Brownsville parents and teachers outraged over students sharing PS 140
BY RACHEL MONAHAN DAILY NEWS WRITER
Tuesday, July 1st 2008, 10:56 PM
Brownsville parents and teachers are outraged over plans to put two transfer schools - for overage, undercredited students - into a building where middle schoolers attend classes.
They're also asking why Brownsville isn't slated for a high school for neighborhood teens.
"The parents are extremely angry," said Yolanda Hector, Kappa V Middle School PTA president. "[We] are not comfortable with the transfer high school because of the age difference."
"My feeling is that, yes, all students deserve an education, but it's inappropriate to put 16- to 20-year-olds in the same building as middle school [students]," said teachers union district representative Karen Blackwell-Alford.
The transfer schools, Brooklyn Democracy Academy and Metropolitan Diploma Plus High School, are slated to open this fall in the Rockaway Ave. building where Kappa V and Public School 140 are located.
"The question we have for the mayor,: Why two transfer high schools and not a regular high school?" said Ualin Smith, who teaches seventh-grade science at Kappa V. "We just want a decent high school that the kids of Brownsville can apply to."
Parents also expressed concerns about their childrens' safety with older students in the building.
"God forbid the system brings [the older students] there and they [hurt] my son," said Lafleur Edwards of Brownsville, whose son, Dylano, 11, will be a Kappa V seventh-grader. "When I'm done suing the [Department] of Ed, they'll be bankrupt."
"My school is District 75 students," said Robert Berger, who teaches at PS 140, of his special education students. "Many of them have emotional issues....It [isn't] a good idea."
Department of Education spokeswoman Melody Meyer said students will be kept separate, not even sharing time in the cafeteria and gym.
Agency officials have held at least two meetings with parents, Meyer added, and school officials have discussed combining resources to buy computer equipment or to renovate.
"We've been working very closely with the parent leaders of the schools," Meyer said. "That said, there is a need for transfer schools in Central Brooklyn."
But parents said the Department of Education was taking away their choices.
Frita Mendez, mother of sixth-grader Seremmay, 11, and eighth-grader Iseinie, 13, said she chose Kappa V over a sixth-through-12th grade school because she was concerned about her daughters being in school with older students.
"I didn't sign on for something like this," she said.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
The New York Times
July 2, 2008
Students, Teachers and Parents Weigh In on State of the Schools
By JENNIFER MEDINA
For the second year in a row, a vast majority of New York City parents, teachers and students who responded to a Department of Education survey said they were satisfied with their schools, with more teachers saying their schools maintain order and make it a priority to help students achieve.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Tuesday that more than 800,000 people responded to this year’s survey, which cost $2 million to conduct. The results of the survey account for 10 percent of the letter grades the city assigns to individual schools, with test scores and attendance making up the rest.
“I think for the first time a major school system has really listened to the parents, listened to the teachers, listened to the principals, listened to the students and tried to find out what they really say, rather than have the arrogance to think we know, ” the mayor said.
This the second year the city has conducted the survey of nearly 1.5 million parents, teachers and students. One encouraging finding was that more students reported feeling safe in hallways, bathrooms, and locker rooms at their school: 72 percent this year compared with 68 percent last year.
There were some signs of trouble and dissatisfaction, however. More than a third of middle and high school students said getting good grades did not earn the respect of other students, and nearly a quarter of parents named smaller classes as the improvement they most wanted. Both findings echo the results of last year’s survey. But among teachers, 82 percent of those who responded to the voluntary survey said that their schools made it a priority to help students achieve their learning goals, up from 73 percent last year. And nearly three-quarters said that their schools maintained order and discipline, up from 64 percent last year.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that the survey results reinforced the idea that student-teacher interaction was the most important aspect of schools.
Ninety-four percent of the 347,829 parents who responded to the survey said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their child’s teacher, and 86 percent said the teachers gave “helpful comments on homework, class work and tests.”
“The fact that parents think so highly of their children’s teachers also indicates how selfless our educators are,” Ms. Weingarten said. “They give their all despite feeling that the central administration isn’t listening to their concerns.”
Last week, the teachers’ union released the results of its own survey, which showed that 82 percent of those responding said they believed Mr. Klein did not have “confidence of the expertise of his educators.”
Education Department officials sharply criticized the union’s methodology, saying that the survey asked leading questions at a time when the union was also running advertisements criticizing the department.
The participation in the city’s survey increased significantly from last year, when 587,000 people responded, and included 48,002 teachers — a 61 percent response rate — and 410,708 students, a 78 percent response rate. Most students filled out the surveys in class, and principals across the city pushed to increase the parent participation, which was 40 percent this year, up from 26 percent last year.
Mary Ellen Kociszewski, principal of the High School for Applied Communication in Long Island City, Queens, where the survey results were released on Tuesday, said she asked parents to fill out surveys when they came to school for teacher conferences and to pick up report cards.
James S. Liebman, the Education Department’s chief accountability officer, who oversaw the survey, said that over all, parents of elementary school students had a higher response rate than those of older children, as they did last year. He said the response rate increased at so-called high-need schools, which have significant numbers of poor, minority and special education students.
Students, Teachers and Parents Weigh In on State of the Schools
By JENNIFER MEDINA
For the second year in a row, a vast majority of New York City parents, teachers and students who responded to a Department of Education survey said they were satisfied with their schools, with more teachers saying their schools maintain order and make it a priority to help students achieve.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Tuesday that more than 800,000 people responded to this year’s survey, which cost $2 million to conduct. The results of the survey account for 10 percent of the letter grades the city assigns to individual schools, with test scores and attendance making up the rest.
“I think for the first time a major school system has really listened to the parents, listened to the teachers, listened to the principals, listened to the students and tried to find out what they really say, rather than have the arrogance to think we know, ” the mayor said.
This the second year the city has conducted the survey of nearly 1.5 million parents, teachers and students. One encouraging finding was that more students reported feeling safe in hallways, bathrooms, and locker rooms at their school: 72 percent this year compared with 68 percent last year.
There were some signs of trouble and dissatisfaction, however. More than a third of middle and high school students said getting good grades did not earn the respect of other students, and nearly a quarter of parents named smaller classes as the improvement they most wanted. Both findings echo the results of last year’s survey. But among teachers, 82 percent of those who responded to the voluntary survey said that their schools made it a priority to help students achieve their learning goals, up from 73 percent last year. And nearly three-quarters said that their schools maintained order and discipline, up from 64 percent last year.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a statement that the survey results reinforced the idea that student-teacher interaction was the most important aspect of schools.
Ninety-four percent of the 347,829 parents who responded to the survey said they were “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their child’s teacher, and 86 percent said the teachers gave “helpful comments on homework, class work and tests.”
“The fact that parents think so highly of their children’s teachers also indicates how selfless our educators are,” Ms. Weingarten said. “They give their all despite feeling that the central administration isn’t listening to their concerns.”
Last week, the teachers’ union released the results of its own survey, which showed that 82 percent of those responding said they believed Mr. Klein did not have “confidence of the expertise of his educators.”
Education Department officials sharply criticized the union’s methodology, saying that the survey asked leading questions at a time when the union was also running advertisements criticizing the department.
The participation in the city’s survey increased significantly from last year, when 587,000 people responded, and included 48,002 teachers — a 61 percent response rate — and 410,708 students, a 78 percent response rate. Most students filled out the surveys in class, and principals across the city pushed to increase the parent participation, which was 40 percent this year, up from 26 percent last year.
Mary Ellen Kociszewski, principal of the High School for Applied Communication in Long Island City, Queens, where the survey results were released on Tuesday, said she asked parents to fill out surveys when they came to school for teacher conferences and to pick up report cards.
James S. Liebman, the Education Department’s chief accountability officer, who oversaw the survey, said that over all, parents of elementary school students had a higher response rate than those of older children, as they did last year. He said the response rate increased at so-called high-need schools, which have significant numbers of poor, minority and special education students.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
The NY Sun - Mayor Sees a Test Scores Triumph
Mayor Sees a Test Scores Triumph
Or is it a case of inflation of results?
By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 23, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mayor-sees-a-test-scores-triumph/80476/
Mayor Bloomberg will announce an education victory today: Test scores are up across the city, by double digits at some schools. But a cloud is already gathering, as education experts are raising the possibility that these gains and others across the country could suggest score inflation and not real learning gains.
The scores being released today show a nine-percentage-point gain in math citywide versus last year, and a seven-point gain on the reading test. The gains are even more remarkable when viewed over the six-year timeline since Mr. Bloomberg took office: Three-quarters of city students now score proficient at math, up from 37% in 2002.
This year's gains were larger than the increases statewide, though smaller than in other cities, such as Buffalo, Rochester, and Yonkers.
Mr. Bloomberg is scheduled to announce the results at a press conference at P.S. 175 in Harlem this afternoon.
The mayor has often greeted test-score increases as evidence that he is fulfilling his promise to improve public schools. "I'm happy, thrilled, ecstatic," he said last year, announcing gains on the state math test.
Since then, concerns have grown that rises in state test scores in New York and elsewhere do not reflect real improvement, but rather "inflations" — either due to easier tests, deliberate cheating, or more subtle "gaming" that helps students perform better without actually having to learn more material.
Local education experts last September called for an audit of the state test after a respected national test showed the city posting significant gains in only one academic area, despite reports from the state test showing larger gains across the board.
A report grading state tests recently delivered New York State a C+. And a study by the teachers union found that a reading test dropped in difficulty by as many as six grade levels between 2004 and 2005.
The concern in New York follows a pattern around the country.
"Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us," a new book by a testing expert and Harvard Graduate School of Education professor, Daniel Koretz, calls score inflation the "dirty secret" of high-stakes testing.
Although some test-score gains represent the real, hard work of teachers and students, others "are entirely illusory," Mr. Koretz writes.
A recent study of Texas schools is the latest in a string of academic observations on the effects of high-stakes testing. The study concludes that educators are "gaming" their state tests by preventing low-achieving students from taking them and teaching only material they expect to appear on the test, rather than the wider span of material tests are supposed to represent.
A study by a pscyhometrician and professor at the University of Iowa, Andrew Ho, found that two-thirds of state tests are publishing higher gains than a national test.
New York is not immune from the phenomenon, according to another researcher studying state tests, Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.
"We've got great rhetoric and great pressure on teachers to teach to the test, but at the end of the day when Albany reports out the share of kids that are proficient, we can't really trust their claims, especially when put up against the federal definition of proficiency," Mr. Fuller said.
The State Education Department defended its tests.
"All of New York's tests are checked many times to be sure that a score this year means the same next year," a spokesman, Tom Dunn, said in a statement. "The only way for a student to improve performance is by learning the curriculum — reading, writing, and math."
At the city Department of Education, where scores are used to help determine school closures, teacher and principal salaries, and promotion decisions from one grade to another, a senior official who oversees testing, Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger, said she has confidence that state tests are reliable.
Ms. Bell-Ellwanger said the department takes into account the potential errors of testing by looking at trends rather than individual data points.
Shown the results, the education historian Diane Ravitch noted that scores were up statewide, and that some cities had even larger gains than New York City.
"What this suggests to me is that the state lowered the bar and it is easier to pass the exams," Ms. Ravitch said.
She said the lesson of the results should be that the state "needs an independent agency to conduct the state tests and report on results."
The results will have an effect on schools. Teachers who signed up for a pilot project on merit-based performance bonuses could become eligible to receive them. Schools teetering on the edge of a failing report card grade could be pushed to another side.
Students will also be affected.
Yesterday, the principal at I.S. 349 in Bushwick section of Brooklyn, Roy Parris, said that his school's high test scores — he said they shot up about 10 points in both math and reading — mean that only one seventh-grader of 155 total is eligible to be held back this year, down from about 15 seventh-graders last year.
Or is it a case of inflation of results?
By ELIZABETH GREEN, Staff Reporter of the Sun
June 23, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mayor-sees-a-test-scores-triumph/80476/
Mayor Bloomberg will announce an education victory today: Test scores are up across the city, by double digits at some schools. But a cloud is already gathering, as education experts are raising the possibility that these gains and others across the country could suggest score inflation and not real learning gains.
The scores being released today show a nine-percentage-point gain in math citywide versus last year, and a seven-point gain on the reading test. The gains are even more remarkable when viewed over the six-year timeline since Mr. Bloomberg took office: Three-quarters of city students now score proficient at math, up from 37% in 2002.
This year's gains were larger than the increases statewide, though smaller than in other cities, such as Buffalo, Rochester, and Yonkers.
Mr. Bloomberg is scheduled to announce the results at a press conference at P.S. 175 in Harlem this afternoon.
The mayor has often greeted test-score increases as evidence that he is fulfilling his promise to improve public schools. "I'm happy, thrilled, ecstatic," he said last year, announcing gains on the state math test.
Since then, concerns have grown that rises in state test scores in New York and elsewhere do not reflect real improvement, but rather "inflations" — either due to easier tests, deliberate cheating, or more subtle "gaming" that helps students perform better without actually having to learn more material.
Local education experts last September called for an audit of the state test after a respected national test showed the city posting significant gains in only one academic area, despite reports from the state test showing larger gains across the board.
A report grading state tests recently delivered New York State a C+. And a study by the teachers union found that a reading test dropped in difficulty by as many as six grade levels between 2004 and 2005.
The concern in New York follows a pattern around the country.
"Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us," a new book by a testing expert and Harvard Graduate School of Education professor, Daniel Koretz, calls score inflation the "dirty secret" of high-stakes testing.
Although some test-score gains represent the real, hard work of teachers and students, others "are entirely illusory," Mr. Koretz writes.
A recent study of Texas schools is the latest in a string of academic observations on the effects of high-stakes testing. The study concludes that educators are "gaming" their state tests by preventing low-achieving students from taking them and teaching only material they expect to appear on the test, rather than the wider span of material tests are supposed to represent.
A study by a pscyhometrician and professor at the University of Iowa, Andrew Ho, found that two-thirds of state tests are publishing higher gains than a national test.
