Lawsuit filed by UFT to block Mayor's budget cuts to education

Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed by the UFT, stating that the Mayor's proposed cuts to education violate two state laws -  the Contracts for Excellence law, which specifically says additional state funds awarded under the program must be "used to supplement, and not supplant funds allocated by the district." And yet these cuts have been imposed despite the DOE receiving an additional $500 million this year in C4E funds - the third phase in of more than $1.3 billion over the last three years, meant to be invested in improving  classroom conditions including lowering class sizes. Instead, class sizes have increased the last two years. Class Size Matters and AQE cited this issue in our letter to the State, pointing out this supplanting and urging them to require DOE to come up with a corrective action plan on class size. 

The other state law these cuts appear to violate is Education Law § 2576, which mandates that the city cannot cut spending on K12 education compared to the prior year, unless the city has suffered an overall decline in revenue, which has not occurred.  In  fact, the city anticipates an even higher surplus this year than last. 

The UFT press release is below, along with two charts shown at the press conference. The first is self-explanatory, but the second chart entitled "Education City Funds as Percentage of Overall City Budget Funds" is a bit confusing.  I was told by a UFT staffer that this chart shows how NYC spending on education has declined as a percentage of its overall spending on all city agencies.  Newsclips about the lawsuit at Chalkbeat, Daily News, NY Post, NBC News and elsewhere.

Teachers Sue to Halt Adams Budget Cuts to Education

 

The United Federation of Teachers, joined by individual teachers, today filed suit in Manhattan State Supreme Court to stop the Adams administration from cutting as much as $2 billion from city schools.

 

The lawsuit charges that as the state increased education funding to the city's public schools, New York City illegal reduced its contribution to education.

These cuts came, according to the lawsuit, "at a time when the City collected nearly $8 billion more in revenue last fiscal year than was anticipated, and when the City’s reserves of over $8 billion are at a new record high.”

 

In November the Adams administration announced cuts of nearly $550 million in the current fiscal year and plans for further reductions that could amount to $2 billion.  The cuts announced in November have already affected the universal pre-K initiative, current after-school and planned summer school programs, along with computer science instruction, special education, and other services.    

 

The legal filing says that the administration's claim that dealing with asylum seekers sill cost $11 billion over the next two years is "an unverified estimate."  That cost estimate has been challenged by lower projections from both the city's Independent Budget Office and the City Comptroller.

 

Describing the administration’s statements of a fiscal crisis resulting from the asylum seekers as “a false narrative,” the lawsuit says “the law does not permit school funding to be used as a political bargaining chip; and cutting essential services to the City’s schools is not a substitute for the mayoral leadership and advocacy on behalf of New Yorkers needed to obtain federal and state support."

 

UFT President Michael Mulgrew said, “The administration can’t go around touting the tourism recovery and the return of the city’s pre-pandemic jobs, and then create a fiscal crisis and cut education because of its own mismanagement of the asylum seeker problem.  Our schools and our families deserve better.”

 

The lawsuit cites two provisions of state law:  a requirement known as “maintenance of effort” that is part of Albany’s mayoral control legislation for New York City schools; and provisions of the state’s “Contract for Excellence” program.

 

According to the lawsuit, the maintenance of effort provision “prohibits the City from reducing spending in its schools from the level provided in the preceding year unless overall City revenues decline.”

 

The city’s contribution to the education budget for fiscal year 2023 was $14.5 billion, while the adopted budget for fiscal year 2024 was reduced to $14.1 billion. By January, further cuts under the Mayor’s plan will reduce the city’s contribution in FY2024 to $13.9 billion. City revenues – not counting state and federal aid -- grew $5 billion last year.

 

Under the state’s Contract for Excellence, local school districts must use new state funds to supplement local spending for education, but not to replace local efforts.  The lawsuit claims that the administration’s budget cuts will mean that state funds will end up supporting city education programs, in effect supplanting with state funds the programs that the city has refused to pay for.

 

According to the lawsuit, the cuts also undermine students’ rights to “a sound basic education” as provided for under New York State’s constitution. 

 

The lawsuit asks the court to find that the Mayor’s recent and planned budget cuts violate the New York State Constitution and state law and order the administration to restore education funding to the $14.5 billion amount that the city appropriated in fiscal year 2023.

 

A copy of the lawsuit is available here: https://files.uft.org/mulgrew-v-cityofny.pdf

 

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Please volunteer to provide comments at the upcoming hearings on DOE's nothing burger class size plan!

On Friday, DOE posted what is purported to be their draft five- year class size reduction plan, in accordance with the new state law.  As I was quoted in the Daily News, “It’s a big nothing burger.  There is no plan. They’re hoping just to coast on enrollment decline until it’s too late to do anything real.”

