Hearings and testimony on need to reform Mayoral control from Diane Ravitch, parents, and advocates

Above is a video of the City Council hearing last week on Mayoral control, also available here.  There were incisive questions from the new Education Committee Chair, Eric Dinowitz, as well as from several other council members.  Also impressive were the oral testimonies of many parents, advocates and former students about how this governance system without any checks and balances  at the local level or community input was inherently undemocratic and had led to unjust and damaging  policies.   

Dinowitz expressed skepticism of claims of learning gains under Mayoral control, given the lagging results in the NAEPs-- the only reliable data on achievement, as opposed to the state test results which are erratically designed at best.  He also pointed out how  graduation rates can be artificially inflated through the use of credit recovery and the like.  He was also critical of HMH Reading, the most commonly used of the mandated box curriculums.

He asked about the DOE contracting process, which over the last 23 years under Mayoral control hashas wasted millions of dollars on useless or corrupt products and vendors, and whether it was true that the Panel for Educational Policy's Contract committee had been dissolved -- which in the past had provided one of the few occasions where the DOE was forced to explain the rationale for proposed contracts before the PEP meeting at which they will be voted upon.  Now PEP members are briefed privately on proposed contracts, and are told they are not to reveal what they haave been told to any member of the public.

DOE officials seemed confused as initially claimed that the Contract Committee still existed, until they conceded that indeed it had been eliminated, but refused to say that they would support such a Committee being restored and mandated in  law.   

There was also some confusion as to whether PEP members were sent resolutions by DOE that CECs had passed on relevant proposals they would be voting on, such as co-locations and school closures.  It turns out they are not, though Katie Jedrelink of DOE  said that CECs could send them directly to the PEP members if they liked. I subsequently pointed out that for years, the DOE website lacked the names of many members of the PEP, and  in even more frequently their email adddresses, making it impossible for the public to contact them.  This lack of information provided for members of the school board of the nation's large school district exists no where else in the country, to my knowledge.  After years of complaining about this matter, I was informed the day before the hearings that they had finally posted all the names and the email addresses of  PEP members, though I have heard from several that it is difficult for them to access their DOE emails, for reasons I don't understand.. 

Other Council Members also asked good questions, including former Education Chair Rita Joseph, who asked them what would be done to improve parent participation, given that only 2% of parents had voted in the recent CEC elections, and also how mistakes had been made in the process, including names of candidates omitted from the voting website.  CM Carmen de la Rosa also had particularly pointed questions related to the lack of adequate space planning by the DOE to allow schools to lower class size in compliance with the state law.  

Below are five of the written testimonies, first from  NYC school historian and education advocate Diane Ravitch, followed with my testimony for Class Size Matters , then  Jonathan Greenberg of the Educational Council Consortium, Naveed Hasan, PEP member and parent leader, and Naila Rosario, President of NYC Kids PAC.

All five of us pointed out the deep inherent flaws with what is essentially dictatorial, one-man rule, and the Mayoral majority on the Panel for Education Policy should be eliminated, to make it less of a rubberstamp.   Each of us also  proposed other reforms.  Check them out! 

 

 

In my testimony, I provide a list of major, multimillion dollars examples of waste and corruption under Mayoral control -- in the text and in the Appendix. Just two days after the hearing, yet another major scandal erupted: Kevin Taylor, the head of the School Safety division was indicted for bribery along with the CEO of the SaferWatch company, who had paid Taylor as well as Terence Banks, the brother of Chancellor Banks to promote the device to DOE, although Terence Banks has not been indicted. 

 See this story here and the indictment here. 

 

Here is the written testimony of Jonathan Greenberg of the Educational Council Consortium, which represents many leaders of Community Education Councils. 

 

Following are the views of Naveed Hasan, a Manhattan parent representative on the Panel for Educational Policy.

 

Finally, last but not least, the testimony of Naila Rosario, the President of NYC Kids PAC, who points out how Mayor Mamdani has left his supporters in the lurch, by reversing his position on mayoral control, one of his central education positions, without explaining why.