New York is not immune from the phenomenon, according to another researcher studying state tests, Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley.
"We've got great rhetoric and great pressure on teachers to teach to the test, but at the end of the day when Albany reports out the share of kids that are proficient, we can't really trust their claims, especially when put up against the federal definition of proficiency," Mr. Fuller said.
The State Education Department defended its tests.
"All of New York's tests are checked many times to be sure that a score this year means the same next year," a spokesman, Tom Dunn, said in a statement. "The only way for a student to improve performance is by learning the curriculum — reading, writing, and math."
At the city Department of Education, where scores are used to help determine school closures, teacher and principal salaries, and promotion decisions from one grade to another, a senior official who oversees testing, Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger, said she has confidence that state tests are reliable.
Ms. Bell-Ellwanger said the department takes into account the potential errors of testing by looking at trends rather than individual data points.
Shown the results, the education historian Diane Ravitch noted that scores were up statewide, and that some cities had even larger gains than New York City.
"What this suggests to me is that the state lowered the bar and it is easier to pass the exams," Ms. Ravitch said.
She said the lesson of the results should be that the state "needs an independent agency to conduct the state tests and report on results."
The results will have an effect on schools. Teachers who signed up for a pilot project on merit-based performance bonuses could become eligible to receive them. Schools teetering on the edge of a failing report card grade could be pushed to another side.
Students will also be affected.
Yesterday, the principal at I.S. 349 in Bushwick section of Brooklyn, Roy Parris, said that his school's high test scores — he said they shot up about 10 points in both math and reading — mean that only one seventh-grader of 155 total is eligible to be held back this year, down from about 15 seventh-graders last year.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Goverment Lies, Corruption and Mismanagement
Bloomberg's Secret Government is Unknown Even to Him
Take Guy Velella, for example. If the CEO of our city government doesn't know what political favors are being done by people who work for him, is this good management? Or did Mayor Bloomberg know that the Local Conditional Release Commission was doing? You Decide.
October 17, 2004
A Back Door Out of Rikers, Suddenly FamousBy BENJAMIN WEISER and KEVIN FLYNN, NY TIMES
LINK
The Local Conditional Release Commission was born more than a decade ago with seemingly the best of intentions. It would show mercy for certain nonviolent prisoners in New York City by freeing them from jail, an act that would also save money and reduce prison overcrowding.
And acting like a local parole board, that is just what the commission did. Hundreds of low-level criminals were freed each year.
But over time, as crime declined, jail populations slumped and the political environment shifted, the panel of mayoral appointees began to release fewer and fewer inmates, a tiny fraction of the thousands of cases it reviewed each year - so few that some prosecutors and the mayor himself lost track of the panel's existence.
Until a few weeks ago.
With its release of a former state senator, Guy J. Velella, only three months into a one-year jail term for public corruption, the panel, which has always lived in the backwaters of the city's criminal justice system, suddenly took center stage. Its rules, its criteria for release, its record keeping, its motivations and its political bent, or lack thereof, have all been the subject of much speculation and analysis in recent weeks.
What emerges from an examination of the commission's activities is a picture of a board that has had almost unfettered power to free prisoners and that continued to operate in the shadows of city government with little accountability and virtually no oversight.Though the obscure body was served by a small staff and a director who was paid $135,000 a year, city officials were unable last week to explain whether the panel has written rules, the extent of its records on its deliberations, or whether it met in person to deliberate.
What is more, of the 15 people the panel freed early over the past five years, there are questions about whether, under the board's own informal guidelines, five were even appropriate candidates for release. For example, in 2000, the panel released Mark Gastineau, a former New York Jets player, even though he had been jailed for an assault on his wife and had prior arrests and probation violations. Two weeks later, the panel reconsidered and ordered Mr. Gastineau returned to jail. And in three cases - those of Mr. Velella and his two co-defendants in a bribery conspiracy- city investigators have stepped in to review whether favoritism was at work.
Indeed, some criminal justice officials are asking why the panel, which has a $386,000 yearly budget and employs several city workers, even continues to exist. "There's no public accountability," said Bridget G. Brennan, the city's special prosecutor for drug crimes, who said she believed that at least one of the defendants her office had prosecuted was later released by the commission.
"The way it's structured,' she said, "just belies the principles of openness and impartiality that are really critical to assure people that our system of sentencing is just."
Response to criticisms by Ms. Brennan and others has been hard to come by. The panel's chairman, its three other members and its executive director all resigned under fire in recent days. Besides some limited remarks several weeks ago, they have declined to comment or have not returned phone calls. City officials, too, have refused to comment, in part because of the continuing investigation and in part because they depict the panel as an independent, quasi-judicial body.
The new chairman appointed by the mayor last week, Daniel Richman, a Fordham University law professor and a former federal prosecutor, has said that it is not his place to discuss how the board might have performed in the past, and that he has not begun to ponder how he views the board's future.
"My job at this point," he said, "is to understand the statutory framework for the board and comply with it."
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who said he had not even heard of the commission before Mr. Velella's release, even though his administration had appointed two of its members, has said that the panel has "outlived its useful purpose" and that he would support legislation to abolish it.
None of this controversy seemed likely when state lawmakers created local conditional release commissions in 1989. The panels in New York and in counties throughout the state were seen by the Legislature as a way to save money and relieve overcrowding in local jails. Under the law, prisoners serving sentences of 90 days to a year could apply for early release after serving 60 days.
"As originally envisioned, it definitely served a worthwhile purpose," said Jerome M. Becker, a former city criminal court judge who was the panel's chairman from 1990 to 1994.
In the early years, Mr. Becker said, the commission would not grant early release to an inmate with a long record or violent background. Prisoners who were released had to agree to strict conditions, like wearing ankle bracelets or entering drug treatment. A prisoner's release could be revoked if he or she violated the release terms, and recidivism was extremely low, Mr. Becker said.
Mr. Becker said that the commission, which has operated out of an office at 33 Beaver Street in Lower Manhattan, met regularly, issued annual reports and consulted with prosecutors, judges and others on prisoner releases. "We got opinions from everybody," Mr. Becker said. In those early years, Mr. Becker recalled, about 200 prisoners a year were released.
"It was not a secretive commission," he added. "The defense bar was aware of it. The district attorney's office was aware of it. The judges were aware of it."
Former Mayor David N. Dinkins recalled, "At the time, it seemed to make a lot of sense."
In recent weeks, the commission has refused requests from The New York Times for copies of its annual reports, as well as other documents that could help illuminate its inner workings, including statistics on the precise number of cases reviewed and the number of prisoners freed. In a terse statement, the commission said that in 1991, it was advised by the City Law Department that it was not required to make public the rules that govern its decision-making.
It is clear, though, that the number of releases dropped sharply in the end of the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, with 15 releases from 1999 to 2004, according to the limited data provided by the panel. One city official said that the drop was due in part to the use of more restrictive criteria in assessing cases. One change, for example, was that prisoners could be considered only if they had no prior record, the official said.
Mr. Giuliani's spokeswoman, Sunny Mindel, said there had been no policy by Giuliani's administration to tighten the release criteria because the board was independent.
The board was "not high on everyone's radar," she said.
"There was knowledge of its existence," she said, "and a view that it might be somewhat anachronistic to the extent that it was created to solve the problem of overcrowding, which had been eased."
But she said it was no surprise that the prisoner releases fell. "Mayor Giuliani's successful approach to crime reduction was widely known and shared by many," she said.
Steven M. Fishner, a former assistant district attorney who was the city's criminal justice coordinator in Mr. Giuliani's second term, was critical of the commission's role, which he called a "backdoor way to get people out of jail."
He noted that the commission typically reviewed cases just months after a judge had already decided the sentence, based on information from prosecutors, lawyers and probation officers.
Of the Velella decision, he said, "It's bad public policy that's given birth to a bad individual decision that is rightly getting the attention it's getting because it undermines confidence in government."
Michael Jacobson, who directed criminal justice agencies under Mayors Dinkins and Giuliani, said that given the city's once crowded population of prisoners, which peaked at more than 20,000 in the early 1990's, "even when they were releasing a lot, it was still a little."
"It's not like it ever really served any purpose as a prison-population valve," Mr. Jacobson said. "It served a purpose of at least letting some folks go who could clearly be handled just as well, if not better, in the community."
Besides the trickle of prisoners now being freed, 18 more inmates were offered early release in the past year but did not take it, Jack Ryan, the spokesman for the city Probation Department, has said. That is because accepting early release requires an inmate to agree to one year of supervision by a probation officer, and inmates facing only a month or two on their sentences may choose to serve their time and avoid the year of probation.
Earlier this year, there was a move in Albany to abolish the panels, spurred by outrage after an upstate panel released Mary Beth Anslow three months into a one-year sentence for operating an illegal day care center where a 3-month-old girl died. But it fell victim to the political and policy differences between the State Senate and the State Assembly.
In February, the Senate, which is dominated by suburban and upstate Republicans, and tends to take a hard line on law and order, voted 59 to 0 to abolish the commissions. A memorandum in support of the bill noted "the lack of standards in determining eligibility for release."
Among those voting was Senator Velella, who had not yet resigned. And the main sponsor of the Senate bill, Michael F. Nozzolio, an upstate Republican, wrote a letter last summer advocating Mr. Velella's release by just such a commission.
But in the Democratic-controlled Assembly, which tends to advocate shorter prison terms and more alternatives to prison for nonviolent inmates, the bill went nowhere. It was referred to the corrections committee and died without being introduced.
Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubry, a Queens Democrat who is chairman of the corrections committee, said that the Assembly had "a different view, institutionally, on what should be done" with the commissions. He cited the early goal of easing overcrowding in jails, and the desire to give municipalities bearing the brunt of the costs of housing inmates a chance to release nonviolent or ill prisoners.
Mr. Aubry said that although the Assembly was troubled by allegations that the commissions' power had been abused in some cases, it did not believe that the commissions should be abolished.
Starting next month, he said, he plans to hold hearings to study the commissions and how they work, the requirements for winning release, and how involved local officials are.
Until last week, the members of the panel in New York City included its chairman, Raul Russi, and Amy Ianora, who were both appointed by Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Bloomberg appointed the other two members, Irene Prager and Jeanne Hammock. The vote to release Mr. Velella was three in favor and one, Ms. Hammock, abstaining. Mr. Russi has said that the release was granted as a compassionate measure because Mr. Velella was a broken man who was calling commission staff members from jail.
Not surprisingly, the commission's relatively few current defenders include some former prisoners who were released by the commission.
Judith Smiley, who pleaded guilty in 2002 to custodial interference for her role in the abduction of a baby boy in 1980, was serving a six-month sentence in the Rikers Island infirmary because she had health problems and was in a wheelchair. A probation officer from the commission got in touch with her, she said.
"I asked how they got my name, because I had not applied for it," Ms. Smiley said by phone from Albuquerque, where she lives. "He said that in essence, one of the commissioners was following the case in the paper and thought that I was a candidate for the program."
Ms. Smiley added, "It was a godsend." She pointed out that she had expected to serve four months (a prisoner's sentence is typically reduced by one-third for good behavior), and the early release meant that she had to serve only two months - "not that I was counting," she said.
Michael Cooper contributed reporting from Albany for this article
November 9, 2004
Freeing Ex-Senator Violated the Law, City Panel Is Told
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER, NY TIMES
LINK
The New York City Law Department has determined that an obscure mayoral panel acted illegally when it released former State Senator Guy J. Velella from jail three months into his yearlong sentence, paving the way for Mr. Velella and four other Rikers Island prisoners who were released by the commission this year to be sent back to jail, the commission announced yesterday.
Mr. Velella and the others have been informed that they must reapply for early release by next Tuesday, and that three days later the board will decide whether to grant the requests. If it does not, the five are likely to be ordered back to jail.
The September decision to let Mr. Velella out of jail was an embarrassment for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who said he had never before heard of the panel, the Local Conditional Release Commission, even though his office appointed two of its four members. Mr. Bloomberg quickly ordered an investigation and forced all the commission members to resign, replacing them with the five members who would consider Mr. Velella's new application.
The commission had worked in relative obscurity for years in the depths of the City Department of Probation, considering whether to grant early release to first-time offenders serving short sentences in city jail.
Its release of Mr. Velella, who was sentenced to Rikers Island for conspiracy to commit bribery, ignited outrage among elected officials and others who thought it smacked of favoritism for a politically connected former lawmaker and his associates.
Mr. Velella, a Republican, and two other inmates connected to his case, Manual Gonzales and Hector Del Toro, were 3 of only 13 people released by the panel in the last six years; thousands of inmates have been denied such release.
The City Department of Investigation determined last week that the commission had violated numerous procedures when it released Mr. Velella and most of the others whose applications it had considered. The department found that the commission often did not have the necessary quorum of three members present when it granted an early release, and that the panel allowed Mr. Velella to make a second application for release too soon after it rejected his first application; state rules require a 60-day period to reapply.
Based on those findings, the city's Law Department determined that Mr. Velella, Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Del Toro were released on applications that were invalid, and the new members of the commission have concurred.
"The findings in the Department of Investigation report and the legal opinion that we've been given by the Law Department make at a minimum a prima facie case for the legal invalidity of all releases done as a result of illegal voting procedures by this commission," said Daniel C. Richman, the new chairman of the commission.
Yesterday, the new commissioners sent letters to the five people released this year, notifying them that they must reapply. The other two cases concern a person who served time for criminal possession of drugs and another who was convicted of forgery.
If the commission determines that the release of these former prisoners should not be upheld, they are likely to be told to turn themselves in. However, lawyers for at least two of the three released in the Velella case said they would fight any attempt to return their clients to jail.
"Guy Velella did absolutely nothing wrong to obtain his conditional release," said Charles Stillman, Mr. Velella's lawyer. "The fact of his eligibility to be released in as little as 60 days was fully known to the district attorney and the court. Every step taken on his behalf was in accordance with procedures set down by the Local Conditional Release Commission and oral advice from its senior staff. Guy Velella has paid and is paying for his wrongdoing."
