In today's "Talk out of School" podcast, I spoke to Kim Watkins, NYC parent leader, about the need to ensure all schools have nurses before they can reopen safely next year. Then Prof. Johann Neem joined us to explain why he fears that the Covid shutdown of schools could hasten the end of support for public education nationwide.
You can listen here. Links to more resources, including Kim Watkin's piece for Gotham Gazette and Prof. Neem's oped in USA Today are below.
NYC parents tell the Mayor to stop stalling and stop giving charter schools access to student information to market their schools
This afternoon, in front of the NYC Department of Education headquarters, NYC public school parents told Mayor de Blasio to stop bowing to the charter school lobby and halt the practice of giving charters access to student personal information to market their schools.Instead, they said, he should listen to parents’ concerns, stop violating their children’s privacy, and cease this practice, which by helping charters expand, causes the loss of funding and space from our public schools.
In recent weeks, Chancellor Carranza has repeatedly promised parent leaders, both publicly and privately, that this practice would be discontinued, but the Mayor has yet to make a commitment to do so, and in the last few days he has said that he has not yet made a decision.
Said Johanna Garcia, public school parent and President of Community Education Council in District 6 in Upper Manhattan:“It is unconscionable that this practice continues. For more than a decade, parents and advocates have complained to DOE about the privacy violations incurred by allowing charters to access our children’s personal information without our consent. I filed a FERPA complaint to the US Department of Education about this practice in November 2017.Moreover, I am not aware of another school district in the country that voluntarily makes this information available to charter schools and undermines our public schools in the process."
NeQuan McLean, co- chair of the Education Council Consortium and the President of Community Education Council in District 16 Brooklyn said: “My mailbox is continually flooded with deceptive promotional materials from charter schools.As a result of expensive marketing campaigns and the damaging co-location policies of the DOE, my district has been overrun by charters.The Mayor repeatedly says he listens to parents; we are saying loudly and clearly that he should end this practice now.”
“Not only is personal student information unnecessary for appropriate marketing, providing access to it is an unacceptable violation of student privacy,” said Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Counselor of School Supervisors and Administrators.
Shino Tanikawa, the co-chair of the ECC and a member of NYC Kids PAC, agreed: “For years, DOE has ignored parents’ complaints about this practice, which started in 2006 when Joel Klein agreed to help Success Academy charter schools expand their “market share” as Eva Moskowitz put it in an email.The result is that this year, more than two billion dollars has been diverted from our public schools. Why should our supposedly progressive Mayor continue this practice, when he promised parents he would defend our public schools in the face of charter encroachment? “
Leonie Haimson, co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, pointed out: “In Chicago, after student information was disclosed to charter schools by the district, resulting in parents receiving postcards urging them to enroll their children in their schools, this sparked a huge controversy and led to an investigation by the city’s Inspector General. As a result, the staffer who released the information was fired and the district apologized to parents . Right now, in Nashville, their school district is defying a state law requiring districts to make parent contact information available to charter schools, and last week appealed a court order to do so. NY State has no such law, and in fact, our state law bars the use of student data for marketing purposes.”
Naomi Peña, parent of four public school children and President of Community Education Council in District 1 in the Lower East Side, said: “For years, I along with other public school parents have been subjected to glossy flyers from charter schools, which have received donations from hedge fund billionaires to help them advertise in this way.Charters also spend thousands of dollars on social media buys, TV and radio ads, and plaster their posters all over our subway.Meanwhile, our public schools don’t have the funding to promote themselves in this way – and if they did, do we really want our public schools spending money on ads that should go to improving learning conditions for our kids?
I just came from the NY Senate hearings on mayoral control, where Senator Shelley Mayer, chair of the Education Committee, Senator John Liu, chair of the NYC Education Committee, and Senators Robert Jackson, Velmanette Montgomery and others asked piercing questions of parents, advocates, community members, as well of Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza.
To cut to the chase: the Mayor said that he and the Chancellor are "working on being more responsive to parents" and plan to be more systematic about this in the "next couple of weeks." This is after he has been in office for five years.
Meanwhile he insisted on a three-year extension of mayoral control to the end of his term; no change in the composition of the Panel on Educational Policy, no change in his ability to fire PEP members at will, and no change in the selection process of the Chancellor to make it more transparent or provide more public input.
Several times the Mayor claimed he had never fired a PEP member for disagreeing with him, which is untrue. Elzora Cleveland was fired last year as reported here and in City Limits below, for voting against school closures.
Both the Mayor and the Chancellor said they had made terrific progress in "empowering" parents and "listening to them," though no specific examples were given in terms of new policies adopted or decisions made.
Jumaane Williams, our new Public Advocate-elect, spoke concisely and well about the need for municipal control - meaning that the City Council should be empowered to provide checks and balances when it comes to our schools, as they do with all other city agencies but DOE.
Brooke Parker of NYC Kids PAC and I spoke after Jumaane; my testimony is below. We agreed that municipal control would be an improvement, as well as giving more authority to CECs to approve school closings and co-locations and changing the composition of the PEP.
After me, Community Education Council District 3 President Kim Watkins and Shino Tanikawa, the co-chair of the Education Council Consortium, the collective of all the CECs, explained how the current system is essentially undemocratic and that parents continue to be shut out of important decision-making when it comes to their children's schools.
