Renewal schools with largest class sizes are those that are struggling still

About a year and half ago I FOILed  the NYC Department of Education for the funding and policies they ostensibly used to reduce class size in the Renewal schools, as the last two years they have promised the state to focus their class size reduction efforts on these schools as part of their obligations under the Contract for Excellence law.

A few weeks ago, I received no information on any special funding or policies that were used to reduce class size in the Renewal schools, but I did receive a spreadsheet showing the changes in their class size averages from 2014-2016.

This DOE data shows that 38% of Renewal schools did NOT reduce average class size between 2014 and 2016 and 69% continued to have maximum class sizes of 30 or more.

The two Renewal schools with the highest average class sizes last year were Flushing HS at 28.7 and DeWitt Clinton at 27.4, and both also increased class sizes last year.  These are the two Renewal schools that according to the DOE have made the least progress and so they are demanding that all  teachers at these schools  re-apply for their jobs for next year.

Flushing had maximum class sizes in many subjects of over 30 , with many classes that violated the UFT contract of 34, including as high as 43 students per class in Global History. DeWitt Clinton also had many classes over 30 — as high as 39 in math.

Meanwhile several of the schools listed as making great gains in this NYT article, including  PS 15 and PS 328, had quite small class sizes and had also reduced class size over the last two years.  - PS 15 had reduced average class size to 17.3 students per class, and PS 328 to 16.8 students per class.

Hudson Yards Success charter parents to Eva Moskowitz: The school "broke our children’s spirit and erased their self confidence in less than 3 weeks".

Ben Chapman of the Daily News reported yesterday that a group of parents whose children attend a new Hudson Yards middle school in the Success Academy charter network is protesting the rigid and abusive disciplinary methods of the network.  The school opened this year and enrolls about 200 students in grades 5 and 6, to be expanded to 480 students through eighth grade in future years.

The school is sited in a high-rise building on the far West Side of Manhattan.  The space also houses a Success charter elementary school and the Success Academy Education Institute, established to train teachers from throughout the country in the Success techniques.  The two schools in the building are supposed to serve as "lab schools" for the Institute. The commercial space in the mixed use tower was acquired for $68 million by Success in December 2016.  

Harlem Success Middle School students

The full letter from Hudson Yard parents to Eva Moskowitz, the Success CEO, is reprinted below, and describes how the principal and faculty at the school "broke our children’s spirit and erased their self confidence in less than 3 weeks." Many of the specific practices outlined below have been reported by parents at other Success charter schools.

From: Hudson Yards Parents
Date: Tue, Oct 10, 2017 at 8:25 AM
Subject: Concerns regarding Hudson Yards

Dear Eva and SA Board of Trustees,

We are a large group of parents from Hudson Yards Middle School who are outraged by Principal Russell’s policies and treatment of our children.

Eva Moskowitz and family crashing a Success protest last year

Last week we met with Principal Russell to voice our concerns and these are the issues and specific incidents that were discussed:

HYSA faculty broke our children’s spirit and erased their self confidence in less than 3 weeks.
Our children who once loved the SA, who were proud of being a part of a great school, rallied in Albany and other events, now simply no longer want to go to school.

Some of our children are getting physically sick, experiencing meltdowns, vomiting, having nightmares and/or having sleepless nights and are unable to concentrate etc. Some of our children have even requested to be homeschooled although they had been award winners and popular last year.

Intimidation and Detention of the scholars: Since school started most of the scholars were detained at least once for reasons that can hardly justify such an extreme measure. Examples:

•  Not locking their hands
•  Not completing homework that was confusing, in some cases assignments not even given to them in the first place
•  For unintentionally and/or accidentally breaking wind or burping in the classroom
•  On October 2, 2017 approximately 50% of the school was detained
•  Some parents were informed about the detention 1 hour before it took place

Teaching style and methodologies:

•  Inattentive and careless: teachers are not actually teaching, but acting similar to traffic policemen (directing traffic and giving tickets). They consistently give misleading instructions without explanations, references or textbooks; we, the parents are helpless. Some instructions that were recently given were grammatically incorrect and could not even be completed
•  Overwhelmed staff: there are multiple documented examples of teachers who appeared so stressed that parents could not get a coherent answer to simple Yes or No questions
•  Vindictive: scholars were told they “need to stop whining to their parents”.