Frank Ortiz, who represents Mr. Gonzales, said: "Every time you don't like the way a decision comes out, do you put in a new commission to change it?" Mr. Del Toro's lawyer, Steven R. Kartagener, had no comment.
Perhaps hinting that the commission has already determined how it will vote on at least some of the cases, Kerri Martin Bartlett, a member of the commission, said, "It is fair to say these matters will be litigated."
Creation of the boards around the state was authorized in 1989 to help relieve jail overcrowding, a problem that has since abated. Some lawmakers and other elected officials, including Mr. Bloomberg, would like to see the boards abolished.
Prior court cases suggest that New York City could prevail in sending Mr. Velella back to jail.
In one recent case, an inmate's application for early release in Rensselaer County was initially rejected, but the inmate reapplied less than 60 days later and won release. Because the law states that inmates must wait 60 days after being rejected to apply again, the State Supreme Court found the release invalid and the inmate was sent back to jail. Mr. Velella and Mr. Del Toro each reapplied for release shortly after their first requests were denied.
In a case resembling Mr. Velella's, a member of the commission in Livingston County decided to release a politically connected inmate without consulting the panel's two other members. In that case, the inmate was returned to prison.
The members of the New York City board said yesterday that they would discontinue the practice of automatically considering every prisoner who qualifies for release and instead require an application from anyone who wants consideration. That process is actually required by statute, the commissioners said, yet one more way in which the former commissioners failed to observe the law.
Without having applications and supporting materials, the board members said, they had nothing to base their decisions on outside of what the sentencing judge already used in the case. To make the process more open to those without education, connections or legal savvy, Mr. Richman said, the commission would reach out to jail inmates to let them know the commission exists and how to apply. "We suspect what will happen is that we will get fewer applications," Ms. Bartlett said.
Yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg said he did not want to prejudice the board's decision. "I didn't think he should have been released to begin with," he said of Mr. Velella, "because I think elected officials should certainly not be treated better than anybody else."
Go to parentadvocates.org on Velella
Take Guy Velella, for example. If the CEO of our city government doesn't know what political favors are being done by people who work for him, is this good management? Or did Mayor Bloomberg know that the Local Conditional Release Commission was doing? You Decide.
October 17, 2004
A Back Door Out of Rikers, Suddenly FamousBy BENJAMIN WEISER and KEVIN FLYNN, NY TIMES
LINK
The Local Conditional Release Commission was born more than a decade ago with seemingly the best of intentions. It would show mercy for certain nonviolent prisoners in New York City by freeing them from jail, an act that would also save money and reduce prison overcrowding.
And acting like a local parole board, that is just what the commission did. Hundreds of low-level criminals were freed each year.
But over time, as crime declined, jail populations slumped and the political environment shifted, the panel of mayoral appointees began to release fewer and fewer inmates, a tiny fraction of the thousands of cases it reviewed each year - so few that some prosecutors and the mayor himself lost track of the panel's existence.
Until a few weeks ago.
With its release of a former state senator, Guy J. Velella, only three months into a one-year jail term for public corruption, the panel, which has always lived in the backwaters of the city's criminal justice system, suddenly took center stage. Its rules, its criteria for release, its record keeping, its motivations and its political bent, or lack thereof, have all been the subject of much speculation and analysis in recent weeks.
What emerges from an examination of the commission's activities is a picture of a board that has had almost unfettered power to free prisoners and that continued to operate in the shadows of city government with little accountability and virtually no oversight.Though the obscure body was served by a small staff and a director who was paid $135,000 a year, city officials were unable last week to explain whether the panel has written rules, the extent of its records on its deliberations, or whether it met in person to deliberate.
What is more, of the 15 people the panel freed early over the past five years, there are questions about whether, under the board's own informal guidelines, five were even appropriate candidates for release. For example, in 2000, the panel released Mark Gastineau, a former New York Jets player, even though he had been jailed for an assault on his wife and had prior arrests and probation violations. Two weeks later, the panel reconsidered and ordered Mr. Gastineau returned to jail. And in three cases - those of Mr. Velella and his two co-defendants in a bribery conspiracy- city investigators have stepped in to review whether favoritism was at work.
Indeed, some criminal justice officials are asking why the panel, which has a $386,000 yearly budget and employs several city workers, even continues to exist. "There's no public accountability," said Bridget G. Brennan, the city's special prosecutor for drug crimes, who said she believed that at least one of the defendants her office had prosecuted was later released by the commission.
"The way it's structured,' she said, "just belies the principles of openness and impartiality that are really critical to assure people that our system of sentencing is just."
Response to criticisms by Ms. Brennan and others has been hard to come by. The panel's chairman, its three other members and its executive director all resigned under fire in recent days. Besides some limited remarks several weeks ago, they have declined to comment or have not returned phone calls. City officials, too, have refused to comment, in part because of the continuing investigation and in part because they depict the panel as an independent, quasi-judicial body.
The new chairman appointed by the mayor last week, Daniel Richman, a Fordham University law professor and a former federal prosecutor, has said that it is not his place to discuss how the board might have performed in the past, and that he has not begun to ponder how he views the board's future.
"My job at this point," he said, "is to understand the statutory framework for the board and comply with it."
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who said he had not even heard of the commission before Mr. Velella's release, even though his administration had appointed two of its members, has said that the panel has "outlived its useful purpose" and that he would support legislation to abolish it.
None of this controversy seemed likely when state lawmakers created local conditional release commissions in 1989. The panels in New York and in counties throughout the state were seen by the Legislature as a way to save money and relieve overcrowding in local jails. Under the law, prisoners serving sentences of 90 days to a year could apply for early release after serving 60 days.
"As originally envisioned, it definitely served a worthwhile purpose," said Jerome M. Becker, a former city criminal court judge who was the panel's chairman from 1990 to 1994.
In the early years, Mr. Becker said, the commission would not grant early release to an inmate with a long record or violent background. Prisoners who were released had to agree to strict conditions, like wearing ankle bracelets or entering drug treatment. A prisoner's release could be revoked if he or she violated the release terms, and recidivism was extremely low, Mr. Becker said.
Mr. Becker said that the commission, which has operated out of an office at 33 Beaver Street in Lower Manhattan, met regularly, issued annual reports and consulted with prosecutors, judges and others on prisoner releases. "We got opinions from everybody," Mr. Becker said. In those early years, Mr. Becker recalled, about 200 prisoners a year were released.
"It was not a secretive commission," he added. "The defense bar was aware of it. The district attorney's office was aware of it. The judges were aware of it."
Former Mayor David N. Dinkins recalled, "At the time, it seemed to make a lot of sense."
In recent weeks, the commission has refused requests from The New York Times for copies of its annual reports, as well as other documents that could help illuminate its inner workings, including statistics on the precise number of cases reviewed and the number of prisoners freed. In a terse statement, the commission said that in 1991, it was advised by the City Law Department that it was not required to make public the rules that govern its decision-making.
It is clear, though, that the number of releases dropped sharply in the end of the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, with 15 releases from 1999 to 2004, according to the limited data provided by the panel. One city official said that the drop was due in part to the use of more restrictive criteria in assessing cases. One change, for example, was that prisoners could be considered only if they had no prior record, the official said.
Mr. Giuliani's spokeswoman, Sunny Mindel, said there had been no policy by Giuliani's administration to tighten the release criteria because the board was independent.
The board was "not high on everyone's radar," she said.
"There was knowledge of its existence," she said, "and a view that it might be somewhat anachronistic to the extent that it was created to solve the problem of overcrowding, which had been eased."
But she said it was no surprise that the prisoner releases fell. "Mayor Giuliani's successful approach to crime reduction was widely known and shared by many," she said.
Steven M. Fishner, a former assistant district attorney who was the city's criminal justice coordinator in Mr. Giuliani's second term, was critical of the commission's role, which he called a "backdoor way to get people out of jail."
He noted that the commission typically reviewed cases just months after a judge had already decided the sentence, based on information from prosecutors, lawyers and probation officers.
Of the Velella decision, he said, "It's bad public policy that's given birth to a bad individual decision that is rightly getting the attention it's getting because it undermines confidence in government."
Michael Jacobson, who directed criminal justice agencies under Mayors Dinkins and Giuliani, said that given the city's once crowded population of prisoners, which peaked at more than 20,000 in the early 1990's, "even when they were releasing a lot, it was still a little."
"It's not like it ever really served any purpose as a prison-population valve," Mr. Jacobson said. "It served a purpose of at least letting some folks go who could clearly be handled just as well, if not better, in the community."
Besides the trickle of prisoners now being freed, 18 more inmates were offered early release in the past year but did not take it, Jack Ryan, the spokesman for the city Probation Department, has said. That is because accepting early release requires an inmate to agree to one year of supervision by a probation officer, and inmates facing only a month or two on their sentences may choose to serve their time and avoid the year of probation.
Earlier this year, there was a move in Albany to abolish the panels, spurred by outrage after an upstate panel released Mary Beth Anslow three months into a one-year sentence for operating an illegal day care center where a 3-month-old girl died. But it fell victim to the political and policy differences between the State Senate and the State Assembly.
In February, the Senate, which is dominated by suburban and upstate Republicans, and tends to take a hard line on law and order, voted 59 to 0 to abolish the commissions. A memorandum in support of the bill noted "the lack of standards in determining eligibility for release."
Among those voting was Senator Velella, who had not yet resigned. And the main sponsor of the Senate bill, Michael F. Nozzolio, an upstate Republican, wrote a letter last summer advocating Mr. Velella's release by just such a commission.
But in the Democratic-controlled Assembly, which tends to advocate shorter prison terms and more alternatives to prison for nonviolent inmates, the bill went nowhere. It was referred to the corrections committee and died without being introduced.
Assemblyman Jeffrion L. Aubry, a Queens Democrat who is chairman of the corrections committee, said that the Assembly had "a different view, institutionally, on what should be done" with the commissions. He cited the early goal of easing overcrowding in jails, and the desire to give municipalities bearing the brunt of the costs of housing inmates a chance to release nonviolent or ill prisoners.
Mr. Aubry said that although the Assembly was troubled by allegations that the commissions' power had been abused in some cases, it did not believe that the commissions should be abolished.
Starting next month, he said, he plans to hold hearings to study the commissions and how they work, the requirements for winning release, and how involved local officials are.
Until last week, the members of the panel in New York City included its chairman, Raul Russi, and Amy Ianora, who were both appointed by Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Bloomberg appointed the other two members, Irene Prager and Jeanne Hammock. The vote to release Mr. Velella was three in favor and one, Ms. Hammock, abstaining. Mr. Russi has said that the release was granted as a compassionate measure because Mr. Velella was a broken man who was calling commission staff members from jail.
Not surprisingly, the commission's relatively few current defenders include some former prisoners who were released by the commission.
Judith Smiley, who pleaded guilty in 2002 to custodial interference for her role in the abduction of a baby boy in 1980, was serving a six-month sentence in the Rikers Island infirmary because she had health problems and was in a wheelchair. A probation officer from the commission got in touch with her, she said.
"I asked how they got my name, because I had not applied for it," Ms. Smiley said by phone from Albuquerque, where she lives. "He said that in essence, one of the commissioners was following the case in the paper and thought that I was a candidate for the program."
Ms. Smiley added, "It was a godsend." She pointed out that she had expected to serve four months (a prisoner's sentence is typically reduced by one-third for good behavior), and the early release meant that she had to serve only two months - "not that I was counting," she said.
Michael Cooper contributed reporting from Albany for this article
November 9, 2004
Freeing Ex-Senator Violated the Law, City Panel Is Told
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER, NY TIMES
LINK
The New York City Law Department has determined that an obscure mayoral panel acted illegally when it released former State Senator Guy J. Velella from jail three months into his yearlong sentence, paving the way for Mr. Velella and four other Rikers Island prisoners who were released by the commission this year to be sent back to jail, the commission announced yesterday.
Mr. Velella and the others have been informed that they must reapply for early release by next Tuesday, and that three days later the board will decide whether to grant the requests. If it does not, the five are likely to be ordered back to jail.
The September decision to let Mr. Velella out of jail was an embarrassment for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who said he had never before heard of the panel, the Local Conditional Release Commission, even though his office appointed two of its four members. Mr. Bloomberg quickly ordered an investigation and forced all the commission members to resign, replacing them with the five members who would consider Mr. Velella's new application.
The commission had worked in relative obscurity for years in the depths of the City Department of Probation, considering whether to grant early release to first-time offenders serving short sentences in city jail.
Its release of Mr. Velella, who was sentenced to Rikers Island for conspiracy to commit bribery, ignited outrage among elected officials and others who thought it smacked of favoritism for a politically connected former lawmaker and his associates.
Mr. Velella, a Republican, and two other inmates connected to his case, Manual Gonzales and Hector Del Toro, were 3 of only 13 people released by the panel in the last six years; thousands of inmates have been denied such release.
The City Department of Investigation determined last week that the commission had violated numerous procedures when it released Mr. Velella and most of the others whose applications it had considered. The department found that the commission often did not have the necessary quorum of three members present when it granted an early release, and that the panel allowed Mr. Velella to make a second application for release too soon after it rejected his first application; state rules require a 60-day period to reapply.
Based on those findings, the city's Law Department determined that Mr. Velella, Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Del Toro were released on applications that were invalid, and the new members of the commission have concurred.
"The findings in the Department of Investigation report and the legal opinion that we've been given by the Law Department make at a minimum a prima facie case for the legal invalidity of all releases done as a result of illegal voting procedures by this commission," said Daniel C. Richman, the new chairman of the commission.
Yesterday, the new commissioners sent letters to the five people released this year, notifying them that they must reapply. The other two cases concern a person who served time for criminal possession of drugs and another who was convicted of forgery.
If the commission determines that the release of these former prisoners should not be upheld, they are likely to be told to turn themselves in. However, lawyers for at least two of the three released in the Velella case said they would fight any attempt to return their clients to jail.
