Hearings scheduled for Oct. 27 on class size bill; please urge your Council Member to sign on and testify yourself at the hearings!

Thanks to all of you who called the Speaker's office, urging him to schedule hearings on the classroom capacity bill that would phase in smaller classes, Intro 2374, introduced by the Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Education Chair Mark Treyger.

Yesterday it was announced that Council hearings would be held on this bill on Wed. Oct. 27 starting at 10 AM.

Two things you can do to help ensure the bill is actually passed: See if your Council Members have signed onto the bill by clicking on the link here, and if not, give them a call and ask them to co-sponsor. You can identify your Council Members and find their contact info here.

It would be great if you could also testify remotely at the Oct. 27 hearings; if you can't make it, you can send in written testimony within 72 hours of the close of the hearings. Instructions on how to sign up to speak or send in testimony are here.  

Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters 

info@classsizematters.org 

NYC Council Introduces New Class Size Reduction Bill

Earlier today, City Council Education Committee Chair Mark Treyger and Council Speaker Corey Johnson introduced new legislation which would effectively reduce class sizes by updating NYC’s Administrative Code.

The bill (Int. No. 2374) will raise the minimum per person classroom space to 35 square feet per student from the current 20 square feet for grades 1–12, phased in over three years, starting in the fall of 2022. The legislation would allow class sizes no larger than about 14 kids in a 500 square ft. classroom, and no more than 21 in a 750 sq. ft room, with all schools in NYC to be compliant by September 2024.

During a press conference announcing the legislation, CM Treyger was joined by CM Daniel Dromm and UFT President Michael Mulgrew. (In the video, you can hear the nearby chanting of a rally on the homelessness issue.)

Treyger, a former public school teacher, noted that the impacted section of the code hasn’t been updated since the 1930s, and emphasized the importance of reducing class size for public health, saying, “We are still facing a serious pandemic and there is an increasing possibility that COVID variants will be with us for years to come. To help make sure that public school classrooms remain safe places, we need stricter space limits for all students, not just the city’s youngest.”

NYC Council Finance Chair Daniel Dromm, also a former public school teacher, spoke on the importance of reducing class sizes for both learning outcomes and public health, saying, “The incorporation of a smaller class size will ultimately benefit the future learning and health of all NYC school children. Due to overcrowding in many districts such as mine, this initiative will be challenging but also worthwhile. I look forward to passing this legislation."

The City Council has proposed $250 million for smaller classes next year!

 The NYC Council has now proposed in its preliminary budget response that DOE allocate $250M next year for class size reduction. This amount would be used to hire 2500 new teachers, which could then reduce class size in as many as 10,000 smaller classes citywide, since each new teacher and class creates smaller classes for every other class in the same grade and/or subject in each school.

See the press release here and below, and an updated fact sheet here.

Now we have to ensure that the Council negotiates hard and the Mayor and the Chancellor  agree that this funding is included in the final budget.  How can you help?

First, sign our (slightly revised) petition, if you haven't already.  

Second, if you're a member of a CEC, PTA or other community organization, please consider passing this resolution, urging that at least $250 million be spent on class size reduction next year; please also invite us to your next meeting to do a presentation on how and why smaller classes are so critical.  

If you're not a CEC member, please consider sharing the resolution with your district CEC, Community board or other organization and urge them to approve it as well.  

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NYC Council proposes $250 million for class size reduction next year

In their Preliminary Budget Response, the NYC Council proposes that next year $250 million should be allocated to lowering class size, especially targeted towards struggling schools with vulnerable student populations. This would allow the Department of Education to hire an additional 2,500 teachers, which could lower class size in as many as 10,000 classrooms, as each new class that is formed can reduce class sizes in as many as four classes per school in the same grade and/or subject.

As the Council points out, when students return to full-time, in person learning, reducing class size will be imperative to provide additional learning support and help them catch up after a year of remote or blended learning.

The Council budget proposal also includes fully funding Fair Student Funding at about $605 million and $110 million to ensure that every public school has at least one full-time school counselor and one full-time social worker, as well as other programs and initiatives.

