Letter to Gov. Cuomo: do not allow the Gates Foundation to influence education policy in our state

Our letter sent to Gov. Cuomo, warning him against allowing the Gates Foundation to outsource education to the ed tech industry, was quoted by the AP​​, in US News and World Report​, NY Post , Gothamist​ and Syracuse News.  Also my critical tweet directed at Cuomo after his announcement that he intended to "partner" with the Gates Foundation on "reimagining" our schools was quoted in Ed Week.  

You can send your own letter to Cuomo here.

May 5, 2020

To Governor Cuomo: 

As educators, parents and school board members, we were appalled to hear that you will be working with the Gates Foundation on “reimagining” our schools following the Covid crisis.  Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation have promoted one failed educational initiative after another, causing huge disaffection in districts throughout the state. 

Whether that be the high-handed push by the Gates Foundation for the invalid Common Core standards, unreliable teacher evaluation linked to test scores, or privacy-violating data-collection via the corporation known as inBloom Inc., the education of our children has been repeatedly put at risk by their non-evidence based “solutions”, which were implemented without parent input and despite significant public opposition.  As you recall, these policies also sparked a huge opt-out movement across the state, with more than twenty percent of eligible students refusing to take the state exams. 

We urge you instead to listen to parents and teachers rather than allow the Gates Foundation to implement their damaging education agenda once again.  Since the schools were shut down in mid-March, our understanding of the profound deficiencies of screen-based instruction has only grown. The use of education tech may have its place, but only as an ancillary to in-person learning, not as its replacement.  

Along with many other parents and educators, we strongly oppose enabling the Gates Foundation to influence the direction of education in the state by expanding the use of ed tech.  

Instead, we ask that you fund our schools sufficiently and equitably, to allow for the smaller classes, school counselors, and other critical services that our children will need more than ever before, given the myriad losses they have experienced this year. 

Yours sincerely,

New York State Allies for Public Education

Class Size Matters

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy

Cc: Board of Regents and Acting NYSED Commissioner Shannon Tahoe

de Blasio's new PAC and charter school treasurer: progressive enough?

credit: NY Post

Mayor de Blasio has set up a new federal political action fund, called "Fairness PAC,"  registered Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. The purpose of the PAC is ostensibly to support progressive candidates nationwide and presumably to enhance his own image nationally for future elective office -- as well as the prominence of his wife, Chirlane.  According to the NY Post,

City officials said the committee will offer direct support to candidates and also cover campaigning-related travel expenses for the mayor and his wife, Chirlane McCray, who’s said she might run for future office.

This is de Blasio's third attempt to set up his own PAC:

The mayor’s first political non-profit, the Campaign for One New York, was shut in March 2017 amid a federal probe over the mayor’s fundraising practices. And de Blasio’s other PAC — The Progressive Agenda — crashed and burned on its initial foray into the national spotlight during the 2016 presidential race.

J. David Goodman and William Neuman of the NY Times ask if the Mayor is progressive enough to satisfy the growing activist wing of the Democratic party.  They cite many aspects of his record, including the expansion of preK, but also his reluctance to address school segregation until recently. 

There are many other education problems de Blasio promised to tackle when running for Mayor but has failed to improve, including school overcrowding, class size, school closings, transparency, community collaboration, parent empowerment, high stakes testing and more -- as outlined in NYC Kids PAC report cards, where he received low or failing grades on these issues.

Yet perhaps the most striking aspect of de Blasio's new Fairness PAC, as revealed by its federal registration form, is that Richard Buery is its treasurer, probably the most important position for a PAC.  Buery was formerly the Deputy Mayor and is now Chief of Policy and Public Affairs for KIPP charter schools.


Over the past two or three years, the progressive wing of the Democratic party has gradually shifted its stance away from supporting charter school expansion, as evidenced by the positions of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others -- as well as civil rights organizations like the NAACP and Black Lives Matters.  This evolution was no doubt helped by the full-throated support for school privatization of Trump and Betsy DeVos.

One recalls that while de Blasio originally ran for Mayor in 2012 on a platform opposing charter school co-locations, he quickly conceded after ads run by the charter lobby and financed by hedgefunders blasted him for refusing space in public schools for three Success charter schools.  He quickly formed a School Space working group, headed by Buery, which included several charter school officials, in order to calm the waters.  Since then DOE has approved the vast majority of charter school co-location requests.

When in 2014, the Legislature passed a new law, pushed through by Governor Cuomo, that NYC would have to provide free space in public schools or pay for leased space for every new or expanding charter school out of the city budget, (the only school district in the state or the nation with this onerous obligation), de Blasio didn't protest, but simply said “The decisions about the space will be made by the Department of Education.  That’s the bottom line.”

