Why is the Mayor so resistant to lowering class size in the face of his long-standing promises to do so?

We heard through the grapevine that the Mayor is stubbornly fighting the City Council proposal to invest $250 million next year in lowering class size.   

Yet when Bill de Blasio first ran for Mayor, he promised that he would commit to specific class size reduction goals and achieve them by the end of his first term.  He made that promise verbally at a mayoral debate on June 14, 2013, and then checked off the following box in a document handed to him at the event, and signing his promise with his name at the end.

 

Then again, in response to a NYC Kids PAC candidate survey,  on July 8, 2013, de Blasio again promised to lower class sizes:

Yet after he was elected, de Blasio never followed through and focused on expanding preK and  3K instead.  

 Still, when parents pressed him about the need for smaller classes, he repeatedly said that  he would do this when he finally received the full funding from the state from the CFE lawsuit. 

Now that our schools are receiving that additional CFE funding of $530M next year, rising to $1.3B annually over the next three years, not to mention $7B in additional federal aid to our schools, he no longer has this or any excuse to deny NYC children their right to smaller classes.

We have heard that instead, de Blasio is arguing for spending a very small amount  towards putting two teachers in a classroom.  Yet doubling up on teachers  has not been shown through research to have the same positive impact as lowering class size, nor does it have the same effect in terms of creating a focused, engaged learning environment. 

In fact, the number of inclusion classes with two teachers has grown steadily over the last decade, and now fully one third of all elementary school children in NYC public schools are in classes with two teachers.  Yet there has been NO significant improvement in achievement as gauged by the NAEP results over this period for either general ed or special ed students, or in any other way that can be measured.

In terms of anecdotal evidence, many parents  report that even with two teachers, their children’s ICT classes are too large to provide them  with quiet, focused environment they need.  Many teachers agree. See the responses from two NYC ICT teachers when I pointed this out recently on twitter, in response to a Chalkbeat article about PS 89 in Brooklyn:

"school plans to deploy additional staff...in grades K-2 so most will take classes that are co-taught, a popular model for serving students w/disabilities rarer in traditional classrooms" Actually ~ 1/3 of all K-5 students are in ICT classes w/2 teachers, most w/o disabilities.

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) June 25, 2021

Problem is that many of these classes w/2 teachers are so large they do not provide same benefits as smaller classes do.

— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) June 25, 2021

One ICT teacher responded this way: 

👆👆👆
Signed,
- a gen ed teacher w 2 ICT sections w as many as 5 coteachers just for them bc my subject doesn't have dedicated coteachers. Some don't know kids' names, let alone who has what on their IEP.

— Sdefenestration (@Sdefenestration) June 25, 2021

Then another teacher chimed in:

Another co-sign from a SpEd teacher.

— I 🛏 My 📱 (@CheeElle4) June 25, 2021

The one thing by consistently shown to have the largest impact on social/emotional/academic/everything is the one thing they refuse to deliver: smaller classes. Ask my kids with ADHD, autism, EBD if they care about their two teachers when there are 33 other kids in the room.

— I 🛏 My 📱 (@CheeElle4) June 25, 2021

NYC students continue to be subjected to class sizes 15-30% larger than those in the rest of the state.  While they have always needed smaller classes, this is true now more than ever before, both for the sake of social distancing and to provide them with the closer emotional and academic support they will need, after spending a year and a half of remote learning.

Why is the Mayor so resistant from accomplishing what has been proven over and over again to work to improve the learning environment for teachers and students, and has consistently been the top priority of NYC parents since the DOE began administering their parent surveys? 

Only  he and his staff can answer that question, but if de Blasio continues to refuse to lower class size even when there is a crying need for this, he will have both  broken his campaign promises and destroyed his own claims to have provided an equitable and quality education to NYC kids – despite having a golden opportunity to do so.  

City budget due next week- help us ensure that funding for smaller classes is included!

It's down to the wire. The City Council negotiations with the Mayor over next year's budget are in their final stages, as the budget is due next week. Reportedly, the Mayor is dragging his feet over the Council's proposal to allocate $250M towards lowering class size. We have only a few days to persuade him to change his mind, and convince the Council to hold firm. We need your help!

