NEW YORK STATE ASSEMBLY
PUBLIC HEARING ON GOVERNANCE OF THE NEW YORK CITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
ASSEMBLY STANDING COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION
Lehman College Lovinger Theatre First Floor Speech and Theatre Building 250 Bedford Park Boulevard West Bronx, New York
Friday, March 13, 2009 10:06 a.m.
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A P P E A R A N C E S:
CATHERINE T. NOLAN, Chairwoman, Assembly Standing Committee on Education
MICHAEL BENJAMIN, Member of Assembly
AURELIA GREENE, Member of Assembly
PETER RIVERA, Member of Assembly
MICHAEL BENEDETTO, Member of Assembly
RUBEN DIAZ, JR., Member of Assembly
CARMEN ARROYO, Member of Assembly
MARK WEPRIN, Member of Assembly
JEFFREY DINOWITZ, Member of Assembly
DANIEL O’DONNELL, Member of Assembly
NAOMI RIVERA, Member of Assembly
MIGUEL MARTINEZ, City Council
BETTY ROSA, Board of Regents
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LIST OF SPEAKERS
MONICA MAJOR, Member, Parent Commission, President of District 11 Community Education Council...... 17
DONALD FREEMAN, Member, Time Out From Testing, Member of Parent Commission, Former NYC Principal ...... 24
LISA DONLAN, President, Community District Education Council 1...... 31
JOSH KARAN, Member, Constitution Committee Of Parent Commission on School Governance And Mayoral Control...... 37
VERNON BALLARD, Member, Manhattan’s Community Board 9...... 43
CHRISTOPHER CERF, Deputy Chancellor, New York City Department of Education...... 55,87
DENNIS M. WALCOTT, Deputy Mayor for Education, New York City Department of Education ...... 55,75
LINDA WERNIKOFF, Executive Director, Office of Special Ed Initiatives, New York City Department of Education ...... 150
JESSE MOJICA, Director of Education Policy Office of the Bronx Borough President...... 197
KATHERINE ECKSTEIN, Director of Public Policy, The Children’s Aid Society...... 201
ALANA RILEY, Parent, The Children’s Aid Society...... 209
ROSSANA ROSADO, Publisher and CEO, El Diario ...... 212
JANE HIRSCHMANN, Co-Chair, Center for Educational Innovation – Public Education Association ...... 226
ANN COOK, Co-Director, New York Performance Standards Consortium...... 237
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LIST OF SPEAKERS
DR. LOUIS REYES, Former Member, Board of Education...... 246,257
ERIC CONTRERAS, Principal, Queens High School Of Teaching...... 247
PABLO VILLAVICENCIO, Academy Dean, Urban Science Academy...... 282,286
VINCENT WOJSNIS, Teacher, MS-399...... 286,301
JOYCE HINTON, Member PTA, MS-399...... 303
VANESSA WALLACE, President, PA PS 100 ...... 305
TERESA JORDAN, Parent, MS-118...... 309
ELIZABETH LAWRENCE, Principal, MS-118 ...... 310
MANUEL CASTRO, Organizer, Mirabel Sisters Cultural Community Center, Inc...... 330
CATHERINE TORRES-RODRIGUEZ, Family Life Academy Charter School...... 334
NILKA GONZALES-RODRIGUEZ, New York Citywide Headstart Council; member, Family Life Academy . . . 339
JASON LEVY, Principal, CIS 339, ...... 341
MARIA SANDERS, Family Life Academy Charter School. . . .345
DEYCY AVITIA, Coordinator of Education Advocacy, New York Immigration Coalition ...... 356
MIRIAM RACCAH, Executive Director, Founder, Girls Preparatory Charter School, Parent...... 362
JEREMIAH KITTREDGE, Democracy Prep Charter School. . . .370
AYANNA MASON, Democracy Prep Charter School...... 372
NIA HILL-MINNS, Democracy Prep Charter School...... 376 EN-DE REPORTING SERVICES 212-962-2961
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LIST OF SPEAKERS
PAMELA WILLIAMS, Greater Holy Tabernacle Church. . . . .380
SHEILA FURS, Parent...... 383
LINDA O’TOOLE, Parent...... 385
REGGIE HARPER, Parent...... 387
MONIQUE PORTER, Parent...... 392
SAMUEL ELIJAH, Parent...... 394
ELIHU McMAHON, Retired Teacher, Parent Educators Against Academic Genocide and Racism. . . .397
DEBRA BRUNSON, Educators Against Academic Genocide and Racism, Jobs for Youths ...... 407
DIANE SARGENT, Former Educator, Educators Against Academic Genocide and Racism ...... 409
ROBERT PRESS, Former Member, Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council...... 417
ESPERANZA VASQUEZ, Parent Action Committee at New Settlement Apartments (Spanish to English translation by Alda Arias) . . . 424
ABDUL-KARIM RAHIM, Parent Action Committee at New Settlement Apartments ...... 427
CARLOS SIERRA, Parent Action Committee at New Settlement Apartments ...... 431
OCYNTHIA WILLIAMS, Campaign for Better Schools, Parent Action Committee at New Settlement Apartments...... 433
CHERYL WYCHE, Parent, ACORN...... 436 MARISOL MARTE, Parent, ACORN...... 437 (Testimony read by Amelia Adams)
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LIST OF SPEAKERS
BRYAN SANCHINELL, Organizer, ACORN, reading for WINNIE, Bronx resident...... 438 MARIA POLANCO, parent, ACORN member...... 439
BOUREMA NIAMBELE, New York Council...... 440
LILLY TEJEDA, Student leader, United Parents of Highbridge...... 443
FRANCES TEJEDA, Parent leader, United Parents of Highbridge...... 444
CARLTON CURRY, United Parents of Highbridge...... 447
SIMON CALDERON, Student leader, United Parents of Highbridge...... 450
JOSE GONZALES, Parent leader, United Parents of Highbridge...... 451
DEBRA MYERS, Bronx resident ...... 454
ADOLFO ABREU, Youth Leader, Urban Youth Collaborative Campaign for Better Schools ...... 462
MIGUEL RODRIGUEZ, Sisters and Brothers United, Urban Youth Collaborative...... 464
ELPIDIO MOLINA, Coalition for Educational Justice . . . .465
GEORGE RIVERA, Member, New York State Alliance For Quality Education; member, New York City Coalition for Educational Justice; member, United Parents of Highbridge ...... 466
ROSA CACERES, Parent, SLT Member, US Navy Veteran. . . . 472
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Good morning. I want
3 to thank you for the gracious welcome we’ve
4 received already here in the Bronx.
