The very basic flaws in the Fair Student Funding formula

 Below are the comments I made at the Fair Student Funding Task Force session this afternoon.  Though I focused on the issue of class size of course, others contributed critical comments on other aspects for the formula; including the way it provides  extra funding to the specialized high schools despite the fact that their students are among the highest achieving in the city, the manner in which DOE makes cuts to schools via the mid-year adjustment forcing schools to excess teachers after the school year has begun (does  any other school district that uses a weighted student funding system do this?); and the under funding of schools who have to wait for November or beyond for more funding even though their enrollments are higher than projected, including schools that have gotten scores of new migrant students without the staff to teach them; and more.  

Not to mention that the formula insufficiently supports the needs of any students, so any increase in the amount provided to poor students, or those who are homeless or have disabilities would inevitably cut funding from other students, in a zero sum fashion.  A rough transcript of the proceedings is here; more info about the materials and minutes of the Working Group is here.

 If you want to send in comments, you can email FairStudentFunding@schools.nyc.gov ; deadline Oct. 27.  Thanks!

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My name is Leonie Haimson and I’m the Executive Director of Class Size Matters.v There are some very basic flaws in in the Fair Student Funding system:

1-      The formula provides insufficient resources to ensure that schools can meet basic student needs – forcing principals to excess staff and cut critical programs and services, as seen from this year’s the budget cuts that have had hugely damaging impacts on most schools.

2-      The formula was designed in 2007 to incentivize principals to maximize class size – which is not only harmful to student learning but also in conflict with new state class size law, recently signed by the Governor. The FSF Taskforce created by the City Council in 2019 surveyed principals, of whom 80% of the identified large class sizes as a consequence of the FSF formula.[1] 

3-      The entire school funding system must be realigned to ensure that schools can meet the new staffing needs mandated by the law. 

4-      Relevant to this issue is how the programs prioritized by successive administrations have been funded separately from the Fair Student Funding and are instead funded on the basis of the need to staff entire classes, rather than individual students, as the previous DOE funding system was designed to do before FSF was introduced.

5-      There is precedent for creating a whole separate allocation system for smaller classes.  In fact, 3K and PreK classes are not subject to the formula.  Instead, schools are funded for an entire 3K and preK class no matter its size, and then capped at 15-18  students, with one classroom teacher  and one classroom paraprofessional. If there are more students per class than these caps, schools receive funding for a whole new class. This is so that they can meet the state law that caps class sizes in these grades. Special education PreK classes are capped at even smaller levels, with additional service providers. [2]

6-      The DOE also provides additional funding outside the formula to each school to “sustain Gifted and Talented (G&T) programs with enrollment lower than 18 students” in grades K-3, though the regular class sizes in these grades can be as large as 25 (in Kindergarten) and 32  ( in grades 1^st-3^rd.) [3]  This additional funding totaled more than $2.8 million last year and allowed schools to keep gifted classes in some schools as small as six to eight students per class.[4]

 Whether within the flawed FSF system or in a separate school allocation, as currently exists for 3K, preK and gifted classes, this task force should propose the creation of an additional funding mechanism to support and ensure the phase in of smaller classes in grades K-12, at the legally prescribed levels.

 

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[1] https://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2021/11/why-fair-student-funding-task-force.html

[2] https://www.nycenet.edu/offices/finance_schools/budget/DSBPO/allocationmemo/fy22_23/fy23_docs/fy2023_sam026.htm

[3] This is the language from the FY 2022 School Allocation Memo entitled “Gifted and Talented Supplemental.  https://www.nycenet.edu/offices/finance_schools/budget/DSBPO/allocationmemo/fy21_22/fy22_docs/fy2022_sam096.htm The FY 2023 SAM has not yet been posted, though the DOE disclosed in a presentation dated May 2022 that they intended to spend $2 million  in federal ARPA funds to expand gifted & talented programming for FY 23. https://classsizematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/FY23-Stimulus-and-C4E-Engagement-Plan-1.pdf  

[4] See the spreadsheet here: https://www.nycenet.edu/offices/finance_schools/budget/DSBPO/allocationmemo/fy21_22/fy22_docs/FY2022_SAM096_T01.xlsx

 

Why the Fair Student Funding Task Force report was never released, and recommendations from eight of its members

The Superintendent of the Boston Public Schools recently announced her intent to eliminate or radically reform their weighted student funding system, because it fails to properly provide for all the programs and services that students need and because it incentivizes principals to overcrowd their schools and classrooms. The same  flaws are inherent in the NYC Fair Student Funding system.

Following widespread protests, the  formula was first adopted by then-Chancellor Joel Klein in 2007, despite serious concerns as to whether it made sense and might lead to increases in class size over time (as it actually did). In January 2019, the City Council passed a law , Local Law 1174, to create a Task Force to analyze the  formula and come up with a report by Sept. 2019 with recommendations on how to improve it.  The below account was written by one of the Task Force members, Shino Tanikawa, to explain why the report was never released; and below her account are the recommendations submitted by eight of the members on the Task Force that the Mayor refused to accept or release.  

I was appointed to the Fair Student Funding Task force by DOE. The Task Force met regularly for 9 months, deliberated, and produced a report ready to be submitted to the Mayor and the Chancellor. Unfortunately during the final review by the City Hall, the report died a quiet death and was never released. 

It became clear the City Hall’s interest was in using the Task Force recommendation to pressure the State to fully fund the Foundation Aid, not to comprehensively evaluate the formula itself. The report contains many recommendations that would require more investment from both the City and the State. For example, we recommended increasing the Base Allocation to cover a wide range of essential staff, such as social workers and school counselors.

In addition, many advocates wanted to include language around evaluating the formula for its impact on class size but we were told the Fair Student Funding has nothing to do with class size reduction (they are wrong). The Mayor has always been reluctant to acknowledge the real need of our school system for smaller classes.

As you can see, one of our major recommendations was that the DOE should develop a class size reduction plan with specific milestones and timelines, especially as "the current funding allocation from Fair Student Funding incentivizes large class sizes in our schools."  We also found that "Nearly 80% of the principals, from 12 CSDs, who responded to a survey distributed by Task Force members identified large class sizes as a consequence of the FSF formula."

The DOE agreed to develop such a plan once our schools received full funding from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, but has reneged on that promise, once again, as it has so often in the past. 

 

Eight of the parent and advocate members of the Task Force, including me,  submitted our own version of the recommendations during the FSF public comment period in April 2021.  

 

I have now shared that report with Class Size Matters. -- Shino Tanikawa

 

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