There is nothing in the plan about providing more space or staffing to lower class size, or capping enrollment at very overcrowded schools.  There is nothing about creating space by using more creative strategies, e.g. by possibly moving more PreK seats out of elementary schools to CBOs which have thousands of empty seats. There is nothing at all about how the benchmarks will be achieved in the out years, especially given how DOE intends to continue cutting school budgets and has proposed to slash the capital plan by $2.3 billion and 22,000 seats.  In fact, there is not a single mention in the proposed Feb. amendment to the capital plan, released six months after the Governor signed the class size bill into law, that even mentions the mandate to lower class size.

Class Size Matters is looking for volunteers to testify at the borough and Community Education Council hearings, scheduled for the month of June. The final adopted class size plan is supposed to be revised based on public input at these hearings, and then submitted to the state in compliance with the new state class size law. An FAQ on the law and what it requires is here. The DOE's draft "plan" is posted here.

We will provide talking points to volunteers along with district- and/or borough-specific data that they are free to draw upon for their comments.Hearings will be online via ZOOM at 6:00pm EST, with registration starting at 5 pm. The registration and Zoom links for these hearings will be posted on the DOE page here.

Please enter your information below.You can also subscribe to the Class Size Matters newsletter for updates here.  Thanks!

Class Size Matters testimony on the city's refusal to use any of the billions of dollars of additional state and federal funds where they're needed the most

Update: A video of my testimony is posted above, along with responses by the Senate Education chair Shelley Mayer and Sen. Robert Jackson.  You can check out the testimony of other witnesses here.  The legislation introduced by Sen. Jackson and AM Jo Anne Simon that would restart the clock on NYC's obligation to lower class size is here; please ask your legislators to sign on if they haven't already. If you listen to the end, we also touch on the issue of Mayoral control.

Tomorrow, Oct. 5, 2021, State Senate Standing Education Committee and the State Senate Standing Committee on NYC Education will hold joint hearings on the city's use of the additional state and federal education funds at 250 Broadway downtown. More about these hearings here. On the same page, the hearings will be live streamed starting at 10 AM. 

Class Size Matters will give testimony about the deficiencies in NYC's plans for these funds, as below. 

My comments last night on the sham C4E process and proposed "plan", and what Lindsey Oates of DOE said in response

 Below are the comments I delivered last night at the last of the DOE's Contracts for Excellence  borough hearings  in Manhattan. There were only about 15 people there,  and the only two people to provide comments were Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, the President of the Community Education Council for District 4, and me.  

Lindsey Oates, the DOE finance director who delivered the powerpoint presentation of the DOE's proposed plan, said the turnout was the highest at any of the borough hearings, which is not surprising, because as Kaliris pointed out, none of the CECs received any notification of these hearings, and the only way she found out about them was through the Class Size Matters newsletter.  

DOE didn't bother to inform any elected officials or parent or community groups either as far I as I know, which violates the intent of the C4E law which says the district's final adopted plan for these funds is supposed to be developed in conjunction with public input.  

Lindsey said CEC hearings would be held later, but as I pointed out, every year they hold those hearings in the fall or winter, too late to have any impact on their plan, since the money has long been spent.  

I also said that the law and regulations were written to try to ensure that the DOE would notify the public in advance, hold timely hearings where they would actual listened to parent input, post an assessment of the public comments as well as the "district's response to each substantive comment, including a statement of any changes made to the contract for excellence as a result of such comment, or an explanation of why the comment's suggestions were not incorporated into the contract for excellence." 

Yet the DOE has NEVER listened to parents or the public since the C4E law was passed in 2007; nor have they ever revised their proposal according to their suggestions.  It been many years since they even posted a summary of public comments and/or explained why they accepted or rejected them, as the regs require.  Lindsey did not dispute any of these points.  

I also asked Lindsey why the DOE claims in their plan that there are no more C4E funds than in FY 2010 (on another page they say FY 2012), given the fact that our schools are receiving $530 million  in additional state Foundation Aid in fulfillment of the CFE lawsuit.  The C4E law was passed to ensure that these funds went towards addressing the specific deficiencies outlined in the case, including excessive class sizes.

Lindsey said the amount had not changed because this is under the control of the State Education Department, who had not told them they had to increase the C4E funds, and  that the NYSED C4E website had not been updated in many years.  (This point about the website is true, as we along with AQE and the Ed Law Center pointed out in a memo to the Commissioner Rosa and Regents Chancellor Young last week.) 

I asked Lindsey specifically if NYSED were to tell DOE to increase the C4E amounts, would DOE comply?  She said yes. 

