Another day, another reorganization; meanwhile more ARIS delays.

All the previous reorganizations (how many have their been? four? Five? Who can count them?) have caused nothing but chaos, confusion, and a massive waste of money. Each of them was supposed to cut the bureaucracy.

Yet somehow, the headcount (and salaries) at Tweed continue to grow, year after year.

Now, there’s yet another reorganization on the way .... but when Elizabeth Green reported this story about the latest reorganization (oh, I meant “reshuffling”) in the morning, she filed again in the afternoon, after Eric Nadelstern, the new "Chief School Officer" called back, to try to reorganize the spin on the reorganization.

If Nadelstern and all the other bumblers at Tweed really believe their own PR about giving principals the choice so they can be the CEO’s of their own buildings, they should privatize Tweed, set it up as a consulting company, and see if any of these CEOs would bother to hire them. I doubt they would – even those zombies trained at the Leadership Academy.

I was at a CPAC meeting this morning, and guess when Santi Taveras said that the vaunted $80 million supercomputer ARIS and its data would be accessible to parents? Not until May. How many months has this been delayed?

Here is an excerpt from the Oct. 24 NY Times:

James S. Liebman, the Education Department’s chief accountability officer, said on Thursday that the project was “proceeding in an appropriate manner” and “in the way we anticipated.” He said that parents would begin gaining access to the system in December, and noted that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in his State of the City speech in January, said that ARIS would be online by the fall, not September specifically.

Well, no way you can redefine May as in the fall. Except perhaps in Australia, which perhaps is the last place in the world that Joel Klein is still popular.

About the only reorganization led by Tweed that would really improve the situation is if they reorganized themselves out of existence.

Does DOE have plans to cut services for visually and hearing impaired children?

This entry was written by a parent familiar with the concerns of visually impaired students and their families:

NYC Public School Parents has learned that the Department of Education has floated a plan to eliminate the Educational Vision Services (EVS) and Hearing Education Services (HES) offices in District 75, which oversees special education programs in our schools. Currently, 1,000 children with visual impairments and 3,000 children with hearing impairments are being served by the these offices. Last week, the head of Educational Vision Services was informed by District 75 and the Chancellor's Office that EVS would be closing and that the principals of schools would take over the supervision of the special instructors for these children. When parents started protesting, the reorganization was temporarily put on hold, but not cancelled.

Such a dismantling would likely have a devastating impact on the students in the system with visual and hearing impairments. Children who are blind or visually impaired need all kinds of special services that others don’t —for example, to learn braille, to be provided with books in braille or large print, and to learn travel skills, like walking with a cane. Many of these children are fully functioning intellectually, but need these services to be able to learn. They need special equipment as well. Regular special ed teachers don't teach these skills, teachers who specialize in working with visually impaired students do. Similarly, hearing impaired students need teachers who can teach sign language, as well as interpreters and other special services. This latest "reorganization" has the potential to completely disrupt those services.

Principals of individual schools are not equipped to supervise or support these specialized staff. In fact, these teachers usually work with students at several schools. The offices threatened with closure have the expertise to ensure that students with these disabilities get the help they need and that their teachers (and schools) receive the support and oversight necessary to make sure they do. If the responsibility to provide these very specialized services are dumped on the principals' shoulders, along with all their other new duties, how can they possibly be expected to manage?

Since the DOE's plans for special education have not been fully disclosed, it's difficult to guess what kind of structure they might have in mind once EVS and HES were closed, and what other current supports might also be slated for elimination. Only one thing is for sure: As usual, no one actually working with these students was consulted about these changes, least of all their parents.

Parents of visually and hearing impaired students are up in arms and plan to attend the meeting of the Citywide Council on Special Education tomorrow night, Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 6:30pm at Tweed to demand some answers. Stay tuned.

More from Klein on "unleashing" greatness

In the same NY Post interview in which the Chancellor recently made his controversial comments about the need for "rigorous standards" for 3, 4 and 5 year olds, he made a number of other revealing statements, including proposing that 10^th graders should be tested and steered either to vocational programs or academic classes where they can be prepared for college:

“Klein also sees a future with kids "testing out" in 10th grade and either proceeding to two more years of high school and then college, or a vocational school, depending on their grades and ambitions.”

