UFT On the Record Podcast: prodding the DOE to enact the small class-size law

 See my comments on this UFT podcast about the Department of Education's evident disinterest in planning for the class size reduction which is required by the new state law.  More on this here.

The fight for smaller classes in NYC with UFT President Michael Mulgrew

Check out our latest  #TalkOutofSchool podcast with UFT President Michael Mulgrew and teachers Emily James & Tricia Arnold, who explained why they are fighting for smaller classes for NYC schools and what you can do to help. 

 

Resources:

Intro 2374 - The City Council class size reduction bill

How parents can help get this passed - Sign the UFT petition and check out Class Size Matters campaign

Gothamist's investigation of defective Intellipure air purifiers and higher Covid rates in schools without mechanical ventilation systems.

Chalkbeat NY - Settlement to give Black and Latino students more access to NYC high school sports teams

Get vaccinated and get your booster - School vaccination sites and schedules and city-run sites.

 

Compelling testimony including videos from yesterday's hearings on the importance of lowering class size for NYC students.

Much of the testimony yesterday at the City Council was compelling about the importance of lowering class size and the need to pass Intro 2374 for the sake of NYC students. Class Size Matters testimony is here. Testimony of Michael Mulgrew, UFT President, is here. An article about these hearings is here. 

If you'd like to submit written testimony, you can do it here through Saturday.  Please also email it to us at info@classsizematters.org so we can post it on our website.

Below are videos and written testimonies of Board of Regents member and former Superintendent Kathleen Cashin, education historian and advocate Diane Ravitch, Elsie McCabe Thompson, President of the Mission Society, Curtis D. Young, Executive Director of Artistic Noise, and Marissa Manzanares, parent and CEC 14 member. 

Kathleen Cashin Testimony (10.27.21) from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

Curtis D. Young Testimony (10.27.21) from Class Size Matters on Vimeo. Marissa Manzanares Testimony (10.27.21) from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

A message update on busing contracts, my birthday request, and interview with Michael Mulgrew next week

1. On Wed., the Panel for Educational Policy was scheduled to meet and vote on several huge contracts, including school busing for $200 million for March and another $200 million for April, though all buses have been idle since mid-March. The DOE had told Panel members they were legally obligated to pay 85% of the costs, though the NYC Comptroller disputed this. Shortly before the Panel meeting was due to begin, I got word that the busing contracts had been kicked off the agenda and postponed till the following month. Then when the meeting began on Adobe Connect, the technical problems were so immense with DOE officials and Panel members unable to hear one other that it was soon ended. I describe the chaos that ensued here.

That meeting has now been rescheduled for Thursday May 6 at 6 PM.   Instructions on how to join will soon be listed under the link for that date, according to the DOE.  I urge all of you to join if you can, and provide comment against the spending on busing, though that contract may now be held during the May 20 meeting, as well as on other excessive, unneeded contracts still on the agenda, whether that means millions of dollars for professional development that's not being used, nurses to be hired on staff this year when schools are closed and hundreds of DOE nurses are sitting at home at this time, and pricey consultants. So far, neither the Panel members nor DOE have answered any of the questions I posed here.

DOE has told others they have not yet decided whether to go ahead with the bus contracts for the rest of the year. What we don't know is if they have already paid for March and April -- even though the spending for these months was never approved by the PEP. The Daily News reported yesterday that the state "has stopped reimbursing the city for the 44% of school transportation costs it usually covers," which is yet another reason for the city to stop wasting hundreds of millions of dollars for unused busing in this time of fiscal crisis.

2. Speaking of fiscal crisis, today is my birthday and I'm hoping that you might make a donation to our organization. Though usually I try to refrain as much as possible from making these pitches, I am very worried about Class Size Matters' funding at this time. It is unlikely that we will be able to hold our usual Skinny dinner fundraiser dinner in June; and last year, our proceeds from this dinner were stolen by our online processor, NYCharities, as you may recall.

Aside from individual donations, we are also supported by City Council discretionary grants, though now we've been told that Class Size Matters may not be reimbursed for any expenses past mid-March unless we are deemed an "essential service." Our Council funding next year is also at doubt, given the city's fiscal situation. So please, if you can afford it, consider making a tax-deductible contribution today, to help us continue our work.

3. Finally, I had a great discussion with advocate Matt Gonzales and parent leader Naomi Pena on my WBAI "Talk out of School" show on Wednesday, about the many challenges facing families with remote learning and the city's new grading system. You can download the podcast here.

