ECC Statement Condemning the Undemocratic State Budget Process That Used Mayoral Control as a Political Bargaining Chip

 To see if there's a way forward on this very critical issue, despite the Governor's insistence on cramming a two-year extension of Mayoral control into the state budget, join us for our Parent Action Conference on Saturday May 11 at 10:30 AM-- more info here.

ECC Statement Condemning the Undemocratic State Budget Process That Used Mayoral Control as a Political Bargaining Chip

April 25, 2024

New York State’s 2024-25 budget shows an utter disregard of parents, students, educators and advocates in New York City. When Governor Hochul made school governance into a political bargaining chip by including a 4-year extension of mayoral control in her Executive Budget in January, she knew well that the state legislature mandated report on school governance in New York City, which she called for, was due to be released near the end of March. 

After first agreeing to remove mayoral control from the budget, the governor put it back in the eleventh hour to use mayoral control for horse trading. The final budget agreed upon by the Governor, Majority Leader and Speaker includes a 2-year extension and some superficial changes to the Panel for Educational Policy.  It is as if the report by the Commissioner of the NYS Education Department never existed. 

We condemn this disregard for parents, students, educators and advocates, many of whom made clear in public testimony recorded in NYSED’s report, that we do not want mayoral control. We condemn the Governor’s hypocrisy in her statement, “governance mechanism that’s been in place for many, many years will not be politicized,” when she is the one who politicized it by using it to horse trade in the budget. 

While we recognize the Majority Leader and Speaker fought to keep mayoral control out of the budget, we are disappointed that they conceded in the end and seemingly listened only to the Mayor and the union leadership, neglecting the voices of the parents, students, educators and advocates. 

Mayoral control needed to be debated separately from the state budget. It should never be used as a pawn in budget negotiations, particularly in a year when a comprehensive report assessing the effectiveness of mayoral control was released. The Governor and the legislature are forcing children of NYC public schools to suffer a dysfunctional and grossly inequitable system for two more years without any future possibilities for a new governance system. 

We thank the legislators in both houses who advocated until the last moment on behalf of parents, students, educators and advocates. We will continue to fight for a democratic school governance system in New York City. 

Education Council Consortium Board of Directors

How DOE & FACE screwed up the elections for new PEP members

An article about DOE's terrible administration of these elections is here.

 

Dec. 22, 2022

Ms. Kenita D. Lloyd

Deputy Chancellor for Family and Community Engagement and External Affairs 

Dear Deputy Chancellor Lloyd,

The Education Council Consortium (ECC) denounces the New York City Department of Education’s (DOE) 2022 Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) member election and calls for the reopening of voting. 

In June of 2022, the New York State Legislature amended the constitution of the PEP by adding 5 new members, to be elected by Presidents of Community Education Councils.  Despite the statutory timeline, DOE continuously delayed the process, resulting in confusion and chaos, ultimately leading to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters.  The DOE failed to provide sufficient notice of the election, providing less than 72 hours notice of the date of the election, and only sending notice via email.  The DOE held an unreasonably short voting period of less than 24-hours and did not provide an alternative method of voting for voters without access or needing digital accommodations.  These circumstances and more, served to disenfranchise CEC Presidents who were eligible and entitled to vote in the election of the borough PEP members.

The DOE did not provide sufficient notice of the election.  CEC Presidents were given less than 72-hours notice of the date of the election, and were only notified of the election via email.  As a result, eligible voters that didn’t check their email during that 72-hour period were not notified of the date of the election, and thus were not able to vote.  Additionally, the DOE’s decision to hold an election without providing at least one week’s advanced notice is a deviation from past practice.  For example, for the DOE’s bi-annual CEC member elections, notice is provided months in advance, and using multiple mediums (paid media advertisements, mail, social media, email, phone calls, text messages, etc.).  Even parent-run elections, like PTA board and Title 1 representative elections require at least 10 days of advanced notice.  In addition to the lack of timely notice, DOE should have supplemented the notification email with one other form of notice (e.g. call or mailing).  Voters should have had at least a 10-day notice period, similar to other parent elections, so that voters could schedule properly.

