Comments on the city's Contract for Excellence plan from CEC District 2

Dear Chancellor Walcott,

We, the Community Education Council District 2, submit this letter to register, yet again, our objections on the Contracts for Excellence Proposed Plan FY14. 

We remain firmly committed to the letter and the intent of the 2007-2008 Education Budget and Reform Act, arising out of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York litigation.   We believe reducing class sizes is one of the most effective ways to improve instruction.  Much has been said about the importance of the effectiveness of teachers but anyone who has spent any time teaching in the classroom knows even the most “effective” teacher teaches better in a smaller class.   Today with the Special Education Reform that places more students with special needs in the least restrictive environment (i.e., general education classes), making individualized instruction even more critical, smaller classes are the key to successful classrooms. 

We are therefore deeply concerned that not only have class sizes not been reduced as a result of the Contracts for Excellence plans of recent years, but the NYC Department of Education has seemingly abandoned efforts to reduce class sizes.

In District 2 despite several new elementary schools coming online in the past four years, many of our schools continue to have class sizes that are higher than the target class sizes of the City’s Class Size Reduction Plan.   More alarmingly the trend appears to be upward, due largely to the series of budget cuts.  It is a travesty that schools in District 2 now have the capacity to reduce class sizes at long last but are unable to do so for lack of resources.  It is also difficult to simply blame the sluggish economy for lack of resources when we see hundreds of millions of dollars going into private hands in the name of the Common Core Standards and associated assessment tools. 

We also object again to the continued blatant disregard by the Department of Education for the legally mandated process for developing the Contracts for Excellence plan.  While the timing of the “public hearing” was earlier than the last year, it was still held after the school budgets have been allocated with much of the funds obligated, rendering any public input meaningless as in the past. 

Principals must begin the school year with a budget.  Presumably the budget in September included Contracts for Excellence funds.  We do not understand why public comments were not solicited when budgets were in development. 

Furthermore despite the fact in June 2013 Judge Moulton found your department in violation of the law, the DOE continues to substitute presentations at CEC meetings for the required borough-wide hearings.  We have objected to this practice because our meetings often have multiple agenda items and presentations at our meetings are made by a Network representative, who is not directly involved in the development or the implementation of the Contract for Excellence plan.   We again urge the DOE to hold borough-wide hearings with someone from the central DOE offices with detailed in-depth knowledge of the Contracts for Excellence. 

The CECD2 has developed a collaborative process with the DOE through our zoning efforts in the past several years.  We have honest and frank dialogues and have developed mutual trust with the staff from the Office of Portfolio Development.  We would welcome a similar collaborative effort on this important program.  In a district where overcrowding and large class sizes have been a chronic problem, we can only make improvements to our schools through collaboration. 

We hope the public hearing process for the Contracts for Excellence will be a better one for the school year 2014-2015.

Send in your comments on the DOE's Contracts for Excellence plan by Friday 5 PM!

The deadline for comments on the NYC’s Contracts for Excellence plan (or non-plan) is this Friday, October 18 at 5:00 PM.   We have a sample letter you can use with plenty of bullet points about all the violations of law in the public process and deplorable results in terms of class size below; but the reality is that since the court made its decision in the CFE case that NYC children were deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education in large part because of excessive class sizes, class sizes have instead INCREASED each year in every grade in the city’s schools.

In grades K-3, class sizes are now the largest in 14 years, and the C4E plan that the city has submitted will do nothing to address this critical problem, which is the top priority of NYC parents according to the DOE's own surveys.  Please be sure to send in your comments before the deadline at 5 PM Friday to contractsforexcellence@schools.nyc.gov  and jking@mail.nysed.gov   
And feel free to adapt or change  in any way you'd like!
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Sample letter to send on DOE’s proposed 2013-2014 C4E plan

Please send by 5 PM, Friday Oct. 18, 2013!

To: contractsforexcellence@schools.nyc.gov 

cc: jking@mail.nysed.gov

I am a parent of a x grader at x school.  My child’s class size is x this year.  This is unacceptable to me, and it should be unacceptable to the NYC Department of Education and the NY State Education Department. 

In the CFE decision, the state’s highest court said that NYC children were unfairly denied their constitutional right to an adequate education, in large part because of excessive class sizes.  And yet since that decision, class sizes have increased each year.  This is contrary to the intent of the Contract for Excellence law passed in 2007 that mandated that NYC measurably reduce class size each year to attain specific annual targets and five-year goals.    To this day, DOE officials have refused to allocate a single penny of the more than $500 million they are awarded each year in state C4E funds towards reducing class size, in their targeted allocations to schools or district wide initiatives.

The DOE has refused to  hold borough hearings since 2008, as the law requires, and the state has set a timetable for public comment months after the C4E funds have already been allocated to schools and mostly spent, making a mockery of the public input and accountability procedures set out in the law.  The DOE also eliminated its early grade class size funding program, even though they promised to retain it as part of their original C4E plan.

This year’s “pre-approved” class size reduction plan requires only that in 75 schools out of more than 1500, class size should not increase more than half of the amount class sizes increase citywide. By no definition and by no reasonable standard does this constitute a class size reduction plan, and by no means will it lead to “measurable progress” in lowering class size.  Moreover, even in these 75 schools, DOE has given them no support or extra resources to lower class size; many of them are already being phased out, and others have other schools co-located in their buildings, which will deprive them of the space needed to reduce class size.

Class size reduction one of only four reforms cited by the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the US Department of Education, as proven to work through rigorous evidence.  The benefits are especially large for disadvantaged & minority students. Eighty six percent of NYC principals say cannot provide a quality education because of excessive class sizes, and smaller classes have been the top priority of parents on DOE’s learning environment surveys every year.

I urge you to listen to parents, school administrators, and research,  and also heed the law, by amending the city’s plan so that it includes “measurable progress” in class size reduction citywide, so that someday soon, NYC students may receive  their right to an adequate education.

Yours, 

Name, school, district