New flyer for the Feb. 28 class size hearings; please come!

Here and below is the updated flyer for the Feb. 28 class size hearings at City Hall, starting at 10 AM.  Please share widely, and sorry for all the confusion.

Please come to show your support for smaller classes, even if you don’t choose to testify.  If you can’t be there at 10 AM, don’t worry; public testimony won’t start till about 11 AM and then will likely continue till at least 1 PM.

We have updated talking points, though it’s always best to speak from the heart and from your own experience as a parent or former teacher.  (Most working teachers unfortunately won’t be able to attend.)

Thanks, Leonie

Update: Class size hearings to be held on Friday Feb. 28, 10AM at City Hall!

Our class size hearings have been rescheduled again, and will now be held on Friday February 28, at 10AM at City Hall in the Committee Room. 

We really need parents, teachers, and concerned citizens to come out and show their support for this event. You can come to testify or show your support for smaller class sizes.

If you cannot attend, you can also send written testimony or a statement of support to jatwell@council.nyc.gov by March 4, which will be shared with the Education Committee members. 

If you do plan to testify or send a statement, is always best to speak from your own experience as a parent or teacher. But additional points you could make are provided in our Class Size FAQ here.

These rescheduling issues are out of our hands, but we apologize for any confusion or inconvenience this causes. Thank you for your patience, and for your continued support for NYC students.

 And if you haven’t already, please also call Speaker Corey Johnson at 212-564-7757 or 212-788-7210 and your own Council Member – you can find out their contact info at https://council.nyc.gov/districts/ 

Urge them to allocate at least $100 million in next year’s budget for class size reduction. 

Then follow up by letting us know at our quick survey. Thanks so much to those of you who’ve done this already.

Class Size and School Overcrowding Citywide Trends

The City Council is holding hearings on class size on Friday, Feb. 28 at 10 AM at City Hall, Committee room.  All are invited to testify and/or just come to show your support.

Here is a presentation explaining why class size is important, showing class sizes are 15-30% larger in NYC than in the rest of the state, and have grown sharply since. 2006.

3 easy ways to help get smaller classes for NYC kids!

Please help us urge the Speaker and NYC Council to invest $100 million in hiring additional teachers to lower class size, starting first in the early grades and in struggling schools.

This would pay for the salaries of about 1,000 new teachers, which could reduce class size in as many as 4,000 classrooms—as adding a new teacher at a grade level lowers class size for all the other students in that same grade in the school. These funds would represent less than one percent of the $34 billion that the DOE will be spending next year.

NYC kids will never be provided with true equity as long as their class sizes remain 15-30% larger than they are in the rest of the state.

If you support this critical goal, please take five minutes to do the following:

1.Call Speaker Corey Johnson’s office at: 212-788-7210; if busy, call 212-564-7757.

Say the following: Please make sure that at least $100 million is allocated towards reducing class size in next year’s budget and the Council’s budget response should include this initiative.

2. Contact your City Council Members via phone and urge them to do the same; also let them know you are a constituent. To find your City Council members and their contact information, plug your address in here: https://council.nyc.gov/districts/

3. Once you have done that, please fill out our follow-up survey.

Unfortunately, the Council hearing and rally on class size had to be postponed because I broke my leg in Spain. More on this here.

Hopefully these events will be rescheduled soon — but we’re not going to wait to put this issue squarely on the Council’s agenda. Please make those calls today!

Thanks so much, Leonie

Local Law 167 & 168, Information and Memo to City Council

Two bills were passed last year by the City Council, with the goal of helping to alleviate school overcrowding: Local Law 167 which required the DOE to make more transparent its data sources and methodology for projecting the need for new school seats, and Local Law 168, which created a Task Force for School Siting to expedite the identification of locations where new schools could be built.

Both laws  resulted from recommendations made by the City Council Working Group report Planning to Learn, as well as problems we had previously identified in our reports, including, Space Crunch and  Seats Gained and Lost in NYC Schools: The Untold Story.