Next Wednesday at 10 AM, I will be interviewing UFT President Michael Mulgrew on how he would like schools to be reconfigured next year to ensure the health and safety of his members, and maximize the academic and emotional support they provide to students who will need this help more than ever before. I will ask him if smaller classes should be part of the equation, as he suggested in a recent interview with NPR, and as several countries and other states have proposed.

If you have other questions I should ask him, please reply to this message and I will try to ask as many as I can.

--Stay safe, Leonie

Another disappointing UFT contract when it comes to helping kids learn

Picture: We Are Teachers

UPDATE:More from the UFT on the new process for addressing violations of the class size cap in the new contract here:   All class-size overages that the chapter leader and principal cannot resolve by the 10th day of school will be sent to the UFT district representative and the superintendent to work to fix and later up to a central class size labor management committee. Does this sound like it will lead to speedier resolution than the process now?

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Today the Mayor, the Chancellor and UFT President Michael Mulgrew announced a new tentative four-year contract. In contrast to their claims that it is innovative and far-reaching, the provisions of the agreement seem familiar in many respects, a retread of past failed efforts. I can't really comment on the salary, health insurance or other financial provisions. Instead, I looked more specifically as to whether the contract is likely to improve learning conditions, and my prediction is no.

Class size limits weren't altered, which haven't been lowered in fifty years and which since the 1960's have range from 32 students per class in grades 1-5 to 34 students in high school. The only apparent policy change to class size in the UFT summary is this brief passage: Class size overcrowding must be remedied within 10 days.


I assumed that meant when contractual class size violations are grieved by the union, they will be remedied by the city within 10 days. However Arthur Goldstein, Francis Lewis HS chapter leader, has more details on his blog:

Class size will not change. Action for oversized classes must be taken within 21 days. Chronically oversized schools will have only ten days. These will go to superintendent and chancellor and will hopefully result in fewer arbitrations.


This description doesn't address when the grievance can be made - right now, teachers and chapter leaders have to wait ten school days before even filing a class size grievance, and only a set number of grievances can be heard by arbitrators each week, which considerably slows down the process of holding class size to the legal limits.

If teachers (and their students) have to wait another 21 days to have the violations addressed this could drag on until November and December, as too often happens currently. Not to mention that there are many loopholes in the contract which continue to allow schools to evade these limits, which are already far too high. There's no mention if any of these contractual loopholes have been eliminated or tightened.


Rather than address the crying need to cap class sizes at lower levels, especially in struggling schools, the contract seems to feature but a variation on the failed Renewal school initiative. Here is an excerpt from Carranza's letter:

At the heart of this groundbreaking contract is The Bronx Plan. The Bronx Plan is a partnership between the DOE and the UFT that allows us to recruit and retain educators through the use of a targeted salary differential in schools that have, in the past, struggled to attract and keep teachers in key subjects. The Plan also creates the Collaborative Schools Model – an idea grounded in the knowledge that our schools perform at their best when teachers, leaders, and staff work together to solve longstanding problems.


Like the Renewal schools, the Collaborative Schools Model or the Bronx Plan [couldn't they settle on a more compelling epithet, or at least choose between them?] will supposedly feature more teacher and community "collaboration" --which usually seems to be nothing more than a public relations fig leaf, especially when it comes to heeding the parent voice.

Also like the Renewal schools, teacher incentive pay will be provided to recruit teachers to these struggling schools. In the case of the "Bronx Plan" or the "Collaborative Schools Model," $8,000 will be offered to teachers who fill hard-to-staff positions.

Many other districts have used incentive pay to try to attract teachers to struggling schools without much success. In 2014, Fulton County schools in Georgia announced a plan to recruit teachers to the lowest-performing schools by offering them $20, 000 stipends:

A year later, in 2015, the AJC checked on the progress of the Fulton pilot and found the district laboring to lure these highly qualified teachers to lower-performing schools....Although 375 were eligible to participate, only 32 applied....So what finally happened to the Fulton experiment? It faded away.

The Renewal schools also featured a $4.9 million teacher-leadership program which "several principals said it has not been much help as they try to recruit teachers from other schools."

This same sort of teacher leadership program will now be expanded citywide, to create "Teacher Development Facilitators" and "Teacher Team Leaders," the latter to train more "Master Teachers, Model Teachers, and Teacher Development Facilitators." All of these positions will likely take more teachers out of the classroom and add them to the bureaucracy, rather than deploy their talents more effectively by deploying them where they can teach kids.