After spending many hours struggling with the Chromebook, a family sent an email to the teacher and tech leader expressing frustration. The following morning as if in retaliation for complaining, the teacher confiscated the Chromebook and told the scholar "You lost your Chromebook privileges" and now you have to work on paper. Teachers stop at nothing to shame, publicly humiliate and embarrass the scholars

•  Negligent: advisor is not even aware of the services scholars with IEPs are supposed to get, although the IEP was discussed with them.

Above mentioned issues are mostly generic, however 2 personal stories from Thursday, October 5, 2017 night were particularly disturbing:

1. A terminally ill mother was trying her best to acclimate her daughter to the Hudson Yards Middle School community to be her second home. The future may turn out to be just like that. Unfortunately, the scholar’s grandfather passed away shortly after school started and the mother provided the school with her precise travel plans for the funeral. As the scholar’s grandfather was lowered into the ground, the mother received a phone call from her teacher but instead of condolences and support, this teacher demanded speaking about uncompleted homework.

2. A devoted mother expressed her concerns about the school in her email to her advisory group, CCing Principal Russell. Immediately after her email was received, Principal Russell phoned her attempting to scare her from sending such mass emails. The mother refused to be bullied in such manner and ended the call. Principal Russell kept calling her repeatedly. It seems that controlling information was more urgent to him than addressing feedback.

Communications:

Some parents were able to have what appeared to be a productive conversation with Principal Russell but not much has changed.
Some parents NEVER got a chance to talk to Principal Russell, after repeatedly asking to do so.
Some parents feel intimidated by Principal Russell for speaking up and conferring with other parents.
Teachers at HYMS have not yet  provided families with their classmates parent’s contacts, unlike what other SA schools did at the beginning of the academic year.
Having a playdate or a study group to help scholars to adjust to their new environment could have been very beneficial, however Principal Russell prefered all communications to be undisclosed so we were not privy to any requests and discussions. We as parents want to teach our children to engage in open and productive discussions and not be driven by fear to do so.

ANGUISH AND SAFETY:

Staff demonstrates ZERO awareness and concern for what they are causing families with their disturbing their end of school-day pickup plans.
The staff do not care or understand that: having to leave work unexpectedly can cause somebody to lose their job.
Parents who have children in multiple schools simply cannot pick up one child without creating unsafe and emotionally stressful situations for any of their children.
To have a 10 year old child standing on the street waiting to be picked up, while parents are  fighting traffic is extremely dangerous. The school’s location makes it a perfect spot to abduct a child and disappear into Lincoln tunnel in less than a minute.
There is a homeless shelter located just across a street from the school, housing single men. Individuals who stay in this shelter have to be out by 9am every day and are not allowed back in before 4:30pm; these hours coincide with our children’s school day.

I hope you understand that our only objective here is to create an enjoyable and productive school environment for our children and not war against the SA network. It would be a loss to everyone if somebody were to use this as a factor in not providing SA additional space for its Middle Schools.
I hope you will choose to act quickly and rectify the situation for everyone’s benefit and avoid yet another public scandal as there is evidence for all written above.

We are not signing our names at this point to prevent retaliation; Principal Russell knows only some of us by name and many parents were afraid to be seen at the meeting fearing retaliation.

Our feeling is that Principal Russell’s one year of experience managing Cobble Hill 5th grade (Middle School that since then was discontinued) may not have sufficiently prepared him for jump starting a new Middle School. At this point in time there is so much bad blood between the parents and the principal, a new jump start is a necessity for this school to succeed.

We must have an experienced leader, an educator who can motivate and unify the scholars as opposed to terrifying them and destroying their self confidence.

We want a school for our children where they cannot only thrive but blossom into successful and productive adults.

Sincerely,

NPE conference Oct. 14-15; please come if you can!

There are only about thirty seats left for our annual Network for Public Education conference, this year in Oakland CA from Oct. 14-15.  If you've never been before to an NPE conference, you are missing something terrific. We have some fabulous keynote speakers, pictured to the right. In addition, you can check out the schedule of workshops.

I'll be moderating two panels: One on the myths and reality of online learning, along with Mark Miller, the former President of the PA School Board Association and Marla Kilfoyle, the Executive Director of the Badass Teachers Association.

I'll also be doing a workshop on the fight for children's privacy, with Rachael Stickland of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and Josh Golin of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood.

