators and our Congressional delegation, urging them to provide the additional funding our schools will need next fall to reopen safely and well, with the enhanced in-person support that students will require to recover from the huge losses they've suffered this year.

The letter also points out that the federal aid should be structured so that the state cannot simply cut education funding in the same amount as the additional aid districts receive from the federal government, as Governor Cuomo did last year with his "pandemic adjustment", cutting NYC's aid by nearly a billion dollars.

 As the Education Law Center and AQE point out in a new analysis, Cuomo threatened to do this again in his new Executive Budget, by slashing state aid by over half of the $3.85 billion in federal emergency relief funds in the previous funding passed by Congress, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act, funding that was meant to respond to the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, not to plug holes in state education budgets. 

At the same time, CM Dromm and CM Treyger also urged the Congress to make sure the city doesn't use these funds by withdrawing its support for schools as well:

" At the same time, include rigorous maintenance of effort provisions in the law, so that the city does not cut back on its own funding, as it is threatening to do with significant cuts to the budgets of as many as 60 percent of schools. This happened previously during the last economic recession in 2007, when during the first two years of the recession, even as the state and the federal government increased aid to schools, the class sizes of NYC students increased sharply, because the city cut its own funding at the same time. Sadly, class sizes in our public schools still remain significantly larger than before 2007, particularly in the early grades."

According to Education Week, the Biden plan does contain certain restrictions to ensure maintenance of effort on the part of states and districts, particularly in relation to their aid to high-poverty districts like NYC: 

States receiving aid through the bill released Monday would have to agree not to cut their per-pupil spending for high-poverty districts more than any per-pupil reduction they make for districts overall, during fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023....In addition, states could not cut their own aid to the 20 percent of districts with the highest share of economically disadvantaged students from fiscal 2019 funding levels. That requirement would also cover fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2023.

There would be similar conditions for districts’ limits on how much they could cut aid to high-poverty schools.

States would also have to agree to maintain certain levels of spending on K-12 schools in general in proportion to recent years’ spending levels, although they could apply for a waiver from that requirement.

Let's hope that these provisions stick and are strong and meaningful, given the propensity on the part of the city and state to take advantage of funds coming from elsewhere to pull back on their own support to public schools.

 

NYC Council hearings on teacher retention & a disappointing budget from the Mayor

 Yesterday afternoon the City Council Education Committee held hearings on teacher recruitment and retention at City Hall; at the same time Mayor de Blasio was presenting his budget proposal for Fiscal 2018.  Both held special relevance to the issues of class size and school overcrowding that are so critical to the quality of education in this city.

At the hearings, Amy Way of  DOE's Office of Teacher Recruitment and Quality and Anna Commitante, Senior Executive Director of the Office of Curriculum, faithfully repeated the Chancellor's mantra that the best strategy to support teachers and prevent them from quitting is to provide them with "80 minutes of rigorous weekly professional development" and "high-quality curricula".

Yet four different Council Members pressed them on the need for class size reduction to stem the tide of teachers leaving our schools, and asked them what if anything they were doing anything to lower c class size:  Education Committee Chair Danny Dromm, as well as Council Members Mark Treyger, Inez Barron and Margaret Chin.  Not coincidentally, Dromm and Treyger were teachers in NYC public schools before being elected to the Council, CM Barron was formerly a NYC teacher and a principal, and CM Chin is married to a public school teacher and once taught ESL classes herself.

CM Barron confronted them about the fact that most of the Renewal schools still have class sizes of 30 and that they should be addressing that condition if they want to give teachers a real chance to succeed and keep them from fleeing these schools.  All these other efforts will be useless until and unless they address this critical factor.   The DOE did not respond. 

Dromm pointed out that many NYC teachers leave to teach in the suburbs because class size is much lower there; he himself had had classes as large as 38 students in middle school.  Treyger said that it was very difficult to provide enough support to students, especially English Language Learners who have recently come to this country,  with class sizes this large as. Chin asked if the DOE had any class size goals they were aiming for; Commitante just repeated the average class sizes, and cited no intention of bringing them any lower.

CM Mark Levine questioned what strategies were being using to stem high rates of teacher attrition especially at struggling schools, where turnover rates are high, and DOE responded with the usual nostrum that they are building "professional learning communities" in these schools.  CM Treyger pointed out that the label of "Renewal" schools hardly helps attract teachers or students; who would go to a hospital called a Renewal hospital? he asked.

Dromm also criticized the Fair Student Funding system, which incentivizes principals not to hire experienced teachers or to try to offload them, as they cost as much as two new teachers.  He argued   that the DOE should cover the cost of staffing schools rather than make principals pay for teacher salaries out of the school's limited budget,  as happened in the pre-Bloomberg years.  He said that the Council was thinking of passing a resolution on this issue.  The DOE officials just shrugged their shoulders and said they didn't think this was a problem.  Several Council Members brought up the need to increase the diversity of the NYC teaching force, which the DOE claimed they were working hard to fix.

