Hearings on NYC's dysfunctional school planning and siting process begins with DOE saying there is no negative impact of school overcrowding on students

Elizabeth Rose, Deputy Chancellor of NYC DOE and Lorraine Grillo, President, School Construction Authority

On Wednesday there were joint hearings at the City Council of the Education, Finance and Land Use committees on their comprehensive new report, Planning to Learn: The School Building Challenge, as well as five bills introduced to address the school overcrowding crisis which has led to more than 575,000 students crammed into overutilized schools according to the DOE's own data.  Here is the overcrowding by type of school, as included in the report -with elementary schools at 106% overutilizaiton, and the citywide average at 96%:

From Planning to Learn: The School Building Challenge

Deputy Chancellor Elizabeth Rose and School Construction Authority President Lorraine Grillo testified on behalf of the city.  Rose refused to admit that school overcrowding was a problem or disadvantaged students in any way, and claimed that "some of our more successful schools are overcrowded."

Rose remained obdurate on this point even in the face of repeated questioning from Council

Council Member Mark Treyger

Education Chair Mark Treyger, who pointed out that overcrowding leads to huge class sizes, loss of art and music rooms, and other evidence of a substandard education.  Using closets for intervention services  and increasing class size does have an impact on opportunities for kids, he pointed out. Moreover, educators aren’t robots and need working space too. But Rose refused to budge.

(One can only imagine the scandal that would ensue if a Department of Health Commissioner testified that hospital overcrowding, with patients receiving treatment in hallways or closets, had no effect on the quality of care provided.  Yet to my knowledge, no media outlet reported on Rose's claims.) 

Lorraine Grillo admitted that the SCA has only four real estate brokers on retainer in the entire city to help them find sites for schools, and yet claimed "we’ve had enormous success with our brokers" and didn't need any more help locating sites.  Yet Council Members Vanessa Gibson and Danny Dromm pointed out how it was they who had recently identified sites for new schools in the Bronx and in Queens and had forwarded them on to the SCA. In fact,  when asked, Grillo couldn't name one school site that had been located by their brokers.

As to the SCA's enrollment projections, Grillo repeatedly claimed that they were accurate within 1-2 percent citywide.  However, that claim cannot be verified since neither the DOE nor the SCA release these projections publicly, and even if true, it could still mean that from district to district, neighborhood to neighborhood the projections were completely off.  Finally, given how many schools are at or near 100% capacity, the difference of only a few students could bring many of them above the tipping point.

Dromm also pointed out that the majority of seats funded in current five year capital plan won’t be ready till after 2022- wouldn't it be better to do rolling ten year plan instead? By 2022, it is likely that school construction will have fallen even further behind the need.  Grillo said that "we're mandated only to do a five year plan", implying that they couldn't go beyond that.
 

Will you include preK seats in future seats projections? Dromm asked.  The SCA doesn't apparently include preK in its seats need projections, even though many thousands more preK students are now in our schools, contributing to even worse overcrowding. Grillo said no,  those figures come from a separate department at DOE.  (what?)

Council Member Danny Dromm

Dromm: There's a huge development planned for Willis Point with 5000 housing units; but only one elementary school planned for the area.  Why not include a middle and a high school in the project?  Grillo responded: Queens high schools are already  overcrowded (This of course doesn't explain why they won't site on there.) What about a middle school, asked Dromm? Grillo said she didn't know.  

The reality is that the school planning process uses a formula that is based on census figures twenty year old, and doesn't take into account either the increased numbers of preK students or charter school students in DOE buildings.

The planning process also requires very high thresholds of increased overcrowding to be predicted by this inadequate formula to consider building a new school, even in neighborhoods where the schools are already overcapacity.  (One of the bills we proposed in our testimony is that the City Planning be required to update the formula based upon the latest Census figures, to include preK students, and to eliminate all thresholds so that the city builds schools where the schools are already overcrowded or likely to become so when the project is built.)

CM Rafael Salamanca, head of the Land Use Committee, also asked a series of good questions:  Why does the SCA use housing data in its seat needs analyses that includes so few units  built between 2019-2024, despite the current construction boom?  Grillo didn't know what he meant.

See this chart, with data drawn directly from the current SCA website - which reveals that for the purpose of projecting enrollment, the city predicts that not a single housing unit will be built in the entire borough of Brooklyn between 2019-2024, and only 184 units in the Bronx -- both experiencing huge building booms:

Council Member Salamanca

Salamanca then asked, Why is there only one multiplier used per borough to project the need for schools, given how the birth rate and immigration differs widely from one neighborhood to the next?   Grillo responded, this is only one piece of puzzle.

