Parent leader Tory Frye on the Mayor's reversal that parents will be allowed to opt-into online learning for their children once -- and will have to decide by Nov. 15

UPDATE 10/29/20: CEC 6 passed a resolution last night, urging the Mayor and the Chancellor to allow parents the option of choosing in-person education for their children in January after the holidays and once in the spring, as previously promised.  The resolution is here and embedded below.

Yesterday, the Mayor announced that contrary to earlier statements, parents would only be allowed to opt into in-person learning for their kids a single time during the entire school year, and the choice will have to be made starting next week from Nov. 2-Nov. 15.  You can register your choice here.

The outrage among parents was immediate. A petition protesting this sudden announcement to reverse the earlier promise made to parents that there would be several times over the course of the school that parents could choose in-person learning is here.

On the one hand, one can sympathize with principals who have been saddled with the exceedingly difficult job of reprogramming classes and staffing dependent on how many kids attend schools in-person, further complicated by the DOE plan to provide three kinds of classes for students at each grade level and subject:  in-person classes kept small for social distancing, online classes for these students when they are home, and remote classes for full-time online students. 

Yet given the fact that infection rates are rising citywide, the holidays are looming with potential visits with vulnerable grandparents, and the hope and expectation that transmission rates may fall again in the spring, this seems like a particular unfair time to force parents to make any sort of year-long decision. 

Michael Mulgrew of the UFT wrote this: "City Hall's decision violates the plan New York City filed with the state, and it breaks faith with parents. Families were told they would have an opportunity each quarter to decide whether their child returned to the classroom or remained fully remote. Such a decision undermines parents' trust in the system."

Tory Frye of CEC6 and a public health expert wrote this to our NYC Education list: 

As a CEC6 member I’m hearing from numerous families who seriously resent and are upset and frightened by this sudden and forced “choice.“ Families and communities weren’t consulted; it’s being dropped on us without any consideration of our needs for flexibility and information. And there’s a lot to consider: timing of the flu season, family contact over the holidays, oh and the election! (We’ve got to make this decision during what may be post-election trauma, elation, and/or chaos? Thanks!)

There’s no evidence I’ve seen that the epidemiological experts/infection spread modelers think that a sudden and potentially massive influx of students in early December (just after Thanksgiving with the relatives!) is a good idea. (Please post if it exists!) In fact, the absence of public health experts leading these presentations and efforts throughout but particularly during these latest decisions is troubling. (Again please correct me if I’m wrong and missed it when they weighed in; I can’t watch every presser.)

And how will the in-school programming and buildings absorb a sudden increase if it materializes?  Are there enough teachers and staff? What about space for physical distancing? 

And what if a vaccine materializes in March? As unlikely as that is, would we get another chance then? What about a relief package from Congress? A lot of what ifs...

The other outrage of this decision is yet another promise made and broken. Do all remote-only families have technology and WiFi? Does every school have a nurse? Doubt it. And now four chances to opt in have dropped to one, just after a major American family holiday and before major world religious holidays. 

I truly hope they’ll walk this poorly conceived and communicated decision back. 

-Tory (CEC6)

Tory Frye: Why the application to authorize Emily Kim's Zeta charter school should be rejected by SUNY

Please send in your own comments to SUNY no later than 6 PM TODAY, Sept. 13, 2017, to charters@SUNY.edu in opposition to Emily Kim, the former lead attorney for Success Academy starting her own charter school.  Below is the letter by Tory Frye, parent and CEC member in District 6.


TORY FRYE 

CEC6 Testimony on ZETA Charter School application

TO: charters@SUNY.edu

This testimony is regarding the proposal to site a new charter school, Zeta, in District 6. District 6 is a community school district with approximately 23,000 students, many of whom are English Language Learner and/or have special education needs. In fact, nearly 30% (27.7% to be exact) of our students are learning English and 20% (18.5%) have special needs, according to the most recent data published by the DOE.  The majority (85%) of our families are Latino or Hispanic.

Currently, our D6 schools are both overcrowded and underfunded. The average K-3 class size for our District is 23; for 4-8 it is 25; these are well over the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) goals of 20 students per class in grades K-3 and 23 per class in grades 4-8. Official utilization at twelve of our most crowded schools range from 90 to 149% (PS/IS 187). The overall utilization rate for elementary schools is 105%.