In 2017, he agreed to other concessions to charter expansion, without complaint, in order to retain mayoral control.  It will be interesting to see how this "progressive" Mayor positions himself on the national stage on school privatization, and from whom he (and his treasurer) raises money. 

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The lawsuit just filed on behalf of the receivership schools

Wendy Lecker, one of the attorneys from the Education Law Center who sued the State Division of the Budget and the State Education Education last week for denying funds to struggling schools on behalf of parents, wrote this summary of the case below.  Three of the schools are in NYC as explained below.  More on how these schools intended to use these funds are here.  Here is the verified petition.

Attorney Wendy Lecker

On September 2, parents from Albany, Yonkers and New York City filed a lawsuit against the state seeking the release of receivership grant money that the Division of Budget is withholding from their children’s schools, as well as six other schools across the state.  

In 2015, New York State passed Education law 211-f, known as the Receivership Law, which directed the Commissioner of Education to designate New York public schools as “persistently failing” based on test scores and other outcome data. Appropriations legislation also passed in 2015 directed that these “persistently failing” schools were eligible to receive $75 million in funding for two-year grants.

The appropriations law mandated that the State Education Department (“SED”) develop an expenditure plan for these “transformation grants,”  that the Division of Budget (“DOB”) approve that expenditure plan, and that DOB then release the grant money pursuant to that spending plan.  

SED developed the plan in October 2015, and it was approved by DOB on October 15, 2015. The plan specifically provided for two-year grants for twenty schools, including the schools at issue in this lawsuit: Roosevelt High School, in Yonkers, William S. Hackett Middle School, in Albany, and JHS 80 The Mosholu Parkway Middle School in the Bronx. The plan also set forth the amount each school would receive over the two years.  All twenty schools applied for and received the two-year grants set forth in the spending plan. Nothing in either the spending plan nor in the applications indicated that these schools would forfeit the second year of their grants should their performance improve.

The three schools used these grants to provide mental health services and other social supports to students, extra academic support and enrichment, and professional development- all designed to improve student learning conditions and performance.

In February 2016, Commissioner Elia determined, based on student outcome data, that nine of the twenty schools were no longer considered “persistently failing.”  SED declared in February 2016 that the nine schools removed from the “persistently failing” list  “will continue to be eligible to receive funding in 2016-17 from a state grant to support and strengthen their school improvement efforts.”

However, Governor Cuomo directed the Division of Budget to withhold the second year of grant funding from these nine schools, in direct violation of the law and the statutorily-mandated spending plan approved by the DOB.

In addition to Roosevelt, Hackett and JHS 80, the six other schools affected by the DOB’s decision to withhold the grant funding are: Grant Middle School in Syracuse; three schools in Buffalo including the Elementary School of Technology, Burgard Vocational High School, and South Park High School; and Automotive High School and PS 328 Phyllis Wheatley School in Brooklyn.

Parents are outraged that Governor Cuomo is punishing these schools for improving by taking away the very resources that will help them continue to improve. 

SED continues to maintain that the transformational grant funding should be released. SED spokesperson Emily DeSantis, was quoted in the New York Times as declaring: “It makes no sense to take away funding from schools that have just started to show progress and that need all the support and resources we can give them.”

The parties are due in State Supreme Court in Albany on September 23, at 9 a.m.

Are 5,485 classes this fall that violate the union contractual class sizes a cause to celebrate?

Update:  I've added videos of Assemblymember Jeff Aubry and CM Donovan Richards.  More on the press conference, including some quotes from me in the Daily News, Chalkbeat,  Schoolbook, NY Post and PoliticoNY. See also the UFT website for more stats.


Today, Michael Mulgrew, the President of the UFT,  organized a press conference on the steps of Tweed about class size.  He thanked our   legislators for bringing home more education funds for NYC schools in last year's state budget, and the Mayor and the Chancellor for seeing that much of it went to schools.  He applauded the fact that there were fewer class size violations during the second week of school than last year, 5,485 compared to 6,447 the year before.  Then he added that we needed to  push to ensure that the full $2 billion extra that we are owed by the state as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision in 2003 -- 12 years ago-- is finally provided to our schools.

According to UFT data, more than 3,400 high school classes exceeded the 34 students permitted in the teachers contract, and in elementary and middle schools, more than 2,000 classes exceeded thecap with class size limits range from 25 in Kindergarten to 32-33 students.  Which means that  about 150,000 students -- or more than 10% of all students -- may be disadvantaged by being crammed into classes of more than 32 or 34 kids per class. 