This was one of the major recommendations of a task force report that Klein sat on earlier in the year – created by Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy. Tucker is a real educational entrepreneur and serial enabler of many of the worst ideas in education – including the adoption of high stakes testing in states.

Tucker has been quite influential, despite the fact that according to his bio in Wikipedia, his only degrees are in philosophy and American literature, with a Masters in Telecommunications Policy and classes in “theater engineering." The report that Tucker released was called “Tough Choices or Tough Times” and you can read the exec. Summary here: (in pdf) The report provoked much criticism and even ridicule when it was released earlier this year – including the notion that all public schools nationwide should be privatized and operated by “independent contractors” -- or organizations like his.

Yet another notion Klein mentions in the NY Post interview is that “"You can't mandate greatness, you can only unleash it. But you can mandate adequacy."

Klein's view that one can only "unleash" greatness underlies DOE”s latest phase of reorganization – a radically decentralized system of schools run by principals with little central oversight or direction. See the recent postings of Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf in EduWonk – in which Cerf argues by giving principals broad powers, so much individual creativity will be released that the overall system will thrive :

”Only by empowering schools with broad decision-making authority within the context of real accountability for results can we stimulate innovation and maximize the creative powers of our committed educators. Only then, can we move school systems to the next level.”

Why the disconnected decisions of 1500 principals, many of whom are severely constrained by overcrowding, an incoherent organizational structure, and a system of accountability that doesn’t take into account their schools’ differential conditions, will lead to greatness is hard to understand. It is certainly not based upon research or the experience any district in the country. Instead, I fear that it will lead to even more inequality of opportunity for our neediest students -- as is happening right now in New Orleans.

Why? Next year, when all NYC schools will be graded A to F, based almost entirely on test scores, and principals will risk losing their jobs based on these grades, the incentives will increase to restrict admission to the most high-achieving students, and to get rid of all the most troublesome, low-achieving students as soon as possible, whether by forcing them to transfer to other schools, discharging them to GED programs, or giving them long-term suspensions.

Though the trend in these outcomes is hard to determine, given DOE’s lack of transparency, there is compelling evidence that both long-term suspensions and discharges have risen significantly under this administration. There is also very good chance that these trends will now accelerate– because oversight will be almost non-existent, and the new system doesn’t measure any of these factors in evaluating schools. Indeed, the Accountability office continues to deny that these problems even exist.

Finally, there are Klein’s concluding words in the Post interview:

"You can't make significant change . . . without there being a certain amount of resistance and pushback," he said. "There are lots of people who are not resistant [to change], but I simply didn't communicate effectively about what [the change] was. They didn't fully understand. They felt things were moving" and they weren't part of it."

What do people think -- was the overwhelming opposition of parents and teachers due to their not "understanding" what the changes were – or more the result of dissatisfaction with the changes themselves and the autocratic manner in which they were imposed?

In each phase of the reorganization, the views and opinions of educators and parents were discounted and ignored, and faddish notions of how to improve our schools substituted in their place. This is still happening, as evidenced by Klein's remarks in this interview. Certainly, those leading the charge at Tweed could have done a far better job communicating their decisions ahead of time – but it may be that they chose not to do this, knowing this would give stakeholders more time to analyze their proposals, evaluate them fairly, and then mobilize resistance.

"School's out"; great examination of the Bloomberg education record

Lynnell Hancock has written a terrific piece for the Nation laying out the way in which this administration has autocratically ignored the views of parents and other stakeholders in our public schools, leading to the failures of the small schools initiative, the bus route fiasco, the obsession with testing, the lack of financial accountability and more.

It is the most comprehensive look yet at Bloomberg's education record. The article is called "School's Out"; but it's only available to subscribers. It was also radically shortened for publication.

Thankfully, Lynnell has sent us the original unedited version -- which we've posted here. It is well worth reading.

