City strikes out so far in legal pleadings over budget cuts; freezes budgets & then unfreezes them; while at least 700 teachers have been let go.

Check out more about the lawsuit on this week's Talk out of School podcast, as explained by attorney Laura Barbieri and me, and two of the plaintiffs, Tamara Tucker and Paul Trust, hosted by Daniel Alicea.

The City has engaged in much legal wrangling, all unsuccessful so far, since Judge Lyle Frank granted a temporary restraining order against the school budget cuts last Friday, July 22 in  the lawsuit Tamara Tucker et.al. vs the City of NY, filed by parents and teachers on July 18. 

The City's  attorneys  asked the Judge for permission to file papers to vacate the TRO, and they submitted their papers on July 25, with the petitioners filing theirs on July 26.  The Judge turned down the City's request to reverse the TRO the next day, on July 27.

Then the City submitted an appeal to the Appellate Court to nullify Judge Frank's court order.  They actually filed two requests as the first one was incorrect on the proper procedure, along with more affidavits and yet another Memo of Law.  Brief oral arguments were heard at 12:30 PM yesterday, Friday, July 30.

What's peculiar is that at about the same time that oral arguments were being heard by the Appellate Judge, the DOE new COO, Emma Vadehra, sent an email to Superintendents that the DOE was shutting down their access to their schools' Galaxy budgets:

The reaction was fast and intense.  Principals expressed outraged that they couldn't access the budget lines to order books and plan programs.  Advocates and parents pointed out that the freezing of school budgets was totally contrary to what the court had ordered -- that no more cuts should be made to school budgets and that the budgets would be based on this year's spending levels, until the Judge could hear the case on August 4.  

Clearly, this was an attempt by the City to manipulate the Appellate court and/or the court of public opinion that the chaos and disruption that DOE claimed over and over again in its court documents was indeed occurring -- even though this was the result of the City's actions not the TRO.

In any case, at 3:30 PM, the Appellate Court Judge Bahaati E. Pitt, rejected the City's request to vacate the TRO.  

Meanwhile, the outrage only grew at the DOE's refusal to allow principals to access their budgets.   Laura Barbieri, the attorney for the plaintiff asked me to post the following statement on Twitter:

At some point, either late in the afternoon or into the evening, after a rash of negative articles and angry tweets, the City finally realized that the smoke and mirrors they had hoped to accomplish with the budget freeze hadn't worked.  At about 9: 25 PM last night, the Chancellor sent out the following email:

The Chancellor made no explanation of why this freeze had been imposed in the first place, or had now been ended.  In fact, there were no changes in the law or orders of the court since Judge Lyle Frank made his original decision to accept the Plaintiff's request for a TRO the week before.  Moreover, Banks erred in saying that "the appeals court has scheduled a further hearing on our motion" to vacate the TRO, as no such hearing has been scheduled.  

All the Appellate Judge did, as is standard procedure after rejecting the City's appeal, is to state that they can now try again by appealing her judgement to the full Appellate Court on August 5 if they insist--  which is after the August 4 date when Judge Lyle Frank will hear both sides' arguments in the Supreme Court.  

A lot of confusion for nothing and now the city has struck out four times; twice by Judge Frank and twice  -- for each of their appeals -- by Judge Bahaati E. Pitt.  It's not looking good for their side.  Most all the legal papers are here.

What's rather damning is that among the literally hundreds of pages of legal documents that the city has filed, nowhere do they actually contest the central claim of the lawsuit -- that the adoption of the education budget was done in a manner contrary to State Law, with the City Council voting before the Panel for Educational Policy (still known as the Board of Education in state law.)

Meanwhile, a DOE document was leaked on Friday, showing that at least 700 teachers have been excessed so far as a result of the budget cuts, which means they have been told by their schools that they are being let go. The NY Post wrote about this late Friday here.  

The full DOE powerpoint is below; and contains a lot of confusing data in an apparent effort to convince whoever saw it that many of these teachers will be hired elsewhere.  

It does show that over the last couple of years, the number of excessed teachers entering the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) pool has shrunk.  Yet that is likely a result of the fact that for the last two years, the DOE told principals they if they hired these teachers, the DOE would cover their salaries centrally.  As Deputy Chancellor Weisberg said at the June 28 Council hearings, and confirmed in this document in the final slide in a somewhat garbled manner, that is no longer the case.  