Local Law 167 came into force on December 1, 2019.  The SCA/DOE claims to have provided the data here:  http://www.nycsca.org/community/capital-plan-reports-data#Local-Law-167-Reports-352

But much of the data required is missing, and in fact the DOE is providing no more data than in years past:

• No data is posted on the number of seats lost over the last few years or projected into the future from lapsed leases, removed TCUs, or the elimination of mini-schools or annexes, that have a significant impact on the need for new seats.
• No disaggregated projections are provided for the seats needs, disaggregated by grade span or type of school, i.e. Pre-K/elementary schools/middle schools, either citywide, or  by district or sub-district, as called for in the law.
• No seats need estimates are provided by sub-district at all.
• The law mandates that they provide an explanation of all the inputs that help determine their projections, including “ any categories of non-quantitative criteria considered, which may include but need not be limited to, facility replacements, grade expansion and truncation, school rezonings, co-locating schools, and converting space in existing facilities.”  None of these inputs are reported on the webpage or elsewhere.
• Finally, the law requires not just the quantitative and qualitative inputs that the SCA/DOE relies upon to determine its projections, but also the “The process … used to determine identified seat need”.  Yet nowhere has the SCA or DOE offered any explanation of the methodology used to incorporate and analyze all these various inputs and data sources, including current overcrowding, housing starts, projected seat loss and their consultant’s enrollment predictions, to arrive at the identified seats needs estimate published in the five-year capital plan.

The goals of Local 168 in creating the School Siting task force have not been fulfilled either.  See the memo below, sent to the co-sponsors of the law last week.  Feel free to send to your council member as well! Click here to find your city council member.

Why I've been mostly out of commission for the last two weeks

As some of you may have noticed, I've been unusually silent the last two and half weeks.  This is the result of a nasty accident I had while in Barcelona, on a short vacation with my husband. On the evening of Tuesday Jan. 21, after three days of visiting amazing Gaudi architectural sites,  I tripped on stairs in a rain storm coming out of a restaurant and badly injured my left leg.  I hobbled to a taxi and back to my hotel, lay down on the bed and my ankle swelled up to large proportions and turned black and blue.  I lay in bed on Wed., and on Thursday, we asked the hotel to send in a doctor who took one look at my leg, squeezed it and said I had to go immediately to the hospital.

He called an ambulance, whose attendants showed up with a wheelchair, and wheeled me into the van onto a stretcher where I lay until they took me to an amazing hospital called HM Delfos.

I was immediately met in the emergency room by attendants who took me into another room where an orthopedist examined my leg, sent me for x-rays, and called the surgeon,.  A half hour later, a handsome young man in a beard and jeans introduced himself to me as the orthopedic surgeon and told me I needed to be operated on immediately.

Both bones in my left leg were broken, he said, and he needed to operate as soon as possible to insert a plate and screws.  When I asked if I couldn't return to NYC for the surgery, he said absolutely not, as he could not guarantee my safety on a flight.  A couple of hours later that same afternoon, he did the surgery after administering an epidural block.  I was awake for about the last half hour of the operation, lying behind a screen, feeling nothing in my left leg, and listening with curiousity to assorted voices exclaiming, speaking rapidly to one another, and laughing heartily in Spanish.  I only wished I could understand what they were saying.

Then I was wheeled into a very spacious hospital room, with a bathroom that had a full shower, where I recuperated in bed and watched Netflix, read books and did crossword puzzles for an entire week.

The doctors, nurses, attendants and administrators were all amazingly kind and responsive.  I never had to wait more than five minutes for help after pulling the bell, and usually more than one staff member came, either to change my IV, take my temperature,  or attend to my pain.  I had three meals a day, with snacks; my husband brought me cappucinos and croissants from the cafeteria in the building, and I felt truly pampered.  I slept in damask sheets.  Meanwhile my foot looked like this:

The only downside to having undergone the recuperation in Spain is that they are a lot more conservative about prescribing pain medication.  I had to wait for two hours while an Ibuprofen drip and an anti-inflammatory medication did  little to assuage the pain before they would administer Tramadol which is a stronger medication.   By that point the sensations were pretty intense.  But I suppose this is one reason they have lower opiate addiction rates in Europe.

Finally, on Wed. Jan. 29, I flew back the city, aided by my husband who skipped a scientific conference that he was supposed to attend in Portugal after our vacation so he could accompany me back home; aided by wheelchair attendants who pushed me through expedited security lines in the airports in Barcelona and then in NYC.  Luckily, I had a business class seat and was allowed to keep my leg up the whole flight back; and the whole trip was surprisingly smooth.

I know the question you are all thinking - what did it cost?  The ambulance, the surgery, titanium implants, a week in the hospital in a comfortable spacious room plus numerous x-rays and a CAT scan cost 21,000 Euros.  It seems like a lot except that when I returned to the US, I learned from the orthopedist here that the surgery alone plus only one night in a hospital (which is what I would have gotten here) would probably have cost more than $90,000.