Please come and share with friends and colleagues, especially those who live in the Bay Area.

Join our free webinar Oct. 3 and learn how to protect your child's privacy!

UPDATE: The webinar was taped and is now posted here.

This Tuesday October 3 at 8 PM EST, Class Size Matters is co- sponsoring a free webinar with the

Parent Coalition for Student Privacy and NYS Allies for Public Education on what practical steps parents can take to safeguard their children's data from breach or abuse.

Our webinar will cover the following topics:

1. How to opt out of directory information sharing -- and why;
2. What common practices in schools violate student privacy & federal law;
3. Practical tips for protecting your child's privacy;
4. Questions to ask your teacher or principal about apps and other technology used in the classroom.
 

Registration is required so please sign up today!


According to federal law, at the beginning of each year, school districts are supposed to inform parents of their children's privacy rights under the federal law called FERPA, including their right to opt out at the beginning of the year from allowing the district to disclose their child's directory information, including name, address and other details, with various organizations or vendors that do NOT provide services to schools.

Yet in NYC and in many other districts, we have discovered that that parents have not been informed of these rights. To make things worse, NYC DOE voluntarily shares the directory information of students with charter schools for recruiting and marketing purposes.

If you are concerned about this issue, and/or have other concerns and questions about how best to safeguard your child's privacy, please join our webinar. Whether or not you can attend, you should also check out our Parent Toolkit with more information about this issue and much more. More on the directory information issue, including a sample opt out form as a pdf or in word that you can fill out and submit to your school is here.

Hope you can join us on Tuesday and thanks!

Leonie Haimson

How many thousands of school seats were lost during the past decade, how did this contribute to overcrowding and how many went to charter school students?

Last  week Class Size Matters released a new report entitled Seats Gained and Lost in NYC Schools: The Untold Story.  For the first time, this study documented that more than 50,000 NYC public school seats were eliminated during the decade of 2004 to 2013.

These seat losses, mostly because of lapsed leases, the removal of trailers and the elimination of annexes, were identified using data from the annual DOE School Capacity and Utilization Reports, known more familiarly as the Blue Books.

Rather than creating net 100,000 seats during this period, as former Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Mayor's Management Report claimed, the real figure was less than half that number — only about 45,000, when seat loss is taken into account.

Moreover, of these net seats, the vast majority were filled by charter school students in public school buildings, with only 2,357 net seats filled by district public school students during this decade.

These findings help explain the worsening overcrowding that has plagued New York City schools, especially in the elementary grades, with the number of overcrowded elementary school buildings increasing by 17 percent and the number of students in these buildings increasing by 29 percent between 2004 and 2012. 

Meanwhile, the total number of students last year in overcrowded school buildings of all kinds was more than 575,000 --- according to the DOE's own "target" methodology.

In fully half of all districts, elementary school buildings lost net capacity during this period.  Of the 19 districts that experience growth in elementary school enrollment, in only three districts did the net new capacity exceed growth: in districts 2, 11, and 22.  If you'd like to see how many seats your district lost during this period, check out the report here or below.

The report also points out several factors that may make seat loss an even more important concern in the future.  This includes the DOE’s plan to accelerate the planned removal of TCUs or trailers, and the fact that there are no funds allocated in the five-year capital plan towards replacing their classrooms.  Moreover, the amount of funding in the capital plan dedicated to replacing lost leases has sharply declined since 2009.

We suggested some  proposals that the DOE could use to stem the loss of seats and to make the process of school planning more transparent and efficient, so that the problem of overcrowding doesn't worsen,  given the boom in residential development throughout the city and the Mayor's focus on increasing the number of affordable and market-rate housing units.

We also urged an end to any further co-locations, which exacerbate overcrowding; and our figures showing that the vast majority of net new seats went to charter school students over this decade provides an important factual counterbalance to the constant demand from the charter school lobby for more space within our already overcrowded school buildings, and the claim that they have been deprived of their fair share of classrooms. 

Unfortunately, very few news outlets carried stories about the report, including those that repeatedly report on the non-newsworthy complaints from the charter lobby every time they hold a press conference or send out a press release.  The Walton Foundation and hedge-funder backed charter including Families for Excellent Schools, Students First, and other astroturf organizations, constantly and erroneously repeat the refrain that charters are unfairly deprived of their fair share of space. Why this lack of interest on the part of NYC reporters?  I could speculate but choose not to.