Since the vast majority of schools have seen their budgets cut significantly, it is likely that the ATR pool will sharply increase once more, as it did during the Bloomberg/Klein years.  Since all these teachers will receive their full salaries anyway, the question remains what actual savings these egregious cuts at the school level will  achieve.

Judge grants temporary restraining order to block budget cuts! To find out more, join our briefing Monday at 4 PM.

Great news! Late Friday afternoon, Judge Lyle Frank of the State Supreme Court granted a Temporary Restraining Order to block the devastating school budget cuts, in response to the lawsuit filed by four parents and teachers on July 18, Tamara Tucker vs. City of New York. A press release is here, along with a copy of  the court order. This big win for NYC kids was reported in NY1,Gothamist, the NY Post, Daily News and many other outlets.

On Monday, the city will file papers arguing against the TRO, and on Tuesday, the pro bono attorney for the plaintiffs, Laura Barbieri of Advocates for Justice, will file reply papers. On Thursday August 4 at 10 AM the case will be heard at the NY State Supreme Court, and the public is invited to attend.

Meanwhile, Laura and I will be holding a briefing via Zoom this Monday, July 25 at 4 PM for those who are interested in joining the lawsuit as plaintiffs or just want to hear more about the case. You can sign up here.

While the Council is said to be negotiating in private with Mayor Adams to allow at least some of the budget cuts to be restored,  it was revealed that the Mayor demanded as a condition that the Council agree to lock in school budget cuts in future years if enrollment continues to decline.  

This would be completely unacceptable and possibly illegal -- especially if Gov. Hochul signs the class size bill, which would require the DOE to send more funding to schools. The Fair Student funding formula is aligned to excessive class sizes and must be totally revamped in any case.

Speaking of class size, our petition​ to Governor Hochul urging her to sign the bill now has more than 9,000 signers. Please sign it yourself if you haven't already and/or share it with friends and allies.

More soon, Leonie

We won in court today to keep PS 25 open -- probably for at least another year!

See also my open letter to Chancellor Carranza in today's Washington Post Answer Sheet , urging him to revoke the decision of the previous Chancellor to close PS 25, and an article in the CSA News.  The NY Post , Politico, and Bklyner also wrote about our win in court.

Today in court, we won our temporary restraining order to keep PS 25 open! 

Judge Katherine Levine of the Kings County Supreme Court issued a decision from the bench that unless she has an epiphany in the next two weeks, the school will remain open next year and she will decide the complex legal merits of the case more carefully over the next few months.

She seemed impressed with our research showing how all the other 33 schools DOE offered these students to apply to 1- all had far lower positive impact ratings 2- many of them were miles away, 19 of the schools in Staten Island alone 3- 25 were overcrowded, and 4- none had class sizes as small as PS 25.  And the DOE has not offered to provide busing for the students.

In short, she was impressed that in most every other proposal to close schools, the DOE had promised higher performing schools that students could apply to, but they didn’t in this case, because according to DOE's own estimation, there are only three other public elementary schools as good as PS 25 in the entire city and they are full.  

In fact, the City itself admitted in their response papers to the lawsuit that according to the school performance dashboard, PS 25 is the "second best public elementary school in Brooklyn and the fourth best in the City, and that PS 25 outperforms charter school other than Success Academy Bronx 2 in its positive impact on student achievement and attendance."

The Judge was also interested in the zoning issue, and that the CEC hadn’t voted to approve the closing of a zoned school.  The City argued instead that they hadn't changed any zoning lines, but that they had just eliminated the zoned school, which is absurd.  As the  PS 25 plaintiffs' memo of law points out, argued by Laura Barbieri, the pro bono attorney from Advocates for Justice who argued the case:

“Entirely eliminating a zoned school and without replacing it with another zoned school, leaving the families in this neighborhood without any zoned school that their children have the right to attend, as occurred in this instance, is the most radical change in zoning lines that can be conceived.”

The Judge was concerned that there was little case law on this subject, but Laura explained the precedent of the Grinage case, in which in 2009, the NYCLU sued the DOE to block the proposal to close three zoned schools without a vote of the CECs.  Chancellor Klein, not a risk averse attorney himself, promptly withdrew these proposals just two weeks after the lawsuit was filed.  Yet incredibly, today in court, the City's attorney claimed that nine years later, Grinage was "still pending."

The Judge asked if the CEC hadn’t voted to approve this, what public input was there?  The DOE explained there were public meetings, etc. where parents expressed their concerns.  The Judge said but you don’t have to listen them, right? Is that the DOE’s  position?  