Guillermo Linares, Donovan Richards, Nick Perry, Bill Perkins and me.

Also speaking with passion and conviction about the need to reduce class size and the importance of NYC schools getting their fair share of funding were Assemblymembers Keith Wright, Guillermo Linares and Nick Perry; and Senators Velmanette Montgomery and Bill Perkins.

Assemblymember Keith Wright pointed out that "“There’s no secret to improving schools," merely great teachers and small classes.  "We have great teachers and now all we need is smaller class sizes." Senator Perkins said,  "Even Stevie Wonder can see that class size matters."

 Here's Assemblymember Jeff Aubry on the inequities of class size in NYC compared to elsewhere in the state:

Of course money matters!

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City Council Education chair Danny Dromm, and Council Members Alan Maisel, Julissa Ferreras, Mark Levine, Corey Johnson spoke about how class size matters and their commitment to fair funding.  Council Member Donovan Richards of Queens said it was a matter of social justice, and that he almost fell through the cracks because of class size at Jamaica high school (now closed.).

Council Members Dromm and Maisel, both former teachers, said they simply couldn't do their best with the large classes they were assigned.



When it was my turn, I said that Cuomo has a moral obligation to fulfill the judgement of the state's highest court, which found that NYC kids were deprived of their constitutional right because of excessive class size. I pointed out the smaller classes were the top priority of parents in the DOE own surveys, and a top priority of most teachers as well.

But I added that the Mayor and the Chancellor also have a real responsibility to reduce class size in our schools, especially since they had made repeated promises to do so, that have gone so far unmet.  Here are some of the pledges they have made,  in relation to another contractual commitment -- the Contracts for Excellence law passed in 2007 that required NYC to reduce class size in all grades:

Bill de Blasio on June 14, 2013, at a Mayoral forum at Murry Bergtraum HS  at which he promised to commit to specific class size goals and if necessary, raise funds to pay for this.  You can see how he checked off the form and signed it himself:

Bill de Blasio in July 2013,  in his completed KidsPAC candidate survey, in which he promised to set reduced class size goals to achieve by the end of his first term, which he has failed to do, as well as achieve the city's original Contracts for Excellence class size goals of 20 in K-3, 23 in 4th-8th grade, and 25 in HS classes:

DOE in December 2015, in their official response to public comment to their C4E plan.

For the 2015-16 School Year, NYCDOE will focus Class Size Reduction planning efforts on the School Renewal Program. The criteria for selecting Renewal Schools is [sic] aligned with C4E goals to target schools with the greatest needs.  

DOE, now, in their current C4E power point (see slide 14):

Yet we have reports of many schools on the Renewal list that have huge class sizes, including some  that violate the union contract. At PS 111 in Queens, Kindergarten class sizes have risen to 27 this fall,  and to 30 in 1st grade.  Long Island City high school, another Renewal school, was reported as having the 4th highest number of class size violations, at 140.  

We have repeatedly asked DOE for a list of Renewal schools where they have actually lowered class size, and to what levels, without success. Reporter Patrick Wall of Chalkbeat tried as well: 

"Education department spokeswoman Devora Kaye said the city shares the goal of reducing class sizes. She would not say whether the city has set any specific targets around class size, or what steps it is taking to create smaller classes in Renewal schools."

Meanwhile, here is the list of Renewal schools with the most UFT class size violations as of September 18:

According to the UFT, Long Island City, Richmond Hill, and Martin Van Buren HS have since reduced their contractual violations to zero or nearly so. But violations mean classes of 35 or more, and reducing them to zero could mean class sizes at 34 - far from the C4E goal of 25 or less. 

These class sizes are unconscionable for students who are way behind, in schools in danger of closing, whose classes should be capped at 25 or less to give them a real chance to succeed.   This is especially true as the city has a surplus of $7 billion, the Mayor promised us he would reduce class size and yet has been silent on this since his election, and the DOE specifically claimed they would focus their efforts at lowering class size in the struggling schools.

At the end of the press conference, Michael Mulgrew was asked about the fact that the Chancellor Farina does not agree that reducing class size should be a priority; and how she has made that clear to parents at numerous town hall meetings.  He responded that  the union will "keep pushing" and emphasize that "we are willing to work" with the administration on class size.  Let's hope they push hard, and make progress with a Mayor and a Chancellor who are not on the same page as parents and teachers on this critical issue.

On Nov. 15, we will see whether class sizes have significantly declined this year citywide or in  the Renewal schools, when the city releases their annual class size reports.