Instead, please take a look at the report yourselves, and please let me know what you think in the comments below.  thanks!

Please take our 5-minute class size survey!

Welcome back to a new school year! 

Please take our five-minute class size survey to let us know how large your child’s class size is this year; teachers, your input is welcome too!   In NYC, the administration has until Sept. 20 to get below the union class size limits – which are already far too high. I’ve already heard of one NYC high school with 260 classes that violate these limits -- meaning more than 34 students per class.

In case you missed it, this summer we filed a legal complaint with the NY State Education Department to enforce the law requiring NYC schools to reduce class size. We hope to hear back from the Commissioner soon.   Meanwhile, after submitting a Freedom of Information Law request a year and a half ago, we finally got back a heavily redacted memo from the Mayor’s office, which blacked out their reasons for rejecting a proposal to align the school capacity formula with smaller classes. Check it out here.

Call your Senators today to support what new poll shows parents really want in their neighborhood public schools: funding to reduce class size not "choice"

On Thursday, the full House of Representatives voted to approve massive cuts to the federal education budget, including the complete elimination of the $2 billion Title II program that provides funds to districts to enhance teacher quality and reduce class size.

In NYC, the entire Title II amount is spent on keeping about 1000 teachers on staff to prevent further class size increases.

Please call your Senators today  -- tell them to retain full funding for Title II and class size reduction in the education budget!  Their DC phone numbers can be found here.  If their phones are busy, here's how to send a free fax.


On Tuesday just two days before, the AFT released a new nationwide poll of 1200 parents, showing that most parents care deeply about increasing funding to their public schools and reducing class size.  Here are some of the results: 

1.  Turns out the top choice of most parents is a good quality neighborhood school that they can send their kids to rather than more "choice" -- by more than two to one.

2. Parents believe that the most important problems facing our public schools are inadequate funding, too much emphasis on standardized tests, and large classes; way behind at number 8 is not enough "choice."

In terms of specific improvements that parents want for their children's schools, they would like expanded access to career and technical education and smaller classes; third is more resources to struggling neighborhood schools.

Unsurprisingly, parents trust teachers far more than they trust Donald Trump, Betsy DeVos or  hedge fund managers to have the right ideas for public education -- given the fact that these individuals want to privatize our public schools in the guise of expanding "choice" rather than support and improve the schools we have:

The full results of the poll, including subgroups responses, are here;  meanwhile, please call your Senators today or send them a free fax!

What is City Hall trying to hide? See their decision memo blacking out why they refused to align the school capacity formula with smaller classes

Yesterday, the DOE announced changes to its Freedom of Information guidelines, stating that from now on, they will attempt to more accurately estimate when they will provide the documents requested, including "the approximate date, which must be reasonable under the circumstances, when the request will be granted or denied."

The current practice is that every month or so, the DOE’s legal office sends you a boilerplate email saying they are still looking for the document, but “due to the volume and complexity of requests” it will take another month “to respond substantively to your request.”  Then the next month goes by, and you get the exact same message again.

I currently have four FOIL requests outstanding for over a year, including the Renewal school’s class size reduction efforts and funding for this purpose, technology spending by DOE between 2011 and 2015, the cost of charter school facility upgrades and leases charter leases and facility upgrades between FY 2014 and FY 2016, and the names of the private organizations receiving student personal information and the legal agreements on how this data will be used and shared. 

All these requests were filed in April 2016 and I am still waiting; nearly a  year and a half later, for a substantive response.

Despite de Blasio’s campaign promises that he would reform the FOIL process and respond in a more timely fashion, the response time is now worse than ever, and DOE remains the least transparent city agency in response time according to this Chalkbeat analysis.   (See also the section on Transparency in the KidsPAC report card in which the Mayor got an "F".)

The current wait times and continual postponements of a substantive response are a violation of law, since they represent a “constructive denial” according to Robert Freeman of the NY Open Government Committee and other experts.  Whether or not this new procedure will mean that the DOE will respond any more speedily to FOIL requests is completely unknown.  I remain skeptical. The new policy was instituted as a result of a lawsuit by the NY Post, so perhaps if the DOE doesn’t shape up their act, they will have to go back to court.  