1- Come to a rally in City Hall Park on Monday, June 28 at 11 AM. (map here). Join other parents, advocates & teachers who will speak about the need to use the additional state and federal aid for critical programs, class size #1 among them. Bring your kids, bring signs, bring your passion & your understanding that this is clearly what is needed to transform our schools and classrooms into the caring, focused and engaging centers of learning that NYC children need, particularly after a year and a half of disruption, sadness and remote learning.

2- Sign our petition to the Mayor and the Speaker. This weekend is your last chance, as we plan to deliver them on Monday to City Hall.

3- Call the Mayor at 311 or email him at bdeblasio@cityhall.nyc.gov, to tell him it's finally time for him to live up to his frequent promise that he would lower class size once he got the long-awaited CFE funding.

4. Tweet about class size to the Mayor and Speaker at @nycmayor & @NYCSpeakerCojo. Or retweet one of the tweets I've already sent today, like this tweet or this one. I've also tweeted that reporting requirements should be attached to any targeted class size funds -- to ensure that the DOE doesn't simply cut back on its budget for staffing at the same time, and that NYC kids get the full benefit of this funding. More on this here.

Hope to see you on Monday at City Hall Park!

Leonie

P.S. if you haven't yet watched our new video on class size, you can checkout the six-minute version here, or the 2- minute one here.

What's needed along with funding to lower class size: specific reporting to ensure accountability with these funds.

We hear that in the budget negotiations happening right now, the Mayor is dragging his feet particularly in connection with the Council proposal to allocate $250 million for smaller classes, even though this is the top priority of K12 parents in NYC and statewide, and even though in the past he always promised he would lower class size when our schools received the full CFE funding, which has happened now.  

If the Council holds firm and there is funding allocated to lower class size, we also need specific accountability and transparency measures to ensure that the DOE doesn't cut their funding for staffing in other ways, as they so often have done, which would mean that NYC kids don't get the full benefit of the program.  

See our suggestions on how this could be prevented by attaching terms and conditions regarding reporting along with this funding below.

Letter to Chancellor to ensure there’s meaningful public input in spending of C4E state funds, as legally required

See the letter we sent to the DOE Chancellor Meisha Porter, written with the Education Law Center, about the need to hold prompt hearings to gain input from parents and others on how the C4E funding will be spent next year. This public input is legally required and is especially critical now, given that our schools are finally getting full C4E funding of about $530 million next year, increasing to $1.3 billion over three years. 

 In past years, these mandated hearings were held too late after these funds had already be allocated and largely spent, and whatever public input was provided had no discernible impact on the DOE's plans for these funds.  

As we also point out in the letter, the DOE must also document and post on its website a summary of the substance of the oral and written comments provided by parents and other stakeholders at these hearings, and describe either what changes were made to the district’s spending plan as a result, or explain why these changes were not made. This is legally required and has not been done by DOE in many years, to our knowledge.  

We also urge the Chancellor to ONLY spend these funds on the evidence-based programs specified in the law, and to ensure that these funds do NOT supplant city funding,  as is legally prohibited. 

Finally, an independent audit must be commissioned and presented to the Board of Education (otherwise known as the Panel for Educational Policy) showing how these funds were spent.

New video on why class size matters!

NYC educators, parents, students, elected officials explain how class size has a profound impact on learning and the quality of education, especially for disadvantaged and high needs students, and that for the sake of true equity, class sizes should be reduced in NYC and nationwide.  If you agree, sign our petition to the Mayor .  A shorter, two minute version is here.

Why class size matters from Class Size Matters on Vimeo.

Adams' comments on class size, remote learning and year-round schooling; and Maya Wiley and Danny Dromm on the ensuing controversy

On Friday, a furor erupted when the Matt Skidmore Show tweeted a video excerpt from a Citizen's Budget Committee Mayoral forum that took place on February 25. The clip is above,  in which Eric Adams said that if elected, he would create a summer school program in which each teacher would have a class of 300-400 students.

Here are Adams' exact remarks, from the transcript:

And so if you do a full year school year by using the new technology of remote learning, you don't need children to be in a school building with a number of teachers, it's just the opposite. You could have one great teacher that's in one of our specialized high schools to teach 300 to 400 students who are struggling in math with the skillful way that they're able to teach. 

