Talking points for class size hearings starting tomorrow Wed. May 22 in the Bronx; make your voices heard!

 The just-released DOE class size plan for next year fails on every account. Class size borough hearings begin this Wednesday May 22^nd.   Make your voices heard!

• Bronx – Wednesday, May 22, 2024 (6:00pm)
• Manhattan – Thursday, May 23, 2024 (6:00pm)
• Staten Island – Tuesday, May 28, 2024 (6:00pm)
• Queens – Wednesday, May 29, 2024 (6:00pm)
• Brooklyn – Thursday, May 30, 2024 (6:00pm)

To register and receive the Zoom link, go to https://learndoe.org/contractforexcellence/ The links will be available by 5 PM the day of the hearing.

Our talking points are available as a pdf here, and below.  But feel free to draw from your own experiences or that of your child, and your perspective.  Thanks!

Talking points for class size hearings

The state passed the class size law nearly two years ago, yet the DOE has still taken no steps to ensure compliance with the law. Instead, their policies have caused class sizes to increase due to repeated cuts of school budgets, while also slashing their spending on more space. Their draft class size “plan”, posted May  7, makes insufficient investments in new teachers and space, and is bound to fail without significant improvements.

Lack of funding to hire enough teachers:

• DOE fails to invest sufficient funding to hire additional teachers to lower class size. The DOE says they will spend $137 million in “targeted” schools for this purpose, though they do not report which schools will receive this funding and how many more classes will meet the legal class size limits as a result.
• We estimate that this amount would allow for the hiring of only about 1,350 additional teachers, out of the 10,000 to 12,000 teachers the DOE itself says will be needed to comply with the law over the next four years. The longer the DOE waits to hire additional teachers, the more difficult it will become to ensure their quality and certification.
• Yet DOE plans to cut the budgets of as many as 760 schools due to projected enrollment decline and to impose a hiring freeze and vacancy reductions systemwide that could easily undo any positive impact from that $137 million. In fact, the city’s Financial plan projects a decrease of nearly 1,000 teachers next year, which would increase rather than decrease class size.
• At the same time, they fail to allocate any of the more than $800 million of Contracts for Excellence funds specifically for the purpose of reducing class size, or the $1.8 billion dollars the city has received in additional Foundation funding that they will have received since 2021-2022 school year. In addition, the Independent Budget Office projects a city surplus of more than $5 billion.

What the DOE should do instead to hire more teachers: 

• The DOE should provide funding to add at least 3,000 more teachers next year — one fourth of the additional number needed over over the next four years, at a cost of about $300 million. They should also promise to refrain from cutting any school’s budget, and not to impose a hiring freeze or vacancy reductions.

Lack of spending to create enough space

• The DOE refuses to create sufficient space for smaller classes. Principals at 650 schools reported to DOE in their survey that they currently cannot comply with the class size limits due to inadequate classroom space. Yet the new proposed five-year capital plan cuts more than $2 billion for new capacity compared to the current plan and would create only about 22,000 additional seats – one tenth of the number that the School Construction Authority itself claims will be necessary.
• A provision in the state budget passed in April requires the DOE to “increase planned spending on classroom construction by $2.0 billion” in order to be able to achieve the class size limits. Yet Instead of building more schools, the Mayor is planning to spend at least $6.8 billion for new jails –$2.7 billion more than the $4.1 billion currently dedicated for new school construction.
• The Queens jail will cost at least $3.9 billion, which is far more than the plan has for new schools in Queens; the Bronx jail to cost at least $2.9 billion. Yet there is not a single dollar specified in the capital plan for new schools to be built in the Bronx.
• The plan only Identifies new seats in six districts (2, 25, 27, 30, 31) plus one new high school in Brooklyn & one in Staten Island. 77% of the new seats remain unidentified as to borough, district, or grade level.
• Without an expanded and accelerated plan to build more schools, the DOE will never meet the timelines to achieve the class size limits in the law.

What the DOE should do instead to create more space:

• Immediately add at least $2 billion to the five-year capital plan, specifying where the new seats will be built by district, sub-district, and grade level, and explain how these additional seats will allow all schools over four years to reach the class size limits in the law.

