Hearings on DOE enrollment/admissions policies: testimony from Deputy Chancellor Weisberg, Jenn Choi, and me

On Wednesday, Jan. 25, the City Council Education Committee held hearings on the DOE's revamped admissions policies.  The parents and advocates who testified as well as the Council Members were divided.  Some said that the new policies that removed academic screens from many middle schools, while basing admissions in selective high schools on a lottery after separating students in four tiers determined by their grades in 7th grade, cheats academically advanced students of the challenges they need to achieve their best.  Other parents and advocates were disappointed that the administration expanded the gifted programs in elementary schools, and in too many middle and high schools, academic screens remain and clearly have a discriminatory and segregating impact. The Council Members also seemed split on whether the current system is equitable and fair.

Council Members Alexa Aviles and Shekar Krishnan questioned Deputy Chancellor Weisberg if the DOE would alter any of their admissions/enrollment policies to more evenly distribute students across schools, to lessen the overcrowding at schools over 100% so they will be able to meet the class size goals in the new state law.  Sadly, he said  no; and he argued that more evenly distributing students across schools would depend on principals at underutilized schools to make their schools more attractive to parents. 

My testimony (see below) dealt  with how how it is DOE's responsibility to ensure that all students and schools can provide a quality education and meet the class size goals in the law.  I also point out that by more evenly distributing students, it will help underutilized and thus underfunded schools provide the staffing and programs their students need.  Chalkbeat recently ran a heartbreaking piece on principal in the Bronx, desperately trying to avoid excessing teachers, by spending days distributing flyers and producing a video to post on Instagram to recruit more students and thus receive more funding, though he was ultimately unsuccessful.  

Why should any principal have to spend their time marketing their schools; isn't it the responsibility of the DOE to ensure that every school has the resources it needs to provide a quality education?  If enrollment was more equally distributed, many schools would likely become more diverse as well, as the most underutilized schools are those that tend to have the highest percentages of Black and Hispanic students.

Weisberg repeatedly insisted they have a plan to meet the goals in the plan, without producing any evidence for that claim, though at times he seemed to limit his comments that they will meet the goals in the first year.  Because of enrollment decline, it is likely that the DOE will be able to make the first year goals for 20% of classes meeting the new class size caps without any effort , and maybe even the second year goals of 40%, if they don't continue cutting school budgets and enrollment continues to fall. 

But it is very unlikely that the class size goals in the 3rd to 5th years in the law can be achieved, without a plan to create enough space, either through aggressive expansion of the capital plan, and/or efforts to more evenly distribute students across schools, by rezoning elementary and capping enrollment severely overcrowded middle and high school enrollment at lower levels. 

In my testimony I also explain how the current "school choice" policies with parents applying to up to ten schools and the schools essentially deciding who to admit are based upon a failed free-market model from the Bloomberg years, in that the best schools will "win" by attracting more students, and the others would be allowed to wither and die, with other new public schools or charter schools put in their place. 

I found the testimony of parents of students with disabilities also quite affecting as to the hurdles their children face in being admitted to high schools that will help them reach their full potential.  Discrimination comes in many forms, and below my testimony is that of Jenn Choi, the mother of a student with special needs who also works at Special Support Services, which advises parents on how to navigate the labyrinthine and often very frustrating special education system in the NYC public schools.

My comments at last night's PEP meeting in opposition to the co-location of a Success charter in a D22 high school building

Update 12.22.22:  At last night's Panel for Educational Policy meeting, Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg insisted that there will be enough space in the building for Origins HS to lower class size to mandated levels even after this co-location of a Success elementary charter school in the building; while providing no evidence to back up his claim. The proposal passed 10-5, with all the mayoral appointees voting to approve the co-location, joined by the Staten Island borough appointee.  I was the last to speak after countless others -- after the DOE had left me off the list.

My name is Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of Class Size Matters, and I’m here to speak against the co-location of Success Academy in Building K495, and in fact all the co-locations of Success charters that have been proposed for Queens, Brooklyn and Bronx. 

