How DOE & FACE screwed up the elections for new PEP members

An article about DOE's terrible administration of these elections is here.

 

Dec. 22, 2022

Ms. Kenita D. Lloyd

Deputy Chancellor for Family and Community Engagement and External Affairs 

Dear Deputy Chancellor Lloyd,

The Education Council Consortium (ECC) denounces the New York City Department of Education’s (DOE) 2022 Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) member election and calls for the reopening of voting. 

In June of 2022, the New York State Legislature amended the constitution of the PEP by adding 5 new members, to be elected by Presidents of Community Education Councils.  Despite the statutory timeline, DOE continuously delayed the process, resulting in confusion and chaos, ultimately leading to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters.  The DOE failed to provide sufficient notice of the election, providing less than 72 hours notice of the date of the election, and only sending notice via email.  The DOE held an unreasonably short voting period of less than 24-hours and did not provide an alternative method of voting for voters without access or needing digital accommodations.  These circumstances and more, served to disenfranchise CEC Presidents who were eligible and entitled to vote in the election of the borough PEP members.

The DOE did not provide sufficient notice of the election.  CEC Presidents were given less than 72-hours notice of the date of the election, and were only notified of the election via email.  As a result, eligible voters that didn’t check their email during that 72-hour period were not notified of the date of the election, and thus were not able to vote.  Additionally, the DOE’s decision to hold an election without providing at least one week’s advanced notice is a deviation from past practice.  For example, for the DOE’s bi-annual CEC member elections, notice is provided months in advance, and using multiple mediums (paid media advertisements, mail, social media, email, phone calls, text messages, etc.).  Even parent-run elections, like PTA board and Title 1 representative elections require at least 10 days of advanced notice.  In addition to the lack of timely notice, DOE should have supplemented the notification email with one other form of notice (e.g. call or mailing).  Voters should have had at least a 10-day notice period, similar to other parent elections, so that voters could schedule properly.

The DOE held an unreasonably short voting window considering the nature of the election.  The DOE provided voters with a less than 24-hour window to vote.  The notice regarding how to vote and the link for the ballot was sent to voters the night before the voting window began, and there were technical glitches in the system that had not been resolved at the time of the notice.  Again, requiring everyone to vote electronically without providing a reasonable period of time for voting is unacceptable.  The candidate forum, where candidates presented their campaign platforms, was held the night before the 24-hour voting window, and the DOE had not even made the recordings available for viewing.  Expecting voting to occur before DOE was even able to make all of the voting information available demonstrates the unreasonably short notice and voting window.

Similarly, new and arbitrary rules restricting voters’ ability to have a voting proxy disenfranchised voters who were unable to cast their ballot.  For example, a CEC 1’s President whose brother had recently passed away had appointed her Vice President to serve as her proxy, per the CEC’s bylaws.  The night before the voting window began, an arbitrary rule preventing proxy voting was issued via email.  CEC 1’s President did not receive the notice until after the election, and the CEC 1 Vice President was not allowed to vote.  The creation of new and arbitrary policies in the ninth hour had the effect of disenfranchising voters.

December is one of the busiest times of the year for many.  CEC Presidents juggle job responsibilities, and family and personal obligations, on top of their role as CEC Presidents.  Adequate notice for meetings and reasonable time windows for voting are required.  The DOE’s PEP member election should be held to the same requirements as those set for PTA, CPAC, and CEC elections.

 

In Partnership,

NeQuan C. McLean

President

NeQuan McLean on how DOE's "gifted" program is the fruit of a poisonous tree

See the eloquent letter below by NeQuan McLean, President of CEC 16 to Hazel Dukes, President of the NAACP NYS Conference and Christine L. Waters, Education Chair about the DOE "gifted" program.

 [One correction to this excellent letter: NYC DOE is not "the most well-funded public school system in the country."  There are other districts in the state and the nation that spend more.]

Letter from ECC chairs that School Leadership Team meetings should continue!

UPDATE: We just learned that on April 24, the DOE posted a memo saying that School Leadership Teams should continue to meet remotely "in accordance with state law" and that these meetings are still subject on Open Meetings Law:
 
"In general, SLTs should seek to ensure that all members of the SLT are able to attend the meeting and that notice of the date and time of any SLT meeting has been made public 10 days before the meeting...While a public comment period is not required, SLT meetings are an opportunity to hear from members of the school community."

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According to law, School Leadership Teams, made up of half parents and half school staff, are required to meet monthly, to discuss issues critical to the running of every school and to develop the school's Comprehensive Education Plan.  Yet since the school closures due to Covid-19, many SLTs have not been meeting at all.  

In the below letter, Shino Tanikawa and NeQuan McLean, co-chairs of the Education Council Consortium, which represents the parent-led Citywide and Community District Councils, urges the Chancellor to send a message to principals that these meetings should continue to occur monthly, even if remotely, as they are more essential than ever to keep the lines of communication open between parents and school staff, and that they include a Public Comment Period to allow other members of the school community to ask questions and share concerns.  

They also emphasized the need to keep these meetings open to members of the public, as the NY State Appellate Court said was required, according to their unanimous decision in 2016.-- Leonie

Chancellor Richard A. Carranza
Department of Education
Tweed Courthouse
52 Chambers Street
New York, New York 10007

April 9, 2020

Dear Chancellor Carranza,

While Coronavirus continues to spread and our school communities are impacted on a daily and ever changing basis, maintaining open lines of communication between parents, teachers and school leaders has never been more essential.