Salamanca also questioned why there was no effort made by the City Planning to address these issues: City Planning comes to us and says, we want 4000 new units in my district, but they have NEVER mentioned the need to build any new schools for the new families living there.  Why?  In many districts school overcrowding has existed for decades; and as we expand preK and 3K, and available land gets scarce and the population grows, the challenges increase to provide enough schools.   We must revise our methodologies to ensure all students have the maximum chance of success.

But perhaps the biggest revelation came when Council Member Treyger asked representatives from City Planning and DCAS (Department of Citywide Administrative Services) to join the DOE and the SCA at the witness table.

He then questioned them if they regularly communicate with the DOE about the need for new schools.  While they didn't answer the question directly, it soon became clear that there was no ongoing collaboration between these city agencies on the issue of school overcrowding, and that they are only involved when it came to major rezonings (City Planning) or when identifying available city-owned or other buildings for expanded preK and 3K (DCAS).

After the questioning of government officials was over, I testified, followed by disability advocates who spoke on the need to retrofit schools for better access.  Then CM Treyger asked if we felt that there was any real coordination between city agencies on tackling school overcrowding.

I answered that there was no effective collaboration that I could see, and that city agencies responded

Leonie Haimson at NYC Council hearings

only to the Mayor's top priorities, which up to now have been expanding preK, implementing 3K and building more housing, all of which actually contribute to worse school overcrowding rather than counteract it. Meanwhile, the only schools that are built are those where there is a tremendous grassroots effort undertaken from parents and their elected officials to demand this.

An example of what it requires occurred in the hugely overcrowded community of Sunset Park last year.  There have been five additional schools for Sunset Park funded in the capital plan for over 20 years without a single one built or even sited, with the DOE claiming there was simply no room in the neighborhood for new schools.  Then last year, four sites were acquired by the SCA for schools but only as a result of a tremendous organizing effort of parents, community organizations, and CM Menchaca, who identified these sites and pressed for their acquisition.

Not every community can do this, of course, and with the capital plan for school construction only half funded, many children will be left out.  Without the active involvement of the Mayor to prioritize this issue, and without a substantial boost in spending in the capital plan, along with systemic reforms to the process of school planning and siting, the problem of school overcrowding will likely grow even more severe, and NYC children will suffer the consequences.

Our testimony is posted below and here; and includes suggestions for strengthening the five bills already introduced.  It also proposes four additional bills:

• A bill to to ensure that the CEQR formula used by City Planning is based upon the latest census data –  and that it includes enrollment projections for UPK and 3K students as well as charter schools already co-located in DOE buildings.

• A bill to reform the ULURP process, so that proposed residential projects in areas where the schools are already overcrowded or likely to become so would require the building or leasing of new schools to provide sufficient seats to keep the schools below 100% utilization.  Right now the thresholds are far too high, even in areas where the schools are already overcrowded.

• Any large-scale development project or rezoning should also be referred to the district Community Education Council for their comments. Often CECs are more aware of specific issues related to school capacity and overcrowding than local Community Boards. Like Community Boards, the CECs should hold public hearings and vote on whether to recommend approval, modification or rejection to the proposed project, based upon its likely impact on schools.

• DOE should be also obligated to report each year on how many schools seats have been added and lost, whether through lapsed leases, elimination of TCUs, annexes or for other reasons. Right now, they only report on the number of seats added rather than lost each year, which gives a highly inaccurate picture of the progress made towards alleviating school overcrowding.

Testimony of Leonie Haimson before the NYC Council Education Committee On school overcrowding and the deficiencies of the capital plan

Newsclips that quote my testimony (below):  

 NewYork City Schools Plagued by Overcrowding (WSJ, behind paywall);  City: Nearly Half of NYC Students in Overcrowded Schools (Schoolbook).

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.  My name is Leonie Haimson; I head Class Size Matters a citywide advocacy group devoted to providing information on the benefits of smaller classes to parents and others nationwide.

Last June, Class Size Matters released a report, Space Crunch, which analyzed the school overcrowding crisis in New York City, and pointed out the need to improve the City's proposed five year capital plan for school construction.[1] We found that given enrollment projections and existing overcrowding, it is likely that the real need in our schools is likely over 100,000 new seats, though the current capital plan would create less than half that number.