An excerpt:

Another parent shut out from the meeting that night had waited outside the Hostos Annex for a chance to ask the exiting chancellor a question. The mother emigrated from Mexico more than a dozen years earlier. She had come so her kids could get a decent education. "But there are 32 kids in my son's classroom," said Esperanza Vasquez. She never got a chance to ask Klein about the overcrowding. He left the Bronx that evening in a hurry, without giving an email address.

2008 Budgets Released

School budgets have been published and can be viewed online. Click here for the DoE site, then page down to click on "Your School's Budget".

Now that they know how much money they get, principals have only a week to decide which School Support Organization (SSO) to choose. For our updated post on the SSOs, click here.

A Closer Look at the Bloomberg Record

In this week's Weekly Standard, Michael Goodwin, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and Fred Siegel, professor of history and Cooper Union, take a scathing look at Michael Bloomberg's record of accomplishment as mayor. Bloomberg has long enjoyed favorable press coverage from the NY Times but with more rumors of his presidential run, expect some long overdue scrutiny from the national press.

Click here for the full article. An excerpt covering Bloomberg's education record follows:

"Manager Mike," the first mayor to also be the city's wealthiest man, put education at the center of his 2001 run for mayor. Beginning with his first campaign speech, he pledged "to do for education what Giuliani did for public safety." He invited people to judge him on the issue and said he wanted to be the "education mayor." Based in part on that promise of accountability, Bloomberg was given unprecedented mayoral control of the schools, which had been in the hands of a fractious and unaccountable Board of Education.

He has done a marvelous job of selling himself as a model school reformer to the New York press, to the New York elites, and to mayors across the country. Mayors Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and Adrian Fenty of Washington, D.C., have spoken of Bloomberg as their model, "the standard-bearer for educational reform."

But the "reformed" school system led by Bloomberg's chancellor, Joel Klein, a former high-ranking Justice Department lawyer, has been more notable for administrative upheaval and noncompetitive contracts than higher test scores. Over the last five years--despite $4 billion in additional spending (the annual operating budget for education is now more than $16 billion and the city has a five-year, $10 billion education capital budget) and three harrowing reorganizations of the original "reform"--student performance has been basically flat. Reading scores in many elementary schools are up, but math scores in middle schools have declined. Graduation rates have inched up, but still barely 50 percent graduate in four years.

Bloomberg and Klein have lurched from their initial strong central control of the schools to a recent attempt at decentralization, both of which have sown confusion. Things began badly when they instituted a "progressive" education curriculum that had failed everywhere it was tried. More recently there has been a school bus fiasco: Roughly 7,000 students were left stranded in the dead of winter when a new routing plan imposed by an expensive consulting firm with a no-bid contract proved unworkable. Blasted by parents and critics, Bloomberg denounced them as know-nothings "who have no experience in doing anything." The parents, he snapped, just need to call 311, the all-purpose gripe-and-information line he established.

Tim Johnson On Latest Bloomberg Schools Reorganization

Tim Johnson, Chairman of the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council, speaks at the 31 IDEAL Ed symposium April 31st on Staten Island.

Queens Chronicle: "Parents Assail Mayor for Lack of Inclusion, Again"

The Queens Chronicle has a good article covering the parents perspective on the deal cut last week by Mayor Bloomberg to advance his latest schools reorganization.

While the mayor and city teachers union celebrated several hard-won compromises on school budgeting last week, Queens parents were bemoaning what, for them, has become a bitterly familiar situation by now: not having a seat at the bargaining table...

Parent leaders David Quintana (CPAC for District 27) and Marge Kolb (District 24 CEC) are quoted.

Click here to read more.

Mayor Bloomberg and UFT Reach Agreement on Schools Reorganization

Here are some highlights of the agreement announced at the press conference on Friday.

No Budget Cuts For Two Years

The Chancellor and DoE staffers responsible for the Fair Student Funding proposal have argued that many schools receive too much funding. Fair Student Funding would have cut some budgets while raising others. Despite record city surpluses, DoE was intent on taking these budget actions that many feared would destabilize successful schools -- as Deputy Chancellor Grimm told parents at a District 2 CEC public meeting, "there will be winners and losers". Under last week's agreement, the Mayor guaranteed that no school will have its budget cut in the next two years. For the many schools who would have seen large cuts, this retreat on the part of the administration is important.

