Update on our Skinny award dinner, class size, court hearings, privacy violations and more!

1. Save the date! On Wednesday June 19 we will hold our annual Skinny award dinner at Casa La Femme on 140 Charles St. The honorees will be Attorney General Tish James for her steadfast and courageous leadership in supporting public school students and parents over many years; and NYC Kids PAC, the only political action committee that rates candidates on their positions on public education. Please reserve your ticket now -- for a delicious three course dinner with wine and great company besides!

2. Last week, the Education Council Consortium and CEC 2 both passed resolutions in support of our campaign to urge the City Council to allocate funding for class size reduction in this year's budget. Please ask your CEC to do the same! We can provide you with district-specific data if you like.

3. This week two important court hearings will be held. Tomorrow, Wed. May 15 at 2:30 PM at the NY Supreme Court, 60 Centre St., Rm. 418, Judge Arthur Engeron will hear a lawsuit vs the city for redacting nearly the entire final City Hall decision memo that we FOILed about how the DOE's formula for assessing school space would be revised, and why the Mayor rejected the Blue Book Working Group's proposal to align school capacity with smaller classes.  

4. This Thursday May 16 at 11 AM, Judge Katherine Levine will hear arguments on the DOE's proposal to close PS 25, a small zoned school in Bed Stuy. The hearing will take place at the Kings Country Supreme Court in Brooklyn, at 360 Adams St. Last year PS 25 parents sued and got a temporary restraining order against closing the school. I wrote an open letter to Chancellor Carranza that was published in the Washington Post Answer Sheet, asking him to withdraw this proposal; obviously he did not.

5. Because of unconscionable delays on the part of the US Department of Education in responding to parents' FERPA complaints, Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy have once again violated student privacy and federal law. An update on this long-running saga is here.

Talk to you soon, and please sign up for our Skinny dinner today!

The city's attempt to bury the news of its rejection of the Blue Book Working Group's recommendations on class size

Yesterday, in the middle of summer, the DOE finally released the recommendations of its own Blue Book working group, recommendations which had been finalized last December, according to several reliable sources.  (Chalkbeat wrongly reports the date as March.)  See also Schoolbook, WNYC radio and DNAinfo, for more information on the recommendations -- and what the city refused to accept.


The DOE not only delayed the release of these recommendations for over six months; they refrained from putting out a press release or posting them anywhere on their website, presumably because officials wanted to tamp down as much as possible on the news that the city had rejected the most critical proposal: that the space utilization formula should be aligned with smaller classes.

More specifically, the city signaled that it would not align the class sizes in the Blue Book with the goals in the DOE's original, state-mandated Contract for Excellence plan -- of 23 students per class in grades 4-8 and 25 in high school.  As Lisa Donlan was quoted in Schoolbook,

Certainly for me and for many of us, the class size issue was the biggest issue that we felt would have the greatest impact on bringing us to painting an accurate picture of reality and making sure that all kids got access to an adequate education — hands down," said Lisa Donlan, president of the Community Education Council for District 1 and a member of the working group.

Because the class size standards in the Blue Book (currently 28 students in grades 4-8 and 30 in high school) are larger than current averages, the failure to align the formula with smaller classes will likely stand in the way of efforts to reduce class size, and  contribute to even more overcrowding in the years ahead.

One of the members of the Working Group, Isaac Carmignani, explained the six month delay to  Chalkbeat this way: that the city didn't want the Group's recommendations or (presumably) their rejection to complicate their negotiations over the budget or mayoral control.

If so, this is yet more evidence that they are aware of the political volatility of this issue -- the number one priority of parents according to their own surveys --as well as their unaccountable refusal to take any real action to reduce class size, or even make an honest attempt to calculate which schools could and could not accommodate smaller classes.