By averaging the enrollment projections of the two DOE consultants, Statistical Forecasting and Grier Partnership, and then adding the additional growth from housing starts, as DOE does, one can estimate that  is that there will be approximately 84,000 additional students in grades K-8 by 2021; and an additional 32,000 high school students.[2]

There are only 38,654 seats in the proposed five year capital plan – with 4,000 of those seats still unsited as to district and with undetermined grade levels. Unless the plan is significantly expanded, our students are likely to be sitting in even more overcrowded schools in the years to come.

School overcrowding has significantly worsened in the last six years, especially at the elementary grade level. Last year, elementary school buildings had an average 97.5 percent utilization rate, according to the DOE's figures in the Blue Book, with the median rate at a shocking 102 percent. High schools were not far behind at an average of 95.2 percent.  About half of all students were enrolled in overcrowded schools last year, according to DOE’s figures, with 60% of elementary school students, totaling more than 490,000 students in all.

At the same time, most experts believe that the official utilization figures reported by the DOE are faulty and actually underestimate the actual level of overcrowding in our schools, The Chancellor has appointed a task force to improve the formula, which will hopefully take account of the real needs of children for smaller classes, and a well-rounded education, with dedicated rooms for art, music and science, as well as mandated services.

The result of all this overcrowding is that class sizes are pushed above reasonable levels, students have lost their cluster rooms, are assigned to lunch as early as 10 a.m., and/or have no access to the gym. Many special needs students are forced to receive their services in hallways or closets rather than in dedicated spaces.
In eleven NYC school districts, elementary schools average above 100 percent capacity; in 20 out of the 32 districts, above 90 percent. In addition, high schools in Queens and Staten Island average above 100 percent. More than 30,000 additional seats are needed in just these districts to bring schools down to 100 percent.
Even more seats are needed if overcrowding is to be eliminated at the neighborhood level, as evidenced by thousands of students sitting in trailers, and thousands prospective kindergarteners on wait lists for their zoned schools.

Recent and past policies have worsened overcrowding.  During the Bloomberg administration, fewer schools built than in earlier administrations, as shown in our Space Crunch report. In addition, the DOE insisted on inserting hundreds of small schools and charters into buildings that already housed existing schools, eating up classrooms by replicating administrative and specialty rooms – a very inefficient use of space when the infrastructure is already inadequate to meet most students’ needs. In the effort to squeeze in more schools, DOE also redefined the size of a full size classroom down to only 500 square feet in their Instructional footprint, at the same times as increasing class size.  As more and more children were pushed into smaller and smaller rooms, the result has been a violation of the building code in many cases, which requires 20 square feet per student.

This administration has also undertaken policies that have worsened overcrowding.  This year, in the push to expand pre-Kindergarten, at least 11,800 preK seats were added in 254 schools that were already overcrowded, according to DOE figures. [3]  The DOE’s plan to create community schools with wrap-around services also requires space, for offices and other programmatic needs. And none of this takes into account the need to reduce class size, which remains at a 15 year high in the early grades.  

In addition, the Mayor’s new ambitious plan to build an additional 160,000 additional market-rate units, on top of the 200,000 affordable units over the next ten years will create the need for even more school seats.[4]

Just as this capital plan is totally inadequate to relieve overcrowding, it is also unlikely to achieve the DOE's widely-publicized promise to eliminate trailers or temporary classroom units (TCUs). While the NY Times has reported that 7,158 students are enrolled in classes in these trailers, [5]  the actual number is likely 50 percent higher – as the DOE has omitted from its count thousands of high school, middle school and elementary school students, as well as severely disabled students, who attend classes in these substandard structures.

Moreover, although DOE officials have promised that the capital plan will accomplish the goal of eliminating trailers, many of which are in disrepair and long past their expected lifetime, and have allocated nearly $500 million to remove them and recondition the school yards on which they sit, there is not a single dollar in the capital plan dedicated specifically to replacing their seats. In the November capital plan, 81 TCUs are identified for removal with a minimum enrollment of 1126 students; but 236 TCU’s will remain with at least 6,265 students. The actual enrollment figure in the TCUs remaining is probably much higher, as 32 of these TCUs are at high schools and the DOE does not report how many students use these trailers.[6]

Our report concluded with a number of policy recommendations, suggesting how the DOE can improve the school utilization formula, enhance the planning process, and institute a more aggressive capital plan, using eminent domain and funded in part by "impact fees”.