Finally, I asked Lindsey to explain the DOE's claim, as expressed on p. 4 of their C4E proposal, that while they acknowledge the law specifically prohibits supplanting, the state has "provided guidance" saying  these funds can be spent to replace funds cut by DOE, which seems absurd on the face of it, since that is the definition of supplanting:

  

I asked Lindsey if she had a different definition of supplanting, and she said she agreed with my definition. I then asked her if she would send me the SED guidance on this, and she said yes.  I emailed her today asking for this, and I'll let you know if I hear back.

In her comments, Kaliris also pointed out that principals are told that if they hire additional staff to lower class size with the C4E funds, they have to carry the fringe and benefit costs on their school budgets.  These amounts can cost up to 40% of the teachers' salaries.  This burden is unlike the process of all other teachers schools may hire, in which DOE covers the fringe cost centrally.  Yet another poison pill meant to discourage principals to lower class size, even if they would wanted to and had the space.

Meanwhile, if you want to send your own comments, please do so in the next week or so, to contractsforexcellence@schools.nyc.gov. (The DOE website says the deadline for comments is Sept. 3, but we have asked SED to make this date sooner, or else the final plan will  be submitted to the State after the funds have already been spent, making the process even more of an obvious sham than it already is.)   Feel free to copy any of the points below or add your own.  Thanks!

August 5, 2021 

Comments on the DOE's failure to do right by NYC children in their C4E proposed "plan"

 

Hello. my name is Leonie Haimson, I’m the Executive Director of Class Size Matters.

First of all, I have to question DOE’s failure to allocate a single penny to class size reduction in this proposed plan, even though In 2003, the State’s highest court in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case said that class sizes in our schools were a systemic problem that robbed NYC students of their constitutional right to a sound, basic education.  And  yet class sizes in our schools have increased since then, especially in the early grades. Why is the DOE refusing to follow through on the court’s decision, by declining to allocate a single penny of these funds in a targeted manner towards lowering class size?

 Of the $530 million in the proposal, nearly $100M will be spent on putting extra teachers in the classroom, which as any teacher or parent will tell you, does not yield the same proven benefits as smaller classes.  As Amanda Vender a Queens ESL teacher wrote,  putting an extra teacher in a class “ is not a good use of our professionals’ time” and “ students’ ability to focus in a classroom of 30 students is much less than compared to a classroom of 15 or 20 students.”

I also question why the DOE claims that are no more C4E funds, given that NYC schools are due to receive $530 million in additional state foundation aid from the state, increasing to $1.3 billion annually over next three years, to fulfill of the goals of the CFE lawsuit. 

Why does DOE say that principals can use these funds to maintain or limit class size increases?  Of the funds that principals can use at their discretion, DOE claims that they can be spent to  maintain or minimize class size increases, which is not the same as lowering class size.  Maintaining or minimizing increases in class size would not  provide any progress towards the smaller classes that NYC students need and deserve, according to the state’s highest court. 

Why does DOE say these funds can be used to supplant or fill in for holes created by the city’s budget cuts, when SUPPLANTING IS SPECIFICALLY PROHIBITED IN THE C4E LAW.  Again, it would make no sense to allow state funds to be used where the city itself has cut back, which would also mean no progress or improvement in terms of providing equitable learning conditions for NYC students.  

 

Of course, all these repeated and rampant failures of DOE are especially unacceptable, given how  smaller classes will be more important next fall,  more than ever, to help with social distancing and to strengthen the  academic support that students will need to make up for a year and half of disruptions and remote learning.  

 

The DOE recently claimed to the UFT that all but 50 schools can achieve social distancing, though no one believes them.  In general, of course, smaller classes lead to better outcomes for all kids – especially those who need help the most.  That’s why class  size reduction is one of only a handful of reforms proven to provide real equity by narrowing the achievement/opportunity gap between racial and economic groups. Smaller classes have also been shown to result in higher test scores, better grades, more engaged students, and fewer disciplinary referrals.  

 

My final question is, Why does DOE insist on ignoring the input of parents and teachers on this issue?  Every year the DOE’s school surveys have been administered, smaller classes have been the top priority of K12 parents when asked what changes they would like to see in their children’s education. According to a UFT teacher survey, 99% NYC teachers responded that class size reduction would be an effective reform to improve NYC schools, far outstripping any other proposal.  And yet year after year, the DOE refuses to do the one thing that we know for sure would lead to improve outcomes in our schools, even when provided an additional $8B in state and federal funds over the next 3 years.  

 

It's a crying shame, and it speaks volumes about the DOE’s profound failure to do what’s right by NYC children.