The DOE held an unreasonably short voting window considering the nature of the election.  The DOE provided voters with a less than 24-hour window to vote.  The notice regarding how to vote and the link for the ballot was sent to voters the night before the voting window began, and there were technical glitches in the system that had not been resolved at the time of the notice.  Again, requiring everyone to vote electronically without providing a reasonable period of time for voting is unacceptable.  The candidate forum, where candidates presented their campaign platforms, was held the night before the 24-hour voting window, and the DOE had not even made the recordings available for viewing.  Expecting voting to occur before DOE was even able to make all of the voting information available demonstrates the unreasonably short notice and voting window.

Similarly, new and arbitrary rules restricting voters’ ability to have a voting proxy disenfranchised voters who were unable to cast their ballot.  For example, a CEC 1’s President whose brother had recently passed away had appointed her Vice President to serve as her proxy, per the CEC’s bylaws.  The night before the voting window began, an arbitrary rule preventing proxy voting was issued via email.  CEC 1’s President did not receive the notice until after the election, and the CEC 1 Vice President was not allowed to vote.  The creation of new and arbitrary policies in the ninth hour had the effect of disenfranchising voters.

December is one of the busiest times of the year for many.  CEC Presidents juggle job responsibilities, and family and personal obligations, on top of their role as CEC Presidents.  Adequate notice for meetings and reasonable time windows for voting are required.  The DOE’s PEP member election should be held to the same requirements as those set for PTA, CPAC, and CEC elections.

 

In Partnership,

NeQuan C. McLean

President

Send a letter now to State Officials, urging them to allow online school and district meetings to continue!

 

One of the few good things to come out of the pandemic is an expansion of parent participation in official school-and district meetings by holding these meetings online. Yet the ability to do so is due to expire on Jan. 15.  Resuming in-person meetings at this time is also especially risky, since Omicron still rages. Please send a letter today to state officials to urge them to enable online School Leadership Team and Community Education Council meetings to continue, by clicking here .

Dear community,

The Governor's Executive Order allowing School Leadership Teams and Citywide and Community Education Councils to hold their meetings virtually will expire on January 15th. If nothing is done, these entities will be required to meet in-person starting January 16th.

With the extremely high positivity rate, resuming in-person meetings is not in the best interest of the public (not to mention the volunteer members who serve on SLTs and CCECs).

Please contact the Governor and state legislators today by clicking here and ask them to extend the exemption to the Open Meetings Law and allow SLTs and CCECs to continue meeting virtually. If you have the time, please call your legislators as well. You can look up your Assembly member and Senator by going to https://www.mygovnyc.org/.

Thank you for your activism!

ECC Steering Committee

Call to Action! Keep the cap on charters!

 The Education Council Consortium (ECC) invites all stakeholders to make a Charter Cap Call to Action. Please find more information in a letter from the ECC to the community, below: 

Dear fellow advocates of public education and concerned families,

We need your help. We advocated hard for a cap on the number of charter schools that could operate in New York City, and we won—but now, the charter school industry is lobbying hard to remove that cap. Even though they could easily open charter schools in other parts of the state, and even though NYC has over 80% of the state’s charters, they still want more in NYC. StudentsFirst, a pro-charter political lobbying organization formed by Michelle Rhee to pass state laws facilitating charter school expansion, has released results from their poll claiming NYC Democrats want more charters. Parent advocates don’t have lobbyists or market research firms to game the system, but we have our voices and our elected representatives. 

Phone Banking

Please reach out to 10 or more friends—SLT and PTA members, grandparents, really anyone you know, and ask them to call or write their state legislators. We are aiming to have 50 calls made in each community school district, surpassing 1,500 calls.

The Charter Committee will hold a virtual phone bank on TONIGHT, Thursday, May 27th at 7pm. Please register in advance for this event. 

Letter Writing 

You can also send a letter to your elected officials here. The letter writing site has a sample letter and it will look up your legislators, so that all you have to do is sign your name! Please do it today and share with others.