When I was on vacation in the middle of August,  I did receive a substantive response to one of my FOILs – this time one I filed to the Mayor’s office.  On April 10, 2016, I asked for the decision memo from the Mayor's office about their decision  to accept or reject the thirteen recommendations of the Blue Book Working group . This working group, appointed by the Chancellor and co-chaired by Lorraine Grillo, the head of the School Construction Authority, had recommended in December 2014 that the DOE align the school capacity formula to the smaller class sizes in their original Contract for Excellence class size reduction plan

The City sat on these recommendations for more than six months, and finally in July 2015, in the middle of summer, announced that they would accept seven of the 13 but reject six others, including what many members said was the most important one: to align the capacity formula with smaller class sizes.  There were several articles about this rejection, including in Chalkbeat and WNYC Schoolbook , DNAinfo, and on my blog here  and here.

The city’s decision not to align the school capacity formula is also an important factor cited  in our class size complaint to the state, filed in July; (see p. 13 of the complaint) , providing yet more evidence of the city’s violation of the Contract for Excellence law, which requires NYC to lower class size and to align its school construction plan with its class size reduction plan. To this day, no one from City Hall has explained their reasons for rejection this proposal -- though members of the Working Group have repeatedly asked for them to do so. 

The final decision memo from the Mayor’s office that I finally received in August is dated May 28, 2015, and is almost entirely blacked out.   The only info that is legible pertains to which recommendations they accepted, with all the explanations for the basis for their decisions redacted.  They even blacked out any mention of the six recommendations they rejected.

The other interesting aspect of the decision memo is how it was signed off on by many high- level staff -- including the Deputy Mayor, the Corporation Counsel, the Chief of Staff, Emma Wolfe, and Dean Fulehain, head of OMB, but no one from the DOE or SCA, which is peculiar given how the issue pertains to the way school capacity will be measured. 

The Mayor’s office FOIL determination letter that I received along with the memo claims the redactions were made because of the exception to FOIL listed under Public Officers Law Section 87(2)(g):

Documents exempted from release include:

(g) are inter-agency or intra-agency materials which are not:
   i. statistical or factual tabulations or data;
   ii. instructions to staff that affect the public;
   iii. final agency policy or determinations;

Yet though this decision memo does pertain to intra-agency communications, it is also a "final agency policy or determination."  

It also presumably cited facts to explain and rationalize the decisions made.  If there were no facts cited to explain the decisions made,  this would even be worse.  Below is my appeal letter to the state, making these points with relevant evidence from previous court decisions and asking them to provide a cleaner copy.

_________________________

Henry Berger, Records Appeals Office

foilappeal@cityhall.nyc.gov

RE: ID #2016-002-00063

Dear Mr. Berger:

I am appealing the decision to redact nearly the entire City Hall decision memo dated May 28, 2015, that approved or rejected certain proposals on reforming the school capacity formula; this letter is attached.

 

The FOIL determination letter that I received along with the memo stated that the redactions were made because of exceptions listed under Public Officers Law Section 87(2)(g):

Documents exempted from release include:

(g) are inter-agency or intra-agency materials which are not:
   i. statistical or factual tabulations or data;
   ii. instructions to staff that affect the public;
   iii. final agency policy or determinations… 

Yet though this decision memo does include intra-agency communications, it is also a "final agency policy or determination."   It also presumably included at least some facts to explain and rationalize the determinations made, which should not have been redacted.

See also  these relevant legal cases, granting access to such documents, from the Committee on Open Government website:

New York Times Co. v. City of New York Fire Dep't, 4 N.Y.3d 477, 796 N.Y.S.2d 302 (2005) (held, dispatch calls made over Fire Department's internal communications system concerning response to September 11 terrorist attacks are disclosable "to the extent they consist of factual statements or instructions affecting the public"),,,,

Miller v. Hewlett-Woodmere Union Free School District, N.Y.L.J., May 16, 1990 (Sup. Ct., Nassau County, 1990) (granting access to records of final decision denying request to change schools); Rold v. Coughlin, 142 Misc.2d 877, 538 N.Y.S.2d 896, (Sup. Ct. 1989) (granting access to inmate health care records as factual data and final agency determinations);

I urge you to reconsider and remove these redactions that related to these determinations as:

1- this is a final decision memo; and 2- presumably the explanations contained at least some facts.

This appeal is filed within 23 business days from the day I received the redacted memo.

Yours,

Leonie Haimson

Executive Director

Class Size Matters

leoniehaimson@gmail.com

917-435-9329