Joint Planning for Class Size Reduction

New state law requires the Bloomberg administration to develop a five year plan to reduce class sizes in all grades. Under the agreement, the administration pledged to "work with the UFT, and other stakeholders, such as New Yorkers for Smaller Classes to develop a joint set of recommendations on how best to implement the law". Given the administration's past refusal to reduce class size or to engage anyone on this issue, their statement that they will proceed in cooperation with others represents a change in their public stance and may lead to progress. New Yorkers for Smaller Classes is a coalition chaired by Lillian Rodriguez-Lopez of the Hispanic Federation and includes the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), Class Size Matters, the NAACP, CPAC, ACORN, as well as many other parent and advocacy groups.

Increased Funding for English Language Learners (ELL)

The weighting for ELL students will increase compared to the original Fair Student Funding proposal, resulting in more funding for each student. A reserve fund will be established to ensure sufficient money is available should the new funding methodology leave gaps as it is implemented.

Parent Engagement

The agreement calls for a committee chaired by the DoE's Chief Family Engagement Officer and comprised of parent groups, to "design improved systems and processes for parent engagement, and specifically, to ensure that every school has a well functioning and well trained School Leadership Team".

Commitment to Engage on Issues

On several other issues -- middle school reform, teacher tenure and student success centers -- the administration pledged to work closely with various relevant advocacy and parent groups, as well as other stakeholders, including the City Council, going forward.


For parents, the agreement is a bit of a mixed bag. There are significant concessions and a welcome willingness on the part of the administration to take input from a wider group of stakeholders. These openings need to be pursued in good faith. At the same time, none of the elected parent organizations mandated by state and city regulations to represent parents were mentioned in the discussion of issues that are tremendously important to parents. The citywide elected parent organizations -- Chancellors Parent Advisory Committee (CPAC), Citywide Council on High Schools (CCHS) and Citywide Council on Special Education (CCSE) -- were clearly not parties to the agreement, nor were the Community Education Councils that represent parents in each of the 32 school districts. Many of these bodies have passed resolutions that address important issues not included in the agreement, for example excessive testing, the poor state of special ed services, the reckless pace of the incessant restructurings, etc. There is clearly much more that needs to be done.

The press release detailing the agreement can be found here.

A Deal On School Reorganization Is Made: UPDATE

UPDATE: In accord with the comment of NYC Educator (below) Mayor Bloomberg, the UFT and some unidentified parents announced a deal Thursday according the Erin Einhorn writing in Friday's New York Daily News. See also a much fuller article from the New York Times's David M Herszenhorn . The city hall press release is here

The contents of the deal are unclear to me from the articles. While Mayor Bloomberg now appears to promise that no school will lose money, the content of that promise may be empty. It seems to me -- that a key element of the Bloomberg-Klein reorganization -- that funding follow each child, is left in place. If so, as I see it, staffing at school will become somewhat more unstable as principals will have a budget motive to shed senior teachers. I am somewhat alarmed at the apparent exclusion of CPAC from the bargaining. What is the story here?

Thursday's New York Daily News is reporting a bargaining session between the Department of Education on the one hand and the United Federation of Teachers and parents on the other. The link is here. Does anyone know more about this?

Update: NY1 coverage of the joint press conference here.

Update on Parent Opposition to Bloomberg's Schools Restructuring

Earlier, we posted resolutions against the latest Department of Education restructuring issued by Community Education Council in District 1 and the Citywide Council of High Schools. These bodies, elected by parents and mandated under NY state law and Department of Education regulations to represent parents, felt strongly enough to issue formal statements itemizing their objections to the restructuring and how the critical needs of their schools are being ignored by Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein.