While several news accounts correctly reported that this refusal appears to violate numerous promises made by Bill de Blasio during his campaign to reduce class size, and adhere to the original C4E plan approved by the state in 2007, they omitted the fact that he made even more specific pledges to align the Blue Book formula to smaller classes, according to his response to a KidsPAC survey, filled out by his campaign manager, Emma Wolfe, in July 2013:

Also glossed over in some of the news stories is how the city is shirking its constitutional and legal obligations to reduce class size.  In the CFE decision, as pointed out in our press release by Wendy Lecker, an attorney at the Education Law Center, the state's highest court said that NYC public school students were denied their constitutional right to an adequate education, in large part because of their excessive class sizes -- a denial in which this administration is now actively complicit.

The Working Group's letter, co-signed by Lorraine Grillo, President of the School Construction Authority and Shino Tanikawa, the President of CEC D2,  complete with its the recommendation on class size is posted on Chalkbeat.  Yet nowhere can I find online the email sent to reporters, containing the list of the specific proposals the DOE is going to accept, and those they are still considering. Few of those they are planning to adopt relate to actual changes to the Blue Book utilization formula.   So, for the record,  here they are: 

The DOE plans to adopt the following recommended changes to the Blue Book:

·         Publish capacity information for Public Assembly spaces (gymnasiums, cafeteria, etc.) in the PASS [the Principal's Annual Space Survey]

·         Include the total enrollment population of English Language Learners (ELL) in PASS

·         Include the total enrollment population of students with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) in PASS

·         Designate private counseling space for elementary and middle schools that currently do not account for private counseling space

·         Establish teacher workrooms at the middle school level to ensure teachers have an appropriate place for a prep period and encourage principals to allow available space to be used as teacher workrooms, subject to repurposing at the principal’s discretion

·         Include information on total enrollment, utilization, and capacity of school buildings within a particular grade level in a geographic district

·         Increase the minimum number of cluster rooms to two for elementary level schools with an enrollment at or below 250 students and conduct further analysis to determine a minimum for schools larger than 250 students

The DOE further agrees that the BBWG should continue to meet in order to monitor progress and make further recommendations as needed. The next Blue Book will be published later this summer or early fall.

The following recommendations require further study and analysis, which the DOE commits to undertake over the next year:

·         Change the formula for Special Education and English Language Learner space allocation based on the population of the targeted students

·         Require a minimum and maximum number of administrative spaces within a school.

·         Change the formula for specialty room allocations for grades 6-12 so there is a minimum of three for all schools

·         Transitioning the specialty room allocations for secondary level schools, grades 6-12 and 9-12, to a formula based model with minimum and maximum spaces allowed.

Our suggestions to the Blue Book working group; please write your own letter by November 26!

Please write your own letter to DOE's Blue Book working group about how to revise the much-criticized school utilization formula.  Their email is below and  the deadline for submitting comments is next Wednesday, November 26.  They plan to present their initial recommendations to the public in December.  Feel free to include any of the points below; most importantly please mention the need for the Blue Book to be aligned with smaller class sizes, or else NYC children will continue to suffer yet more overcrowding, more co-locations and larger classes in the years to come. 

To:  BlueBookWG@gmail.com 

November 19, 2014

Dear members of the Blue Book Task force:

Thank you for reaching out for suggestions on how to improve the school utilization formula. I urge you to reform the formula so that it takes into account of the following critical factors:

1. The need for smaller classes.  The formula should be aligned to smaller classes in all grades, with the goal of achieving the targets in the DOE’s Contract for Excellence plan of no more than 20 students per class in K-3, 23 students per class in grades 4-8, and 25 students per class in core high school classes.  Right now, the target figures in the utilization formula are much larger in grades 4-12 (28-30) and also larger than current class size averages in 4-12 grades, which are about 26.7-26.8.  They will thus tend to force class sizes upward.  In fact, there is a clause in the C4E law passed in 2007 that requires that NYC align its capital plan to smaller classes – which has yet to occur. 