After a bit more of this, Karen Alford of the the UFT testified . She gave short shrift to class size and just mentioned in passing that it would be good if first or second year teachers had a chance to have smaller classes. Shael Suransky -- remember our former Deputy Chancellor? - now head of Bank St. College talked at length about the importance of teacher residency programs. This, he said, is especially important to train teachers of ELLs,  22% of whom are diagnosed with disabilities, showing something is very wrong in our schools.  A professor from Teachers College said that requiring applicants submit GRE scores to graduate-level teacher education programs as now mandated by the New York State Education Transformation Act of 2015 was pointless and exclusionary, and would further cut down on the diversity needed for the teaching force.

I testified as well.  My testimony, on the proven positive impact of small classes on teacher retention,  is here.

At the same time, I was eager to hear what the Mayor was announcing about next year's budget plan. The day before, NY1 had announced that he would propose nearly doubling the seats in the school capital plan:

"There is nothing more important to our families than their children and we have a lot of overcrowded schools," the mayor said Monday night on the Road to City Hall. "This is an area where we have to make an impact."

On Tuesday, the mayor will propose his new budget for the year ahead. In it, he will almost double the number of new school seats, meaning he will add about 38,000 seats.

This made me quite hopeful; perhaps De Blasio would finally do the right thing and fully fund at least the DOE's estimate for the need for new seats.  The 38,000 was not just a random figure -- but the unfunded seats in the current 2015-2019 five-year capital plan, which includes about 45,000-50,000 seats. (Our estimate of the actual need for seats is much higher.)

Yet it turned out that the Mayor was promising to fund these seats not now, not in the current plan, but in the 2020-2024 plan -- several years from now.   By that point, of course, our schools will likely be even more overcrowded given the current pace of residential development.

As is customary, one capital plan rolls into another, as few of the 45,000 or so in the current plan will  be built by the time the new plan is adopted.  In fact, only about one fifth of these seats have yet even been sited.

Late in the afternoon, I asked Ben Max of Gotham Gazette who was tweeting out highlights from the Mayor's announcement what the story was on the school capital plan:

.@TweetBenMax what's funding for new school seats? I'm hearing contradictory stories

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) January 24, 2017

Ben Max tweeted back a photo of the Mayor's announcement:

@leoniehaimson pic.twitter.com/GW35uCKW8S

— Ben Max (@TweetBenMax) January 24, 2017

@benmax wonder why @Ny1 reported doubling of new seats? https://t.co/5ATwt0pd9A

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) January 24, 2017

Thats fewer new seats than in current capital plan that has 44,324 new seats https://t.co/IhC7sgWxNE

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) January 24, 2017

Then the DOE's press officer interjected:

@leoniehaimson @benmax @NY1 The 38,487 seats are in ADDITION to the 44K seats - part of plan to address overcrowding

— Devora Kaye (@dskaye) January 24, 2017

@leoniehaimson This recognizes &addresses full current seat need, not end for next cap plan-future projections not done so not in plan yet

— Devora Kaye (@dskaye) January 24, 2017

Pushing off funding for needed seats into future plans totally inadequate -likely lead to worse overcrowding given rate current development https://t.co/pK1DeVhiUU

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) January 24, 2017

Also fact NYC doesn't have future enrollment projections is an indictment in itself - always DOE seems yrs behind https://t.co/pK1DeVhiUU

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) January 24, 2017

This morning, Chalkbeat wrote the following summary about the mayor's plan, and linked to my tweet:

As part of the administration’s bid to reduce overcrowding, this year’s budget proposal includes nearly $500 million in additional spending to create roughly 38,500 seats between the years 2020 and 2024. That will “largely alleviate the overcrowding issue we’re facing now,” de Blasio said. Devora Kaye, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education, said that is in addition to the 44,000 seats already included in the city’s five-year capital plan.

But at least one advocate raised concerns about whether this pace of expansion does enough to address overcrowding issues the city currently faces.

The article in DNA info quoted my critique of the Mayor's attempt to pull a fast one on the public:

Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, said the 40,000 school seats promised by the mayor represent a cut of 10,000 in the current five-year plan.

"The mayor’s announcement is symptomatic of chronic underfunding and inadequate planning for the future, and will likely lead to even worse overcrowding given the rapid pace of residential development and enrollment growth," said Haimson.

Indeed, nothing about the budget plan makes much sense -- especially since the additional $500 million that is supposed to be allocated in the NEXT capital plan two years from now only would fund about 5,000 more seats - far from the 40,000 claimed by the Mayor. 