Today, as an elected representative serving on the District Six Community Education Council (CEC6), I testify on behalf of D6 public school parents. We are opposed to the siting of a new charter school in our district, as it represents one of the key strategies of the Trump/DeVos privatization of public education effort. It is a clear appropriation of tax payer resources by privately owned and operated, corporate charter schools (and subsequent annexation of public school space) that do not and will not equitably serve our community’s children. Further, they employ instructional practices that will not produce critical, well-educated citizens. Finally, they employ labor practices that that guarantee high levels of teacher turnover, low levels of highly experienced master teachers and are on the whole unsustainable over time.

On May 15 2014, CEC6 passed a resolution against supporting charter schools at the expense of public schools.  That is the official position of CEC6, the body elected to represent parents and families in the district.

We testify today to reiterate the position that by taking space and resources from NYC public school students, the proliferation of charters further limit public schools’ ability to provide the sound basic education, which is our children’s state constitutional right – a right that has been violated for years now and takes us further down the road to privatization. We see that in states where charters are supported in cutting off resources to true public schools, billions are lost by public school children. For example, in Michigan, the home state of Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, nearly $1 billion of public education dollars have been drained each year from Michigan public schools. This siphoning of funds by charters has resulted not in educational gains but in Michigan making no progress in the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), a national, longitudinal assessment. That a key goal of many charter school donors and supporters is the privatization of public education is supported by numerous news articles and investment strategy notes.  The fact is that public education as a 700 billion to one trillion dollar industry. 

Our D6 public schools cannot afford to have scant resources diverted. NYC public school budgets have been cut by over 14% since 2007; we simply cannot afford to lose another dollar to charter schools that do not serve our students’ needs, reject and eject special needs students, use educationally unsound approaches for English Language Learners, propose to co-locate against the wills of our existing public schools and treat our community with disrespect by failing to engage with us authentically.

We base these statements on the documentation below, which gives lie to the “success” of so many charter chains, like the one from which “Zeta” emerged.

• NYC charter schools enroll many fewer special needs and English Language Learner students than NYC public schools, as documented in the State Report Cards and in NYC Department of Education’s data.  In a recently published analysis, we see that just 7% of students at charters in NYC were English Language Learner students, as compared to 14.4% in true or “traditional” NYC public schools. Similarly, just 14.7% of students at charters in NYC have special needs, as compared to 21.4% in true or “traditional” NYC public schools. At Harlem Success 1-3, where the proposed school leader of “Zeta” was trained, in recent years the percent of students with disabilities ranged from 12.6 -13%, the percentage of ELL students ranged from 4.1-7.1%, and the economic need index averaged .69 – far below other nearby schools. The average public school in NYC serves fifteen times the concentration of highest need special education students compared to Success Academy charters.

• In addition to under-enrolling students with special needs and learning English, who often underperform as compared to their peers on state standardized tests, charters lose their students at an alarming rate. Again, using publicly available data for analysis, we see that in 2007 Success Academy Harlem I enrolled 73 students in the first grade. Today, as they enter the 11^th grade, this class now contains just 18 students.  Where do these students go and why do they leave? 

• The Independent Budget Office (IBO) has found that NYC charters have higher levels of attrition for students with disabilities. In recent years, many documented stories of children with special needs being pushed out and/or illegally suspended from NYC charter schools, without due process, have been published. Some charters have suspension rates two to three times that in the surrounding district schools.  

•  According to DOE discipline code, students in NYC public schools can only be expelled if they are in general education classes, and have turned 17 prior to the beginning of the school year. Yet the SUNY charter Institution notes in a renewal document for Harlem Success 2 that the “implementation of the expulsions does not align with stated policy language,” though it did not reveal how many students were expelled.  As to Success Academy suspensions, the Institute writes, “It was unclear that live instruction was consistently provided in accordance with New York’s compulsory education law.” 

•  Charter schools siphon resources from traditional public schools. Currently the DOE budget for charters surpassed $2 billion per year. According to state law, if charters are not given space in public school buildings, the city must provide funds for them to rent their own space, which further diminishes the resources available to our local public schools.

•  According to the IBO, the two thirds of charter school students in co-located buildings receive more in per pupil funding than public school students, when their free space and services are taken into account. Since the new requirement that NYC provide free space for every new charter, these inequities have grown even worse. 

We have examined the applications that Zeta put together and pull out just a few areas that cause special concern.

