Talk out of School: The History of Segregation in NYC public schools with Christopher Bonastia

 

Episode Summary

After a short recap of the latest news including the Appellate Court decision on the budget cuts lawsuit, our special guest this week was Christopher Bonastia, Lehman College Professor and the author of a terrific new book about the history of segregation in NYC public schools.

Episode Notes

Class Size Matters press release  on the Appellate court decision on the school budget cuts lawsuit;news clips from the  NY Times, the Daily News, Chalkbeat and Gothamist.

Christopher Bonastia, The Battle Nearer to Home: The Persistence of School Segregation in New York City. Order from Barnes and Noble. 

Under his musical alias Uno Collision, Bonastia has also released a soundtrack album to accompany the book. Several tracks include excerpts of interviews in which individuals reflect upon their experiences in the New York City school system. Links to stream the album can be found here:

Let Us Break Bread Together: Integrating New York Public Schools.  Based on a project in School Districts 12, 13, and 14.   1954 video produced by the NYC Board of Education. Article explaining to the plan to site schools on a Linear City to be built over the Cross-Brooklyn Expressway with photographs

Linear City and Cross-Brooklyn Expressway, 1969 article about plans to site schools on a Linear City to be built over the Cross-Brooklyn Expressway.

Early voting sites in 33 NYC public schools. But why?

Early voting will begin statewide on Saturday, October 26th and continue for 11 days.  Meanwhile, 33 NYC public schools have been chosen as early voting sites out of 61 across the city, though their principals were only informed of this fact on October 5, according to the reporting of Brigid Bergin of  Gothamist/WNYC. Here and above is the list of the NYC sites by borough.

The highlighting above reveals that six of the eleven early voting sites in the Bronx, twelve of  eighteen sites in Brooklyn, eight of nine sites in Manhattan and seven of nine sites in Staten Island are public schools.  [Why there are an equal number of voting sites in Manhattan and Staten Island is another question, given that there are more than three times as many residents of Manhattan as on Staten Island.  Shouldn't the number of sites or at least the number of the voting machines be proportional to the population of each borough?]

In the 33 public schools where early voting will occur, this will deprive many thousands of students of  their ability to have their scheduled phys ed classes in their gyms and/or eat lunch in their cafeterias.   It will also poses real security risks to students, with hundreds of voters gaining access to school buildings and possibly roaming school hallways during the school day. 

One principal was quoted in the Gothamist article as saying, “I can’t not have kids [in the gym] for a week in October. That’s crazy."   

At the same time, there is not a single public school that will be used as an early voting site in the borough of Queens, as the city instead wisely located them instead in Board of Election headquarters, YMCAs, community centers, churches, colleges, museums, and even the Resort World Casino in Ozone Park.
 
I also checked the early voting sites of the 62 other New York counties on the League of Women Voters website. I could find only one other New York county that had any public schools listed: Suffolk County has one public school, Nesconset Elementary School,  among ten early voting sites.

The other hundreds of early voting sites located throughout the state include town halls and other government offices, public libraries, fire departments, YMCAs, local Board of election headquarters, community centers, senior centers, County courthouses, churches, recreational centers, office complexes and even malls. 

Why NYC had to put so many of their early voting sites in public schools is hard to fathom, when so many other, more appropriate options were available. 

Assemblymember Michael Reilly of Staten Island sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Board of Elections last May, expressing his concern over the use of public school facilities for early voting after the preliminary list of sites was announced on April 30.  

At that time, only nine of the 38 early voting sites selected were public schools, including five in Brooklyn, three in Manhattan, and only one in Staten Island -- although three parochial schools in the  borough were identified at that time, later to be eliminated.

In his letter, AM Reilly, who before his election to the Legislature was a member of Community Education Council 31, pointed out how early voting would be seriously disruptive to these schools:

“At most schools, voting machines are being placed in cafeterias, gymnasiums, and even the building’s main lobby. It impedes a student’s ability to navigate their school safely, and sometimes causes them to miss valuable academic time,” said Reilly. He continued, “Before early voting, schools were disrupted for just a maximum of three or four days each election year, but now we are inconveniencing students, teachers, and administrators for a minimum of 24 days to accommodate a 12-day primary election, and a 12-day general election, not to mention an additional 12-days for any special election. It’s ridiculous, plain and simple.”

