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

No Busing for Overflow Kindergarteners in Queens

See email exchange between Marge Kolb, head of the Presidents council in D24 in Queens, and Kathleen Grimm of DOE below.

To this day, DOE has refused to put the placement of G and T classes through any public process for community input, leading to flawed decision-making and the awful outcome described below, with parents having to spend hours transporting their Kindergarten children to schools miles away from their zoned schools – with no busing provided.

As Marge says, "DOE cannot pretend to be 'well-managed' and continue to perpetrate these kind of harms upon parents and children."

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From: MKolbcorr@aol.com [mailto:MKolbcorr@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 10:48 AM
To: Klein Joel I.
Cc: Fighetti Gabriela; Sternberg Marc; dmytrocec24@yahoo.com ; Roseann Darche; nickcec24@aol.com ; Chan Madelene
Subject: No Busing for Overflow Kindergarteners?

Dear Chancellor Klein:

I recently called the District 24 office to inquire about the schools in our district with capped kindergartens (which I believe, currently number 6 or 7 schools). I was shocked to learn that busing has still NOT been arranged for 10-12 Kindergarten students from PS 12 in northern Woodside who were offered seats LAST MAY at PS 128 in Middle Village. I was told that one parent may be walking the 4.5 mile round trip to get her child to school each day (twice! in the morning and afternoon) and another parent may be close to losing her job because of the time involved in delivering and picking up her child from school . Parents were initially (and kindly) given metrocards by the PS 128 principal so they could make their way by public bus with their children, but he has since had to stop providing these due to the expense, so now parents are expected to pay their own way (and take two buses) to get their children to school each day. Please note that PS 12 has a free lunch rate of 74% and Limited English Proficiency of 34% - this is primarily an immigrant population being served.

At the September 28 D24 CEC meeting, Gabby Fighetti from the Portfolio division stated that she had just learned of this situation and would immediately take action. Now, weeks later I am told by the D24 office that these students will not be able to be offered busing. This is unacceptable!

I find it absolutely appalling that instead of offering PS 12 students seats at PS 229, which is the next school zone to the south, the DOE instead placed a brand-new 1^st grade G&T class at PS 229 which could have instead been placed at the new PS 330 (at IS 73) which opened this year with a Kindergarten G&T. The class at PS 229 draws most of its students from outside the school zone, and thus, had it not been opened, PS 229 might very well have been able to take the overflow from PS 12 (as it took overflow from PS 143 last year).

This is just another example of why the centralization of decisions such as this is detrimental to districts. The right hand at Central does not know what the left hand is doing. You have CEC and Presidents’ Council leadership who have years of experience in the district and a perfectly competent District Superintendent on the ground, yet were any of us consulted in advance about these issues? No!

I would like an immediate report as to what is being done to get transportation for the affected students. In the meantime I will alert the local elected officials to this situation.

Marge Kolb

President, D24 Presidents’ Council

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From: Grimm Kathleen [mailto:KGrimm@schools.nyc.gov]
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 4:11 PM
To: MKolbcorr@aol.com
Cc: Fighetti Gabriela; Sternberg Marc; Chan Madelene; Shear Jeffrey; Goldstein Eric
Subject: FW: No Busing for Overflow Kindergarteners?

Marge,

I am sorry for any frustration here, but PS 12 is a school that does not have busing. Children who are eligible can continue to receive MetroCards, but we cannot provide them to parents. I wish that I could be more help here.

Kathleen

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From: MKolbcorr@aol.com [mailto:MKolbcorr@aol.com]
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 5:01 PM
To: KGrimm@schools.nyc.gov
Cc: GFighetti@schools.nyc.gov; MSternberg@schools.nyc.gov; MChan2@schools.nyc.gov; JShear@schools.nyc.gov; EGoldstein@schools.nyc.gov; dmytrocec24@yahoo.com; rdarche@queensbp.org
Subject: Re: FW: No Busing for Overflow Kindergarteners?