In contrast, our analysis of the Renewal program found that despite DOE promises to the state, most did not cap class sizes at lower levels, and the vast majority continued to feature maximum class sizes of 30 or more. Those that did cap class sizes at lower levels had a significantly greater chance of boosting student achievement. Lowering class size, by the way, has also been shown to reduce teacher attrition, especially at low-performing schools.

The "Collaborative Schools Model" or the "Bronx Plan" will also feature enhanced "data coaching." Shades of Joel Klein and Jim Liebman; remember their misplaced almost messianic faith in "data coaches" and data inquiry teams?

I predict that the "Collaborative Schools Model" will go the same way as the Renewal program, and the Klein era data inquiry teams, and will continue to leave thousands of students behind, that is, unless support, focus, and funding is put on lowering class size in these schools.

There are other aspects of the new contract that appear to be going in the wrong direction. For example, students in the Bronx will be put on computers to receive distance learning from their teachers, instead of offering them the close, in-person support that they need:

Remote teaching pilot: Starting in Spring 2019, Bronx high school students will participate in a 3-year, remote-teacher pilot program. These courses will be led remotely by teachers, who will be able to engage their students and answer questions in real time. The pilot will expand access to AP courses, advanced foreign language courses required for an Advanced Regents Diploma, and elective courses, allowing schools to expand course offerings.

Clearly, the Chancellor and the UFT haven't paid attention to the research showing online learning rarely works, except for the most motivated, self-directed students.

Another disappointing aspect of the agreement is the way Mulgrew seems to have traded pay raises and other goodies for his support of continued mayoral control that is up for renewal this spring. Mulgrew's position on this issue seemed often to be shape-shifting and depend on who was in the room at the time, but along with the announcement of the contract was his unabashed, full-throated assent to submit to the mayor's top priority, and allow him to continue his one-man rule into the indefinite future:

" Given the importance of the issues and the long-term initiatives that are part of this contract, the UFT is calling for the continuation of mayoral control as the governance structure for New York City public schools.”


One wonders if the UFT membership gets to vote on that issue separately; or if the organization itself operates similarly as one-man rule.

It's not as if the members of the UFT are unconcerned with this issue, as its leaders must know.  See the 2014 UFT survey of NYC teachers that showed that 99% of respondents said reducing class size would be an effective reform -- outstripping every other option.  (Though the survey is supposed to be given every year, I couldn't find any posted since that year. If others can, please provide the link in the comment section.)

In contrast to the lack of attention given class size in this new contract, see how Nevada teacher Angela Barton just wrote about the frustration of growing class sizes and how it relates to teacher attrition on the We Are Teachers blog:

"With these large numbers, it has become increasingly more difficult to recognize students that may be struggling...It’s almost like they are invisible.” It’s true. The more students in one room, the louder, smellier, and more distracting it becomes. Individual teacher-student interactions and meeting student needs are impossible....

We know firsthand that teacher and student morale, along with academic and social development, suffer with larger class sizes.

We also know that smaller class sizes would help restore the joy of teaching and retain quality educators. Routinely, state legislators who vote on education funding choose to ignore the voices of teaching professionals.

So what’s next? I think it’s time we take action, raise our voices, and walk hand in hand with parents and community members to our legislatures and other governing bodies. We can not and will not be crowded out of our own classrooms.

In fact, according to an analysis of the Economic Policy Institute, the teacher gap keeps growing nationwide -- with nearly 400,000 jobs lost since the recession just to keep up with student enrollment growth, meaning larger classes as well:

Rather than passively give in to these conditions, other teacher unions have made class size a central focus in their negotiations; most recently in Los Angeles. Let's hope for the sake of NYC kids we don't have to wait another fifty years for the UFT to do so.

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.

Urgent! Please call your Council Member today about need to address school overcrowding

UPDATE: 6/12/15.  As of this afternoon at 6:00 PM, 22 Council members have now signed onto the letter:  Council Members Barron, Chin, Cornegy, Cumbo, Dromm, Garodnick, Gentile, Johnson, Kallos, Koslowitz, King, Lander, Levin, Levine, Menchaca, Mendez, Reynoso, Rodriguez, Rosenthal, Torres, Treygar, and Vallone. If your CM has NOT signed please call him/her TODAY and ask why not!  You can find their contact info here. 