First, Zeta proposes to co-locate their charter school with an existing public school (see page 164). Our district has had numerous, negative experiences with co-locations and CEC6 has also passed a resolution opposing further co-locations in the district. Specifically, the application states:

“As mentioned in Response 16(a) above, we will promptly be submitting to the NYC DOE our written requests that the DOE co-locate the two proposed schools in CSDs 6 (Upper Manhattan) and 12 (Central Bronx), respectively. We have reviewed the DOE’s UnderUtilized Space Memorandum for the 2017-2018 School Year As of February 23, 2017. The Under-Utilized Space memorandum lists 320 significantly underutilized DOE public school buildings, 19 of which are located in CSDs 6 and 12. Accordingly, we are optimistic that the DOE will be able to co-locate our two schools within the requested CSDs.”

Second, Zeta proposes to educate English Language Learners using an “immersion” method that amounts to all instruction being in English (p. 300). Although they cite various sources to support this, which I must note focus on early childhood education and not K-5 education, recent syntheses of the evidence on educating primary school level children who are learning English suggests that dual language or bilingual education, which encourages fluency in both the primary language and English. 

Third, the charter application does not indicate that a robust, culturally-grounded or well-rounded education will be generated. The emphasis is on performing well on standardized assessments and relegates the arts and languages to “enrichment” (p. 24) 

Fourth, despite statements about community outreach, very little actually occurred in District Six and much of that either at the end of very busy school year or over the summer. Further, no elected officials in our district, other than the Independent Democrat Caucus state representative, state Senator Alcantara, wrote a letter of support.  

Fifth, the application emphasizes that great need for schools with students who perform well on standardized tests and also on the need for integrated schools. Our district is predominately Hispanic and/or Latino and low or lower income. Increasing diversity and deconcentrating various forms of capital at a small number of specific schools is a goal for District Six, as is increasing the number of dual language schools. The Zeta school, however, cannot likely increase diversity without enrolling student who do not live in the district. This suggests that the school both will not serve D6 students and will increase the number of private vehicles on the streets surrounding the building where the school is co-located, a situation similar to the traffic nightmare that currently characterizes the SACS located at the Mother Cabrini site in Washington Heights.

Sixth, Zeta states that there is a great need for their school based on wait lists for other charter schools in our district.  Yet, there are waitlists for nearly every school in our district! Families apply to multiple schools as part of Kindergarten Connect; the wait lists are meaningless. 

Seventh, the applicant acknowledges, as described above, that they will in fact siphon funds and resources away from D6 students. In the application, they estimate that at scale they will reduce our district budget by .03% or about 1.5 million dollars per year. They state in their application on page 18:

“In school year 2015-16, CSD 6 had an operating budget of $559,874,764.44 In CSD 12, the 2015-16 operating budget was $573,724,715.45 Therefore, the total fiscal impact of the school located in CSD 6 would be approximately .01% of the district’s projected operating budget in the first year the school would offer instruction, and approximately .028% in the fifth year of instruction. The total fiscal impact of the school located in CSD 12 would be approximately .01% of the district’s projected operating budget in the first year the school would offer instruction, and approximately .028% in the fifth year of instruction. Based on these percentages, the projected fiscal impact of the proposed schools on public schools in New York City is not expected to be significant.”

This calculation suggests that they either do not intend to educate current D6 students or that they are very much underestimating the negative financial impact on the district.

Finally, at the hearing to collect public comment, which was held on September 11 at 6PM at PS 5, a date, time and location which combined to make it very difficult for our D6 parents to attend, the proposed school leader, Ms. Emily Kim, a lawyer by training and former SACS lead counsel, failed to arrange for interpretation and in fact made clear statement on video that she did not have any legal obligation to do so. She further stated that she would consider doing so in the future. This makes it very clear that her “extensive research” into the district was superficial and not grounded in the reality of our families lives, where so many speak Spanish only and are effectively excluded when proceedings are conducted in English only.

Our district does not need another charter school that will only divert funds from our existing schools. We need more resources and support for the families and schools that are working to educate the children of the district.

Thank you.

Tory Frye, elected parent representative CEC6

Tory (Victoria) Frye

vicnyc@me.com

646-418-6435

Tory Frye on the questionable claims of supporters of Success Academy and charters in general

On Thursday, as the NY Times revealed, Eva Moskowitz closed her Success Charters for the day, and told parents that they had to accompany their children to a rally near City Hall or find alternate baby-sitting for them. NY1 reported that all 32 of her schools had the morning off and parents got a wake-up call reminding them to attend. She bussed parents, students and staff to the rally; as did Achievement First charters.  One can only imagine the criticism in the media if any public school had called off classes and demanded that parents do the same for a political rally.