Other problems with the DOE’s plan

• DOE proposes that every superintendent increase the percentage of classes in their district schools at or below the class size caps by 3%. Yet forcing superintendents and principals to lower class size without providing any more funding or space could create problems in many schools. Instead, it is DOE’s responsibility to ensure that every school has the resources needed to lower class size without negative tradeoffs to the overall quality of education students receive.
• The DOE also cites as an option to achieve the class size limits by expanding online learning. Forcing more students into remote classes, given the dismal results of this strategy during the pandemic, seems especially unwise and would likely undercut any of the benefits to student learning and social connection provided by smaller classes.

What the DOE should do instead:

• The DOE must create and implement an actual multi-year plan, showing which schools will receive additional funding to hire additional teachers to lower class size each year, and detailing where additional space will be created to allow the approximately 650 schools that do not currently have sufficient space to achieve the class size limits within the within the mandated time frame. If the DOE refuses to create this plan, the State Education Department should require them to do so.

 

Send a message to Governor & state legislators: don't raise the cap on charter schools & repeal DOE's obligation to provide them with space!

Gov. Hochul has proposed raising the cap on charter schools and eliminating the regional caps, so that 100-300 more could be authorized in NYC.  Charters are already costing the city about $3 billion per year, and this could double the cost, as well as take away precious space needed to lower class size to the levels in the new state law. A press conference with State senators and parent leaders denouncing this proposal was held last week; see the videos here​.

So please send a message​ to the Governor and your state legislators today, urging them to drop this proposal and instead repeal the provision requiring DOE to provide space for charter schools in public schools or pay for their rent — the only school district in the state and the nation with this onerous obligation.  They should also eliminate the loophole allowing charter schools to expand to all grade levels, otherwise this will continue to cost DOE more money and space every year; and instead, should require more accountability and transparency for the charter sector.

We also have drafted a resolution for CECs​  and other organizations to consider, in opposition to raising the charter cap, and urging the Legislature to adopt the measures above and more.  The resolution is full of facts and figures. We also have a resolution​, urging the Legislature and the NYC Council to hold hearings on DOE’s class size reduction plan — or as the evidence suggests, their lack of any real plan.

Please take a look and if you agree with one or both resolutions, send them to your district CEC or Citywide Council to consider.

24 new charter schools looking for space. Watch out -- your school could be next!

Someone is creating space for new schools in NYC – unfortunately it’s not the DOE. See below article from NY Observer, about a private school company snapping up lots of real estate in a down market.

Meanwhile, our public schools are increasingly overcrowded, with class sizes increasing in nearly all grades, and likely to become more so next year – with little or no plans to relieve this ongoing crisis. Actually, because of DOE policies, it’s likely to get much worse.

According to Inside Schools, while 24 new charter schools are expected to open in fall 2009, only a handful have an announced location so far – and most of the rest are likely to be crammed down the throat of some unsuspecting existing public school.

Charter schools are approved one year prior to their opening in September, but the Department of Education doesn't determine whether DOE space is available until January, said Mike Duffy, executive director of the city's charter school office. Although charter schools can choose to obtain private space and determine their location sooner, most decide not to for financial reasons.

In New York State, charter schools do not receive money for operating expenses, such as facilities, but in New York City, charter schools housed in a DOE facility reside rent-free. "They don't pay a dollar," said Duffy.

Now if charter schools were required to find their own buildings, they might help relieve the intense overcrowding at NYC public schools. But DOE would rather allow the overcrowding to increase, in order to give charter schools buildings for free. Charter schools in NYC also don’t pay a dollar for heat or electricity, food, transportation or all of the other expenses that charter schools are required to pay elsewhere in the state and the country. Even as our public schools are facing big budget cuts, the charter schools are due for a big increase.

Though it is difficult to do an exact comparison because of DOE’s lack of financial transparency, these hidden (and voluntary) subsidies mean that in the end, Tweed appears to be sending a greater per student amount of taxpayer funds to charter schools than to most of our regular public schools. This may partly explain how charter-operator Eva Moskowitz was able to afford to pay herself a hefty $371,000 salary in 2006-7, as well as continue to expand her aggressive PR, fundraising and recruitment operations. Not to mention the sixteen openings for administrators currently posted on her school’s website.

Watch out for DOE announcing the closing of more and more neighborhood elementary schools in the near future, not because they are failing, but simply because our educrats are intent on finding good real estate for all the new charter schools they want to house – at the expense of our existing schools.

Check out the recent NPR story about the separate but unequal system that NOLA’s public school system has become with the growth of charter schools – with the regular public schools receiving worse facilities while saddled with a far larger proportion of the kids that nobody wants. Is this the future we face here in NYC?