Council Member Danny Dromm, Chair of the Finance Committee said, “When I was a fourth-grade teacher at P.S. 199, I knew that with my class of 35 plus I was simply unable to meet the needs of all my students.  The fact that NYC teachers and students have had to struggle for years with the huge class sizes that exist in our public schools is simply unconscionable.  These excessive class sizes were a primary reason that the State’s highest court in the CFE lawsuit concluded that NYC students were deprived of their right to a sound basic education. That’s why I am thrilled that this year, with the support of Speaker Johnson and my fellow Council members, and the additional billions in state and federal funds that our schools are due to receive,  we can finally start to make a significant change to these unconscionable conditions.  I truly hope the Mayor and the Chancellor take heed of our unique opportunity to lower class size and agree that it is finally time for a change.”

“Large class sizes have plagued our schools for far too long – creating problematic teacher to student ratios. Crowded classrooms hinder proper teacher instruction and prevent effective individualized attention, which children need. With this new commitment of long-overdue federal and state funding, we must ensure these resources are used to reduce class sizes, build additional instructional space and hire more teachers. Class size reductions lead to better student performance and academic outcomes. As we negotiate the budget, I will continue to advocate with Speaker Johnson and my Council colleagues for funding to meet the needs of our students and school communities,” said Council Member Mark Treyger, Chair of the Committee on Education.

Council Member Helen Rosenthal, Chair of the Subcommittee on Capital Budget said, “NYC class sizes citywide and in my district are far larger than the state average, and far larger than they should be to provide students with an equitable opportunity to learn.  Because of the new infusion of state and federal education aid, next year provides a unique opportunity to begin to transform our schools by creating the smaller classes that will provide students with the additional personalized feedback and support they will need to help them recover from more than a year of disrupted learning.  In the long run, to be able to lower class size citywide, we must also expand the capital budget for school construction to provide more classroom space, and the federal infrastructure bill proposed by President Biden contains funds to do just that.”

“For years, lowering class size has been the top priority of most NYC parents and teachers to improve our schools.  We finally have the resources from the state and the federal government to do what we’ve known for years would make all the difference in the world for our students.  Research shows that while smaller classes benefit all children, those who make the greatest gains are students of color, kids in poverty, those with special needs, and English Language Learners, who collectively make up the majority of students in our schools.  Yet according to DOE data from the 2019-2020, nearly a third of all NYC students were in classes of thirty or more.  I want to thank Speaker Johnson, Chairs Dromm, Treyger and Rosenthal and the rest of the City Council for stepping up to the plate and saying, there is no more time to waste.  Especially given all the losses our children have suffered over the last year,  they will need smaller classes next year more than ever before,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters.

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Letter to City Council and Speaker Regarding School Siting Task Force

For more on the School Siting Task Force, including its second and final meeting see our blog here , as well recent articles in the Daily News and Wall Street Journal.  More on the controversy as to whether its meetings should have been open to the public to begin with see our blog here,  an article in City Limits , an advisory letter providing guidance from the NY State Committee on Open Government, and a letter from the City Comptroller Scott Stringer.  

We will update this post when we receive a response from the Speaker and/or the Council.

August 6, 2019

Dear Speaker Johnson and members of the City Council:

We are very disappointed in the process and outcome of the School Siting Task Force, created by Local Law No. 168 in Sept. 2018.  The law mandated the creation of  an “interagency task force” to facilitate the acquisition of publicly and privately-owned sites for schools.  Over 500,000 students are crammed into overcrowded schools,  and in some communities, it has taken over 20 years for the DOE and the School Construction Authority to find suitable sites.  The law also mandated that this task force should provide a report to the City Council no later than July 31, 2019 on their findings.

One of us, Shino Tanikawa, was appointed to the Task Force by the DOE, and the first meeting was held privately on Feb. 26, 2019. Yet according to the expert opinion of the NY State Committee on Open Government, any task force or advisory body created by law to have a specific governmental role is subject to Open Meetings Law.  City Comptroller Scott Stringer also sent a letter to the Chancellor and Lorraine Grillo, President of the SCA, urging them to comply with the law and allow members of the public to attend. In our experience, such a critical issue as facilitating school siting and planning to alleviate overcrowding deserves transparency; and it is our experience that it is parents and members of the community who often have the best and most useful suggestions when it comes to these issues.