Recently, more CECs (community school boards) and Presidents Councils (comprised of PTA presidents) have passed resolutions of opposition. Below is an updated list with links to resolutions where available:

District 1 Community Education Council (Manhattan) click here
District 1 Presidents Council (Manhattan)
District 2 Community Education Council (Manhattan) click here
District 2 Presidents Council (Manhattan)
District 3 Presidents Council (Manhattan)
District 4 Presidents Council (Manhattan)
District 6 Community Education Council (Manhattan)
District 24 Community Education Council (Queens) click here
District 26 Community Education Council (Queens) click here
District 27 Presidents Council (Queens)
District 30 Community Education Council (Queens) click here
District 30 Presidents Council (Queens) - the first to act
Region 6 HS Presidents Council (Brooklyn)

These bodies represent parents across the city:

Citywide Council on Special Education click here
Citywide Council on High Schools click here
Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council click here

Many PTAs have also passed resolutions, including those at PS 3, PS 41 here, PS 116, PS 150, PS 290, Clinton Middle School, School of the Future (D2), PS 166 (D3), Middle School 210 (D27), and the following high schools: Manhattan Center for Science and Math, Stuyvesant, James Madison and Port Richmond.

If parents know of other PTAs, CECs or parent groups that have passed resolutions or are considering them, please leave a comment below or send us an email.

Send a Message to The Mayor and Chancellor!

Let the Mayor and Chancellor know how you feel. Tell them to stop the constant restructuring. Add your signature and comments to the Class Size Matters / Put the Public Back in Public Education Coalition petition. Here are the key points:

Enough is enough! Listen to parents. These are our demands:

• Provide smaller classes and a better capital plan to eliminate overcrowding.

• Restore arts funding and reduce testing.

• Include real input from parents and other stakeholders at the school level and system-wide before important decisions are made.

• Invest more resources in our children and the classroom, and waste less on expensive bureaucrats, consultants and no-bid contracts at Tweed.

• Stop the privatization and outsourcing of critical education services.

• Finally, no budget cuts to any school. Every one of our public schools is under-funded. With more than $1 billion in additional education spending and record city surpluses, there is no reason for any school to have its funding cut next year.

Click here to read the full text and sign the petition. It only takes a few seconds. And don't forget to forward to a friend.

How one organization felt, after being asked to sign onto the letter of support

Below is an email from an intermediary organization that receives funding from DOE, sent to principals and teaching mentors, after being asked to sign onto the letter of support that Mayor Bloomberg released on Monday.

The letter was signed by 100 individuals, representing groups ranging from small afterschool programs to the Museum of Modern Art – most of which are financially dependent on the good graces of the city. The DOE email which follows calls the signers "the Department's partners and friends."

It is interesting that this particular organization, whose name is removed, asked for input from principals as to whether they believed that their schools and/or network might be punished if they did not sign on – and specifically requested feedback by phone or from a non-DOE email account, as though worried that Tweed might actually monitor their communications.

It would be interesting to know if officials at Tweed spy on people’s emails.

Take note that the actual pros and cons of the proposals were never mentioned – no less whether these changes might really be in the interests of “the people who matter most: Our children” as the DOE letter claims.

Here is more evidence of the way in which the bullying tactics of the administration are viewed by educators on the ground. So much for the supposedly independent groundswell of support.

Also, interestingly, a reference is made to the fact that an earlier version of this letter criticized the elected officials and the UFT who opposed these radical proposals – which was apparently removed after negative reaction.

Dear principals and mentors,

We received this letter on Tuesday asking for [our group] to sign on. So far, we were told by one intermediary (who is NOT signing) that there was an earlier version which explicitly criticized politicians and the teachers union and that after pushback, it was revised to this version.

We are asking for your input….(phone or non-doe email is best)…

What cost and/or benefit to your school (and our network of schools) do you foresee if we do or do NOT sign this letter?

We are also reaching out to other intermediaries to gauge their response.

Thanks.

[name removed]

---

From: Marcus Debbie [mailto:DMarcus6@schools.nyc.gov]

Hi xxxxxx-

Below is a public letter than many of the Department's partners and friends are signing. We have a long list of signatories already. Would you consider signing on to this public letter of support on behalf of xxxxxx [your group]? It would be great to have you.

Thanks,Debbie

Debbie Marcus
Associate Director of External Relations
Office of New Schools
http://schools.nyc.gov/newschools
(212) 374-6929
dmarcus6@schools.nyc.gov

Dear New Yorkers,

Until Mayor Bloomberg took charge of the city's schools, student performance had been all but stagnant for decades. Now, because of the first phase of the Children First school reforms the Mayor and the Chancellor have enacted, New York City's students are making real progress. Thousands more students are graduating and the New York City graduation rate is higher than it's been in more than 20 years.