"Guy Velella did absolutely nothing wrong to obtain his conditional release," said Charles Stillman, Mr. Velella's lawyer. "The fact of his eligibility to be released in as little as 60 days was fully known to the district attorney and the court. Every step taken on his behalf was in accordance with procedures set down by the Local Conditional Release Commission and oral advice from its senior staff. Guy Velella has paid and is paying for his wrongdoing."
Frank Ortiz, who represents Mr. Gonzales, said: "Every time you don't like the way a decision comes out, do you put in a new commission to change it?" Mr. Del Toro's lawyer, Steven R. Kartagener, had no comment.
Perhaps hinting that the commission has already determined how it will vote on at least some of the cases, Kerri Martin Bartlett, a member of the commission, said, "It is fair to say these matters will be litigated."
Creation of the boards around the state was authorized in 1989 to help relieve jail overcrowding, a problem that has since abated. Some lawmakers and other elected officials, including Mr. Bloomberg, would like to see the boards abolished.
Prior court cases suggest that New York City could prevail in sending Mr. Velella back to jail.
In one recent case, an inmate's application for early release in Rensselaer County was initially rejected, but the inmate reapplied less than 60 days later and won release. Because the law states that inmates must wait 60 days after being rejected to apply again, the State Supreme Court found the release invalid and the inmate was sent back to jail. Mr. Velella and Mr. Del Toro each reapplied for release shortly after their first requests were denied.
In a case resembling Mr. Velella's, a member of the commission in Livingston County decided to release a politically connected inmate without consulting the panel's two other members. In that case, the inmate was returned to prison.
The members of the New York City board said yesterday that they would discontinue the practice of automatically considering every prisoner who qualifies for release and instead require an application from anyone who wants consideration. That process is actually required by statute, the commissioners said, yet one more way in which the former commissioners failed to observe the law.
Without having applications and supporting materials, the board members said, they had nothing to base their decisions on outside of what the sentencing judge already used in the case. To make the process more open to those without education, connections or legal savvy, Mr. Richman said, the commission would reach out to jail inmates to let them know the commission exists and how to apply. "We suspect what will happen is that we will get fewer applications," Ms. Bartlett said.
Yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg said he did not want to prejudice the board's decision. "I didn't think he should have been released to begin with," he said of Mr. Velella, "because I think elected officials should certainly not be treated better than anybody else."
Go to parentadvocates.org on Velella
Friday, June 27, 2008
Bloomberg and Council Reach Deal on Budget
Bloomberg and Council Reach Deal on Budget
By DAVID W. CHEN and MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: June 27, 2008
With a legal deadline four days away, city officials brokered a deal on Thursday night on a $59.1 billion budget that would preserve a popular tax cut for homeowners and a $400 rebate and add $129 million in education spending to what had originally been proposed.
Over all, the size of the budget for the fiscal year that begins in July is essentially unchanged from the current one. But during a news conference in the City Hall rotunda, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said they were not able to provide as much money as they would have liked for some cultural and social programs. And they repeatedly warned that the current economic downturn threatened the following year’s budget, thanks to the rising price of oil, a falling stock market and other troubling indicators.
“I don’t have to tell anybody here that this is a difficult time and the forecasts are worrisome,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “With so much uncertainty in the local and national economy, we need to show fiscal restraint just as families across the city are doing.”
Ms. Quinn added, “As much good news as there is in this budget, there is bad news for some people.”
The deal came as a relief to lawmakers and administration officials, who had worried that the city might not make the legally mandated July 1 deadline. But the relative austerity of the budget deal disappointed many of the housing, legal, health care and other advocates who had become a regular fixture on the steps of City Hall all week.
Details are expected to be released in the next day or two, and the City Council is scheduled to vote on the budget on Sunday night.
During the news conference, Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn offered a few of the highlights. The New York City Housing Authority would receive $18 million more than Mr. Bloomberg proposed in May. Libraries would continue to be open six days a week and not five as was originally suggested.
The city’s capital budget would be trimmed by 20 percent. All agencies would absorb across-the-board cuts in operating expenses. And financing for City Council-sponsored programs, now at the heart of a federal investigation, was cut by 38 percent. There would also be less money to pay for security guards at cultural institutions, and a chess program for schools was cut.
The budget also eliminates civilian positions in the Fire Department and eliminates unfilled positions in the Police Department.
“Everything was given a little haircut,” said Councilman David Weprin, the chairman of the Finance Committee.
Initial reaction was mixed.
“I am disappointed that with a $4.5 billion surplus, the mayor forced the Council to cut funding for essential services, including homeless prevention, legal and mental health services, and workforce development,” said Councilman Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn. “In addition, the New York City Housing Authority, which is in dire financial straits, will be forced to shut senior centers and youth programs across the city. The mayor should not have put the city in this situation, and these cuts will be deeply felt for years to come.”
“This is a bad day for seniors,” said Bobbie Sackman, the director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services, who estimated that the budget would reduce spending on travel, housing, food, H.I.V. testing and other services by a total of $19 million.
Throughout the process, the mayor and the Council seemed to be living in different fiscal universes. While Mr. Bloomberg called for financial austerity in the face of a rapid downturn in the economy, the Council accused him of overstating the city’s woes, pointing to a big surplus in the 2008 budget.
Talks between both sides began to sour two weeks ago, after Mr. Bloomberg announced on his weekly radio show that the city might have to scrap a popular property tax cut for homeowners.
The mayor said that the 7 percent tax cut, put in place in 2007, might not be justifiable given job losses on Wall Street and an unexpected $700 million bill for a retroactive raise given to 23,000 police officers in May.
Almost immediately, the Council united to oppose the measure, turning what had been described as amicable talks into a bitter stalemate.
At one point this week, the negotiating team for the Council broke off talks to highlight their frustration.
One councilman, Lewis A. Fidler of Brooklyn, stormed into the press room at City Hall and accused the mayor of playing “a nasty game of chicken” with the property tax proposal, which would amount to a tax hike.
“He’s looking at his last year as mayor, and he doesn’t want to go out with an unmanageable situation,” Mr. Fidler said.
On Thursday afternoon, the atmosphere was so tense that when Mayor Bloomberg walked out of City Hall and headed toward his car, he barely acknowledged the calls of children who had convened on the steps with their parents to decry overcrowding in public schools.
At the news conference, Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn even forgot to do the traditional handshake and kiss. When a reporter asked what had happened, they returned. Ms. Quinn said “Take two,” and the two performed their duty.
Fernanda Santos contributed reporting.
By DAVID W. CHEN and MICHAEL BARBARO
Published: June 27, 2008
With a legal deadline four days away, city officials brokered a deal on Thursday night on a $59.1 billion budget that would preserve a popular tax cut for homeowners and a $400 rebate and add $129 million in education spending to what had originally been proposed.
Over all, the size of the budget for the fiscal year that begins in July is essentially unchanged from the current one. But during a news conference in the City Hall rotunda, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, said they were not able to provide as much money as they would have liked for some cultural and social programs. And they repeatedly warned that the current economic downturn threatened the following year’s budget, thanks to the rising price of oil, a falling stock market and other troubling indicators.
“I don’t have to tell anybody here that this is a difficult time and the forecasts are worrisome,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “With so much uncertainty in the local and national economy, we need to show fiscal restraint just as families across the city are doing.”
Ms. Quinn added, “As much good news as there is in this budget, there is bad news for some people.”
The deal came as a relief to lawmakers and administration officials, who had worried that the city might not make the legally mandated July 1 deadline. But the relative austerity of the budget deal disappointed many of the housing, legal, health care and other advocates who had become a regular fixture on the steps of City Hall all week.
Details are expected to be released in the next day or two, and the City Council is scheduled to vote on the budget on Sunday night.
During the news conference, Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn offered a few of the highlights. The New York City Housing Authority would receive $18 million more than Mr. Bloomberg proposed in May. Libraries would continue to be open six days a week and not five as was originally suggested.
The city’s capital budget would be trimmed by 20 percent. All agencies would absorb across-the-board cuts in operating expenses. And financing for City Council-sponsored programs, now at the heart of a federal investigation, was cut by 38 percent. There would also be less money to pay for security guards at cultural institutions, and a chess program for schools was cut.
The budget also eliminates civilian positions in the Fire Department and eliminates unfilled positions in the Police Department.
“Everything was given a little haircut,” said Councilman David Weprin, the chairman of the Finance Committee.
Initial reaction was mixed.
“I am disappointed that with a $4.5 billion surplus, the mayor forced the Council to cut funding for essential services, including homeless prevention, legal and mental health services, and workforce development,” said Councilman Bill de Blasio of Brooklyn. “In addition, the New York City Housing Authority, which is in dire financial straits, will be forced to shut senior centers and youth programs across the city. The mayor should not have put the city in this situation, and these cuts will be deeply felt for years to come.”
“This is a bad day for seniors,” said Bobbie Sackman, the director of public policy for the Council of Senior Centers and Services, who estimated that the budget would reduce spending on travel, housing, food, H.I.V. testing and other services by a total of $19 million.
Throughout the process, the mayor and the Council seemed to be living in different fiscal universes. While Mr. Bloomberg called for financial austerity in the face of a rapid downturn in the economy, the Council accused him of overstating the city’s woes, pointing to a big surplus in the 2008 budget.
Talks between both sides began to sour two weeks ago, after Mr. Bloomberg announced on his weekly radio show that the city might have to scrap a popular property tax cut for homeowners.
The mayor said that the 7 percent tax cut, put in place in 2007, might not be justifiable given job losses on Wall Street and an unexpected $700 million bill for a retroactive raise given to 23,000 police officers in May.
Almost immediately, the Council united to oppose the measure, turning what had been described as amicable talks into a bitter stalemate.
At one point this week, the negotiating team for the Council broke off talks to highlight their frustration.
One councilman, Lewis A. Fidler of Brooklyn, stormed into the press room at City Hall and accused the mayor of playing “a nasty game of chicken” with the property tax proposal, which would amount to a tax hike.
“He’s looking at his last year as mayor, and he doesn’t want to go out with an unmanageable situation,” Mr. Fidler said.
On Thursday afternoon, the atmosphere was so tense that when Mayor Bloomberg walked out of City Hall and headed toward his car, he barely acknowledged the calls of children who had convened on the steps with their parents to decry overcrowding in public schools.
At the news conference, Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Quinn even forgot to do the traditional handshake and kiss. When a reporter asked what had happened, they returned. Ms. Quinn said “Take two,” and the two performed their duty.
Fernanda Santos contributed reporting.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Hey City Council, what are those $800 million in "nondiscretionary" DOE cost increases?
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Hey City Council, what are those $800 million in "nondiscretionary" DOE cost increases?
I recently sent this letter to City Council Member Dan Garodnick, and similar letters to Speaker Christine Quinn and Council Member Alan Gerson, with copies to Council Member Robert Jackson of the Education Committee. I encourage other parents to do the same. Dramatic cuts to school budgets are being negotiated in the City Council right now, and the cost basis for these cuts deserves to be challenged.
UPDATE: See full detail on Tweed's $809 million in "non discretionary" cost increases here and $154 million in "discretionary" increases here.
Dear Council Member Garodnick,
It was good to meet you last week and convey some of parents' concerns about the DOE budget.
I mentioned when we spoke that many parents following education issues feel that the overruns in the FY 09 budget identified by the DOE as inevitable cost increases are in fact discretionary. I attach an exile file from the DOE detailing their claimed cost increases. You'll see that very few of them are milk and fuel. Several fund increases in controversial and untested programs. Items that could be considered non-compulsory include:
- $70 million in growth for charter schools
- $64.3 million in growth for CTT programs
- $30 million for expanded school closures
- $26.7 million to maintain school level funding for Fair Student Funding
Of these reputed overruns only about $380 million is increased staff expenses, and $2 million of that is a CSA bonus created by Chancellor Klein. Only $43 million is increased transportation costs.
Under "necessary improvements":
- $25 million in expanded merit pay for teachers (the first year of this program, which was privately funded, has not been evaluated)
- $20 million in "school support reserve": what is this?
- $10 million more for ELA and math test scoring. Why?
- $2.3 million more for "Talent Intitiatives": what is this?
- $2 million more for G&T classes
In their budget cuts document (also attached), DOE claims they are cutting periodic assessments and children's first intensive programs at a savings of $1.4 million and $2.45 million, respectively. But under "necessary improvements" these programs are identfied as increasing by $3.6 million and $2.8 million, respectively, in costs.
Additionally, according to Principals' Weekly, DOE is doubling the size of data inquiry teams. This cost does not appear in the budget.
The accountability office and the quality reviews could also be cut. Their value in relation to their cost has never been convincingly demonstrated to the public.
DOE officials are saying to parents and officials all over town that they are obliged to make draconian cuts to high performing schools because they are burdened by increasing costs. But these are costs of their own devising. Before we sacrifice successful schools, and challenge salutary influence of the CFE funds on our struggling schools, we should look to how much these expensive programs are really doing for us. And we certainly should not allow them to be disguised as necessary increases in basic operating costs.
Many thanks for your attention,
Ann Kjellberg
Hey City Council, what are those $800 million in "nondiscretionary" DOE cost increases?
I recently sent this letter to City Council Member Dan Garodnick, and similar letters to Speaker Christine Quinn and Council Member Alan Gerson, with copies to Council Member Robert Jackson of the Education Committee. I encourage other parents to do the same. Dramatic cuts to school budgets are being negotiated in the City Council right now, and the cost basis for these cuts deserves to be challenged.
UPDATE: See full detail on Tweed's $809 million in "non discretionary" cost increases here and $154 million in "discretionary" increases here.
Dear Council Member Garodnick,
It was good to meet you last week and convey some of parents' concerns about the DOE budget.