We are hoping to recoup most of that cost from our insurance company, who told us that they would cover the costs as if it had occurred in the US, since it was an emergency and the doctors had forbade me from returning home for the surgery.  After all, it was a bargain to the insurance company compared to what they would likely had to pay if I had undergone the operation in the United States.

This is what my leg looks like now:

I will be unable to walk for at least a month and maybe more.  But meanwhile, I am getting around on a knee scooter in my third floor walk up and dragging myself upstairs and downstairs on my tush.

The only other major drawback to the accident was the postponement of the class size hearings and rally on January 29.  I am hopeful that the hearings will be rescheduled later this month.  I will let you know as soon as I hear more.

FAQ for parents and teachers on Regents "exit exams" and why they should be eliminated

Update:  The sessions in Manhattan and Bronx were cancelled because of the pandemic.  The Regents plan to resume this process sometime this summer.

The Board of Regents and the New York State Education Department are re-examining the use of Regents "exit exams" as a requirement for high school graduation, and are holding a series of regional public sessions to gather input from parents, teachers and other stakeholders before making any changes to the current policy.  These meetings will be held in Brooklyn Feb. 26-27;  Queens on March 10, and Staten Island on March 11. Additional meetings have been added in Manhattan on March 23 and March 31, and the Bronx on March 24.

UPDATE: These sessions have been postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak and will be rescheduled in the future.

The full list of sessions statewide is posted here, along with times and locations.

NY State Allies for Public Education and Class Size Matters have prepared the following fact sheet to inform parents in preparation for these sessions.  It summarizes the research showing the negative impact of exit exams on drop out and incarceration rates, and the fact that in recent years, most states that once required them have now eliminated them.

If you want your voice heard on this critical issue, please attend these meetings while bringing copies of the fact sheet to share with other parents, and/or email the State Education Department to express your views at GradMeasures@nysed.gov.  Thanks!

Rally for smaller classes at City Hall on Wed. Jan. 29 at 12 noon!

This event has been postponed due to unforeseen circumstances.  Will let you know as soon as its rescheduled!

Please join Class Size Matters and NYC Kids Pac to rally for smaller classes on Wed. January 29 in front of City Hall at noon; with City Council hearings focused on the class size issue to follow, starting at 1 PM.  A flyer you can share with others or post in your school is here.

The rally and hearings are an ideal opportunity for parents and teachers let the Mayor and the Council know that there can be no equity or excellence for NYC kids until the city lowers class sizes, which are 15-30% larger in our public schools than in the rest of the state.

We will be urging them to provide dedicated funding in next year's budget specifically to hire extra teachers to reduce class size, starting first in the lower grades and in struggling schools.
Class sizes have risen sharply since 2007 in every part of the city, and this year there were more than 275,000 students in classes of 30 or more.

Please come to our rally and stay for the hearings afterwards to show your support. If you'd like to testify and would like talking points, we have posted them here.   We also have more information about class size trends citywide, as well as data specific to your district here.

Email us info@classsizematters.org if you'd like to speak at the rally or testify at the hearings. 

Our class size lawsuit argued in the Appellate Court yesterday!

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit along with Sen. Robert Jackson and attorney Wendy Lecker

Yesterday, the class size lawsuit against the city and the state that we filed more than a year ago, along with nine NYC parents from every borough and the Alliance for Quality Education, was heard in the Appellate court in Albany.

Our pro bono attorney, Wendy Lecker of the Education Law Center, did a fabulous job, those of us in the courtroom agreed, which included two of the parent plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Litza Stark of Queens and Johanna Garcia of Manhattan, along with Johanna’s daughter Hailey, back from her first semester in college. NY Senator Robert Jackson, who spearheaded the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, was also there to support us, as well as retired teacher Norm Scott.

A panel of five judges listened intently as Wendy related how the NYC Department of Education had violated the state Contracts for Excellence law passed in 2007, which specifically mandates that the city lower average class sizes in all grades over five years – but instead, class sizes had sharply increased so that they are now far larger than they were when the law was first passed.  In response, the attorneys for the city and state tried to argue that since the five years outlined in the original law had lapsed, there was no longer any requirement for the DOE to lower class size.

Yet as Wendy pointed out,  the state legislature renews and reauthorizes the C4E law every year, including its class size mandate, with no specific end point for when the city’s obligations would cease;  thus this is indeed a continuing requirement on the part of the DOE.