Students' progress in reading and math is now outpacing gains in the rest of New York State.
But our schools are still not serving all New York City children as they must.

For the sake of our children, we need to act. And we need to act now. If we don't take the smart next steps the Bloomberg administration has outlined, we risk failing the children of New York City. That's a price that we are not willing to pay.

The reforms make sense. Schools need the authority and the resources to build the right educational program for every child, and to ensure that they're getting the job done, they must be held accountable for their students' academic success in all subject areas from math and reading to the arts and science. Schools also must be funded fairly.

Our students and their families, indeed all New Yorkers, deserve the kind of schools and the kind of school system that our Mayor and our Chancellor are creating. We can't put special interests ahead of the interests of children. This Mayor has it right-we need to put our students' interests first. We urge all New Yorkers to join together to support these reform efforts. These reforms have real promise and will make schools better for the people who matter most: Our children.

Sincerely,

Parent Leader Dorothy Giglio Responds to the Mayor's Tirade

At his April 9th press conference, Mayor Bloomberg again lashed out at opponents of his latest schools restructuring. Dorothy Giglio has been an involved parent for almost twenty years and was elected by parents to lead the Region 6 High School Presidents Council. Here is her response to the Mayor's latest tirade:

I don't even know how to react to this latest slap in the face. I am amazed that I am suddenly a "special interest group". Well I am a parent who has an interest in seeing that the children get what they need and deserve and that parents have a voice in the process, so I guess that is a special interest.

It astounds me that after the Mayor and Chancellor took their dog and pony show all over town trying to drum up support for this new plan and received only concerns and jeers, from parents, teachers and community people that they would pull this blatant attempt and making it appear that support is there when it isn't. If I heard from one person that they thought this was a good idea, I might be willing to rethink my position. If I heard from one parent over the last five years that thought the first reorganization was good for their children or for them, I might rethink my position, but the opposite is exactly what I have heard, over and over again.

I have even spoken to teachers and administrators (who for fear of repercussions will not speak out) that the first reorganization was bad enough, but this one would be a disaster. An end to the system. To the people who lined up behind the Mayor, for what ever their "special" reason. Shame. They are pandering in order to gain jobs, or contributions or just because they consider him a friend.

Well as a parent, and a volunteer for over 20 years, I have seen plans come and go, and I will certainly admit that we did need some changes five years ago, but not what we got. There were inequities that had to be corrected in many areas, but what we wanted was a quality education for each child. We are still not getting that, instead we got a giant overpriced bureaucracy. Now they want to make it worse and keep attacking us because we want a voice. A real voice, not an hour of speechmaking and telling us how we are wrong.

I am asking every parent member in my Presidents Council to call their representatives today and tell them that they expect them to stand up for our parents and children in this latest insult and tell the Mayor he cannot buy or bully his way when it comes to our children.

Tim Johnson: Put the Public Back in Public Education

Check out the dynamic speech of Tim Johnson, President of the Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council, at the rally on February 28:

Community Education Council in District 1 Opposes Restructuring, Calls for Smaller Class Sizes

At a press conference yesterday, the Mayor lashed out at proponents of smaller class sizes for our overcrowded schools. Perhaps he should read the resolution passed by these parent leaders elected to represent the parent agenda in District 1 of Manhattan and recognized by the Department of Ed. This resolution follows similar ones by the Citywide Council of High Schools, Stuyvesant High School and other elected parent bodies.