Let's look at our best mastered [sic] teachers and have them have programs where they're no longer being just within a school building. We no longer have to live within the boundaries of walls, of locations. We can now have a different method of teaching and I'm going to have the best remote learning that we could possibly have, not just turning on the screen and having children look at someone or really being engaged.

After the video was tweeted,  it was retweeted thousands of times, commented upon and disputed by the other candidates.  Here are just some of the articles about the controversy in Intelligencer, NY1, Politico, and Daily News, among others.

In response, Adams claimed he "misspoke and meant to say 30 to 40 students. He also said he was referring to summer school classes and optional enrichment for high school students." 

But neither of those statements are true.  As Mercedes Schneider pointed out in her blog,  Adams had said something very similar in an interview in Bloomberg News, in an interview with political consultant, Howard Wolfson, on  February 22, just three days before the CBC forum: 

So just dealing with summer school — we could use remote learning. We should have the best remote-learning experience on the globe. We should reach out to Google, we should reach out to Facebook, we should reach out to our tech industry, and we should build out a state-of-the-art remote learning experience so that children don’t have to sit in the school building. We should require two to three hours a day where our young people during the summer months are receiving continuous instruction. And you could have a great teacher, math teacher, English teacher, from one of the specialized high schools, who can do this remotely, or one of the great teachers of schools, public, middle schools.

Covid has revealed to us we can do remote learning — we just have to do it right. We can’t go through the motions. Too many students — they’ll sign on, they just put a screen up. That is not remote learning. We need to master remote learning. You could have one teacher who could instruct remotely 200 to 300 students, and give them the instruction that they deserve. We can do this if we bridge technology with the learning experience, and it would be cost-effective.

Yet if we've learned one thing from this pandemic, is that remote learning doesn't work, especially with large classes -- as too many NYC kids have been subjected to this year.  (See my Council testimony on this.) 

Moreover, these remote classes would not be "optional" as he now claims, but an essential part of year-round schooling that would be required of all students, if Adams has his way.

Mostly skipped over in the class size controversy is Adams' proposal for mandatory year-round schooling.  The below is the top education item in his 100 Steps Forward for NYC campaign document.

Year-round schooling is a highly unpopular idea among most parents, nearly as unpopular as large classes, as shown in this recent nationwide survey of parents on what steps should be taken to make up for the Covid disruption of learning, like extending the school year. 

On Sunday, Maya Wiley held a press conference in Jackson Heights Queens, to discuss her proposal to reduce class size, as well as her other education priorities.  All the parents and teachers who spoke also agreed about the need to invest in smaller classes and criticized Eric Adams' claim that remote classes with hundreds of students could ever "give them the instruction that they deserve."  

Wiley specifically pointed out that though most all student suffer from a regime of remote learning, the research shows that those who suffer the most are disadvantaged students: "online learning is not racial equity because kids of color fall further behind in online learning,”

Videos of all the speakers at the rally,  including Wiley, are posted here.  Below is what she said when she was asked by the NY1 reporter about the Adams proposal of instituting remote summer school classes with hundreds of students:

Here is what Council Member Danny Dromm, a former teacher who was at the rally, said on the same topic:

The Adams campaign continues to deny that the candidate ever meant what he clearly did mean, with his campaign spokesperson insisting to the Daily News that "the only thing that matters” is the candidate is “not going to require any student to attend 300-400 person classes or any teacher to teach them."

“He believes in in-person classes and small class sizes. He’s always said so."  

After looking carefully at his education record and campaign proposals, I see no mention of this. 

For Adam's education proposals on a host of other issues, check out our comparison charts, summarizing his education agenda and those of the other Mayoral candidates.

Brooklyn Children’s March Against Gun Violence on Monday June 14

In the wake of gun violence that brought the death of a 10 year old child in Far Rockaway, New York, elementary and middle school students from East New York, Brooklyn will march and rally on Monday, June 14 as part of Gun Violence Awareness Month.

The march was organized by the National Council of Student Voice, an initiative of The Academy for Social Transformation, and Man Up! Inc., a community service organization in East New York, Brooklyn, dedicated to building a safer city through violence prevention, education and employment.