As many parents and teachers have pointed out during the public hearings, there is no mention in either the Educational Impact Statement or the Building Utilization Plan for this co-location or indeed any of these co-locations of the need to lower class size, according to the bill signed into law by the Governor in September.  Meanwhile, somewhere between 56%-80% of the 69 classes at Origins High School do not comply with the class size caps in the new law.     

In addition, more than 80% of District 22 high school classes in D 22 did not make the class size cap of 25.  This means that many more classrooms will be needed at Origins HS and in the district as a whole to achieve the smaller classes mandated by the law.  Yet the Instructional Footprint on which the EIS and BUP bases their estimation of space explicitly assumes current class sizes will continue into the indefinite future.  

In addition, neither this EIS nor any of the others actually describe any of the Educational impacts that these co-locations  will cause; in some cases, the loss to students of a science lab, the loss of intervention and support spaces for students with disabilities, or the loss of access to the gym,  or the cafeteria at reasonable times. 

·       In fact, no educational impacts are described in any of these documents, only an abstract accounting of how many rooms each school should get, according to an arbitrary formula that doesn’t allow for either smaller classes or require any of the other elements of a quality education.

Chancellor Banks, I was encouraged by your interview with Marcia Kramer on Sunday, where you appeared to embrace the opportunity to lower class size, and said you want "to ensure that our kids have a great school experience," and you realized that this would require the building of “dozens of new schools.” 

Then why are you proposing these co-locations that will take away necessary space, and why has the DOE cut the capital plan for new capacity by over $1.6 billion dollars and over 11,000 seats since you took office?

Instead, we need a real plan to ensure that all schools and all students will have the benefit of smaller classes in the time frame specified in the law;  rather than any more co-locations that will deprive NYC public school students of their long -awaited opportunity to be provided with their right, according to the state’s highest court, to a sound basic education.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.

Angry questions from Council Members met with incredible claims by Deputy Chancellor Weisberg at the budget hearings yesterday

Speaker Adams, Ed Chair Joseph & Oversight Chair Brewer

The budget hearings yesterday were pretty explosive. I've never seen so many Council Members at hearing at once, including the Speaker, so angrily question the DOE, furious about how many teachers  have been excessed as a result.  Several of the members had children in public schools and related how their principals had come up to them, distressed because they had to lay off their teachers and lose their arts programs or other valuable services to kids.

Speaker Adams asked Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg if he had anticipated the impact of these cuts on schools.  He responded, yes, but implied it was no big deal, and this happens every year.  He made two unbelievable claims:  one, that the numbers of teachers excessed this year were fewer than during the previous two years, though he couldn't supply a figure.  

He also claimed that he didn't expect any Absent Teacher Reserve to be created as a result, because all these teachers would somehow find positions elsewhere, even though he admitted the vast majority of schools had seen cuts.  Indeed, he asserted that NYC schools would be hiring "thousand of teachers."

Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg and DOE CFO Lindsey Oates

 

DOE Chief Financial Officer Lindsey Oates admitted that many other budget lines were cut in addition to Fair Student Funding.  She also admitted that there were $4.5 billion in unspent federal stimulus funds that the DOE intended to use elsewhere.  She then claimed the leaked internal DOE briefing we  posted that revealed an additional $1.1 billion that schools hadn't spent and were told to return to Central because  “These are real dollars that could be used for other purposes.” was merely a "training memo" and that it didn't mean what it said.

 CM Restler

Perhaps the angriest Council Member appeared to be Lincoln Restler, who said he was "red hot mad" , held up a list of the millions of dollars cut from the schools in his district, and said that the DOE had assured the Council that the cuts would only affect vacant positions.  

There is some evidence for this in the Council briefing sheet,  which reports "Administration maintains that this budget action aligns DOE’s budget with actual headcount ...and that the 3,227 [teaching] positions are vacant."  