Is the company due to receive a $2 billion contract from the DOE the same as implicated in a huge 2011 scandal?

After this blog was posted, articles appeard about the contract in the NY Daily News, Chalkbeat, and NY Post.

 

UPDATE and CORRECTION: A sharp eyed friend just noted that this contract is really for five years, with an option to renew at four more years, so it is potentially worth over $2 Billion!  I have corrected the text and the headline accordingly.  I have also gotten confirmation that this indeed the same company as involved in the Lanham kick-back scheme. 

 

Last week Public Advocate Letitia James, City Council Education Chair Danny Dromm and Class Size Matters sent a letter to the members of the Panel for Educational Policy, with a copy to Chancellor Fariña, urging them to release the details of a contract with a company called "Custom Computer Specialist" which they are supposed to vote on at their February 25 meeting. (Click on image to enlarge.)

 

This company is due to receive a five year contract for "IT networking hardware and installation services" at $224.8 million per year, with two options to renew, each for another two years, potentially totaling almost more than $2 billion, as noted in the brief summary posted above and on the DOE website.

In addition, the PEP is supposed to vote on a one year contract for Verizon, costing $42.6 million for telephone services and data network connectivity. 

 

In response to an earlier letter from CM Helen Rosenthal, chair of the Contracts Committee, the DOE stubbornly refused  to release any details of its contracts to the public until the day before the vote, including whether they had been competitively bid or involved companies that had been investigated for improper or illegal behavior. Actually, the full documentation for the contracts approved at last month's PEP meeting was only posted several days after the vote, and only following an email to DOE from CM Rosenthal's chief of staff, Marisa Maack.

Not until today, when I had a chance to reread my 2011 testimony before the City Council Contracts Committee that I was reminded how Verizon and Custom Computer Specialists were implicated in a 2011 massive kick-back scheme to benefit then-DOE consultant Ross Lanham, who oversaw “Project Connect," a billion dollar IT contract, according to a report from the office of Special Investigator Condon.  Both vendors overcharged DOE by millions of dollars, and in turn they enriched Lanham by hiring his consulting company at hugely inflated rates.

 

Without more information, it is impossible to know whether Custom Computer Specialists is the same company as the "Custom Computer Specialist" due to receive a $2 billion contract on Wednesday, as listed on the DOE document above, but it seems quite possible. This lack of information only reinforces the importance of the request in our letter that the DOE or the PEP members should reveal the details of this contract immediately, and in the future, every contract at least ten days ahead of any vote.

The IT "Project Connect" scandal became big news, and Lanham was sentenced to 37 months in prison, as well as pay $1.7 million in restitution to DOE, according to the prosecutor on the case, Preet Bahara. Judge George Daniels criticized the DOE for allowing so much money to be stolen from both the city and the feds, since the internet wiring was partially paid for by the federal E-Rate program: "There was absolutely no checks and balances, no procedure to identify and prevent the overbilling that went undetected at DOE,” Daniels said. “It was a crime waiting to happen." 

 

I am unaware as to  whether either company, Verizon or Custom Computer Specialists, have repaid DOE for these overcharges, which amounted to millions of dollars.  Yet in November 2014,  according to the NY Times, Comptroller Stringer wrote a letter to the Chancellor, revealing how the city was still being investigated by the feds and had been suspended from the E-Rate program because of the Lanham scandal, losing as much as $120 million in the process.   

Perhaps the DOE has now been reinstated since the brief description of this new contract says it will be paid with "Tax levy, Capital and E-Rate funds."

Below are relevant excerpts from Condon's 2011 report:

An investigation conducted by this office has substantiated that Ross Lanham (“Lanham”), while employed as a consultant for the Department of Education (“DOE”) to oversee “Project Connect,” billed millions of dollars to the DOE for five consultants whom he employed through his company, Lanham Enterprises, Inc., without the knowledge and/or agreement of the DOE….. All of the vendors profited, to some extent, from Lanham’s scheme.   The investigation also established that Verizon, in order to be awarded a multi-million dollar contract, agreed to Lanham’s demand that Verizon use subcontractor Custom Computer Specialists (“CCS”) at a higher cost to the DOE than Verizon would have charged for the same services. …

Custom Computer Specialists

In an interview with SCI investigators, a Senior Manager at CCS, which was a subcontractor to IBM on Project Connect, stated that Lanham approached him in April 2002, and asked him to hire two consultants, Michael Ginzburg at $70 per hour and Jennifer Thornton at $30 per hour, and to pay them directly. The Senior Manager stated that CCS would then bill Lanham Enterprises, a consulting company owned by Lanham and his wife, Laura, at $75 and $35 per hour respectively for their services. The Senior Manager stated that in April 2002, service agreements were executed between CCS and Lanham Enterprises and CCS and each of the consultants. The CCS Senior Manager told investigators that, at some point, Consultant Tamika Stevenson “came on board.”