DISTRICT 1 CEC RESOLUTION

PASSED AT MARCH 22, 2007 CALENDAR MEETING

WHEREAS, District 1 has requested information regarding school-specific impacts and District structure along with other questions for which information or answers were not provided;

WHEREAS, This plan is being implemented in a reckless and hasty manner;

WHEREAS, After having reviewed the Department of Education's Children First: and Fair Student Funding Plan;

WHEREAS, By financially penalizing schools for having experienced teachers over time, will likely lead to a less qualified teaching force in our schools, which already have nearly double the attrition rate of teachers more than anywhere else in the state;

WHEREAS, Reaffirming the fact that some of our schools and classrooms in District 1 and city-wide are severely overcrowded and our children's quality of education is suffering from this ongoing crisis;

WHEREAS, Many schools are being penalized for low levels of achievement as a result of this overcrowding, which is out of their control;

WHEREAS, Research and our own experience in District 1 strongly indicates that reduced class size makes a big difference in a child's education, and will lead to higher overall graduation rates;

WHEREAS, the best way to retain effective and experienced teachers is to improve classroom conditions by lowering class size;

WHEREAS, Smaller classes has been one of the top priorities of District 1 parents, school leaders, teachers, New York City Council Members, Assembly Members and many constituents for the last twenty years;

WHEREAS, The state's highest court found that classes in NYC schools were too large in all grades to provide our children with their constitutional right to an adequate education;

WHEREAS, Despite claims from the Department of Education, state data shows that there has been little or no progress in reducing class size since that decision was written, and in some key subjects, class sizes have actually risen;

WHEREAS, An audit released last March by the State Comptroller's Office found that with $89 million in state funds targeted to create 1,586 additional classes to reduce class size, the city had only created 20, contrary to the language and intent of the law;

WHEREAS, Despite billions of dollars in added funds, the Department of Education does not intend to reduce average class size in any grade higher than 3rd, and to use only 2% of the extra funds for smaller classes;

WHEREAS, This would leave our children still deprived of the attention they need in classes that are up to 60% larger than the rest of the state; doubtlessly contributing to an unconscionably high dropout rate in our high schools, and a 43.5% four-year graduation rate according to the State Education department;

WHEREAS, Despite claims to the contrary, there is no independent evidence that in the last round of reorganization, $200 million was ever redirected directly into the classroom;

WHEREAS, As a result of that reorganization, thousands of special education students were not evaluated in a timely fashion and many were denied their right to mandated services, in accordance with the Federal Law, and the Department of Education also cut spending on
special education by $445 million in one year;

WHEREAS, the following year, despite claims that more funding was being driven to the classroom, total dollars spent on general education declined by $144 million;

WHEREAS, according to the Educational Priorities Panel, a smaller percentage of the overall budget has gone to instruction each year;

WHEREAS, the head count and salaries of Tweed employees has grown substantially, and continues to grow, with a projected increase of 12% in spending for Tweed staff next year;

WHEREAS, In contrast, our schools are still under-funded, and under this new system, up to half of all schools may have their budgets further cut, despite $1.1 billion in planned additional education spending next year and more than $5 billion over the next four years;

WHEREAS, The implementation of a similar proposal, supposed to make funding fairer, and more flexible caused one of the largest educational crises in Great Britain's history, with the threat of massive teacher lay-offs and children actually sent home from school after only four days of instruction, until an emergency supplementary bill to provide additional funding for schools could be passed;

WHEREAS, Sir Michael Barber, the Chief Education Advisor at the time for Prime Minister Tony Blair, is now a top consultant at Tweed, and helped devise this new proposal;

WHEREAS, There is no evidence of any school system in the world that has adopted weighted funding like the proposed Fair Student Funding, and has made significant progress in student achievement;

WHEREAS, Though DOE claims that many principals in the empowerment zone last year used their additional funding and flexibility to hire extra teachers to reduce class size, principals reported that they were simply sent more students by Tweed as a result, erasing any
chance of actually providing them with smaller classes;

WHEREAS, The administration has admitted this may have occurred in many instances, and yet refuses to promise that it will not happen again;

WHEREAS, For many middle and high school teachers, given their huge class sizes and teaching loads, just spending 5 minutes out of class conferring with each student, and another five minutes correcting his or her weekly homework would take an additional 40 hours per week;

WHEREAS, The Department of Education has just contracted with IBM for $80 million to produce a new data management system whose function and purpose is supposedly to help teachers individualize instruction to meet the needs of each student, and yet with class sizes of 30 or more in many schools, and teaching loads of 150-180 students, it will continue to be impossible for teachers to do so;