2. The formula should include space for preK.  This year, there are more than 53,000 preK seats; with 20,000 more seats to be added next year.  According to news reports, 60% of the preK programs this year are in district school buildings.  Without an allowance in the Blue Book formula for preK, the city may be subtracting the space needed to reduce class size, or other critical space needed for a quality education, as noted below.  Our analysis revealed that there are at least 11,839 preK seats sited in buildings this year that were over 100% utilization last year, according to the 2013-2014 Blue Book.

3. The formula should include sufficient cluster and specialty rooms so that all children have the ability to take art, music, and science in appropriate sized classrooms. 

4. Subtract the number of specialty classrooms necessary for a well-rounded education in middle schools, for the purpose of calculating utilization rate, as was done in the 2002-3 formula.  Now, if a middle school specialty room or library is converted into a classroom because of overcrowding, the formula falsely portrays the school has having more space rather than less.

5. In order to maximize classroom occupancy (the current efficiency ratio assumes 90% in middle schools) ensure that teachers have an alternative space to do their prep work and store their papers.

6. Properly capture the need for dedicated rooms to provide services to struggling students and those with disabilities.  The formula now is inadequate and depends on an abstract figure, rather than the actual number of struggling students or students with disabilities enrolled in the school.

7.  Though students housed in trailers or TCUs are now assigned to the main building for the purposes of calculating the utilization rate, those students housed in temp buildings are not.  Neither are students in annexes or mini-schools, even though they often use common spaces in the main building, such as libraries, cafeterias and gyms.  According to our analysis, nearly half of schools with TCUs, annexes, transportables or temp buildings were wrongly reported as underutilized in earlier Blue Books.  The overcrowding caused by assigning all these additional students to shared spaces must be captured in the utilization figure. 

Reforming the Instructional Footprint

The instructional footprint must also be improved, as the DOE uses this highly flawed instrument to determine where there may be space for co-locations.  Here are some suggestions on how to do this:

1. Re-install class size targets into the Footprint.  There are no longer ANY class size targets in the Footprint, which will lead to continued class size increases unless this is remedied.  The original Footprint from 2008 assumed class sizes of 20 students per class in K-3 and 25 in grades 4-5, and none in any other grade.  In 2009, class size targets were raised to 28 in grades 4-5 and in 2011, all class size targets were eliminated except in the case of Alternative learning centers, transfer HS, full time GED programs and YABC programs. Why these changes were made, and why the DOE held that these were the only schools that should be provided with smaller classes was unexplained.  Instead the class size targets should be re-instituted and aligned with those in the Blue Book, as suggested above (i.e. class sizes of 20 in grades K-3, 23 in grades 4-8 and 25 in high school.)

2. Restore the definition of a full size classroom for grades 1-12 to at least 600 sq. ft.  In 2010, the Footprint reduced this to 500 square feet – even though in the building code requires 20 sq. feet per child in these grades; meaning only a maximum of 25 students could be in a minimum size room without risking their safety.  (For comparison, Georgia mandates at least 660-750 square feet for a minimum size classroom, Texas calls for 700- 800 square feet, and California at least 960 square feet or 30 sq. ft. per student.)

3. Special education students should be provided with even more space, according to the NYSED guidelines of 75 sq. feet per child.  Instead, the DOE Footprint specifies only 240-499 square feet for special education classrooms; if the city adhered to the state guidelines, this would allow for only three to seven students per class. 

4. Increase the number of cluster rooms which now are very minimal in the Footprint, especially for large high schools, calling for only two specialty rooms and one science lab, no matter how many students are enrolled in the school.

5. Ensure that the Footprint allows sufficient space for dedicated support services, resource rooms, administrative services, intervention rooms, and SETSS rooms.

I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have; more information about these issues is also available in our report, Space Crunch, available here: http://tinyurl.com/m632rg6

Yours,

Leonie Haimson

Executive Director

Class Size Matters

124 Waverly Pl.

New York, NY 10011

212-674-7320

leonie@classsizematters.org

www.classsizematters.org