I mentioned when we spoke that many parents following education issues feel that the overruns in the FY 09 budget identified by the DOE as inevitable cost increases are in fact discretionary. I attach an exile file from the DOE detailing their claimed cost increases. You'll see that very few of them are milk and fuel. Several fund increases in controversial and untested programs. Items that could be considered non-compulsory include:
- $70 million in growth for charter schools
- $64.3 million in growth for CTT programs
- $30 million for expanded school closures
- $26.7 million to maintain school level funding for Fair Student Funding
Of these reputed overruns only about $380 million is increased staff expenses, and $2 million of that is a CSA bonus created by Chancellor Klein. Only $43 million is increased transportation costs.
Under "necessary improvements":
- $25 million in expanded merit pay for teachers (the first year of this program, which was privately funded, has not been evaluated)
- $20 million in "school support reserve": what is this?
- $10 million more for ELA and math test scoring. Why?
- $2.3 million more for "Talent Intitiatives": what is this?
- $2 million more for G&T classes
In their budget cuts document (also attached), DOE claims they are cutting periodic assessments and children's first intensive programs at a savings of $1.4 million and $2.45 million, respectively. But under "necessary improvements" these programs are identfied as increasing by $3.6 million and $2.8 million, respectively, in costs.
Additionally, according to Principals' Weekly, DOE is doubling the size of data inquiry teams. This cost does not appear in the budget.
The accountability office and the quality reviews could also be cut. Their value in relation to their cost has never been convincingly demonstrated to the public.
DOE officials are saying to parents and officials all over town that they are obliged to make draconian cuts to high performing schools because they are burdened by increasing costs. But these are costs of their own devising. Before we sacrifice successful schools, and challenge salutary influence of the CFE funds on our struggling schools, we should look to how much these expensive programs are really doing for us. And we certainly should not allow them to be disguised as necessary increases in basic operating costs.
Many thanks for your attention,
Ann Kjellberg
Friday, June 13, 2008
NYCLU - School to Prison Pipeline
Every day, more than 93,000 New York City school children must pass through a gauntlet of metal detectors, bag searches and pat downs administered by police personnel who are inadequately trained, insufficiently supervised and often belligerent, aggressive and disrespectful. This burden weighs most heavily on the city's most vulnerable children, who are disproportionately poor, Black and Latino.
A groundbreaking new report by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union, Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools, documents the excesses of the policing operation in New York City's public schools and the penalties that students have paid as a result of those operations.
Laying the responsibility squarely at the feet of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the NYCLU and the ACLU Racial Justice Project report offer realistic recommendations for reform.
The NYCLU and the ACLU are committed to working with educators, students, families, community members, and city officials to achieve these urgently needed reforms. Click below to get more information about this problem and to learn how to get involved in making change.
-->
Get informed
Read the Report (PDF)
Read about students who have experienced over-policing in their schools
Download our Palm Card: Know Your Rights with Police in Schools (PDF)
Read About the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Get involved
Download the NYCLU's Organizing Tool Kit on Policing in Schools (PDF)
Learn how to file a complaint about the behavior of an NYPD officer or a School Security Agent in a school (Microsoft Word file)
Download a template of a letter to send to your council member (Microsoft Word file)
Download a template of a letter to send to the mayor and the schools commissioner (Microsoft Word file)
Reach out to key organizations working on policing in schools
A groundbreaking new report by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union, Criminalizing the Classroom: The Over-Policing of New York City Schools, documents the excesses of the policing operation in New York City's public schools and the penalties that students have paid as a result of those operations.
Laying the responsibility squarely at the feet of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the NYCLU and the ACLU Racial Justice Project report offer realistic recommendations for reform.
The NYCLU and the ACLU are committed to working with educators, students, families, community members, and city officials to achieve these urgently needed reforms. Click below to get more information about this problem and to learn how to get involved in making change.
-->
Get informed
Read the Report (PDF)
Read about students who have experienced over-policing in their schools
Download our Palm Card: Know Your Rights with Police in Schools (PDF)
Read About the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Get involved
Download the NYCLU's Organizing Tool Kit on Policing in Schools (PDF)
Learn how to file a complaint about the behavior of an NYPD officer or a School Security Agent in a school (Microsoft Word file)
Download a template of a letter to send to your council member (Microsoft Word file)
Download a template of a letter to send to the mayor and the schools commissioner (Microsoft Word file)
Reach out to key organizations working on policing in schools
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Douglaston mom sues city to regain voice in school leadership teams
BY JESS WISLOSKI DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, June 10th 2008, 4:00 AM
http://www.nydailyn/ews.com/ny_local/queens/2008/06/10/2008-06-10_douglaston_mom_sues_city_to_regain_voice.html
Marie Pollicino of Douglaston has filed a lawsuit against the city in an effort to gain more power for parents.
Mayor Bloomberg has never stood trial for the ongoing charges parent groups have made that his administration shuts them out of involvement in New York City's schools. But he soon could.
A state commissioner's ruling on a lawsuit against the Education Department filed by an angry Queens mom is expected by the end of June.
If Commissioner Richard Mills hands down a favorable ruling for parents, a city appeal will bring the case to trial in state Supreme Court.
Marie Pollicino, 46, a mother of three boys who lives in Douglaston, says she just wants justice.
"It wasn't personal just for me; it was for all the parents with a child in the public school," she said.
Her petition asks the state to revoke a newly-minted change to the schools chancellor's regulations enacted on December 3.
"The chancellor changed the regulations without input from any groups. They just make up their mind," she said.
The revision, which applied to regulation A-655, took decision-making power away from parents and teachers in school leadership teams, Pollicino claimed.
Since filing in late December, she has been inundated with support. Three unions, including the United Federation of Teachers, have signed on as petitioners to the case. Community Education Council 26, of which she is a member, also signed on, along with lawyer Melvyn Meeks, who is a parent leader at Flushing's Public School 188.
In the past, school leadership teams comprised a body of teachers, parents, and administrators, who met monthly at each school to create its budget and comprehensive educational plan.
The new law gives principals "the final determination" on educational plans and budgets and changed parent duties.
The petition claims the changes "fatally weakened the core duties" of the teams and in doing so violates state law.
The city refuted Pollicino's claims in an appeal stating the city's provision for parents to "consult" with principals meets the state's required "shared decision-making" clauses for parental roles.
Laura Postiglione, a spokeswoman for the city's Law Department, would not comment. "We can't comment due to pending litigation," she said.
Public notification about the regulation change was not found on the Education Department's Web site. Manhattan parent Patrick Sullivan, who sits on the citywide Panel for Education Policy, said public comments were collected from panel members. He and other parents were vocally opposed to the modification, he said.
"Parents want to be involved in the schools," he said. "It's a tremendous deterrent."
jwisloski@nydailynews.com
Tuesday, June 10th 2008, 4:00 AM
http://www.nydailyn/ews.com/ny_local/queens/2008/06/10/2008-06-10_douglaston_mom_sues_city_to_regain_voice.html
Marie Pollicino of Douglaston has filed a lawsuit against the city in an effort to gain more power for parents.
Mayor Bloomberg has never stood trial for the ongoing charges parent groups have made that his administration shuts them out of involvement in New York City's schools. But he soon could.
A state commissioner's ruling on a lawsuit against the Education Department filed by an angry Queens mom is expected by the end of June.
If Commissioner Richard Mills hands down a favorable ruling for parents, a city appeal will bring the case to trial in state Supreme Court.
Marie Pollicino, 46, a mother of three boys who lives in Douglaston, says she just wants justice.
"It wasn't personal just for me; it was for all the parents with a child in the public school," she said.
Her petition asks the state to revoke a newly-minted change to the schools chancellor's regulations enacted on December 3.
"The chancellor changed the regulations without input from any groups. They just make up their mind," she said.
The revision, which applied to regulation A-655, took decision-making power away from parents and teachers in school leadership teams, Pollicino claimed.
Since filing in late December, she has been inundated with support. Three unions, including the United Federation of Teachers, have signed on as petitioners to the case. Community Education Council 26, of which she is a member, also signed on, along with lawyer Melvyn Meeks, who is a parent leader at Flushing's Public School 188.
In the past, school leadership teams comprised a body of teachers, parents, and administrators, who met monthly at each school to create its budget and comprehensive educational plan.
The new law gives principals "the final determination" on educational plans and budgets and changed parent duties.
The petition claims the changes "fatally weakened the core duties" of the teams and in doing so violates state law.
The city refuted Pollicino's claims in an appeal stating the city's provision for parents to "consult" with principals meets the state's required "shared decision-making" clauses for parental roles.
Laura Postiglione, a spokeswoman for the city's Law Department, would not comment. "We can't comment due to pending litigation," she said.
Public notification about the regulation change was not found on the Education Department's Web site. Manhattan parent Patrick Sullivan, who sits on the citywide Panel for Education Policy, said public comments were collected from panel members. He and other parents were vocally opposed to the modification, he said.
"Parents want to be involved in the schools," he said. "It's a tremendous deterrent."
jwisloski@nydailynews.com
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
School Rally
SAVE OUR SCHOOL
.
Join us on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 and June 25, 2008 in front of 1300 Greene Ave for the save Philippa Schuyler Rally from 7 am to 9 am.
NYC Violating the law on class size
To: NYC parents and other interested parents
From: Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters; 212-674-7320; leonie@att.net
Date: 4/20/2006
Re: NY State Comptroller’s audit of NYC’s use of state class size funds
On March 16, the State Comptroller released the results of an audit, showing that because the Department of Education has been misusing state funds , NYC children have been deprived of the smaller classes they need and deserve. Here is a link to the audit; here are some news stories about the audit's findings.
Specifically, the Comptroller found that last school year, the city had added only 20 classes in grades K-3 over the number that existed before the program’s inception. At $89 million, this means that each additional class cost the taxpayer more than $4.5 million.
This audit was performed in response to a request from then-Speaker Gifford Miller, Councilmember Jackson, and State Senator Schneiderman, who in January of 2005 asked the State Comptroller to examine the city’s use of the state class size reduction funds, based on evidence collected by Class Size Matters that there were signs that the city had not added the number of classes that it claimed in its official reports to the state, and that as a result, that class sizes had risen in grades K-3 in many parts of the city, despite declining enrollment.
This was also occurring at the same time that the city claimed to have formed 1586 additional classes in these grades, with the use of the state funds that are specifically supposed to be used for this purpose. Check out a timeline with the relevant background informationt.
You can also read the Council press release and some earlier news articles , including the unexpected disclosure of an audit from 2003 that found the City already in violation of law on this issue here. Because nothing was done to follow up, NYC fell from 55% of compliance in 2002 to only 1% in 2004.
NYC began receiving categorical state funding in the 1999-2000 school year to hire additional teachers and form additional classes to reduce class size in grades K-3. For the last five years, the city has received more than $500 million from the state for these purposes, with $89 million annually for the past four years..
Yet the State Comptroller found that last year, 1566 classes were missing compared to the number the city claims to have formed with these funds, a conclusion made by counting the number of classes provided above those offered before the program began in the1998-9 school year, as the statute specifies. The Comptroller also found that DOE had sharply cut back the number of classes in these grades by almost 900 over the last four years.
If the city had actually formed all the additional classes claimed with the state funds, class sizes in grades K-3 would now average 19.1 students per class. Instead, the average size of these classes remains greater than 21, with 65% of K-3 children in classes over the state goal of 20, and 26% in classes of 25 or higher.
The Comptroller concluded that the DOE had improperly substituted state funds to pay the salaries for teachers who should have been paid with city funds, a practice counter to the language and intent of the law, and “inconsistent with the Program’s maintenance of effort requirement.”
In her formal response, dated November 7, the day before the Mayoral election, Kathleen Grimm, DOE’s Deputy Chancellor of Finance and Administration, disputed the audit’s methodology and conclusions, calling them overly “quantitative,” and refused to alter the department’s practices. Instead, she wrote, DOE allows for “the holistic judgments of local educational leaders.” (It is interesting that on matters relating to bulletin boards and how children are arranged on rugs, DOE is happy to prescribe to principals and teachers; but when it comes to matters such as reducing class size, they say they will leave it entirely up to them – even when it comes to the possible violation of state law.)
The audit also addressed the capacity issue. While there are schools with little or no room to form additional classes, the auditors found that there were many that did have the room to reduce class size, but were not receiving funds to do so, or weren’t using these funds appropriately. One school reported using the money to pay for a teacher who was actually on leave. Auditors also found that in many parts of the city there were schools sitting only a few blocks away from each other, one overcrowded and with classes of 25 or more, while another was severely undercapacity.
At a public forum since the audit was released, the Chancellor claimed that some of the state class size funds were used to keep class sizes lower in 4th and 5th grades. In fact, some of these funds can legally used this way, but the city did not report this.
Instead, they claimed that all 1586 classes were formed in K-3, while the Comptroller found only 20. Moreover, by counting the total number of classes as provided by the Independent Budget Office, one sees that the city offered fewer classes in every grade through 6th since 2001. See the chart posted here, in Excel, with total number of classes and class size averages in each grade.
http://www.classsizematters.org/audit_memo_chart_one.xls
This means that DOE has been systematically skimping on class size in K-6, to fund other priorities.
A district by district analysis shows that only 4 districts out of 33 have seen a steady decline in class size in each of the last three years, despite falling enrollment.
http://www.classsizematters.org/auditmemochart2.xls
If the Chancellor and the Mayor really cared about providing smaller classes, they would not only make sure that the state funds for class size reduction were used for this purpose, and as they were legally intended, but they would also have devoted city funds for this purpose. Nearly every previous Chancellor over the last 30 years has had his own initiatives on class size, without the advantages that this one enjoys, of more education funding overall, falling enrollment, and Mayoral control.
Instead, there are only two examples during the Bloomberg/Klein years in which a specific initiative to limit or reduce class size was announced, neither of which actually occurred because DOE failed to follow up.
In January of 2003, Mayor Bloomberg pledged to limit middle school class sizes to 28, but then failed to fund the program, and instead, class sizes rose in the 7th and 8th grades.