When investigators asked the Senior Manager whether he contacted anyone at the DOE regarding CCS hiring the consultants, the Senior Manager indicated that he did not and added that he also did not know whether anyone else from CCS ever contacted the DOE about this matter. …Iacoviello [DOE Director of Deployment and Implementation] recalled that Lanham had in formed him that the DOE did a lot of business through IBM and CCS, and had said that CCS will “become your best friends, because without them nothing gets done around here.”…. Iacoviello stated that he then began to question Lanham about the price that CCS was charging for construction and integration costs which averaged approximately $75,000 per school, and sometimes higher.  Iacoviello recalled that when he asked the Business Account Manager why the DOE was paying so much money, he replied that Lanham told Verizon that Verizon had to use CCS if they wanted to get the work.  Iacoviello told investigators that when Lanham directed Verizon to use CCS, he acted on his own and bypassed both the Verizon and City bidding processes. ….

Lanham subsequently added three more consultants, Lanham’s brother, Robert Lanham, Tamika Stevenson, and Karen Tempio, using a similar pass-through arrangement, but using Verizon instead of IBM. Although these consultants were being paid $60 to $70 an hour, Lanham billed CDC $225 per hour for each of these consultants.  CDC then either billed Verizon $247.50 an hour for the consultants, or submitted their invoices to CCS, who in turn billed Verizon $247.50 an hour. The DOE was subsequently billed at least $290 an hour by Verizon….

CCS facilitated Lanham’s concealment of the employment of the consultants.   CCS also benefited by Lanham’s threat to Verizon that they would lose millions of dollars in business if they did not hire CCS. SCI was not able to determine the extent of the relationship between Lanham and CCS....

Verizon concealed from the DOE and law enforcement that they got millions of dollars in contracts through Lanham only after agreeing to hire CCS as a subcontractor. All of the subcontractors named in this report, except Bayview, facilitated the concealment of the fact that Lanham was profiting from the DOE while he was being paid to represent the DOE….[emphasis added.]

It is the recommendation of this office that the DOE recover all the money paid to IBM and Verizon for the Lanham consultants. It is further recommended that the DOE bring in outside auditors to determine any additional cost to the DOE and the Federal government engendered by Verizon’s use of CCS as a subcontractor on work that Verizon could have done at a lower cost.

Class size averages drop slightly this fall in grades K-3 and 4th-8th, but grow in high school; would take 24-38 years to reach C4E goals

For immediate release: November 18, 2014

For more information contact:

Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329, leonie@classsizematters.org  

Josey Bartlett, (718) 803-6373 x 202, Jbartlett@council.nyc.gov

Class size averages drop slightly this fall in grades K-3 and 4^th-8^th, but grow in HS

At least 367,794 students remain in classes of 30 or more

Late Friday, the DOE released class size averages by school, district, borough and citywide.  The data is posted here: http://schools.nyc.gov/AboutUs/schools/data/classsize/classsize.htm

The good news is that for the first time since 2008, average class sizes decreased over the grade spans of K-3^rd  and 4^th-8^th   grades. 

The bad news is that at this gradual rate of decline, it would take 24 years in grades K-3 and 38 years in 4^th-8^th grades to reach the Contracts for Excellence goals the city promised the state  to achieve over five years. 

 

In addition, 30,444 Kindergarten students --43%  -- are in classes of 25 or more ( 25 is the union contractual limit in that grade).

Average class sizes fell to 24.7 in grades K-3, 26.7 in grades 4^th-8^th, but increased slightly in high school this year to 26.8.

Yet these class size averages  of 25- 27 are deceptive, as hundreds of thousands of  students remain crammed into classes of 30 or more.   

In fact,  there are more students in classes of 30 or more this year (a minimum of 367,794 students, compared to 347,418 last year at this time.)

“The preliminary class size data shows that too many New York City students remain in overly large classes,” said City Council Education Committee Chairperson Daniel Dromm. “Many classes contain 30 or more students, which makes teaching extremely difficult, particularly given the higher expectations required under the Common Core.  The Department of Education must make class size reduction a high priority in order to give city students a quality education.  Our kids deserve better.”

Said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, “When he ran for mayor, Bill de Blasio promised to comply with the City’s original class size reduction plan submitted in 2007 and if necessary, raise funds to do so.  Smaller classes have also been the top priority of parents on the DOE’s own parent surveys for 8 years in a row.  It is time that the Mayor followed through on his campaign promises, and focused on this all-important goal to improve the opportunities of NYC children. “

For class size averages and trends for each school district, or the schools with the largest class sizes by district, please email  info@classsizematters.org

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