Here is an analysis of Victoria Frye, parent and CEC member in District 6 in Washington Heights on the claims of those who support Success Academy and charters more generally, with data and links for those who want to explore the issue further.

Waitlists

Looking at “demand” data for schools is obviously a market-based approach to education.  Even if one does believe that market or business models are ideal for educating children, waitlists prove nothing.  Guess how many kids are on the wait list for District 6 schools? Over 3,000.  How is that possible? The same families applied to multiple schools, probably including charter schools. 

 Charter school waitlists are equally inflated.  Even a D6 elementary school that is labeled as failing by “Families for Excellent Education” in their laughable “research” report TheForgotten Fourth,  PS 132 (The Juan Pablo Duarte School) had 152 applicants for just 50 seats; what does that demonstrate?  Some D6 schools had hundreds of students wait listed last spring. School acceptance rates were  18 and 14% for PS 311 and 314 -- both smaller than the acceptance rates of 19% percent claimed by Success Academy in its SUNY application, asking for the authority to establish 14 new charters across the city. 

Data on enrollment at the Success Academies in D2 shows that good portions, from a quarter to a third of students, come from outside the district.  How does that demonstrate “demand” within D2 for a Success Academy?  So the “evidence” (if you choose to interpret it that way) is clear: the demand for public schools eclipses the demand for charters.  So, no, charters should not get space or resources until we replicate the "high demand" and "high performing" public schools in our city.  For more on this see this analysis.

Apples to Apples Comparisons

Luckily some serious researchers have looked at this issue.  Bruce Baker, a professor Education at Rutgers, for example put together this chart: 

According to 2013 school report cards, “PS 149 has nearly double the number of special needs students compared to Academy 1: 20.6% compared to 12.6%, and more than four times the number of English Language learners  --18.9% compared to only 4.1% at Success Academy.”  (As described here: )  Success also suspends students at double the rate of their local public schools, for example Harlem Success 1, 2, 3, and 4 suspended students at a rate of 22, 15, 14 and 19% as compared with 6, 7, and 9% in Districts 3, 4, and 5. And again the IBO reports that special needs students leave charters at a much higher rate than comparable public school students (). And when charter students leave or are counseled out of a charter they do not go to another charter, they go to a public school.  Even SUNY, as the charter authorizer, acknowledges that attrition at Success is problematic.  

Regarding inclusion at public schools, we have a citywide policy of inclusion that mandates that local neighborhood schools must accommodate special needs students.  Budget realities constitute real barriers to schools being able to do this, so there is a tension between the relatively new inclusion policy and years and years of budget cuts.  The Chancellor has acknowledged this issue; but as of yet, I have heard of no solution to it.

Space

Our D6 public schools do not have space – FULL STOP.  We are over 90% capacity district-wide with the faulty capacity formula and we have numerous schools that are desperately in need of new facilities. We have the largest average class size in D6 since 2006. Last year, 6 D6 schools have K class averages of 25+. Ten D6 schools had grade 1-3 class averages of 25+. Five D6 schools had at least one 1-3 class with 30+. 14 D6 had at least one 4-8 class with 30+. PS 366 had a K class with 28 students. PS 153 had a 1^st grade class with 32 students. PS 28 had a 2^nd grade class with 31 students. PS 132, a struggling school, had a 3^rd grade class with 29 students. The average D6 utilization rate is 94%.  

Thirteen schools are over 100% utilization, including PS/IS 187, which is blocks away from the Mother Cabrini High School, which the DOE handed over to Success Academy.  D6 also has 19 “TCUs” (aka trailers) at 3 schools, not including the “mini buildings” at schools like PS 192/325.  Mott Hall is in a building that is dilapidated and dangerous; it ought to be condemned. So someone please explain to me how our D6 public schools have “space” for charter schools?  Taking space from D6 schools will HARM D6 students.