On May 2, Chancellor Carranza and SCA President Lorraine Grillo responded to Comptroller Stringer’s letter, saying the public would be allowed to attend future meetings, though they refused to concede that they were legally obligated to do so:

Although we disagree with your position that the Task Force is subject to the OML, we do not object to opening Task Force meetings to the general public, consistent with our commitment to community input and engagement. Accordingly, future meetings of the Task Force will be open to the public.

Yet we heard nothing more about the Task Force until Shino received a message on July 22 that the second and final meeting of the Task Force would be held on Monday, July 29 at City Hall from 3-5 PM, and that this meeting would be open to the public.

Five months had gone by between Feb. 26 and July 29, without the Task Force meeting once.

During that final meeting, Lorraine Grillo and her staff from the SCA projected some spreadsheets, listing thousands of city-owned properties and privately-owned land, the vast majority of which they had ruled out as unsuitable for schools, because they were too small, not in the right areas, or strangely configured. They said they had found only two sites out of more than 7,000 properties owned by the city that might be good sites for schools. In addition, they said, they were continuing to explore and analyze some of the privately-owned properties.

Their presentation only lasted about 15 minutes, and then Liz Hoffman of the First Deputy Mayor’s office, who was running the meeting, opened it up to questions. She was asked if the public could receive a copy of these spreadsheets and she said no. She was asked if the public would receive a copy of the report, and she said no that it would be sent to the City Council on July 31, as specified in the law.

According to Shino and Kaitlyn O’Hagan, the City Council representative to the Task Force, neither one of them had even seen a copy of the task force report or was asked for any input before a draft was provided to the Council on July 31.  Shino requested that the draft report be shared with her and was told the final report would  be shared only after the City Council reviewed it.  It was not until City Council staff stepped in that the report was sent to the entire Task Force. In any case, the report is only one and a half pages long. 

Whether or not the deliberations of this Task Force and this report comply with the intent and/or language of Local Law No. 168, it is hugely regrettable that rather than welcome collaboration with parents and advocates, the city continues to restrict it.

We urge you to re-start the entire process of this Task Force, ensure that it holds regular meetings open  to the public, includes representatives from more stakeholder groups, releases all the relevant data,  and solicits input from parents and community members. 

If the Mayor’s office objects, we urge you to amend the legislation to require these provisions.  We would be happy to work with you to finalize the language of an amended law.  Tackling the problem of school overcrowding is too important an issue to let this Task Force end with a one-and-a-half-page report from the SCA.

Yours sincerely,

Leonie Haimson

Executive Director

Class Size Matters

leonie@classsizematters.org

Shino Tanikawa

Co-Chair

Education Council Consortium*

estuaryqueen@gmail.com

(*Affiliation for ID only)

Naila Rosario

President

NYC Kids PAC

Info@nyckidspac.org

Will the Mayor and the Chancellor allow the School Siting Task Force to comply with Open meetings law, or insist on keeping their deliberations private?

Update 5/619: After the City Comptroller Scott Stringer sent a letter urging the DOE to comply with Open meetings law and allow members of the public to attend these meetings, Chancellor Carranza and SCA President Grillo responded in a letter today, saying the public be would be allowed to do so, though they didn't agree that they were obligated to do so.  Thanks to Comptroller Stringer and Robert Freeman of the NYS Committee on Open Government who wrote the advisory guidance saying these meetings are indeed subject to Open Meetings Law because the task force was a public body created by city law. 

In City Limits, Jarrett Murphy reports on the continuing lack of transparency of Mayor de Blasio and this administration.  Freedom of Information requests take months, sometimes years to be responded to.  Meetings of public bodies are closed when they should be open.

In January 2015, we were forced to sue Chancellor Farina and the NYC Department of Education to keep School Leadership Team meetings open to the public.  When Farina decided to close these meetings, we intervened in a lawsuit to keep them open, along with Public Advocate Letitia James, and our pro bono attorneys Advocates for Justice and NY Lawyers for Public Interest.  When we won in the Supreme Court in April 2015, Chancellor Farina still insisted on keeping these meetings closed, and appealed the decision to the Appellate Court.