Finally, she asked the attorneys as regards the temporary restraining order: what’s the balance of harm?  What the worst that happens if I leave the TRO in place?  The PS 25 students have the benefit of an excellent school for another year?  

The City attorney tried to argue this would hold up assignments for all other 3000 kids at closing schools, but as the Judge responded, that was a "ridiculous" argument.  All those transfers and assignments can go through, this will only affect the students at PS 25. (Actually there aren’t 3000 kids in closing schools –  instead there are about 2000 kids in all and 661 in elementary schools, but none of them will be affected but the students at PS 25, whose parents want them to stay).

We were all whooping it up inside the courtroom when the Judge issued her decision from the bench, including PTA Vice President Crystal Williams, one of the plaintiffs.  Afterward, we all hugged and expressed huge relief. Above is a photo after the  hearings of PS 25 parents, supporters and our attorney Laura Barbieri, in front of the Kings County court house.  I just heard from Darcy Griffin, the PTA president, that the parents at PS 25 were all thrilled when they picked up their kids and heard the news.

Let's hope that the Chancellor withdraws the proposal to close this terrific school, as I urged him to do in today's Washington Post; which not only would serve the case of justice, preserve this excellent school, save the parents, teachers, and students at PS 25 much anxiety, and city taxpayer money.

This is how I closed today's open letter in the Washington Post Answer Sheet:

Chancellor Carranza:  On Tuesday in hearings before the New York City Council, you spoke eloquently about how the city should be celebrating our successful public schools, rather than allowing others to denigrate them. In particular, you noted that you had seen some great teaching in Bed-Stuy schools. If you are serious about this, you should rescind the decision to close this school and instead celebrate its accomplishments.] 

The negative impact on PS 25 families would be severe if this closure is allowed to go forward, especially for the large number of homeless students, because the school is a sanctuary of stability in their lives. As Mark Cannizaro, the president of the CSA, the New York City principals’ union, has said, “the students, families and educators of PS 25 deserve better.”  Instead of closing this exceptional school, we urge you to honor PS 25’s achievements, emulate and expand it — and enable more NYC schools and students to have the same chance to succeed.

Congrats to the parents, students and teachers at this amazing school, to Laura Barbieri, our wonderful pro bono attorney, and my research assistant, Sebastian Spitz, who did much of the data and factual analysis for the case. Here are some of the legal briefs filed in the case, opposing the PS 25 closure:  

Memorandum of Law in Support of Preliminary Injunction to Stop the Closure of PS 25 
The memo of law explains the legal basis for why the DOE must keep PS 25 Eubie Blake open until the court is able to make a final decision on the legal merits, including the irreparable harm to its students if the school closes this year and they have to transfer to lesser schools.

Parents' Legal Petition Against the Closure of PS 25 This verified petition explains the background of the case, including PS 25's high quality, and the legal argument for why the DOE does not have the right to close the school.

Affidavit of Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters My affidavit explaining the research showing the importance of class size, and how PS 25's small class sizes are a critical reason for the school's success.

Appendix to Leonie Haimson's Affidavit: Summary of Class Size Reduction Research on the proven benefits, in the short term and long term, of small class sizes, especially disadvantaged children who make up the overwhelming majority of PS 25 student population.

Affidavit of Crystal Williams  Crystal Williams, parent of two students at PS 25 and the Vice President of the PS PTA, explains how PS 25 has helped her children and why she and other parents oppose its closure.

Order to Show Cause and Request for Temporary Restraining Order to Stop the Closure of PS 25 This document requests that the court prevent the DOE from taking any further steps to close PS 25 until the court decides on its legality. 

Here are the response documents filed by the City:

Verified Answer of DOE in PS 25 Case  The DOE explains why they want to close PS 25 – though they admit on p. 3 that according to their school performance dashboard,  it is the 2^nd best public elementary school in Brooklyn and the fourth best n the city and outperforms all other charter schools than Success Academy Bronx 2 in its positive impact on student achievement and attendance.

Analysis of Public Comments on the Closure of PS 25 This document summarizes the various public hearings, etc. held about the school's proposed closure, revealing widespread public opposition to the plan. 

DOE's Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Temporary Injunction and Show Cause
The Department of Education's argument explaining why they should have the right to close PS 25 before the court makes a final decision on the merits of the case.