And in the fall of 2004, due to the insistence of the City Council, $20 million was appropriated to make further reductions in class size reduction in grades K-3. According to DOE officials, this enabled them to provide an additional 176 classes in these grades during the 2004-5 school year. However, as the audit reveals, rather than adding any classes, DOE cut the number of classes provided by 287.
Finally, the fact that the administration plans to use only 2% of the additional funding due our schools as a result of the CFE case to provide smaller classes demonstrates the administration’s appalling lack of concern concerning this issue. Even with $5.6 billion in additional annual funds, DOE intends to lower average class size in no grade higher than 3rd, and in these grades only to 20. If DOE had merely complied with the state law and maintained the same number of classes in K-3 as in the fall of 1999, class sizes would have already averaged 20 in these grades last year.
What should be done? Our state officials should be working to ensure that DoE actually complies with the law in the future. The following message should be sent to NY State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, Assemblymember Cathy Nolan of Queens, and Speaker Sheldon Silver. Their contact info is below.: You can send them this message:
The NY State Comptroller has now found that NYC was breaking the law on class size, and instead of forming 1586 additional classes, last year DoE officials formed only 20. With $89 million in state funds, that’s $4.5 million per class.
As a result, 60% of our K-3 students sit in classes with 21 students or more, and 26% in classes with 25 or more students. If DoE had actually formed the additional classes as claimed, average class size would be down to 19.1 in these grades.
Yet rather than adopt any of the recommendations proposed by the Comptroller’s office, DoE continues to thumb their nose at the law. It is your responsibility to ensure that NYC complies with the law on class size from this day forward.
Please send this message to:
Commissioner Richard P. Mills
New York State Education Department
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, New York 12234
518-474-5844
richard.mills@mail.nysed.gov
Speaker Sheldon Silver
250 Broadway
Suite 2307
New York, NY 10007
212-312-1420
speaker@assembly.state.ny.us
Assemblymember Cathy Nolan
61-08 Linden Street
Ridgewood, NY 11385
718-456-9492
nolanc@assembly.state.ny.us
Moreover, the following questions should be asked of Chancellor Klein and other DOE officials. You can email him at JKlein@nycboe.net; copy the Mayor at mbloomberg@cityhall.nyc.gov
1. How do you explain the fact that the State Comptroller’s office found that with $89 million in state funds, DOE only added 20 new classes compared to the number that existed before the program’s inception, at a cost of $4.5 million per class?
2. How is it that last year, instead of adding any classes with an additional $20 million in city funds, the number of classes in K-3 declined by 287?
3. If DOE provided 900 more classes in grades K-3 four years ago, and enrollment is still
declining in the elementary grades, this cannot be a problem of capacity; isn’t that true?
4. Do you support the goal of 20 per class or less in grades K-3 in all schools, and if so, what has DOE done to accomplish this? If you believe reducing class size and following the law is important, why not prescribe to principals how these funds should be used?
5. During a public forum, Chancellor Klein claimed that some of these funds were used to keep class sizes smaller in 4-5th grade, if so, why wasn't this reported as such? In fact there is no evidence that funds have been spent in this manner, and IBO data shows that fewer classes in every grade through 6th have been provided over the last four years. Doesn't this indicate that DoE has been skimping on class size to fund your other priorities?
6.Why does your plan for the CFE funds only devote 2% towards reducing class size, despite the finding of the Court of Appeals that class sizes were too large in all grades to provide NYC children with an adequate education ?
7. In her response to the audit, Kathleen Grimm wrote that “instances in which the early grade class size dollars may appear to have been budgeted to classes required under our local commitment represent no deliberate misuse of funds, but rather the difficulty of budgeting across thousands of schools (p. 59).” Does this mean that NYC schools have indeed substituted state funds for local dollars, and that that DOE is unable to adequately monitor this program? Or do you plan to improve compliance in the future?
From: Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters; 212-674-7320; leonie@att.net
Date: 4/20/2006
Re: NY State Comptroller’s audit of NYC’s use of state class size funds
On March 16, the State Comptroller released the results of an audit, showing that because the Department of Education has been misusing state funds , NYC children have been deprived of the smaller classes they need and deserve. Here is a link to the audit; here are some news stories about the audit's findings.
Specifically, the Comptroller found that last school year, the city had added only 20 classes in grades K-3 over the number that existed before the program’s inception. At $89 million, this means that each additional class cost the taxpayer more than $4.5 million.
This audit was performed in response to a request from then-Speaker Gifford Miller, Councilmember Jackson, and State Senator Schneiderman, who in January of 2005 asked the State Comptroller to examine the city’s use of the state class size reduction funds, based on evidence collected by Class Size Matters that there were signs that the city had not added the number of classes that it claimed in its official reports to the state, and that as a result, that class sizes had risen in grades K-3 in many parts of the city, despite declining enrollment.
This was also occurring at the same time that the city claimed to have formed 1586 additional classes in these grades, with the use of the state funds that are specifically supposed to be used for this purpose. Check out a timeline with the relevant background informationt.
You can also read the Council press release and some earlier news articles , including the unexpected disclosure of an audit from 2003 that found the City already in violation of law on this issue here. Because nothing was done to follow up, NYC fell from 55% of compliance in 2002 to only 1% in 2004.
NYC began receiving categorical state funding in the 1999-2000 school year to hire additional teachers and form additional classes to reduce class size in grades K-3. For the last five years, the city has received more than $500 million from the state for these purposes, with $89 million annually for the past four years..
Yet the State Comptroller found that last year, 1566 classes were missing compared to the number the city claims to have formed with these funds, a conclusion made by counting the number of classes provided above those offered before the program began in the1998-9 school year, as the statute specifies. The Comptroller also found that DOE had sharply cut back the number of classes in these grades by almost 900 over the last four years.
If the city had actually formed all the additional classes claimed with the state funds, class sizes in grades K-3 would now average 19.1 students per class. Instead, the average size of these classes remains greater than 21, with 65% of K-3 children in classes over the state goal of 20, and 26% in classes of 25 or higher.
The Comptroller concluded that the DOE had improperly substituted state funds to pay the salaries for teachers who should have been paid with city funds, a practice counter to the language and intent of the law, and “inconsistent with the Program’s maintenance of effort requirement.”
In her formal response, dated November 7, the day before the Mayoral election, Kathleen Grimm, DOE’s Deputy Chancellor of Finance and Administration, disputed the audit’s methodology and conclusions, calling them overly “quantitative,” and refused to alter the department’s practices. Instead, she wrote, DOE allows for “the holistic judgments of local educational leaders.” (It is interesting that on matters relating to bulletin boards and how children are arranged on rugs, DOE is happy to prescribe to principals and teachers; but when it comes to matters such as reducing class size, they say they will leave it entirely up to them – even when it comes to the possible violation of state law.)
The audit also addressed the capacity issue. While there are schools with little or no room to form additional classes, the auditors found that there were many that did have the room to reduce class size, but were not receiving funds to do so, or weren’t using these funds appropriately. One school reported using the money to pay for a teacher who was actually on leave. Auditors also found that in many parts of the city there were schools sitting only a few blocks away from each other, one overcrowded and with classes of 25 or more, while another was severely undercapacity.
At a public forum since the audit was released, the Chancellor claimed that some of the state class size funds were used to keep class sizes lower in 4th and 5th grades. In fact, some of these funds can legally used this way, but the city did not report this.
Instead, they claimed that all 1586 classes were formed in K-3, while the Comptroller found only 20. Moreover, by counting the total number of classes as provided by the Independent Budget Office, one sees that the city offered fewer classes in every grade through 6th since 2001. See the chart posted here, in Excel, with total number of classes and class size averages in each grade.
http://www.classsizematters.org/audit_memo_chart_one.xls
This means that DOE has been systematically skimping on class size in K-6, to fund other priorities.
A district by district analysis shows that only 4 districts out of 33 have seen a steady decline in class size in each of the last three years, despite falling enrollment.
http://www.classsizematters.org/auditmemochart2.xls
If the Chancellor and the Mayor really cared about providing smaller classes, they would not only make sure that the state funds for class size reduction were used for this purpose, and as they were legally intended, but they would also have devoted city funds for this purpose. Nearly every previous Chancellor over the last 30 years has had his own initiatives on class size, without the advantages that this one enjoys, of more education funding overall, falling enrollment, and Mayoral control.
Instead, there are only two examples during the Bloomberg/Klein years in which a specific initiative to limit or reduce class size was announced, neither of which actually occurred because DOE failed to follow up.
In January of 2003, Mayor Bloomberg pledged to limit middle school class sizes to 28, but then failed to fund the program, and instead, class sizes rose in the 7th and 8th grades.
And in the fall of 2004, due to the insistence of the City Council, $20 million was appropriated to make further reductions in class size reduction in grades K-3. According to DOE officials, this enabled them to provide an additional 176 classes in these grades during the 2004-5 school year. However, as the audit reveals, rather than adding any classes, DOE cut the number of classes provided by 287.
Finally, the fact that the administration plans to use only 2% of the additional funding due our schools as a result of the CFE case to provide smaller classes demonstrates the administration’s appalling lack of concern concerning this issue. Even with $5.6 billion in additional annual funds, DOE intends to lower average class size in no grade higher than 3rd, and in these grades only to 20. If DOE had merely complied with the state law and maintained the same number of classes in K-3 as in the fall of 1999, class sizes would have already averaged 20 in these grades last year.
What should be done? Our state officials should be working to ensure that DoE actually complies with the law in the future. The following message should be sent to NY State Education Commissioner Richard Mills, Assemblymember Cathy Nolan of Queens, and Speaker Sheldon Silver. Their contact info is below.: You can send them this message:
The NY State Comptroller has now found that NYC was breaking the law on class size, and instead of forming 1586 additional classes, last year DoE officials formed only 20. With $89 million in state funds, that’s $4.5 million per class.
As a result, 60% of our K-3 students sit in classes with 21 students or more, and 26% in classes with 25 or more students. If DoE had actually formed the additional classes as claimed, average class size would be down to 19.1 in these grades.
Yet rather than adopt any of the recommendations proposed by the Comptroller’s office, DoE continues to thumb their nose at the law. It is your responsibility to ensure that NYC complies with the law on class size from this day forward.
Please send this message to:
Commissioner Richard P. Mills
New York State Education Department
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, New York 12234
518-474-5844
richard.mills@mail.nysed.gov
Speaker Sheldon Silver
250 Broadway
Suite 2307
New York, NY 10007
212-312-1420
speaker@assembly.state.ny.us
Assemblymember Cathy Nolan
61-08 Linden Street
Ridgewood, NY 11385
718-456-9492
nolanc@assembly.state.ny.us
Moreover, the following questions should be asked of Chancellor Klein and other DOE officials. You can email him at JKlein@nycboe.net; copy the Mayor at mbloomberg@cityhall.nyc.gov
1. How do you explain the fact that the State Comptroller’s office found that with $89 million in state funds, DOE only added 20 new classes compared to the number that existed before the program’s inception, at a cost of $4.5 million per class?
2. How is it that last year, instead of adding any classes with an additional $20 million in city funds, the number of classes in K-3 declined by 287?
3. If DOE provided 900 more classes in grades K-3 four years ago, and enrollment is still
declining in the elementary grades, this cannot be a problem of capacity; isn’t that true?
4. Do you support the goal of 20 per class or less in grades K-3 in all schools, and if so, what has DOE done to accomplish this? If you believe reducing class size and following the law is important, why not prescribe to principals how these funds should be used?
5. During a public forum, Chancellor Klein claimed that some of these funds were used to keep class sizes smaller in 4-5th grade, if so, why wasn't this reported as such? In fact there is no evidence that funds have been spent in this manner, and IBO data shows that fewer classes in every grade through 6th have been provided over the last four years. Doesn't this indicate that DoE has been skimping on class size to fund your other priorities?
6.Why does your plan for the CFE funds only devote 2% towards reducing class size, despite the finding of the Court of Appeals that class sizes were too large in all grades to provide NYC children with an adequate education ?
7. In her response to the audit, Kathleen Grimm wrote that “instances in which the early grade class size dollars may appear to have been budgeted to classes required under our local commitment represent no deliberate misuse of funds, but rather the difficulty of budgeting across thousands of schools (p. 59).” Does this mean that NYC schools have indeed substituted state funds for local dollars, and that that DOE is unable to adequately monitor this program? Or do you plan to improve compliance in the future?
NYC Parents to DC Parents
NYC parents to DC Parents:
"Buyer Beware!"
December 2006
"Buyer Beware!"
December 2006
On December 13, 2006, Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters, along with Eugenia Simmons-Taylor and Monica Ayuso, parent leaders in District 4 East Harlem and District 28 Queens, traveled to Washington DC to speak about Mayoral control, at the request of Parent Watch, a DC parent advocacy group. The Class Size Matters presentation is posted here.
Before we left, we solicited comments from NYC parents about the effects of Mayoral control on our schools. Here they are below:
There has been a complete refusal to listen to parents during the decision making process. Regardless of the issue, the DOE and Mayor decide on a policy, try to implement it, and only then are parents allowed to express an opinion. This procedure has demoralized many parents, including those active in various organizations, to the point that a sense of not wanting to bother pervades. More and more parents are simply concentrating on the needs of their own children and maybe, their schools. The loss of parental input has led to disastrous policies-cell phone ban, redundant test taking, etc- that lead to confrontations with parents. We hear collaboration from the DOE and we know that means only one thing, follow us, trust us, we know best.
-- Rob Caloras, President, Community Education Council District 26, Queens
____________
We must begin now to develop an alternative to the current system of mayoral control. We need to focus on the cornerstone of good government: a system of checks and balances. We’ve seen what unchecked power produces. We see parental rights and worker rights being violated every day in our schools.
We hear that Tweed is putting more money back into our classrooms. But we see more privatization, and more outside consultants feeding at the public trough, courtesy of no-bid contracts. Mayor Bloomberg: our school system is not for sale! We read that real change is occurring, but all we see is change for the sake of change. We need to challenge the conventional wisdom and the party line of this administration.