ManUp! was founded in 2003 by activist and honorable chair of Community Board 5 in East New York, Andre T. Mitchell in response to the killing of 8 year-old Daesean Hill by a stray bullet as he walked home from school with his stepfather and younger siblings.

“The tragic killing of 8 year old Daesan Hill in East New York nearly two decades ago brought us together to address the scourge that is gun violence in our community,” said Mitchell. “The killing of 10 year old Justin Wallace in Far Rockaway brings us together now, again, to address gun violence for what it really is – a public health crisis that has reached the level of a state of emergency and should be declared as such.” 

Students from P.S. 328, Van Sicland Middle School and the East New York Middle School of Excellence will take part in the rally along with high school students from Brooklyn and East Orange, New Jersey. 

Last year, students from East Orange under the tutelage of Seton Hall Professor Juan Rios, Jamila T. Davis and Angelo Pinto, Esq., marched to garner attention for the case of Maurice Gordon, an unarmed black man from Poughkeepsie, N.Y. killed at the hands of police on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. The East Orange students’ protest was featured in media outlets throughout the United States and internationally.

East Orange high school student Kimberly Cross, who received a full scholarship to attend Princeton University in the fall, said “In East Orange we learned that our voices matter – that we don’t have to wait until we’re 21 to demand a better world than the one we’ve been left with. That,” said Cross, a member of the newly founded National Council of Student Voice, “will be my message to the students of East New York and students around the world: Act Now.”

The students in East New York rallying on behalf of Justin Wallace and against gun violence are part of a curriculum taught through The Academy for Social Transformation, designed to bring social emotional learning and social justice awareness to middle school and high school students.

“Violence in America is a disease with systemic roots that requires systemic solutions.” said Angelo Pinto, executive director of The Academy for Social Transformation. “Students need to understand themselves as empowered agents of change on both a personal and societal level. Daesan Hill and Justin Wallace had their opportunity to effectuate change cut short – but we can act in ways both small and large to make those changes for them, and ourselves.”

The students will begin their rally at Daesan Hill Drive (at Sutter Avenue and Hendrix St.) in East New York, Brooklyn at 12 noon and conclude at the Prince Joshua Avitto Community Center (PJACC) at 876 Schenck Ave, Brooklyn, NY. The center was named after P.J. Avitto, a 6 year old boy who was stabbed to death in 2014. Avitto was the cousin of New York Knicks basketball player Taj Gibson, who will attend and speak at the rally along with former Knicks star Allan Houston. 

Other speakers will include students from the National Council of Student Voices; Andre T. Mitchell, author, activist and entrepreneur Dr. Jamila T. Davis; Angelo Pinto, Esq.; Professor Juan Rios, director of the Masters of Social Work program at Seton Hall University and co-director of the Community Care & Justice program in South Orange, New Jersey. 

For more information : Dr. Jamila T. Davis, 347-650-7361 and jamiladavis06811@gmail.com

NYC Mayoral Candidates: Their Positions on Public Education

Updated June 14, 2021 with more info on Adams' position on class size. 

 Below is our summary of the positions of the leading candidates for NYC Mayor on a range of critical education issues.  For optimal readability, download it and read at 100% of its size.  Please share with others!

#TalkoutofSchool: NYPD Intervention in student mental health crises and how to make schools more healing-centered

After a brief news recap, in today's #Talk out of School,  I spoke with Dawn Yuster, the Director of the School Justice Project for Advocates for Children, which has just released a startling report on police interventions in student mental health crises in NYC schools. 

Then I interviewed Resheeda Harris, parent leader, and Katrina Feldkamp of Bronx Legal Services, both members of the Healing-Centered Schools Task Force, composed of advocates, parents and educators who are working with schools so that they become less punitive and more healing-centered – which would help prevent these mental health crises and police interventions occurring. Listen in and check the resources for more information.  You can check out other Talk out of School podcast segments and/or subscribe here.