Mayoral control in the eyes of three NYC parent leaders

The NY State Education Department is holding hearings on Mayoral control, leading up to a report they will submit to the Legislature at the end of March.  The Legislature then has to decide whether to renew Mayoral control, let it lapse or amend it by end of June 2024.  More and more of the few school districts who have Mayoral control, including Chicago, are moving away from it in the realization that it leaves out community voices and contributes to rampant privatization, including charter school expansion.

At the hearings in the Bronx on Tuesday night, parents and teachers who spoke were nearly unanimous that Mayoral control is a deeply flawed system that must be changed.  You can see news clips about the hearings here, and video of the proceedings at the bottom of this page, which also has information about future hearings in December and January, including a link to sign up for the next hearing in Queens on December 18.  

Several of those who testified on Tuesday mentioned the Mayor's failure to lower class size according to the new state law as evidence of the lack of accountability under the system, despite claims by him and the Chancellor that this essentially autocratic system somehow strengthens accountability.  

This question of accountability and Mayoral control was also discussed by two parent leaders, Shino Tanikawa and Jonathan Greenberg, on the latest episode of Talk out of School, which aired on  Sunday on WBAI and is also available as a podcast here and above.  Please listen and subscribe!

Below is the testimony given by Thomas Sheppard, one of the independent members of the Panel for Educational Policy, elected by parent leaders in the Bronx, and thus doesn't automatically vote "yes" for every proposal on the PEP agenda. Currently, the PEP, which was named that by Michael Bloomberg when he got Mayoral control but is still legally the NYC school board, has ten independent members and thirteen members appointed by the Mayor, who uniformly rubber stamp whatever proposal is put before them, usually without any explanation or comment no matter how wasteful or misguided.

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Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony and share my perspective on the issue of Mayoral Control. My name is Thomas Sheppard and first, I am a father of six children, three of whom are NYC Public School students. I also serve as the Bronx Community Education Council Presidents Member on the Board of Education for the City School District of the City of New York, also referred to as the Panel for Educational Policy or PEP. I was first elected in 2020 to serve as the representative of all 32 CEC Presidents and, with recent changes to NYS Education Law, re-elected to serve as the Bronx CEC Presidents Member for the 2023-24 School year.

I am here tonight in opposition to Mayoral Control of New York City Public Schools. Being a member of the PEP for the past 3 and a half years has shown me and the majority of parents in NYC that Mayoral Control simply does not work as a responsive form of Public School Governance. My experience has been that the PEP with a supermajority of Mayoral Appointees working in collusion with the Mayor and Chancellor, routinely ignores the voices of the community, the New York City Council, and even the New York State Legislature, and that the DOE’s bureaucracy often exploits procedures and the law in a way that disenfranchises the students, families, and school communities for which is it supposed to serve.

I can give many examples, but since I only have 3 minutes, I will briefly highlight 3, provide more details in my written testimony, and invite you to view recordings of years of PEP meetings at schools.nyc.gov (http://schools.nyc.gov) for more context.

The examples I will touch on are:

    1.    Every Mayor and Chancellor illegally overusing procedures like Emergency Declarations to circumvent community input on important matters such as the estimated budget.

    2.    The refusal of the Mayor & Chancellor to comply with the Class Size Reduction Law passed by the New York State Legislature last year, with no ability by the community to hold either of them accountable for that decision.

    3.    The Mayor’s supermajority on the PEP with no direct interaction with the community, routinely taking action in direct opposition to the positions of Education Councils and school communities, especially in matters such as significant changes in school utilization.

Finally, I wanted to make a distinction between Mayoral Control of NYC Public Schools and the system of governance itself. I am calling for an end to Mayoral Control in the short term, and a redesign of this system of school governance to one that is community-centered, democratic, responsive, and accountable to students and parents in the long-term. And while that work of redesign happens with all of our community stakeholders and elected officials, a transition from Mayoral Control must include at a minimum, eliminating the Mayor’s supermajority on the PEP, giving students voting representation, and giving the PEP and Education Councils the authority to hire and terminate the Chancellor and District Superintendents respectively.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify before you.