Sadly, too many reporters have echoed this false claim by DOE,  except for Jill Jorgensen of NY1, who accurately reported that if enacted, the Mayor's Preliminary budget would cause schools to lose actual teachers when the budget was first released in February.

CM Shekar Krishnan asked why the Chancellor wasn't there to answer their questions.  Weisberg said that he and Oates were better equipped to address the sort of "technical" issues that the hearings dealt with.  Krishnan pointed out that the $215M in Fair student funding cuts were less than 1% of the entire DOE budget, and he was incredulous that the funds couldn't be found to reverse them.  CM Brewer insisted that if they gave her a spreadsheet with all the details of DOE spending, she could find enough funds in a few minutes. 

Many other members pointed out that these cuts would surely increase class size, the opposite of what the law required just passed by the Legislature, which obligates NYC to be lowering class size starting next fall.  Weisberg responded that they had people working on such a plan, in case the Governor signs the bill.  Really!

One of the main sponsors of the state legislature,  Senator Robert Jackson proclaimed, "These cuts must be

eliminated, no ifs, ands, or buts! Schools should not be penalized for having a reasonable student teacher ratio." He urged the Council to "Stand up & fight back. Time is now!"

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander

NYC Comptroller Brad Lander testified that the FSF cuts were larger than DOE had reported, and amounted to a net reduction of $372 million—and for schools losing money,  a total of $469 million, with an average FSF loss of  $402,456.  

He also cited our finding that the "FSF reductions are just a piece of the estimated $1.7 billion in Galaxy school budget losses facing our schools. Unfortunately, given limited transparency on what those overall budget losses represent, we cannot fully assess what that $1.7 billion means for our schools."  

We have heard from principals and from the DOE itself that any funds added to Galaxy budgets after the June 13 date on which we did our calculations cannot be used to pay for staffing in any case.  

Lander also pointed out that with rising tax revenues, there was no reason that the city couldn't sacrifice some its own surplus to fill the gap:

It is also important to remember that, while enrollment has been declining, the City tax revenue and State aid that provide the vast majority of school funding is not based on the number of students. So reductions in enrollment could be an opportunity—with the funding and space we already have— for reductions in class size that we’ve long desired.

In our testimony below, we reported how 98% of schools or 1,535 lost Galaxy funding, while only 29 schools gained funding. The average cut per school was $1.1 million, or 13.9%.  We also explained how unnecessary these cuts are given the huge budget surplus and reserves that the DOE and the city currently has.    

Cuts to schools are always tragic in my eyes, but are especially inexcusable when the city is flush with cash and our kids need the close attention and support of their teachers more than ever before. 

Nearly twenty years ago, by cutting school budgets and closing schools, Bloomberg/Klein/ and their labor chief, Dan Weisberg, caused the excessing of thousands of teachers, creating something called the Absent Teacher Reserve fund, while paying their full salaries at more than $100 million per year- even at a time of rising class sizes.  Clearly they hoped that the political backlash to this ridiculous wasteful policy would be strong enough to force the union into allowing these teachers to be fired. 

We argued strenuously that these teachers should be allowed to teach, and put back into the classroom where they belong, and eventually under Mayor de Blasio, DOE allowed  teachers in the ATR pool to be placed back into classrooms.  

In 2017,  as head of TNTP, the organization founded by Michelle Rhee, Weisberg inveighed against providing these teachers with permanent positions, and again last year, when he argued, "It trumps the interest of kids."  

Is it really better for kids to let their class sizes increase while their teachers are paid to stay home ?  Despite all his claims that there will be no ATR pool again, I suspect there will be and he will resume this tired old argument and wasteful practice now that he is Deputy Chancellor, unless these awful school budget cuts are reversed.

Anyway, if you want to hear more of the trenchant questions asked by Council Members and the often clumsy deflections by Weisberg and Oates, you can follow my twitter feed from yesterday @leoniehaimson or watch the video here.  

Our written testimony is below. 