Now, our Mayor is worried about his legacy. Mayor Bloomberg has been traveling the country. He’s on tour selling the benefits of mayoral control from coast to coast. But, he won’t talk to us. This Mayor will travel to California, but he won’t walk across the street to Tweed Courthouse to address New York City parents. He won’t answer our questions. He won’t talk. And, he won’t listen.
When the history of this administration is written, historians will note that the stakeholders of the school system – parents and teachers – were left out of the critical policy decision-making. True parental empowerment is a precondition to our support for any future system of mayoral control. Parents deserve and demand a seat at every table when decisions affecting our children are made. We need to return democracy to the administration of our school system.
…..There’s a serious problem down at Tweed Courthouse. Most of the educators have left the building. The lawyers, and the management consultants, and the privateers have moved in. And, parents are locked out.
-- Tim Johnson, Chairman, Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council (CPAC)
________________
In theory I thought it was a good idea to break up the community school boards and give parents more of a say in terms of the CEC councils under the Mayoral and Chancellor's control. However, I find that as "parental representatives" our advice falls upon deaf ears. I think that the Mayor parades the premise and practice of Community Education councils to give the public the misguided notion that "we" have a say and that "we" are heard. This is not the case. I have yet to see any of the suggestions that we as a council been taken into consideration or put into practice. Also having the school under mayoral control only feeds his political agenda and does not address the real issues. Bloomberg claims to be a Mayor for the children and constantly uses education as his political platform yet again parents are seen but not heard. Just my two cents...
---- Kathleen Bullock-McCoy, Citywide Council on High Schools, Bronx
_____
Greetings from NYC! It has been a rough few years under mayoral control! We all welcomed it because we believed that change, any change had to be better than what we were dealing with. How wrong were we? We were very wrong! In what seemed to be a small amount of time parents found themselves unable to get in touch with personnel at the DOE. We found that nobody knew what they were responsible for and nobody answered telephone calls or return messages and emails. Special education is basically running with no accountability. School do not do what they are supposed to do for special needs children unless a parent request due process hearings and then the games begin.
The worst part about the whole mayoral control issue is the fact that everyday the mayor and the chancellor roll out another form of "The Dog and Pony Show!" What that means is that they constantly roll out a new initiative and never follow through on the impact it is having. 4 years later and we are still not getting our calls returned or emails responded to and nobody is held accountable... If you know of anyone being held accountable please let us know because I have not seen it yet in spite of all the mayoral talk of accountability. BUYER BEWARE!
It is a scary world with the mayor in control because how do you hold the mayor accountable when no one will listen because he is the boss wielding so much power that no one dare go against him. I have nothing to lose. I am leaving the city because of the schools. They have gotten progressively worse since Mayoral control. Teachers have lost their gusto for teaching because of the nonsense. Parents are worn out because they have been racked over the coals and are exhausted because they have to follow chancellor's regulations to the T but school officials can do what ever they want and get away with it. Finally, the mayor and the chancellor do not like bad press, so when you try to uncover corruption in the DOE, they try to shut you down. Also, the mayor seems to think that hiring businesspeople to educate our children is a great idea. Our children have been guinea pigs the last 4 years. Different programs, more tests, no accountability and no education. I could tell you horror stories about special education but I would need to kill many trees to tell the very real stories of children's academic careers ruined because of the chancellor’s lack of accountability. Buyer beware of mayoral control! Mayoral control is not a good thing when it comes to education; leave that to the educators. Good luck! -
-- JoAnne Scichilone, VP, Special Education Parent Panel
____
I have been a parent advocate for over 20 years, since my first child entered the school system up to my last child who is currently a junior in High School. We as parent leaders worked diligently to bring about real parent involvement. Yet with the change in governance to total mayoral control with no system of checks in place, we have never seen parents so disenfranchised as they are now. We have not only lost the gains we made, but we have moved back to the Dark Ages of Parent Involvement, where parents were expected to run bake sales and do homework and that was the limit to what their involvement was expected to be. Under previous Chancellors and especially under Chancellor Crew parents achieved a real voice in the system that educated their children. We were consulted on curriculum, zoning, special programs, etc. and we had meaningful input on the budgets of our schools and our districts.
Now with the changes of the last 4 years, we have lost those gains. We receive little or no information from the Department of Ed and when we do receive any information, it is only to be told about decisions that have already been made. The concept of real consultation does not exist. There is much talk about parent involvement, but actually it has been done away with it in it highest forms. Vast amounts of money are being spent with no input from parents nor for that matter from anyone else. The Region and District have their budgets in place and we have never been consulted on them, while in the past we would have sat at the table to spend every dollar. Our Special Ed and Gifted Programs are being decimated even though we were told this was not to be the case. Even as recent news stories have indicated, in the very real issue of safety and carrying cell phones, the Mayor has made his decision and has no interest in the very real concerns of the parents. I will not say that Mayoral accountability is all bad, and some change was needed however, any system must have in place a form of checks and balances. It is the very foundation of our Federal system of government and has historically proven itself to be the best system.
As recent statistics have actually shown, the supposed gains of this administration under total Mayoral control appear to not even be real but rather a reworking of the numbers. High School graduation rates are not up, and the children in the 8th grade are not showing great advances. If you look closely at the governance structure, the current administration is actually admitting the failures of most of their restructuring since they are now looking for new ways to restructure once again, using the empowerment school model to in effect return to a form of decentralization. As a parent, I warn, be very careful before you turn over total control over to anyone.
– Dorothy Giglio, Region 6 HS CPAC representative, Presidents Council District 22, Brooklyn
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My daughter is a public school student in New York City. Despite what Bloomberg and Klein say, mayoral control is not a success in New York. The top down style does not take into consideration the different learning styles of students nor does it appreciate the knowledge and experience of teachers. Refusing to respect education specialist and filling the ranks with rubber stamp teachers and principals with little experience has led to demoralization of staff and negatively impacted on students. Hiring central staff with no educational policy experience led to gaffs like the imposition of a city-wide curriculum in math that did not meet the needs of students. Their policy also added responsibilities to principals without giving them the authority to carry the new directives out. …
Mayoral control limits parental involvement. Parental input is a critical asset in the public schools. Klein and Bloomberg refuse to listen. One issue is cell phones in school. It is obvious that cell phones cannot be used during school time, but many children come to school alone, some as young as 11. Parents work and the only way they know their kids are safe is by receiving a phone call.
The biggest issue confronting NYC schools is class size. Bloomberg and Klein ignore the problem. Studies have proven that smaller classes allow for greater learning. Teachers have time to work with children who are slower to absorb the lesson. They were 37 and 38 kids in a class in my daughter's middle school. That she was able to learn was a tribute to the well trained staff at that school. It was a unique situation. Parents send kids to private school because of class size. Public school students should receive the same treatment. Test score increases are not an indication of achievement. This mayor gooses the important tests by holding back students who would not do well. This practice is disingenuous…Mayoral control in NYC has not been a success. Washington, DC should not do it.
– Lee Levin, parent
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Do you know the expression, "All is not gold that glitters"? That is what is going on in the New York City Public School system. Instead of making class sizes that teachers can teach, there are still many schools that are running over capacity.
This is true for many schools in poorer neighborhoods, and schools in the most wealthy communities. In school district 3 where we live, on the upper west side, one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Manhattan, we have to send my two children, age 13 and 18, to a completely different district, where one school happens to function under completely different rules due to a "fluke" in the system which allows for this. We're thankful we have this—it’s a commute of 30 minutes on the trains and a brisk 10 minute walk to the train, but worth it, because there are only 25 children in the classroom, as opposed to over 35 in the classrooms in the district where we live... The other high schools in the district are just unacceptable to attend in terms of quality of student body and academic programs, and overcrowding--(one year we were assigned a high school where at the orientation, the parents and kids were forced to wait out in the rain for 30 minutes while they opened the building, then we proceeded to go to an auditorium where they used a bullhorn to control the crowds--at that point, our daughter ran crying from the building, and staunchly refused to attend that school).
Don't listen to the rhetoric of the politicians! Putting two kids thru the public school system in NYC is more difficult and stressful than applying for colleges, (which is what we are doing now). We had a period of years where we sent our child to private school just to avoid her being overlooked in a classroom of 36 kids, where her skills as a writer were completely overlooked due to the damaging effects of overpopulation. It forced us to spend thousands of dollars that we should have saved for college. When we ran out of money for private school, and tried to get back into public school, we were assigned a high school where at the orientation, the parents and kids were forced to wait out in the rain for 30 minutes while they opened the building, then we proceeded to go to an auditorium where they used a bullhorn to control the crowds--at that point, our daughter ran crying from the building, and staunchly refused to attend that school. The public school system in New York City is still a vast myriad of red tape that could be simply erradicated by implementing some foundational reforms, like cutting the class size to a human level!
-- R. and C. Sadoff, parents
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It's been almost five years since the mayor got control of the schools -- what, exactly, has been the nature of this "success"? Not even their precious test scores have gone up, let alone graduation rates. School climate is deteriorating. The emperor has no clothes!
I think we need to tell the folks in DC that "this model of accelerated school reform" is hot air. This is why ICOPE is calling for a new system altogether -- the age of "school reform" is over. We need to orient the system around human rights -- not just the right to education -- but the rights to democracy, dignity, development of the whole child and his/her community, etc -- all of which are interdependent.
The people in DC need to learn from the errors of NYC -- not duplicate them.
- Cecilia Blewer, Independent Commission on Public Education
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My daughter is in a class of about 25, with one teacher, who has not been able to secure help in the classroom. In her previous grades, the teachers have always had at least student teachers every day for most of the weeks. It’s a shame to put the workload on our teachers and to compromise children who learn better in smaller groups. My daughter’s best experiences in school, she has told me, was working in small groups and getting more individual attention.
– Faith Schwartz, parent
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I am the parent of a student in kindergarten in Brooklyn. I highly discourage you from modeling your schools on the NYC model. There is no room for parental involvement in the school system here. And there are no checks and balances in this system, which is dangerous and very undemocratic. What if our next mayor totally disagrees with the educational philosophy adopted by our current mayor? A horror story, that's what. And with such a large, overcrowded system the centralized running of our schools is not what our children need. Not all students work in the same way, teachers and principles deserve to determine their best teaching methods -- not a centralized authority -- and one that is not even necessarily run by an educational expert.
Please for the students in DC, their families and the future students and families that will come after them I implore you to work within your system to find out what works and focus on that. Focus on teachers and their good ideas, focus on principles, and focus on parents. Do not focus on standardized testing, or a centralized authority to supersede the best teaching practices possible in your city. The federal focus on no child left behind was a centralized one, and it has failed our nation's children miserably. No centralized accountability system can hope to aim higher than NCLB because it will not take in to account all the important variables that educators and administrators are adept at managing. So focus on giving them the resources they need and the rest will follow. – Lee Solomon, parent
Honestly, I'd have to say it's been a mixed bag. On the plus side, we finally got an administration committed to making changes and empowered to do so. I support a number of the major initiatives. For example, I am conceptually behind the city-wide curriculum, and completely behind the matching system for high school admissions. The negatives have been largely due to the Mayor's contempt for teachers and parents, which was not anticipated. So the ultimate question is how do you create change within a system of checks and balances, which by their nature slow down process? -
-- Elizabeth Rose, parent
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To the Washington DC parents,
Mayoral control of the public school system results in less access and accountability and more arrogance on the part of the mayor and his chancellor. If you want a less democratic process in the say of your children's education and more of a dictatorial disregard of you and your children, then choose mayoral control of the public schools. Unfortunately, the old adage is true, "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." I urge you to reconsider and NOT accept mayoral control of your schools. It makes a bad situation worse. If fact, I would advise total decentralization of the public school system and have each school stand on its own, answerable to the parents and children of that individual school.
My best in your pursuit of justice and freedom to decide the fate of your children's future. Good luck. ]
-- Annette Evans, concerned parent/former educator
____
As someone who originally supported both Mayor Bloomberg and mayoral control, I feel it's important to reach out to you before a decision is made in your city.
Like many, I thought mayoral control meant that politics would be removed from the schools. What I've found is that mayoral control simply meant the schools were subject solely and completely to the Mayor's politics. Here are some examples to illustrate our current situation:
Marginalization of Parents
With our Mayor enamored of corporate management approaches and autocratic decision making, mayoral control has meant the complete evisceration of parental involvement. Many local "community education councils", the new local school boards, have simply given up meeting as they have no role and their input is simply ignored. My school board, in an affluent part of the city, struggles to find members and a quorum to meet.
Our Public Advocate, a city-wide office responsible for representing the interests of the people collected input on how the Mayor's ban on bringing cell phones into schools put students in jeopardy on their long commutes. The Mayor dismissed the exercise as a "publicity stunt". Now we have a lawsuit against the Mayor to overturn this policy.
School Crowding and Class Size
The Mayor follows the cynics who don't believe public schools can be improved, that a new parallel system of charter schools must be built as an alternative. But instead of providing facilities for these new schools, he insists on forcing them into existing schools, causing further overcrowding. Currently, the Mayor is trying to force a new middle/high school into a Harlem school serving grades K-2. The opposition there is lead by a 24-year old PTA president who is fighting not only the Mayor, whose Department of Education is headed by one of the country's most accomplished litigators, but also Columbia University who will manage the school.
We have little transparency or accountability with regard to the very large class sizes we suffer. Classes of 28 are common for even the earliest grades. Despite a law passed by our city council, the Mayor refuses to provide average class size data for high schools. He repelled a referendum on class size by claiming he didn't really have authority required, that it was really the State who runs the schools.
School Construction
The Mayor is very close to the real estate interests who are busy transforming the city with their gargantuan development projects. But rather than task them to include schools in their plans, a measure he fears would hinder growth, he allows them to build housing that will overwhelm our schools. When he is willing to build schools, he finds the least desirable options. The NY Times reported a major thrust of the Mayor's long term planning will be to clean up toxic waste sites to provide land for schools and other facilities. Despite denials from his staff on this policy, the Mayor put forward a plan to build four schools on toxic waste site in the South Bronx.