Dear Ms. Grimm:

Your information is incorrect. PS 12 HAS busing, it is PS 128 that does not, and inasmuch as DOE has offered seats to overflow students from PS 12 to attend PS 128 (AS LONG AGO AS LAST MAY!!!) it is incumbent upon the DOE to provide transportation to those students.

How come your reply to me does not address the fact that PS 12 parents were led to believe that they would receive busing or that seats at PS 229 (much closer to PS 12 than PS 128 is) were not offered but were instead slotted for a NEW G&T 1st grade class which could just as easily have been located at the new PS 330 which was already getting a NEW G&T kindergarten class?

DOE cannot pretend to be "well-managed" and continue to perpetrate these kinds of harms upon parents and children.

I already have The Daily News interested in this story and the local City Councilmember, Jimmy Van Bramer has been apprised, so I expect a better answer from you.

Marge Kolb

President, D24 Presidents' Council

Who controls our schools:principals or the police?

We asked Sally Lee of Teachers Unite to contribute this entry to our blog:

The arrest of the student and principal at East Side Community High School set the stage for yesterday’s City Council hearings on school safety and NYCLU news conference. The focus of the hearings was the complete confusion over who has authority in public schools—principals or school security agents.

When Kathleen Grimm, the DOE Deputy Chancellor, claimed that principals have the power to remove metal detectors from their schools, there was audible surprise. Even the President of the Principals’ Union, Ernie Logan, stated that he had never heard that before.

In the afternoon, the union representing the security agents held their own press conference an hour before the NYCLU’s conference yesterday, and pushed the idea that these agents are victimized and assaulted by students.

The press coverage focused on the DOE and NYPD claim that once a student performs a criminal act, it is under the jurisdiction of the police. This begs the question: How often are school security agents escalating non-criminal incidents into violent conflicts?

Again, the enlightening news came from inside the hearings, where students gave a clear picture of regular harassment. One boy talked about a school security agent forcing him to stop eating lunch so that he could take him directly to the dean’s office, while cursing at him, all because of a completely false accusation—which made him miss half of his next class. One girl spoke of being forced to skip a class while sitting in a “holding room” which is where students are made to stay when even one minute late.

The NYCLU reports that the NYPD has assigned more than 5,000 school safety agents and at least 200 armed police officers to the city’s public schools. This massive presence would make the NYPD’s school safety division the fifth largest police force in the country—larger than Washington DC, Detroit, Boston or Las Vegas. And yet, there is no effective mechanism to hold school safety agents accountable for misconduct.

At yesterday’s news conference, youth from the Urban Youth Collaborative; Lepore Felice, the principal of Urban Assembly School for Careers in Sports; Jamaal Bowman, the dean of a small school inside Martin Luther King Jr. High School; and I discussed the importance of investing in proactive solutions to keep our schools safe including: small class sizes; rich after-school programs; peer mediation initiatives and increased support services.

Critics will say that cops are needed in schools to keep students in line in these violent times. Bowman, quoted on WNYC this morning, highlighted the fact that police are heavily stationed in schools with almost 100% Black and Latino students. Race and income is the main factor contributing to the hostile use of policing in our schools, but the NYPD and Department of Education will never own up to that scandal.

Teachers Unite for Student Safety is an initiative of Teachers Unite advocating for supportive services in schools rather than the use of aggressive policing strategies. For more on the hearings, see the NY Times blog.

UPDATE: See the excellent article in City Limits. Excerpt:

“A primary finding of the hearing was that the 1998 MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] that assigned responsibility for school safety to the NYPD expired in 2002 and has not been renewed. Furthermore, a joint committee called for by the MOU to "ensure the effectiveness of school safety" and prepare annual evaluations of the school safety program was never convened. The only outside oversight of the school security program, according to DOE and NYPD, is conducted by Mayor Bloomberg."