Just recently the DOE signed a five year contract with an IT vendor, Computer Consultant Specialists, to wire NYC schools at a cost of $127 million a year, and renewable for four more, potentially at a cost of more than $1 billion. Originally the cost of this contract was nearly twice that high, at $225 million per year, for up to nine years, at a potential cost of $2 billion.  After I blogged about this questionable contract, and reporters started asking questions about it, the DOE managed to cut about $100 million out of the annual amount.  [7]

There has been considerable controversy over this contract, especially as the company was implicated in a kickback scheme that robbed DOE of millions of dollars only a few years ago.  But I wanted to make a separate point: for only $125 million in city funds per year, according to the Independent Budget Office, just a bit more than the DOE cut out of this contract, the number of seats in the capital plan could be doubled and we could eliminate school overcrowding and begin to meet the real needs of our students.  I strongly urge the Council to do so.

I also strongly support the resolution against raising the charter cap.  If the Governor’s proposal was adopted, with the cap raised to 100 and all geographical limits eliminated, NYC could be subjected to 250 new charters, all obligated to receive space at the city’s expense.  I hope the DOE or some other body gave you a cost estimate of how much the new charter amendments are projected to cost the city.  I assume that they will surpass $40 million per year very quickly, with the state obligated to reimburse 60% of the cost thereafter. 

But if 250 charters were imposed on the city, the cost to providing them with space could be immense.  Our rough estimate is that this could cost an additional $833 million per year.  Of that amount, the cost to the city would be roughly $357 million per year, with the state covering the remaining portion at $476 million per year.[8]  The annual city payments for charter rent alone could nearly triple the number of seats in the capital plan if used to build new schools.

If the cap is lifted, and 250 more charters were targeted to NYC, the likely outcome would be that the only schools to be leased or built in the future would be charter schools, and as our public schools became increasingly overcrowded, parents would be forced to send their children to these schools whether they wanted to or not.

Conclusion: None of the goals of parents, advocates or the de Blasio administration can be achieved without a better and more ambitious capital plan – so that our public schools have the space for prekindergarten, smaller classes, a well-rounded education, and wrap-around services.   Only with significantly improved planning, policies, and funding can our public school students be provided with the learning opportunities they deserve.  And all this would be nearly impossible to achieve if the state lifts the cap on charter schools.

[1] http://www.classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SPACE-CRUNCH-Report-Final-OL.pdf

[2] This is because the consultants do not take into account building starts, so the DOE says they “overlay” the estimates from residential development using the City planning formula, above the estimates of the consultants.

[3] Pre-Kindergarten data from DOE Directory for the 2014-2014 Admissions (September 2014)
http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/AAEE65E0-8326-4E33-BACA-A462A2ECC65E/0/201415PreKDirectoryUPDATED09032014.pdf; Utilization Data from Blue Book report, 2013-2014,  http://www.nycsca.org/Community/CapitalPlanManagementReportsData/Pages/EnrollmentCapacityUtilization.aspx

[4] Michael M. Grynbaum, “In 2nd Year, Mayor de Blasio Will Focus on Making Housing Denser and More Affordable, NY Times, Feb. 2, 2015.

[5] Al Baker, “Push to Rid City of Classrooms That Are Anything but Temporary,” NY Times, March 31, 201.4

[6] http://www.nycsca.org/Community/CapitalPlanManagementReportsData/CapPlan/11052014_15_19_CapitalPlan.pdf

[7] See http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2015/02/news-update-on-immense-doe-contract.html; also Yoav Gonen, “DOE hiring tech firm linked to kickback scheme,” NY Post, Feb. 24, 2015 and Juan Gonzalez, “New contract from city's Department of Education to questionable technology firm does not compute,” NY Daily News, Feb. 24, 2015.

[8] This was based on the following estimated figures: 250 new schools with up to 1200 students each (400 students at each level: elementary, middle and high school) to be paid a minimum of $2,775.40 per student for rental costs, which is the amount required for next year, though the per student amount likely to rise in the future. This equals $832.6 million – with the city covering the first $40 million and then 40% of the total cost thereafter, as specified in the new state law. 