Shino, a parent activist for at least 15 years, said that she vehemently opposed mayoral control without checks and balances. She pointed out that there is no accountability, as the supporters of mayoral control maintained, because there is no real transparency and voters do not vote on education alone. Moreover, as de Blasio is now in his second term, what choice do voters even have at this point? We cannot vote him out. She added that all the things that others praised de Blasio for doing, including expanding preK, could have done with or without mayoral control.
Senator Liu and Senator Jackson asked whether they would support a Commission that could deliberate over the course of one or two years to devise how an improved system of school governance might be structured.
Shino said perhaps, but only if the Commission including CEC members and other parents. "We need a real conversation that includes parents students and teachers and that results in a system that is truly democratic...We need a system that doesn’t depend on the individual temperament of the mayor."
The most infuriating testimony came from Bob Lowry of the NY State Council of Superintendents and Julie Marlette of the NY State School Boards Association. Both said that they supported an unrestricted three-year extension of mayoral control with no changes; not for their own districts of course, but for NYC. The districts they represent have elected school boards that offer parents and community members real input as opposed to our essentially dictatorial one-man rule.
In my testimony, I tried to counter many of the myths surrounding mayoral control, including great improvements in student outcomes, less corruption and waste, etc. etc.. Our Kids PAC video is at the top of the page. Our mayoral control fact sheet is here.
Take a look and let your legislators know how you feel. At this point, it appears that the best chance we have for making a real change is for the State Legislature to create a Commission to examine both the benefits and drawbacks of mayoral control and propose a better system for the future.
Yesterday's press conference where parent leaders from the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council and the Community and Citywide Education Councils demanded that the Mayor give them a seat at the table in selecting a new Chancellor was covered by the Daily News, the Wall Street Journal, Chalkbeat, and NY1. (The WSJ article is posted in the comment section below.)
The Mayor's response, according to the Daily News?
"While parent and community input is an important part of our chancellor search, the decision is ultimately the Mayor's, who is a proud parent of former NYC public school students,” said De Blasio spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie."
What? How is parent or community input part of the Mayor's search, when the search has been undertaken in complete secrecy, no one has been asked their views and potential candidates don't even know how to apply? And the suggestion here appears to justify excluding parents , because de Blasio was once a public school parent himself, is very curious. By the same token, one might argue that he shouldn't have had to be elected by voters for a second term, because he was once a voter himself.
Lindsey Christ of NY1 dug up the 2012 video showing when de Blasio ran for office originally, he described how he would select a Chancellor this way: "With a serious serious public screening. Cathy Black was pushed down our throats because of mayoral control gone to an undemocratic level. No one said mayoral control meant a mayoral narrow inability to communicate, to give the public a role, to air ideas and decisions before they were made. We need a more democratic small "d" version of mayoral control and we need a chancellor who is presented to the public not just forced down their throat." Here is Lindsey's tweet today, with a response from Kim Watkins, CEC 3 President:
"A serious, serious public screening" is what @NYCMayor said in 2012 should happen with a Chancellor search. Now he says search will be secretive. We found the video of his 2012 comments. WATCH: pic.twitter.com/AuNDVYzxWt
Great find, not just on the hiring of next Chancellor but on mayoral control across a wide array of school issues - see @CEC3NYC opinion @GothamGazettehttps://t.co/t3k8E34fq1 1.1 mil children system needs checks & balances not autocratic rule.
The Mayor's argument now seems to be that holding a public screening with parent input would discourage potential candidates . But as David Bloomfield pointed out yesterday in Chalkbeat, this sort of public vetting goes on all the time in other districts across the country:
In those districts, community consensus is usually reached on a job description with desired qualifications. The post is widely advertised, often by a specialized superintendent search firm that conducts an initial review of confidential applications. A list of qualified candidates is presented to the Board of Education, which further culls the still-private list to arrive at three to five finalists.\\
After the candidates are given a chance to inform their current employers, they are publicly announced and interviews scheduled. In the ensuing weeks, the public and press explore finalists’ records. Members of the screening committee may even visit their home districts. Candidate interviews are often televised or streamed online. The position is then offered after a period of post-interview public comment and board deliberation.
The candidates were selected among 18 applicants by the preliminary screening committee made up of five board members who are voting members of the committee and 10 non-voting members from the public. The education board will interview the finalists at a public meeting on Jan. 26, 2018 at the Omni Parker House in Boston.
This is far better than the haphazard process that brought us such Chancellors as Cathy Black in the recent past. If candidates have the gumption to run the nation's largest school district, they should also have the confidence to appear before the public and explain what they would do in the job.
As David Bloomfield concludes,
A thoughtful, transparent process would be a win-win for the mayor, enhancing his progressive credentials while allowing him to remain in the driver’s seat. A public search would also be a win for the city and the next chancellor, who would arrive with more of a popular mandate than if she or he was vetted and hired behind closed doors...A public process makes sense, and the moment is now.
A video of yesterday's entire press conference is below, thanks to Norm Scott.
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This blog is edited by Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of Class Size Matters and who was a NYC public school parent for 15 years. If you'd like to write for the blog, please email us at info@classsizematters.org