Hedge Fund supporters

Hedge fund people do not donate to systems that educate the masses; if they did, they would have been donating to public schools all along and/or advocating for increasing taxes on capital gains and investment incomes to levels that would fund public schools at the same levels of private schools.  Why have they not been doing this?  I thought they cared deeply about public school students?  Why do they only donate to charter schools or PACS that advocate vouchers and charters?  They see a business opportunity wrapped in a bogus charitable donation; they are about creating new “markets” and the best way to do this is to engage in "disruption," which is exactly what charters do.  The fact is they see public education as a 700 billion dollar (now 1T?) industry waiting to be privatized; and they need an education "crisis," a private-public "solution" (created by ALEC) and then lobbyists and politicians to pave the way for them.  This is well documented, for example here.  

Just a taste of what they have in store for children in the future: virtual schools. “Baird Equity Research, in a giddy note to investors this year about the potential growth of K12 Inc., noted, “capturing just two million (3.5%) of the addressable market yields a market opportunity of approximately $12 billion … Over the next three years, we believe that the company is capable of 7%+ organic revenue growth with modest margin expansion.” How will it achieve this growth? According to Baird, K12 Inc.’s “competency in lobbying in new states” is “another key point of differentiation.” The analyst note describes “K12’s success in working closely with state policymakers and school districts to enable the expansion of virtual schools into new states or districts” as a key asset. “The company has years of experience in successfully lobbying to get legislation passed to allow virtual schools to operate,” Baird concludes.”

Funding

The Independent Budget Office, which is just what its name says, reports that charters get more money per student than public schools. As well, each new charter gets $500K to start up, along with renovations etc.  This new round will cost us a cool 7M just to start.  If we accept that a competition-/market-based model of education is the way to go, and schools should be marketing to and competing for students, then we need an even playing field where public schools can offer the same programs and resources that charters do, with their hedge fund donor-money and extended days.  

 Eva Moskowitz earns 475K per year and according to Wikipedia has 4 assistants.  She runs 22 schools.  The NYC schools Chancellor earns $200K.  Eva also moved her offices to Wall Street recently.  So let's start paying public school teachers and administrators similar salaries and see what happens.  The truth is that Eva is getting paid this much because it is expensive to be the face of the destruction of the public education in the US, which is what she will go down in history as, if we let her do it.

Quality Schools

First, I have to point out that one of the schools included in The Forgotten Fourth report is D6’s Harbor Heights middle school, which is a school for new arrivals to the US.  The research was so sloppy that they did not even eliminate schools where students who just arrived in the US and do not speak English AT ALL attend and - as would be expected - do miserably on the state ENGLISH tests.  It’s also incredibly disrespectful to the educators and students in the school. 

According to CEC1 President, a D1 school for new arrivals was also included in the report.  Ignoring this, but accepting charters’ definition of “success,” if they are doing something unique, why is it not being replicated in public schools? If some children flourish under this model, then we do not need to remove the charter school cap statewide; we can just start doing what charters do.  If it is the longer school day, then lengthen it and pay teachers for their time.  If it is instruction that has been replicated many times over at various charter schools, then teach public school teachers to do it and implement it in magnet public schools to which parents can choose to send their children.  

But the truth is that this is not about implementing successful strategies in a public system to the benefit of all public school students.  It is about privatizing public education in the US and opening up a trillion dollar market to investors.  And the best way to go about this is to make it look like and to help public schools “fail” and that there is a “demand” for charters and thus we should just turn the whole system over to charters.  That’s what today’s rally was about; next is to try to lift the charter cap. 

  

 And, finally, teacher attrition…

Teacher attrition at Success is stunning.  As noted in this recent article: “In Harlem Success Academies 1-4, the only schools for which the state posted turnover data, more than half of all teachers left the schools ahead of the 2013-14 school year. In one school, three out of four teachers departed.”  The model is clearly unsustainable and obviously not “family-friendly” (which may explain their relatively young and inexperienced teachers and principals), but then again they only have to sustain it long enough to disrupt the system, buy the politicians, pass the legislation and open the market…

Plenty of NYC public schools stink and need very serious attention - don't get me wrong.  The current state of racial, ethnic and social class-based segregation must be addressed.  School funding must be addressed and child poverty must be addressed.  And no we cannot wait to get all of that right before we implement evidence-based education strategies that drive student achievement, like integrated schools and small class sizes (both shown to drive performance).  And if the research shows (using apples to apples comparisons) that some charters use techniques that improve achievement that public schools do not, given the same students, resources and environments, then we should implement the techniques in public schools.  

-- Victoria (Tory) Frye