Revelation that NYC's School Construction Authority has been operating without a legally constituted board for a full year & Why it Matters

Sept. 3, 2024

In Saturday's NY Post, it was reported how the School Construction Authority, which has jurisdiction over NYC's $19 billion dollar capital plan, has been operating for a full year without a legally constituted board.  Over that period, the board has approved not only the capital plan, but also hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to consultants and builders, passed resolutions including the move of the agency's headquarters and the hiring of 31 new civil service employees.

The enabling state act which created the SCA says this:

The authority shall be governed by and its powers shall be exercised by a board of trustees consisting of three members. The members shall be the chancellor, or acting chancellor if the position of chancellor is vacant, and two other members, to be appointed by the mayor. The chancellor or acting chancellor shall serve as the chairperson of the board of trustees. ...Each appointed member shall continue in office until a successor has been appointed and qualifies.

And yet there have only been two members of the SCA board since August 2023, when Lorraine Grillo resigned:  the Chancellor and Peter McCree, who according to LinkedIn is president of a company called Link2Consult Inc.

The Agency itself seems so oblivious of the necessity of having three members that it actually posted this organizational chart on its website last April:

Highlighted above is also the name of the Inspector General, William Schaeffer, who is supposed to ensure that the SCA operates legally.  Yet Schaeffer is quoted in the NY Post article this way: "We need to appoint a third trustee, not because we’re violating the law, but because that’s what the statute requires.” What?

 

To make things worse, Schaeffer is not only the IG but also the Vice President of the SCA and his salary is paid by the SCA, rather than by the Department of Investigation, unlike the IG of every other city agency.  In addition, his situation is unique in that he was jointly appointed by both the SCA President and the DOI Commissioner.  These findings raise real concerns about his potential conflicts of interest, leading to a lack of sufficient oversight and real independence. 

 

If one reads the Board minutes from the past year, there is no mention of the class size law, no mention of how the $2 billion cut to new capacity imposed by the Mayor would affect their ability to build enough classrooms to comply, and no mention of the state budget passed in April 2024 that required them to add another $2 billion for new construction to create the space for smaller classes.  In fact there is little discussion of any of the relevant issues confronting the DOE and SCA except for much self-congratulatory chatter about how they have awarded more MWBE contracts.

Nor is there any discussion of how the contract with Local 1740, the union of School Architects, Engineers and Technical Professionals, expired three years ago, and negotiations have stalled, except for brief comment by Deputy Chancellor Weisberg following a statement from a union leader during the public comment section of their March board meeting, in which she expressed her hope for a swift resolution. 

 

As it is, the SCA operates with little transparency and accountability, as we have pointed out many times including in the NYP article.  By refusing to publicly report in which districts they need and intend to build more school seats in the capital plan, and by saying this will not be revealed until the sites have already been acquired and projects are in design, SCA officials appear to be violating their own enabling legislation, as well as Education Law §2590-o, the class size law, and Local Law 167.

 

 

Local Law 167 & 168, Information and Memo to City Council

Two bills were passed last year by the City Council, with the goal of helping to alleviate school overcrowding: Local Law 167 which required the DOE to make more transparent its data sources and methodology for projecting the need for new school seats, and Local Law 168, which created a Task Force for School Siting to expedite the identification of locations where new schools could be built.

Both laws  resulted from recommendations made by the City Council Working Group report Planning to Learn, as well as problems we had previously identified in our reports, including, Space Crunch and  Seats Gained and Lost in NYC Schools: The Untold Story.

Local Law 167 came into force on December 1, 2019.  The SCA/DOE claims to have provided the data here:  http://www.nycsca.org/community/capital-plan-reports-data#Local-Law-167-Reports-352

But much of the data required is missing, and in fact the DOE is providing no more data than in years past:

• No data is posted on the number of seats lost over the last few years or projected into the future from lapsed leases, removed TCUs, or the elimination of mini-schools or annexes, that have a significant impact on the need for new seats.
• No disaggregated projections are provided for the seats needs, disaggregated by grade span or type of school, i.e. Pre-K/elementary schools/middle schools, either citywide, or  by district or sub-district, as called for in the law.
• No seats need estimates are provided by sub-district at all.
• The law mandates that they provide an explanation of all the inputs that help determine their projections, including “ any categories of non-quantitative criteria considered, which may include but need not be limited to, facility replacements, grade expansion and truncation, school rezonings, co-locating schools, and converting space in existing facilities.”  None of these inputs are reported on the webpage or elsewhere.
• Finally, the law requires not just the quantitative and qualitative inputs that the SCA/DOE relies upon to determine its projections, but also the “The process … used to determine identified seat need”.  Yet nowhere has the SCA or DOE offered any explanation of the methodology used to incorporate and analyze all these various inputs and data sources, including current overcrowding, housing starts, projected seat loss and their consultant’s enrollment predictions, to arrive at the identified seats needs estimate published in the five-year capital plan.

The goals of Local 168 in creating the School Siting task force have not been fulfilled either.  See the memo below, sent to the co-sponsors of the law last week.  Feel free to send to your council member as well! Click here to find your city council member.