WHEREAS, The new accountability/grading system is also potentially dangerous, and may lead principals to discharge, transfer, suspend, and otherwise try to rid their schools of low-achieving students any way they can, since their jobs will depend upon raising test scores sufficiently;

WHEREAS, The data reported by Department of Education regarding class size, graduation rates, and many other measures is often inaccurate and unreliable, so the new formula for assessing the progress of schools will be based on similarly erroneous metrics;

WHEREAS, In trying to impose a new system citywide without adequate consultation, careful thought, or testing, education officials have previously caused grave problems, most recently as in the bus route fiasco;

WHEREAS, For all the above reasons and more, in numerous public meetings, parents and teachers have urged the Department of Education to stop this new reorganization from going forward, because of the substantial risk that rather than improving our schools, it will lead
to further chaos, instability, and budget cuts, and may result in class sizes growing even larger at many schools;

RESOLVED, That the Community Education Council in District One rejects the Department of Education's Children First proposal and calls upon the Mayor and Chancellor to designate that an adequate amount of CFE funds, be utilized to reduce class size in all grades throughout all
New York City public schools, so that our children will finally receive their right to an adequate education and a better chance in getting a quality education, by giving them a more solid foundation towards their future.

City Council: Stop the Restructuring

The press conference held by members of the City Council calling for a halt to the latest restructuring was well attended. See coverage from NY1, the Post and Sun. The Mayor emerged from City Hall only to walk quickly pass the assembled parents and councilmembers, pretending not to notice. Corinna Lindenberg of the Chancellors Parent Advisory Council (CPAC) is quoted in the Post.

The latest reorganization will simultaneously change the funding mechanism while eliminating the regional structures that support schools today. The changes will be city-wide with no pilots or trials. Many councilmembers remarked on the recklessness of the changes, all made without input from the Council, which has oversight responsibility for the schools under the City Charter.

Robert Jackson: Put the Public Back In Public Education

Robert Jackson, Chairman of the City Council Education Committee is joining 27 other councilmembers in calling for a postponement of Mayor Bloomberg's latest schools restructuring. A press conference will be held today at noon on the steps of city hall. In the video below, see Chairman Jackson talking about class size, graduation rates and the restructuring at the February 28th rally at St. Vartan's Cathedral.

New Visions Caves

NYC Public School Parents orginally told the story of how New Visions, an organization seeking to become one of the DoE's Partnership Support Organizations (PSO), was using its control of Gates Foundation grants to force schools to select it as a PSO. Today, Erin Einhorn of the Daily News reports they have backed down on this controversial practice:

Late yesterday, New Visions director Robert Hughes issued a statement saying all schools that qualify for grants will be entitled to them regardless of whether they hire New Visions. He declined to elaborate on why he had changed his mind.

While this decision is a positive development, the episode shines a harsh spotlight on the rushed preparations to eliminate the DoE regional support structures.

DOE Reorganizes Yet Again

March 26, 2007 (GBN News): The NY City Department of Education announced today yet another in a series of reorganizations, a new plan called, “Every School For Itself”. The move came as a bit of a surprise to most parents and educators, given that the previous initiative, “Children First”, has not yet been completely implemented. In response to a question as to why the abrupt change, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein told GBN News that this shows just how much the schools have improved under his leadership and that of Mayor Bloomberg. “To be able to change before changing”, the Chancellor said, “is the ultimate measure of success.”

Details of the new plan have not yet been fully developed, but will involve fierce competition among city schools for scarce resources. The plan will take effect April 1 according to the DOE statement. By that date, principals were to have made certain choices for their schools, which will determine their success or failure. What their options will be has also not yet been decided.

In a related story, Parker Brothers stock fell 10 points today amid concern over the fate of its new games, “Children First: A Game of Irony”, and “NCLB: The Game”, given that they were based on the last reorganization. Company spokesperson Brad Milton vowed that the game maker would keep up with the rapid changes. A new game is already being developed, Mr. Milton stated, which will be called, ”Survivor: New York City Schools”. However, it was feared that cost overruns due to the frequent need for redevelopment would render the game unaffordable to all but the very wealthy.


(With thanks to Dorothy Giglio)