School closures, and the myriad disruptions to life as we know it—the sudden move towards remote learning, the death of loved ones caused by the pandemic, the pressure of maintaining stability in the face of this all—have reshaped our feelings about what the term “School Climate” truly means. Principals are being forced to bear an unsustainable physical and emotional burden. Families, teachers, staff, and the administrations must be heard.

Our School Leadership Teams are the support system for our schools. We were encouraged to hear that you have mandated that SLTs continue to meet during the pandemic.

We would like you to take this a step farther and would urge you to ensure that School Leadership Teams continue to meet monthly throughout the course of the pandemic, and that you implement a Public Comment Period during SLT Meetings should it not exist in SLT ByLaws, so that school community voices can be heard.

It is vitally important that schools are able to discuss, as a community, what is succeeding and failing in the various arrangements that have been made during the remote learning instruction period, and what assessment and evaluation might look like.

SLT meetings, held online, would provide a critical mechanism for parent input so that views can be considered on many critical issues ranging from school grading policies, methods for taking attendance, scheduling, or any other newly adopted practice resulting from the emergency that we all are experiencing.

SLT meetings should continue to be aligned with the New York State Open Meetings Law, as the 2016 decision of the Appellate Court requires. Announcements of Meeting Dates and times should be shared widely so that school community members and members of the public can be informed as to when the meetings will be held, how they can observe the proceedings, and how to offer comments and feedback.

As our schools have now been closed for nearly four weeks, with no clear end in sight, we would appreciate your prompt reply.

Most Sincerely in Partnership and Service,

NeQuan & Shino
Co-Chairs
Education Council Consortium

cc:
The Honorable Mayor Bill de Blasio
Public Advocate Jumaane D. Williams
First Deputy Chancellor Cheryl Watson-Harris
Acting Deputy Chancellor Adrienne Austin, Esq.

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Website: educationcouncils.org

NYC parents tell the Mayor to stop stalling and stop giving charter schools access to student information

Video and press release below about our press conference this afternoon.  Sorry for the low quality- it was broadcast on twitter live. 

For immediate release: April 15, 2019

For more information contact: NeQuan McLean, 347-470-4975, educationcouncils@gmail.com

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?

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Parent leaders demand NYC Mayor give parents a voice in choice of a new schools Chancellor

Jessamyn Lee,Co-Chair, Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council (credit S. Ochshorn)

For immediate release: January 23, 2018

For more information: Leonie Haimson, leoniehaimson@gmail.com; 917-435-9329

On Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2018, leaders of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council (CPAC), representing all the PTAs and Parent Associations in NYC public schools, along with the leaders of the Education Council Consortium, representing the elected and appointed members of the Community and Citywide Education Councils, along with about 30 other parent leaders,  gathered on the steps of Tweed

Marco Batistella, CPAC co-chair (credit S. Ochshorn)

Courthouse, the NYC Department of Education headquarters.  As representatives of more than one million public school parents, they demanded that Mayor de Blasio implement a transparent selection process for a new Chancellor, and give parents a voice in this process, as he promised to do when he first ran for Mayor, instead of the quiet, internal decision that he currently plans.  

If there is a public vetting that includes the input of parents and community members, the likelihood will be that the individual selected will work well with parents and be responsive to their concerns.  As the first step in devising  this process, they asked to meet with the Mayor as soon as possible.

Shino Tanikawa, Co-Chair ECC, President NYC Kids PAC (credit S.Ochshorn)

Jessamyn Lee, the Co-Chair of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory said: “The Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council (CPAC) urges Mayor de Blasio to honor Chancellor Farina's commitment to parent engagement by including parents in the selection of the new Schools Chancellor. We are partners in the education of our children. The city trusts parents to participate as partners in the hiring of our school principals and local superintendents. The 1.1 million students in our school system are wholly disenfranchised, represented only by the voices and activism of their parents. For the Mayor to deny parents the opportunity to represent the interests of our children in this critical decision is to ignore the voices of our most vulnerable, underrepresented New Yorkers. CPAC insists that parents be included in the hiring of the Department of Education's new leader. “

NeQuan McLean, Co-chair, ECC (credit S. Ochshorn)

Shino Tanikawa, the Co-Chair of NYC Kids PAC and the co-President of the Education Council Consortium said, “I sincerely hope the Mayor considers an open and public selection process that includes parent leaders.  This is an opportunity to ensure that the next Chancellor has the qualities and qualifications necessary to run the nation's largest public school system and is someone who can truly collaborate with all stakeholders including parents.”

NeQuan McLean, the Co-Chair of the Education Council Consortium said: “The next chancellor will need to address the challenge of ‘separate is not equal’ in NYC’s highly segregated school system.  NYC students deserve a chancellor who will work to stop the well- documented harm done to the majority of students who attend our public schools. These students are children with disabilities, English Language Learners and children from economically disadvantaged communities. They are our most vulnerable students with the most to gain as educated and career-ready citizens. Our next chancellor needs to be a champion for these children and all children in our public school system.”

Pam Stewart,  CCHS (credit: S. Ochshorn)

Eduardo Hernandez, CEC 8 (credit S. Ochshorn)

Marco Batistella, CPAC Co-Char, Pam Stewart of the Citywide Council of High Schools, Eduardo Hernandez of the Community Education Council in District 8, Nancy Northrup of the Queens High School Presidents Council, and many other parent leaders explained why it was critical for parents to have a real voice in the selection process, to ensure that the next Chancellor will be successful in collaborating with parents for the benefit of  NYC children. 

For more information, see the CPAC letter here:  https://tinyurl.com/y8r5y7pu ; 

ECC letter here: https://tinyurl.com/y739q5yk

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