We eventually eventually succeeded in our lawsuit in October 2016, in a unanimous decision of the Appellate court, but only after Farina had effectively kept these meetings private for nearly two years.

Now there is a new example of the Mayor and his administration to keep private what should be public.  This fall, the City Council passed Local Law 168, to create a School Siting Task Force that would include representatives from several city agencies and government bodies, including the DOE, the City Council, City Planning and the School Construction Authority.  This Task Force is supposed to meet and come up with a report by July 31 about how the city can more quickly acquire sites for new schools to alleviate school overcrowding.

This is a crucial issue, because in many cases, twenty years or more have lapsed because of the apparent inability of the SCA and the DOE to find sites, even when the neighborhood schools are at 120% or more.  This happened in Sunset Park Brooklyn before parents, members of the community and CM Carlos Menchaca became involved in pushing for new schools and identifying appropriate sites.

The SCA itself has very few people on staff and only four real estate companies citywide on retainer tasked with this assignment, and we've been told that they never "cold call" or reach out to owners to see if they might consider selling their properties before they are put up for sale, even though this is the best way to acquire sites for development in the hot NYC real estate market.

As I said last week to a Queens Courier reporter writing about Councilmember Holden's plan to get a new high school built in Maspeth, nearly the only way public schools get built in NYC is for parents and local elected officials to find available sites and then advocate like mad for them to be acquired. 

After I heard that the School Siting task force had already met once in secret, I solicited an advisory opinion from Robert Freeman, the Executive Director of the NY State Committee on Open Government.  He confirmed my view that because the task force was created by law, it is a public body subject to Open Meetings Law.  See his letter below.  NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer has also written to Chancellor Carranza and other city officials in support of opening these meetings to the public. His letter is below Freeman's

Yet even after I had shared the opinion from the Committee on Open Government with members of the School Siting Task Force, I heard second-hand that the NYC Corporation Council was holding firm that these meetings should remain private.

Now, in response to City Limit's query, the DOE apparently is reconsidering this position:

A spokesman for the DOE told City Limits, “We are committed to continue partnering with parents and community on this issue, and are exploring how to best solicit input moving forward.”
The agency says it is reviewing whether or not the law requires opening the meetings to the public. If so, those deliberations puzzle Haimson. “This is really a no-brainer,” she says. After all, there’s not a lot of time left to meet: “The report of the task force is due in July.”

Given the acute nature of school overcrowding, with more than half a million students crammed into schools that are at or over capacity, one would think that the officials would welcome public attention, input and support to help solve this ongoing crisis.  Chancellor Carranza himself speaks frequently about wanting to "listen" to parents and "empower" them, but this is impossible if they don't even know what is being discussed behind closed doors.

The last act of a potentially tragic drama: for your kids, make three calls today!

So far there is no budget deal apparent; the  Mayor’s office reportedly rejected an offer by union leaders to provide funds from their reserve fund to prevent layoffs because he thought the conditions were too onerous, including limiting the expansion of consultants:

“At issue is preventing the reduction of the municipal work force; they said the Bloomberg administration was using consultants to replace city workers who left or retired as a way to gradually eliminate positions from its payroll. “ (Times) 

Bloomberg news cites the last time in 1988 when the Council voted their own budget over the mayor’s veto, and  Giuliani impounded the funds for almost six months.   

Daily News  says that “Council members say they need a budget deal by Monday – Tuesday at the latest – in order to have time to print bills and take care of procedural matters ahead of the June 30th budget deadline.”

This now looks really bad.  If teachers are laid off this will be the first time in the city’s history at a time of rising city revenues.  Council insiders say that phone calls from parents could really make the difference between massive layoffs and none at all.

So this is the time to make your voice heard, before its too late:

1 – Call 311: tell them you will never forgive Bloomberg if he eliminates 6,000 teaching positions, and you will hold him personally responsible for hurting NYC kids.

2-call your Council member; number by clicking here: The message is the same same, or tailor it, but make it clear that s/he must be sure to restore these positions, for the sake of our kids.