Your Mayor will undoubtedly have his own agenda which may or may not follow ours. But the important point is that once we ceded control to the Mayor, we were left with few or no checks on his authority to do as he pleases. Our City Council can hold hearings but has no real authority. That State Legislature has authority but is too far removed and disinterested to police the Mayor's actions.
I urge you to consider the failings of our approach before embarking on this path.
-- Patrick Sullivan, parent
New Report Shows City Misusing $153 Million in class size funds
See the new report, produced by an independent consultant for the UFT, showing that based on DOE’s own data, the city has utterly failed to reduce class size with the $153 million in state funds targeted for this purpose -- and that in one third of schools receiving class size reduction funds, class sizes actually increased. Comptroller Thompson said he would audit the use of these funds to see how they were actually spent.
The city’s misuse of these funds is a direct result of a lack of leadership, commitment and accountability on the part of the DOE.
At the current glacial rate of decline, it will be 10 to 30 years before the city reaches its state-mandated targets of 20 on average in grades K-3 and 23 in other grades. More of the report’s other findings:
At 43 percent of all K-8 schools citywide, class sizes increased.
In large high schools with 1,500-plus students, there were four more students per class on average than in small schools with fewer than 1,500 students.
Little progress was made even in the city’s low-performing city elementary and middle schools (SINI/SRAP), which need smaller classes most desperately; 51 percent saw some decreases in class size but 42 percent saw larger classes.
In the city’s failing middle schools, class sizes remain larger than the citywide averages.
Among the 309 K-8 schools that were allocated the class size reduction funding, the more money that was allocated for this purpose, the more likely it was that class sizes increased rather than decreased.
Districts 10, 20, 24 and 25 had among the largest classes yet all were in the bottom half for reducing class size this year. Conversely, the top five districts for reducing class size (18, 6, 19, 5 and 17) all had smaller than average class sizes to begin with.
See the media coverage in the Daily News: NY Post ; NY Sun; and NY1;
In the NY Times, the findings were buried in a longer piece about the fact that another $80 million has been wasted in the ATR system devised by Joel Klein – in which teachers who were “excessed” through no fault of their own because of school closings and the like would no longer be automatically reassigned to other schools but would be held in an “absent reserve” at full pay until they could find new jobs. Of course in the new “open market” system, principals have to pay out of their school budget for every new teacher they hire, and the more experienced the teacher, the more he or she costs -- so there’s a built-in disincentive against doing so. In the past, principals were given budgets that automatically covered the cost of their staff, no matter what their experience level, but this is no longer the case.
We filed a Freedom of Information request for the data on the ATRs and as of October, there were 800 of these teachers. Many of them are highly skilled, and should instead have been assigned to classes at no cost to principals to reduce class size. The city, of course, would rather have them sit around doing nothing so they can eventually lay them off.
The ATR teachers, along with the approximately 800 teachers sitting idle for years in the rubber rooms, many of them without even being formally charged with misconduct, as well as an explosion of out of classroom positions such as “data coaches” and “senior achievement facilitators” have led to huge inefficiencies in the system, that Klein et al should be held accountable for.
The city’s response to the new findings? The DOE doesn’t deny that class sizes may have gone up in one third of schools receiving class size reduction funding -- but insist that “schoolwide averages mask targeted class size reductions in key courses like math.”
So a school could lower class size in math, but raise class sizes in English, Social Studies and Science? What do you think: is this what our kids need? Is this what the State intended when they ordered NYC to reduce class size?
The city’s misuse of these funds is a direct result of a lack of leadership, commitment and accountability on the part of the DOE.
At the current glacial rate of decline, it will be 10 to 30 years before the city reaches its state-mandated targets of 20 on average in grades K-3 and 23 in other grades. More of the report’s other findings:
At 43 percent of all K-8 schools citywide, class sizes increased.
In large high schools with 1,500-plus students, there were four more students per class on average than in small schools with fewer than 1,500 students.
Little progress was made even in the city’s low-performing city elementary and middle schools (SINI/SRAP), which need smaller classes most desperately; 51 percent saw some decreases in class size but 42 percent saw larger classes.
In the city’s failing middle schools, class sizes remain larger than the citywide averages.
Among the 309 K-8 schools that were allocated the class size reduction funding, the more money that was allocated for this purpose, the more likely it was that class sizes increased rather than decreased.
Districts 10, 20, 24 and 25 had among the largest classes yet all were in the bottom half for reducing class size this year. Conversely, the top five districts for reducing class size (18, 6, 19, 5 and 17) all had smaller than average class sizes to begin with.
See the media coverage in the Daily News: NY Post ; NY Sun; and NY1;
In the NY Times, the findings were buried in a longer piece about the fact that another $80 million has been wasted in the ATR system devised by Joel Klein – in which teachers who were “excessed” through no fault of their own because of school closings and the like would no longer be automatically reassigned to other schools but would be held in an “absent reserve” at full pay until they could find new jobs. Of course in the new “open market” system, principals have to pay out of their school budget for every new teacher they hire, and the more experienced the teacher, the more he or she costs -- so there’s a built-in disincentive against doing so. In the past, principals were given budgets that automatically covered the cost of their staff, no matter what their experience level, but this is no longer the case.
We filed a Freedom of Information request for the data on the ATRs and as of October, there were 800 of these teachers. Many of them are highly skilled, and should instead have been assigned to classes at no cost to principals to reduce class size. The city, of course, would rather have them sit around doing nothing so they can eventually lay them off.
The ATR teachers, along with the approximately 800 teachers sitting idle for years in the rubber rooms, many of them without even being formally charged with misconduct, as well as an explosion of out of classroom positions such as “data coaches” and “senior achievement facilitators” have led to huge inefficiencies in the system, that Klein et al should be held accountable for.
The city’s response to the new findings? The DOE doesn’t deny that class sizes may have gone up in one third of schools receiving class size reduction funding -- but insist that “schoolwide averages mask targeted class size reductions in key courses like math.”
So a school could lower class size in math, but raise class sizes in English, Social Studies and Science? What do you think: is this what our kids need? Is this what the State intended when they ordered NYC to reduce class size?
Schools Chancellor Clashes With City Council
Schools Chancellor Clashes With City CouncilMay 27, 2008Schools Chancellor Joel Klein appeared before the City Council Tuesday to discuss his wish to shift school funding around, in lieu of a $99 million budget gap projected for the next school year. Klein previously proposed using $63 million in state aide to help close the gap in the $22 billion budget. But Governor David Paterson and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver have already rejected the plan, saying that the money is earmarked for struggling schools. Klein said without that money, hundreds of schools could see their budgets slashed by as much as 6 percent. "Throughout this process I have always told the mayor to give us as much money as is possible," said Klein. "If I could have done it, I would have done it. My endgame, the proposal I'm making is to have an across-the-board cut of 1.4 percent." Protesters marched out of City Hall after repeatedly interrupting Klein. Some bore signs and chanted, "Chancellor Klein, don't cut a dime!" Some members of the city council asked Klein why more is not being done to seek additional funds from the mayor. "To some degree you're pitting the parents of the more successful students against the parents of the less successful students," said Democratic Bronx Councilman Oliver Koppell. "I say that to you because you have to live with that every single day, that that's the perception that you're not standing up and fighting,” said Democratic Manhattan Councilman Robert Jackson. Klein defended that the Department of Education has helped increase school funding overall. "Under this administration, there's $4.6 billion dollars -- significantly more money -- added to the schools. We've also taken $350 million-plus from the bureaucracy to the schools. So I think the facts can speak for themselves," said Klein. Other city lawmakers said that money for schools could be restored. "Revenues's been up at least for this fiscal year which is going to be rolled over into the next fiscal year. We can find the money if we want to find the money," said Democratic Queens Councilman David Weprin. "If we were to make cuts to the DOE's contracts, budget and cuts to their central staff, and look for cuts and savings in other agencies, we could find the money we need to preserve services to our classrooms," said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Quinn said she will work with Klein to cut more fat from the bureaucracy instead of the classroom. While Klein said he has chopped all the fat from the budget, he said Quinn is welcome to look again.
Top News • NY1 Living
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Copyright © 2008 NY1 News. All rights reserved.
Right Way to Grade Teachers
Right Way To Grade Teachers
By RANDI WEINGARTENApril 7, 2008http://www.nysun.com/opinion/right-way-to-grade-teachers/74223/
Chancellor Joel Klein of New York City's Department of Education and superintendents from other parts of the state are opposing language in the budget bill clarifying last year's agreement that teachers shouldn't be evaluated on student test scores; they should be assessed on how they use test scores and other data to adjust their teaching to help students improve.
This enlightened approach to tenure decisions is something that the Legislature and the governor agreed last year was eminently reasonable. The approach is akin to judging doctors on how they use the results of blood tests, X-rays, and the like to prescribe a course of treatment.
The plan, agreed upon last year, represents recognition of a real problem. Using student test scores for evaluating teachers is just as flawed a premise as using them as the sole criteria to judge children. After all, there are many factors that affect student learning that are beyond a teacher's control, such as the school's resources, class size, availability of special education, the performance of other teachers, student mobility and attendance, and parent support.
And then there are the technical limitations of the available data and the quality of the standardized tests that make it impossible to isolate the "effects" of an individual teacher. Take, for example, the fact that the state English Language Arts tests are given in January of each year. Which teacher is responsible, the 4th-grade teacher who taught the student between February and June or the 5th-grade teacher who had the child between September and January?
Perhaps the greatest myth that opponents perpetuate is the notion that student test scores can be used to make decisions for which they were never intended. Even education advocates who regularly disagree with each other conclude that, as co-director of a Washington think tank called Education Sector, Thomas Toch, wrote recently in Education Week, "standardized test scores aren't the simple solution they seem to be."
To ensure quality, the criteria for judging a teacher's performance should be rigorous and multifaceted. It should include multiple measures of student learning and instructional practices associated with exemplary teaching, such as knowledge of subject matter, the ability to tailor instruction to the needs of their students, and engagement with parents and the greater school community.
If we are serious about ensuring high teacher quality for our kids, we need to develop evaluation systems that fairly and accurately measure a student's total intellectual growth. We also must ensure that school leadership fosters a collaborative working environment and provides the resources and conditions that support high-performance teaching and learning.
Second, the tenure process is just that — a process. When the chancellor concludes that an overwhelming majority of teachers are granted tenure, he discounts the fact that about a third of new teachers leave the classroom in their first three years, most because they recognize that they are not suited for the job.
Opponents are arguing that the legislation takes away local control from school districts. In fact, it does nothing of the kind. Nothing precludes districts from making tenure decisions based on myriad criteria —just not student test scores.
At a time when schools all over the state are facing daunting budget cuts, including nearly $800 million in state and city reductions to our city's schools, it is both disappointing and perplexing that the chancellor and the superintendents don't like this legislation. Instead of fighting tooth and nail to hold onto every dollar for education, they have chosen to create a bogey man. As teachers are used to telling their young students: There is no bogey man.
Ms. Weingarten is president of the United Federation of Teachers.
By RANDI WEINGARTENApril 7, 2008http://www.nysun.com/opinion/right-way-to-grade-teachers/74223/
Chancellor Joel Klein of New York City's Department of Education and superintendents from other parts of the state are opposing language in the budget bill clarifying last year's agreement that teachers shouldn't be evaluated on student test scores; they should be assessed on how they use test scores and other data to adjust their teaching to help students improve.
This enlightened approach to tenure decisions is something that the Legislature and the governor agreed last year was eminently reasonable. The approach is akin to judging doctors on how they use the results of blood tests, X-rays, and the like to prescribe a course of treatment.
The plan, agreed upon last year, represents recognition of a real problem. Using student test scores for evaluating teachers is just as flawed a premise as using them as the sole criteria to judge children. After all, there are many factors that affect student learning that are beyond a teacher's control, such as the school's resources, class size, availability of special education, the performance of other teachers, student mobility and attendance, and parent support.
And then there are the technical limitations of the available data and the quality of the standardized tests that make it impossible to isolate the "effects" of an individual teacher. Take, for example, the fact that the state English Language Arts tests are given in January of each year. Which teacher is responsible, the 4th-grade teacher who taught the student between February and June or the 5th-grade teacher who had the child between September and January?
Perhaps the greatest myth that opponents perpetuate is the notion that student test scores can be used to make decisions for which they were never intended. Even education advocates who regularly disagree with each other conclude that, as co-director of a Washington think tank called Education Sector, Thomas Toch, wrote recently in Education Week, "standardized test scores aren't the simple solution they seem to be."
To ensure quality, the criteria for judging a teacher's performance should be rigorous and multifaceted. It should include multiple measures of student learning and instructional practices associated with exemplary teaching, such as knowledge of subject matter, the ability to tailor instruction to the needs of their students, and engagement with parents and the greater school community.
If we are serious about ensuring high teacher quality for our kids, we need to develop evaluation systems that fairly and accurately measure a student's total intellectual growth. We also must ensure that school leadership fosters a collaborative working environment and provides the resources and conditions that support high-performance teaching and learning.
Second, the tenure process is just that — a process. When the chancellor concludes that an overwhelming majority of teachers are granted tenure, he discounts the fact that about a third of new teachers leave the classroom in their first three years, most because they recognize that they are not suited for the job.
Opponents are arguing that the legislation takes away local control from school districts. In fact, it does nothing of the kind. Nothing precludes districts from making tenure decisions based on myriad criteria —just not student test scores.
At a time when schools all over the state are facing daunting budget cuts, including nearly $800 million in state and city reductions to our city's schools, it is both disappointing and perplexing that the chancellor and the superintendents don't like this legislation. Instead of fighting tooth and nail to hold onto every dollar for education, they have chosen to create a bogey man. As teachers are used to telling their young students: There is no bogey man.
Ms. Weingarten is president of the United Federation of Teachers.
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