The good news and mostly bad news about inBloom & private data sharing from NYSED at the NYC Council hearings

Ken Wagner and Nicholas Storelli-Castro of NYSED

On Monday, the City Council hearings on inBloom and the state’s plan to share personal student data with vendors without parental consent opened with Ken Wagner, NY State Education Deputy Commissioner, along with his sidekick, Nicolas Storelli Castro, head of NYSED governmental relations, being sworn in.  In his presentation, Wagner was careful never to mention the words inBloom, but instead gave a long power point,   including information on the high remediation rate of NY high school graduates. 
He argued that data systems like the “Engage NY portals” or the data dashboards that the state is requiring NYC and most districts sign up populated by data from the inBloom cloud will help students become “college and career ready.”

The good news is that, in response to questions, Wagner said that the personal data of NYS students has not yet been uploaded to the inBloom cloud, but only de-identified data so far. 

But there was a lot of bad news, too.  The worst was Wagner’s statement that even in 2015, when districts have to pay or choose to cancel their contracts with the dashboard companies, they still will be unable to take student data out of inBloom.  The data for every public school student in the state will remain with inBloom in perpetuity, as long as NYS chooses; and will be destroyed if and only if the State Education Department decides to terminate its contract with inBloom.

So what is the possible purpose of inBloom to collect and store all this highly sensitive information, if it is not to be shared with other vendors or used to populate the data dashboards?

Wagner argued that there were two reasons NYSED is determined to keep student data in inBloom past 2015:

1-      So school districts can compare their achievement results across school and districts; yet he neglected to explain why this couldn’t be done without the participation of inBloom or any other vendor, or indeed, without any personalized student data attached.

2- To facilitate the electronic transfer of information when students move from one district to another.   Of course, schools and districts already transfer this information all the time, and there is no need to share any personal data with vendors to accomplish this.  Even when students move to a new district, their disability data is held very closely and is NOT sent to their new school without the explicit permission of  parents – and yet inBloom and vendors are getting full access to this very sensitive information anyway.

Some of Wagner’s other claims were also very weak– either because he is confused or willfully deceptive.  He claimed that 700 districts now share private student data with for–profit vendors all the time, without parental consent, and that they couldn’t operate otherwise. 

Yet I have now spoken to school administrators and data specialists in and outside NYC and they insist that this is simply untrue.  Even those districts that have contracts for the very same dashboards produced by the very same companies say that they don’t share any personal student information with these companies, but instead just buy the software from them. 

Just as one might buy MS Office and fill in your personal financial data on an Excel spreadsheet, but don’t give it to Microsoft, schools populate the data themselves, and the vendors never get access to it.  The only time, I am told, that a vendor might obtain an opportunity to even see the data is if there were a technical glitch or a virus; and then they would be given a temporary password by the district to go into the system and fix the problem, and would have to get out right away.  The company would certainly never be awarded the sort of unfettered access that this plan allows.  All this makes one wonder what the real purpose of inBloom is, if not to encourage student data-mining, which the state denies.

Wagner also insists that the security protections for cloud storage in inBloom are stronger than what currently exists in schools and districts, but didn’t explain why inBloom then refuses to take any responsibility for data breaches, or why the inBloom cloud wouldn’t be a far more attractive target for hackers, given how it will contain aggregated and highly valuable data for millions of students.   

He also claimed that the student data cannot and will not be sold, though inBloom has already admitted publicly that it is considering charging vendors for access to the data. 
He said that the federal government already requires the reporting of students in various categories like immigrant, homeless etc,. but the reality is that unlike what the state is doing with inBloom, NO personally identifying information is included.

Robert Jackson, the Chair of the Education committee, asked:  if this is such a good program, why have five out of nine states withdrawn and others have cut back on it?  Wagner responded that the Phase II states of Delaware, Kentucky and Georgia never planned to share data in the first place, but were just “sitting at the table”.  He also said that Louisiana, which had a “change of leadership” (i.e. former DOE educrat John White who was appointed the state superintendent) had gotten “ahead of itself” and has now merely pulled back to Phase II. 

If this is true, then why did inBloom misinform the public repeatedly, and suggest that the data sharing would involve nine states, as in this article from April? 

“The company is currently developing and testing its educational database in selected districts in nine states, including New York..”   [inBloom spokesperson] Ms. Roo said.”

Wagner did admit that Massachusetts, a Phase I state, no longer plans on sharing any student with inBloom, though he said that he knew nothing about the recent announcement that parents in Colorado’s one “pilot” district, Jefferson County would be allowed to opt out.

Wagner also refuted that that any data involving immigrant status, single parent, or student pregnancy would ever be shared with inBloom, though these data elements are included in NYSED’s data dictionary  (p.13) as “optional” or recommended for districts to upload to the inBloom cloud. 