3-call Speaker Quinn’s office: ditto.  Her phone numbers are here:

(212) 564-7757 (if you are her constituent) or (212) 788-7210 (if you are not.)

We have now  reached the last scene of the last act of a potentially tragic drama that will determine the future of our schools and our children for years to come.  Class sizes, especially in the early grades, have been shown to have a significant effect on their likely success later in life.  See this and this study.

See also this report from the Public Advocate’s office, which shows that in the 1970’s, the last time teachers were laid off, it took a decade or more for schools to recover in terms of their teacher/student ratio.

Even if you have called before, do it again.  Do it for your kids and do it now!

And please forward this message to others who care.
___________________________________________________________________
Here is the email I got after I called 311, acknowledging my complaint; feel free to post yours in the comments section, but make the call now!

From: reply@customerservice.nyc.gov [mailto:reply@customerservice.nyc.gov]
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 12:41 PM
To: LEONIE@ATT.NET
Subject: City of New York Auto Acknowledgment Correspondence # 1-1-662625007

Dear LEONIE HIMSON:
Thank you for contacting the City of New York. Your message has been forwarded to the appropriate agency for review and handling.

For future reference, your service request number is 1-1-662625007.

Sincerely,

The City of New York

This is an auto-generated system message. Please do not reply to this message. Messages received through this address are not processed. Thank you.

The information you have provided is as follows:
Form: Customer Comment
Topic: ED
Name: LEONIE HIMSON
Street Address: 124 WAVERLY PLACE
City, State Zip: NEW YORK, NY 10011
Country:
Email: LEONIE@ATT.NET
Message:
CALLER SAYS IF THE MAYOR ILLIMINATES THE 6000 TEACHING POSITIONS SHE WILL HOLD HIM PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR HURTING OUR KIDS. HE WILL NEVER RECOVER HIS REPUTTATION

Update! Rally and hearings about the mayor's devastating cuts to our kids

There was a rousing rally at City Hall yesterday morning, with parents and elected officials standing up for our kids and against the mayor’s ruthless and devastating cuts.  

The actress Kristin Johnston made a great speech, saying that she has had a long love affair with NYC ever since she moved here more than ten years ago, but that these budget cuts threatened to kill that love, and would seriously damage Bloomberg's legacy.  “Is this really the message you want to give to the kids? Your education doesn’t matter?"   She said that the citizens of NYC would fight back, and win: “I only have two words for you: Cathie Black!”  (Photo at right from DNA info of Johnston, in back of the banner made by the activist parents of District 6.)

The city council budget hearings that followed were eye-opening as usual.  Chair of the Education committee Robert Jackson led off with a strong opening statement, saying that while the mayor wants to cut 6,000 teachers for a savings of $350 million, DOE was projecting increased spending on contract schools (private schools) by $157 million, and special ed preK by $165 million, with no explanation as to why. Overall, the DOE plans to increase its contract budget by over $700 million, rising to $4.5 billion.

Walcott was steadfast that all these spending increases on private contracts and IT consultants were necessary; though he did announce that the DOE had (finally!) cancelled its contract with Future Technology Associates, the huge, wasteful and probably corrupt IT contract that the DOE has spent over $100 million on, with  63 consultants getting more than $250K per year, and much of the actual work done by cheap labor in India and Turkey while DOE  was being charged over $100 per hour for their work.  

This company, that Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez has been reporting on for almost two years, was supervised by Judith Krohe,  DOE’s executive director of financial operations,  who, it turns out, was personally involved with one of the principals. She has now resigned in disgrace, and the company is under investigation by the Special Investigators office, based on Juan’s revelations (though when RJ  held up a copy of one of Juan’s Daily News columns , Walcott said you can’t believe everything you read in the papers.  Unfortunately for the taxpayer,  you can.)  Here is Juan’s update on the FTA issue.

Repeatedly, the DOE has said that FTA’s work was so expert that it could not be brought in- house; now they admit that by hiring 20-25 employees, they will save taxpayers $2.7 million in one year alone. Why can’t this be done with more contracts, RJ asked.  Why can’t they renegotiate all their contracts and ask for a 5-10% cut?  Impossible, said Walcott.