The attorneys for the city and state also claimed that the court has no jurisdiction over this matter, but that the Commissioner of Education has the sole power to determine whether the city had adequately complied with the law.  Yet as Wendy counter-argued, the court indeed has the authority to decide whether the Commissioner has accurately interpreted the language of the statute, and the court's authority to do so in regards the C4E law was specifically re-confirmed in 2011 by the Appellate judges in 2011. By essentially nullifying the city’s class size obligation under the law, Wendy said, the Commissioner had essentially usurped the legislature’s role.

Though one cannot predict how the court will rule, those of us in the room felt that Wendy’s arguments were far stronger than those of the city or state attorneys, who did not even try to dispute the facts in the case: that class sizes had increased sharply since 2007, and this had unfairly deprived NYC students of an quality education. 

In any event, the Appellate Court will likely not issue any decision until this summer at least, and we are not content to sit back and wait for this to occur.  Instead, we are urging the Mayor and the Council to put a down payment on the quality of our children’s education by allocating specific funding for class size reduction, starting next year in the early grades and in struggling schools.  More on how you can help with this soon.

"Talk out of School" Ourtomorrow about suing the College Board and NY State Education funding

Our guests tomorrow

Join us tomorrow Wed. Jan. 14 at 10 AM on WBAI 99.5 or wbai.org when I interview Cassie Creswell of IL Families for Public Schools and attorney Scott Drury about the federal class action lawsuit vs. the College Board for selling student data.  

Then we will also speak to NY State Senator Robert Jackson about the Legislature’s battle over state education funding and charter schools.

Breaking: Our class size appeal will be heard on Jan. 13 in Albany!

Big news just announced today: Our class size lawsuit vs NYC and NY State, Agostini vs. Elia, will finally be heard on Monday, January 13 at 1 PM in the Appellate Court in Albany.

Last spring, May 23, 2019 , attorney Wendy Lecker of the Education Law Center filed our appeal on behalf of nine NYC parents, Class Size Matters and the Alliance for Quality Education.  We sued the State Education Commissioner and the Chancellor, and urged the Appellate court to order the NYC Department of Education to reduce class size in all grades as the Contracts for Excellence law requires. 

Our original lawsuit, Agostini vs. Elia, was filed in April 2018 when then-NYS Education Commissioner Elia refused to take action to enforce the Contracts for Excellence law in response to our original complaint.  

The C4E law was first approved in 2007 and required NYC to lower class size; instead class sizes increased sharply and remain at levels far higher than when that law was passed.  

Yet in December 2018, Acting Supreme Court Judge Henry Zwack ruled against us in a skimpy decision that engaged with neither the law or the facts of the case; instead he claimed that this was merely a matter for Commissioner Elia to decide.  

Commissioner Elia had argued that any class size obligations on the part of the DOE had lapsed years ago. Yet as our appeal points out, if the Legislature wanted to eliminate this key legal obligation on the part of the city they would have done so, rather than renewing the provision every year.  Thus, the DOE's failure to lower class size is a continuing violation of law, and since the State Education Department has refused to hold city officials accountable for providing students with their constitutional right to a sound basic education, which includes smaller classes according to the Court of Appeals in the original CFE lawsuit, we have been forced to do so instead.

Unlike Judge Zwack, the Appellate Court has asked for copious back-up data on class sizes in NYC schools, which as the above charts make clear, have indeed risen dramatically since 2007.  Hopefully, that means these judges are engaged in the issue and will base their judgement on facts rather than the city's wishful thinking.

Please remember Class Size Matters in your year-end gift-giving!

Dear all--

I hope you had a wonderful holiday break with friends and family. Please consider making a year-end, tax-deductible donation to Class Size Matters so that we can continue our passionate advocacy for the smaller classes that all kids need for a quality education. We also promote the parent voice in education decision-making and the data privacy that students deserve.

Among our achievements this year - beating back the College Board which was pushing the NY State Education Department to allow their practice of selling of student data to continue. We also released a report showing that NYC is spending over a hundred million dollars annually on helping charters rent private space - including in some cases, in buildings that their charter management company owns.

Via a lawsuit last spring, we kept PS 25 open, an excellent public school in Brooklyn that the DOE wanted to close despite its excellent results and the small classes it provides for its students, 100% of them from low-income families.

We launched a new talk show and podcast on WBAI radio, called "Talk out of School." Our class size lawsuit vs DOE will be heard in the state appellate court in January.  Keep your fingers crossed for a positive outcome in that case.

But in addition to your good wishes, we need your financial support to keep going. If you appreciate our work, please do so now by clicking here.

Grateful for your help, Leonie