As you know, NYC public schools are badly overcrowded and becoming more so every day. The city's capital plan for schools is underfunded by DOE's own admission, and if not expanded will likely lead to even worse overcrowding. The need for more schools is especially true as the Mayor is rapidly expanding preK and has a plan to encourage the building of 160,000 market rate housing units and 200,000 affordable units, which will further accelerate enrollment growth.


To address this crisis, Public Advocate Letitia James has written a letter to the Chancellor and the Mayor, urging them to double the school seats in the capital plan and to appoint a Commission to improve the efficiency of school planning and siting. Class Size Matters and many CEC leaders have signed onto this letter, as well as Daniel Dromm, Chair of the NYC Council Education Committee and Michael Mulgrew, UFT President. The letter is posted here. Here is a fact sheet about this issue. Since that letter was sent yesterday, four more Council Members have signed on: CMs Barron, Gentile, Johnson and King.

If your Council Members are not listed above, please call them TODAY, and ask them if they will sign onto the letter from the Public Advocate and Class Size Matters, urging the Mayor and Chancellor to alleviate the school overcrowding crisis by expanding the capital plan. You can easily find their phone numbers by entering your address here. If the city fails to expand the plan, your children and thousands of others are likely to suffer even worse overcrowding and larger class sizes in the future.

And please, whatever message you hear back, whether positive or negative, let me know by responding to this message. The Council will vote on the capital plan by the end of this month, so this is an urgent issue.

Thanks as ever for your support!

060215 - PA Ltr to Chancellor Farina Re Capital Plan (3)

Almost a quarter of a million students sitting in classes so large they violate the union contract

Yesterday, Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, along with Manhattan Borough President Stringer (who will also be our next City Comptroller) and Class Size Matters held a press conference, to announce that

6,313 classes throughout the city are in violation of the contractual class size limits – 25 per class in Kindergarten, and 32-34 in most other grades.  (For the exact limits by grade, see our fact sheet here.)  Of course, these limits are far higher than the Contract for Excellence goals of 20 in grades K-3,  23 in middle schools, and 25 in high schools that the city promised the state to achieve by 2012.

The number of classes that violate the union rules is 200 more classes than last year at this time, and an estimated 230,000 students are now sitting in ridiculously large classes that the DOE takes up to six months to address.

See Daily News and NY1 on this issue, including interviews with some of the affected students at Cardozo HS in Queens, who don’t yet have desks or a set schedule. 

Though Queens HS are the most affected because of overcrowding, the DOE plans to put more co-locations in some of these high schools next year, which will cause even MORE overcrowding– a critical impact that is completely unmentioned in the Educational Impact Statements DOE is required to produce.  Below is what I said at the press conference:

When Michael Bloomberg ran for office in 2002, he promised he would reduce class sizes in Kindergarten – 3^rd grade in all schools to 20 or less; instead now we have the largest classes in these grades in 15 years.

In 2007, the DOE promised to the state to reduce class size in all grades in return for hundreds of millions of dollars in Contract for Excellence funds.  Instead class size has increased every year in all grades -- since then.

Each year that the DOE’s parent survey has been given, smaller classes are the #1 priority of public school parents.  This administration claims to be devoted to responding to parental choice; yet it is clear that Bloomberg and the people he has put in charge of the DOE has no real interest in giving public school parents their top choice for their kids.

86% of NYC principals say they are unable to provide a quality education because of overly large classes, and yet they say that when they try to reduce class size, DOE just sends them more students, undercutting their efforts.

The DOE has worked in myriad other ways to increase class size:

•      Since 2007, DOE has cut school budgets 14%.

•      In 2010, DOE eliminated Early grade class size funding for grades K-3– despite their promise to the state to maintain it.

•      In 2011, DOE decided no longer to adhere to a side agreement to cap class sizes in 1^st-3^rd grades at 28, leading to tripling of number of classes with 30 or more students in these grades.

•      In 2012, DOE instructed principals they must accommodate special needs students up to contractual class size maximums.

•      DOE has taken out all class size standards out of the instructional footprint that determines where new co-located schools will go – which forces class sizes up in these buildings.

Sadly, whoever is elected mayor and whatever his goals and policies on class size will have a difficult job ahead of him in improving student outcomes, b/c the research shows that large classes in the early grades leave their imprint on children for years to come. 

This is the sorry education legacy of Michael Bloomberg and one that will not be easy for any mayor to overcome.