Jackson said that contractors are “ripping us off by millions of dollars, ripping us blind” because they figure the “mayor is a millionaire so no one cares.”  Walcott: we report every infraction to the SCI and we have strict internal protocols. Veronica Comforme, the DOE”s chief financial officer said that they had put these new systems in during last year and a half.  (What about the eight years before that?  How many hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars have been ripped off? )

Chief Academic Officer Shael Suransky said that they would soon start billing Medicaid $100 million a year, which they stopped in 2005 because the feds said that the DOE didn’t document properly the services given (they have already lost $600 M through their incompetence in this area alone. Let’s hope SESIS, the DOE sped reporting program is working; there have been complaints that it is even more dysfunctional than ARIS.)

Finance Chair Dominic Recchia asked how many children were in the contract schools. Victoria Conforme, head of finance, said she didn’t know, Recchia complained that  there was a terrible lack of transparency as to the education budget, and the DOE was not responsive to follow-up information requests. 

CM Fidler said there was a “holy trinity” of school success: small class size, teacher quality and parent involvement, and that the mayor should go to Albany and make a deal with the Governor to extend the millionaire’s tax, with its revenue dedicated to education aid.  He asked Walcott if he would ask the mayor to do that, and Walcott said no, this wasn’t his job.  Besides which,  an “effective teacher” can do his job well, no matter what the class size.  Fidler said he was very “disappointed” and that he wished he would show “leadership” and that “someone has to advocate for the kids.”

The most persistent questioners on class size were Council members Daniel Dromm, a former teacher, and Brad Lander.  Both pointed out that the DOE estimate of only a two student per class increase was unlikely to occur in many schools.  Dromm pointed out that when a school  eliminates a classroom teacher, this immediately raises the size of classes on the grade by five or six, depending on how many classes per grade there are, in a non-linear fashion. Lander pointed out that already classes had increased  in size to excessive levels, and asked what the actual contractual class size caps were by grade. 

Again, none of the top-level DOE officials appeared to know the answer to this very basic question, neither Walcott, Suransky, or Conforme, though they had been asked this same question by Lander in the previous month’s hearings.   (The actual caps are to the left, compared to the CFE or Contract for Excellence goals.  In every grade but Kindergarten, they are 30 or more.)  Lander asked what would be the effect on classes that were already near thirty;  Walcott shrugged his shoulders and said they hadn’t done that analysis. Lander said that their apparent unconcern about this issue and their failure to do any analysis was unfair to parents. 

The reality is that the union contractual class size caps in grades 1-5 are 32, and many classes could indeed rise to that level if these cuts go through; these are huge class sizes not seen in the early grades in  many years.  The confusion on this point is a result of how  previously, the DOE had honored a side agreement with the UFT that limited class sizes in grades 1-3 to 28 students per class, which is still far too large but far better than 32. Class sizes could rise even above these limits, since there is an obscure rule called "breakage" meaning if the surplus number of students does not amount to more than half the limit of a new class, the violation can remain unaddressed.

Tweed no longer honors the side agreement that limited class size to 28 in 1-3 grades, and the UFT does not grieve these violations.  This is yet another of the myriad ways that the Bloomberg administration has systematically undermined class size and the quality of education received by NYC children in recent years

Walcott's testimony revealed multiple levels of shifting rationales. Why not let the principals choose what to cut, according to the DOE theory of principal autonomy, asked RJ, instead of unilaterally deciding that six thousand teaching positions must be eliminated?  Walcott said he is looking for input from principals, but that the decision to lay off teachers has to be made centrally.

Several council members drew attention to the big increase in charters and their spending and staffing that comes directly out of the DOE budget.  There will be 18 new charter schools next year, and charter growth  will cost the DOE an additional $120 million; amounting to more $666 million, not counting the space and services which DOE gives them for free.  Why the big increase in charters, asked CM Steven Levin, doesn’t that divert even more resources from our district public schools?  Walcott said that the growth in charters was in response to parental demand.  But then Levin pointed out that there is also strong parental demand not to lay off any teachers.