According to AM Reilly's twitter feed, his letter got no response, and instead of addressing this situation with the seriousness it deserved, the city added twenty-four more public schools to the list  this fall. On October 8, AM Reilly wrote the Mayor again, reaffirming his concerns.    

Let's hope this unacceptable situation gets fixed before the the primaries and general election next year.  

Please sign our letter to Klein and Liu re federal jobs funds

Yesterday the President signed an education jobs bill that will provide $10 billion to save an estimated 160,000 teaching jobs nationwide

According to news reports, it will send about $608 million to NY State; and an estimated $200 million to NYC. Thanks to those of you that called or emailed the Congress about this critical bill. (You can see how your House member voted here.)

These funds are desperately needed to prevent the projected loss of 2,000 teaching positions in NYC schools this fall, which, along with a continued growth in enrollment, would otherwise lead to drastically increased class sizes.

As you know, class sizes have already risen on average for the last two years; and last year, more than half of Kindergarten students were in classes of 25 or more in many schools. This is simply unacceptable, especially as the city promised to reduce class sizes in all grades in return for receiving nearly a billion dollars in extra state funds.

Please sign onto our letter to Chancellor Klein below, urging him to use these new federal funds to avert the loss of any teaching positions so that class sizes do not increase, and the City Comptroller to provide rigorous oversight to ensure that these funds are used appropriately.

Please email me at leonie@att.net with your name, school, borough, and leadership position or other organizational affiliation (if any). If you would like that affiliation to be starred with an asterix (meaning affiliation for identification purposes only) please let me know that as well.

Thanks for your support, and please forward this message to others who care.

___
Dear Chancellor Klein and Comptroller Liu:

As you know, the Congress passed and the President signed an education jobs bill that will provide approximately $200 million in federal funds for New York City schools.

Chancellor, we urge you to use these funds immediately to avert the loss of any teaching positions. Otherwise, the budget cuts already imposed are expected to lead to the elimination of 2,000 teaching positions and cause damaging increases in class size, especially as student enrollment is increasing.

Comptroller Liu, we urge you to implement strict oversight to ensure that these funds are used appropriately. Over the last two years, class sizes have risen sharply despite the city’s promise to reduce them in exchange for taking nearly a billion dollars in additional state aid.

The need for smaller classes has been the top priority of parents in the Department of Education’s parent surveys for as long as these surveys have been given.

Class size reduction is one of the very few reforms that, according to the federal government’s Institute for Education Sciences, has been proven to improve student achievement.

It is critical that these federal funds go directly to the classroom where they belong, so that the city’s children can learn in classes that are as small as possible .

Yours sincerely,

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters

Add your name here: Name, school, borough, leadership position or other affiliation (if any)

Diane Ravitch asks: "Are we in an age of National Stupidity or National Insanity?"

In her latest posting, The Great Accountability Hoax, Ravitch points out that the so-called "accountability" policies being promoted by the Billionaire Boy's Club, the foundations, and now the Obama administration are a "great fraud and hoax, but our elected officials and policymakers remain completely oblivious to the harm caused by the policies they mandate."

Not only has the Chicago program of teacher merit pay proven to be ineffective, but a recent study shows that the similar NYC experiment that the administration spent $38 million on last year has shown no positive results:

"...we find little effect of the bonus program on student achievement in the first or second year of the program. We find no discernible effect on in-class or school-wide policies reported by students and teachers, such as additional tutoring sessions or increased use of student achievement data. Finally, we show that the bonus program had little effect on teacher turnover or the qualifications of newly hired teachers."

Roland Fryer's much bally-hooed experiments with paying kids for good test scores also failed miserably.

Nevertheless, the US Dept. of Education insists on increasing funding for merit pay through the Teacher Incentive Fund program to $900 million next year!

It appears that no amount of negative results will stop the privateers from continuing to promote their wasteful experiments on our kids in the name of "accountability," without acknowledging how their own behavior exhibits a failure of both financial and moral accountability.