Updated guidance from DOE on remote learning

Here is the email sent by DOE to principals by Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg on Wednesday that was rather confusingly reported yesterday by Gothamist, along with the three attached docs below.

1) Memo of agreement between the DOE and UFT, dated Aug. 2021, entitled "Pivot to Remote."

 2) DOE deck, entitled "Emergency Pivot to Remote" updated Jan.12, 2022.

3) DOE memo entitled "Labor Field Guidance - Digital Classroom" updated Jan.12, 2022.

Below that is an excerpt of an email sent to principals by their union, the CSA, plus new Attendance rules, updated by DOE on Jan. 14, 2022.

Any student at home with a positive Covid test "is entitled to asynchronous instruction and access to Office Hours." At the discretion of teachers and their principals, students at home for other reasons may be provided with this instruction and teachers will be paid additionally for it.  Where the funding will come from is as yet unclear -- i.e. whether the DOE will pay for this centrally or that schools will have to cover the cost from their limited budgets..

From: First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg <FirstDeputyChancellor@schools.nyc.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2022 8:52 PM
Subject: Updated DOE/UFT Pivot to Remote MOA - Providing Instruction to Students Who Are Absent Due to COVID

I’m writing to provide some clarification around how to address teaching staff who provide asynchronous instruction and office hours to students who are absent due to COVID.  

 

The definition of a "partial closure" as outlined in the Memorandum of Agreement with UFT (MOA) regarding emergency closures has been updated to reflect new Situation Room procedures for reporting positive COVID-19 cases. Effective immediately, any student that has a positive COVID-19 test (at-home, rapid, PCR test, etc.) is entitled to asynchronous instruction and access to Office Hours as outlined in the Pivot to Remote MOA and as outlined in the updated Field Guidance and Overview of the Agreement.  

  

Teachers providing asynchronous instruction and office hours to these students are entitled to compensation as per the pivot to remote MOA. A "partial closure" is now defined as when any part of a class is in isolation or is unable to attend in-person instruction due to a positive COVID-19 test as described above.   

  

Note that the scenarios listed below are not currently considered partial closures and teachers cannot be required to provide asynchronous instruction and Office Hours as set forth in the MOA:   

• If a student fails the health screen and there is no COVID-19 test  
• A student is absent for non-COVID reasons   
• A family is keeping a student home and is requesting all assignments  
  

For these students, staff are expected to engage in normal past practices with respect to non-COVID student absences. However, if staff are willing and their supervisor approves, staff may provide Office Hours and asynchronous instruction to these students and shall be compensated accordingly.   

Please feel free to reach out to your Senior Field Counsel with any questions.  

Thank you again for your tireless service and leadership.  

Sincerely, 
Dan Weisberg 
First Deputy Chancellor

Excerpt from email sent to principals from their union, the CSA:

The definition of a "partial closure" as outlined in the Memorandum of Agreement with UFT (MOA) regarding emergency closures has been updated to reflect new Situation Room procedures for reporting positive COVID-19 cases. Effective immediately, any student that has a positive COVID-19 test (at-home, rapid, PCR test, etc.) is entitled to asynchronous instruction and access to Office Hours as outlined in the Pivot to Remote MOA and as outlined in the updated Field Guidance and Overview of the Agreement.

Teachers providing asynchronous instruction and office hours to these students are entitled to compensation as per the pivot to remote MOA. A "partial closure" is now defined as when any part of a class is in isolation or is unable to attend in-person instruction due to a positive COVID-19 test as described above.

Note that the scenarios listed below are not currently considered partial closures and teachers cannot be required to provide asynchronous instruction and Office Hours as set forth in the MOA:

- If a student fails the health screen and there is no COVID-19 test
- A student is absent for non-COVID reasons
- A family is keeping a student home and is requesting all assignments

For these students, staff are expected to engage in normal past practices with respect to non-COVID student absences. However, if staff are willing and their supervisor approves, staff may provide Office Hours and asynchronous instruction to these students and shall be compensated accordingly.