Jackson, Fidler, and Recchia all repeatedly criticized the DOE for putting out non-transparent budgets, and not responding adequately to follow up questions from staff.  One way in which the DOE purposely obscures its spending is by repeatedly claiming that they’ve made cuts in the bureaucracy when with more careful analysis, it turns out they’ve just pushed costs to the school level.  For example, a couple of years ago, DOE claimed cost savings in the central administration in test scoring, but then it turned out these “savings” were achieved by making schools send their teachers to score state exams during school time, requiring principals to hire substitutes instead;  earlier Tweed had paid teachers overtime to do this same job.

Recchia alluded to the fact that the educrats at Tweed are playing new tricks with the budget, by obscuring the continued expansion of the mid-level bureaucracy at the expense of the classroom by  submerging almost 2,000 positions  of the ever-expanding Children First networks into the budget line of school-level spending called “ General education and Special education Instruction and School Leadership.” 

Through all the shifting reorganizations, from the districts, to the regions, to the school support organizations and now to the CFNs and clusters, the  midlevel bureaucracy had a budget line that was kept separate from schools,  so that their headcount and spending could be separately tracked.  That’s how we knew that the savings DOE claimed they’d achieved by eliminating the districts was illusory.  No longer; now they claim a reduction of the bureaucracy of $17 million; while hiding its growing headcount at the school level.  In this way, they are doubling cheating our kids – as the actual cuts to the classroom are even larger than apparent.

Speaker Quinn and Recchia put out a statement calling for $75 million in alternative cuts; including $4 million from Teach For America and the New Teacher Project recruitment and training, a smaller DOE press office,  and $13.2 million from the DOE’s IT contracts (projected to be $50.6 million, up 76% from this year alone.)   More on their proposals here, and more accounts of the hearings from  GothamSchools, Post, Daily News,  Times, NY1  and DNA info, which has additional photos of the rally and the hearings. See also D6 parent Tory Frye’s FB page with some short videos.

This was my statement at the press conference, which sums up my views:

One of the ways in which a city reveals its future and its soul is by the way it treats its children.  By any measure, the mayor fails in this category.  He has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars and continues to waste millions more on no-bid contracts, consultants, computers, and testing; and instead wants to slash the budget by eroding the most important thing of all: the personal relationship between a student and his or her teacher. 

Already, class sizes have steadily increased in recent years and school level spending has been cut by 12%. Eliminating six thousand teaching positions at a time of enrollment growth would be absolutely devastating and would return us to the dark ages as far as class size goes.  The mayor’s cuts reveal that rather than putting children first, he is putting them last. 

Before adopting these devastating cuts, the mayor and the council should consider whether they would subject their own children to class sizes of thirty or more.  If the answer is no, they should do everything they can to restore all 6,000 teaching positions.

Report from the Council hearing on PCBs

There was a joint hearing of the Council Education and Environmental Committees today which considered the issue of how to deal with the PCB-containing overhead fluorescent light fixtures which are still present in approximately 800 public schools buildings. Many of those fixtures are leaking PCBs.

The DOE has proposed replacing them on a ten-year timetable, while forty Council members have signed onto a demand that it be done in two years, and the US EPA has just weighed in that it should be done in "at most five years", a compromise which Christine Quinn seemed ready to embrace.

Without going into all of the fine points and nuances, I just wanted to relate what was probably the most dramatic juxtaposition of the several-hours-long hearing.

The first panel consisted of DOE personnel, led by Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm, along with personnel of the School Construction Authority, Health Dep't., and Dep't of Citywide Administrative Services. Led by Grimm, they said repeatedly that it couldn't be done in less than 10 years and that children and adults spending their days in those buildings during the time it took to finish the replacements were not at any risk to their long-term health.

Later a panel of doctors, scientists, and occupational health and safety professionals testified. All of them said that PCB exposure is something which presents immediate health risks, not only for developing children but also for pregnant or potentially pregnant adults. And that unstable PCBs should be removed from the buildings, or the people should be removed from the exposure to them, a.s.a.p.

The message from the 2 panels was so diametrically opposite that one council member said that after listening to both he felt as if he'd been on 2 different planets.

-- Richard Barr