UPDATE:  A school board member from Westchester has alerted me to the fact that while this line says optional, there is another line for student characteristics that says mandatory. Click on this to see the area highlighted:

Apparently some district administrators are interpreting the confusing mixture of optional and required elements to mean that this highly sensitive information is going to be shared with inBloom and vendors -- and that the only part of the category that is optional is the associated time period.
Wagner went on to insist that disability and suspension data was absolutely necessary to be shared with inBloom and the dashboard vendors, though this information has been considered very sensitive and has been very closely held in the past by schools in New York and elsewhere. The Jefferson County Superintendent, for example, has announced that they will not share any disciplinary information with inBloom, even for those students whose parents have not opted out.

When asked about the bills the Legislature has proposed to allow parental consent or opt out, Nicolas Storelli Castro said this would be “devastating to some of work we are doing.” 

CM Gale Brewer asked if they had held any hearings to hear from parents on the subject; and they admitted not.  They claimed to not know if the teachers union had a position on this; though NYSUT has been quite vocal in its opposition. Brewer also expressed concern as to who would monitor inBloom and the use of this data; and they had no answer.

CM Daniel Dromm, chair of the immigration committee, returned to the issue of data concerning immigrant status. Again, Wagner claimed that this data would not be shared with inBloom – though it is listed in their data dictionary as potentially uploaded to the cloud.

CM Margaret Chin asked about the expected costs to the taxpayer.  Wagner said that districts would have to pay $2-$5 per student to inBloom for their “services” starting in 2015, and extra for the dashboards, but that if they decided to contract with additional vendors for three or more “tools” they could break even.

Comptroller John Liu then took to the stand, and gave tremendous testimony.  He said that a growing number of New Yorkers are deeply concerned about the inBloom and as a parent and comptroller, he shared these concerns  Because there was no fee for service in NYSED’s initial contract with inBloom, it  had bypassed city and state comptroller review and registration.  Now, he has great concerns about the long term costs and lack of security in this arrangement, with the state and the city holding near total liability for breaches.  He also pointed out that in 2007, New Yorkers were told by DOE that ARIS, its $80 million data system, would revolutionize education, yet his audit has shown that it is rarely if ever used. 

He also pointed out that News Corporation, the parent company of Wireless, the major subcontractor to inBloom, has been targeted in several criminal investigations in the UK and seems likely to undergo US Senate investigations for breach of privacy.  Why should we trust its integrity? 

After Liu was finished, Wagner and his colleague returned to the stand.  They said that NYSED has not and will not hold hearings itself on this issue.  When asked if it was true that hundreds of parents had asked to opt out, they said they had received an “email campaign.”  Storelli Castro added, “We’re not blind to the concerns, and we’re here to allay unnecessary fears.”

Wagner also claimed that “school districts have been part of process from beginning” and yet not a single school board member or even Superintendent I have spoken to across the state even knew about inBloom until we made it public.

After they left the stand, I gave a brief power point which is below; and refuted several of the points they had made. My full testimony is here.  Others who spoke against the invasion of privacy this plan represents included Karen Sprowal, a NYC parent of a special needs student, who pointed out how this plan will make parents less likely to fill out Title I and Medicaid forms, knowing the information could be shared with inBloom and other vendors, which could cost school districts across the city and state hundreds of millions of dollars.   

Lisa Shaw, another parent of special needs children, spoke eloquently about how she doesn’t want her children’s diagnoses to follow them throughout their educational career, as the data dashboards are designed to do, and how she is considering transferring to a private school or moving out of state because of this.  Catherine McVay Hughes, chair of Community Board 1 in lower Manhattan, Santos Crespo, head of Local 372, Gloria Corsino, President of Community Education Council District 75, Michelle Lipkin of Chancellor's Parent Advisory Committee (CPAC), Ray Wilson of District 10 President's Council, and several others testified in favor of the Council resolutions to support state legislation to bar the transmission of children’s personal data to vendors without parental consent or opt out.  As Santos said,

...frankly our state and local governments do not have the best track record concerning its contracts with third-party vendors. From the City Time fiasco to Sodexho siphoning cash from kids ...tax payers continue to be victim to unscrupulous private contractors. We simply can’t take a chance and believe that this time is different and that the outside vendors that the NYSED is seeking to share this information with will not exploit and safeguard it from hackers and other unscrupulous people. The information that NYSED is seeking to provide to third-parties is much too sensitive to take any chances.

InBloom Presentation Updated 9.30.13