Episode Notes

Resources:

• Citizens' Committee for Children Survey of NYC Youth
• How to urge legislative leaders to pass A. 7447/S.6296, the bill that would require NYC schools to start lowering class size.
• Advocates for Children new report, Police Response to Students in Emotional Crisis
• Call Advocates for Children of New York’s Helpline number at (866) 427-6033, Mon-Thursday 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM.for any family who has experienced NYPD child in crisis interventions or has questions about other education-related issues 
• Healing-Center Schools Task Force report, Community Roadmap to Bring Healing-Centered Schools to the Bronx
• Visit bit.ly/RoadmapToHealing, for more details and registration for their upcoming feedback sessions. 
• Click here to read about the launch of the Healing-Centered Schools Task Force
  

Only three more days to move the bill to renew NYC's obligation to produce a class size reduction plan!

 We have only three days to move A. 7447/S.6296, the bill that would require NYC schools to start lowering class size; please call the Legislative leaders today!  Instructions below.

 

 

Call to Action! Keep the cap on charters!

 The Education Council Consortium (ECC) invites all stakeholders to make a Charter Cap Call to Action. Please find more information in a letter from the ECC to the community, below: 

Dear fellow advocates of public education and concerned families,

We need your help. We advocated hard for a cap on the number of charter schools that could operate in New York City, and we won—but now, the charter school industry is lobbying hard to remove that cap. Even though they could easily open charter schools in other parts of the state, and even though NYC has over 80% of the state’s charters, they still want more in NYC. StudentsFirst, a pro-charter political lobbying organization formed by Michelle Rhee to pass state laws facilitating charter school expansion, has released results from their poll claiming NYC Democrats want more charters. Parent advocates don’t have lobbyists or market research firms to game the system, but we have our voices and our elected representatives. 

Phone Banking

Please reach out to 10 or more friends—SLT and PTA members, grandparents, really anyone you know, and ask them to call or write their state legislators. We are aiming to have 50 calls made in each community school district, surpassing 1,500 calls.

The Charter Committee will hold a virtual phone bank on TONIGHT, Thursday, May 27th at 7pm. Please register in advance for this event. 

Letter Writing 

You can also send a letter to your elected officials here. The letter writing site has a sample letter and it will look up your legislators, so that all you have to do is sign your name! Please do it today and share with others.

Results from our Parent Action Conference: how should the eight billion dollars in state and federal funds for our schools be spent? check it out!

On Sat. May 22, 2021, we had a great Parent Action Conference, co-sponsored with NYC Kids PAC and Teens Take Charge, to brainstorm on how parents, educators and students would like the $8B in additional federal and state funds should be spent to meet our students' needs. Thanks to all her participated! 

 Our terrific keynote speakers were from the federal, state and local levels: former NYC principal and now US House Rep. Jamaal Bowman, State Senator Robert Jackson, who was a parent and former D6 School Board member and original CFE plaintiff, and former NYC teacher, City Councilmember Mark Treyger, now chair of the Council Education Committee.

We presented a brief power point (also below) that included more info on the resources our schools are receiving, and summarized the results of our online survey. We then broke into six different groups focused on Elementary schools, Middle and High Schools, Students with Disabilities, Multi Language Learners, Health and Safety, and a student group led by Teens Take Charge. Members of our groups wanted to emphasize the need for smaller classes, more counselors and social workers, a nurse for every building, more extracurricular activities and programs and more. 

 Here is a recording of the session with Passcode: w!vhA8LG. The Jamboard with ideas from our breakout groups is also below.   

"Talk out of School" podcast with PEP member Tom Sheppard and Regent Kathy Cashin

Check out our latest "Talk out of School" podcast with Tom Sheppard on pushing the envelope on Panel for Educational Policy to empower parents on issues such as school mergers, closures, and larger educational policies regarding testing, funding and class size; and Regent Kathy Cashin on how smaller classes transformed her schools when she was Superintendent of D23 & Regional Superintendent in Brooklyn and Queens.

 

Resources:

Panel for Educational Policy agenda for May 18 meeting and contract list; instructions on how to listen or comment here. 

Daily News article on proposed closure of PS 88 in the Bronx 

NY Times 2006 profile of Kathleen Cashin and her work as a Superintendent and Regional Superintendent in Brooklyn and Queens.

Regent Cashin’s op-ed on what happened in her schools when class size was reduced.