5 My name is Catherine Nolan and I’m a New
6 York State Assemblywoman from Queens, but I have
7 the great honor of chairing statewide the
8 Committee on Education for the New York State
9 Assembly and this is a series of hearings.
10 This is the fourth in a series of
11 hearings we’re having all over the city of New
12 York to discuss the important issue of governance
13 of the New York City school system.
14 I really do want to thank Lehman College
15 for the wonderful welcome that they’ve given us
16 already, and I want to acknowledge my colleagues
17 who are here with me today starting with one of
18 the senior members, in points of service, I
19 should add, but the speaker, one of the great
20 woman leaders of our state and one of the great
21 leaders of the Bronx, Assemblywoman Aurelia
22 Greene, is here with us today. Thank you,
23 Aurelia.
24 Assemblyman Peter Rivera who chairs our
25 critically important mental health committee has
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2 joined us, we thank you. My right hand at these
3 hearings, the chair of our subcommittee on
4 special education, someone who has taught for
5 over 35 years in the Bronx and we’re so happy to
6 have him as a member of the Assembly Education
7 Committee, Assemblyman Mike Benedetto. Thank
8 you.
9 I know one of our really great future
10 leaders, I don’t want to say too soon, but we’re
11 really honored to have, I guess hopefully, the
12 next borough president of the Bronx, Ruben Diaz,
13 Jr., also a member of the committee.
14 Then, I should say, more than my right
15 hand, I would say almost the heart of the
16 Education Committee, someone who has just been
17 such a voice always in pushing the committee
18 forward on critical issues, particularly as it
19 relates to English language learners and the need
20 for quality, bilingual teachers, and the chair of
21 the subcommittee on bilingual education, the
22 great Carmen Arroyo. Assemblywoman Arroyo, thank
23 you very much.
24 At a number of these hearings, we’ve had
25 colleagues from the City Council join us and I’m
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2 so pleased to see here from the great borough of
3 Manhattan, City Councilman Miguel Martinez.
4 Thank you very much, Miguel.
5 Also here is Assemblyman Mark Weprin, an
6 important member of our committee from my home
7 borough of Queens, Mark, thank you. And also
8 Assemblyman Michael Benjamin who has been such a
9 great advocate for both the Bronx and has
10 challenged I think so many of us to do better by
11 our schools. So we thank each and every one of
12 you.
13 At our other hearings, our lead witnesses
14 were important members of the city government,
15 and we are very honored today to have Deputy
16 Mayor Dennis Walcott, and Deputy Chancellor
17 Christopher Cerf, and a number of other important
18 people, but some parents and other groups said,
19 you really want to hear from parents first, so we
20 did that on Staten Island, and we’re going to do
21 that here in the Bronx.
22 We’re going to be joined a little later
23 by the Bronx Regent – the very distinguished Dr.
24 Betty Rosa, and when she comes, we want to have
25 her speak right away because of the tremendous
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2 pressure of the Regent schedule. But we are
3 going to be starting off today with Monica Major,
4 the President Community District Education
5 Council 11; Lisa Donlan, President, Community
6 District Education Council 1; Josh Karan,
7 Community Education Council 6; Vern Ballard,
8 Community Board 9; and Don Freeman from the
9 Fannie Lou Hamer High School. We would like to
10 have them come up. We like to panel people. It
11 usually makes it move a little faster.
12 While they are coming down, if any of my
13 colleagues would like to say a word, or make an
14 opening remark, we would certainly be happy to
15 hear that.
16 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: Well, I’m glad to
17 be here. I was part of the committee – of the
18 task force that came up with the plan. We put a
19 sunset on the plan so that we can have an
20 opportunity to look at it and see how we could
21 make it better. So the purpose of these hearings
22 is to see how we can make it better, what do we
23 need to improve.
24 I think what I’ve heard all along,
25 parental participation, parental participation,
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2 parental participation, parental participation,
3 parental participation, parental participation,
4 particularly in light of the fact that New York
5 is such a diverse state and such a diverse city,
6 how do we get parents from overseas, parents from
7 all over the world to be able to participate in
8 the education of their children.
9 If you don’t get the parents to
10 participate, you don’t get as good a product as
11 you should. So I’m looking at these hearings,
12 one with the hindsight of what occurred five
13 years ago, and my participation five years ago,
14 and, two, what do we need to go forward in order
15 to make education even stronger.
16 I’m not impressed with the results yet,
17 I’m not impressed with what we’ve been able to
18 see with the figures over the last seven, eight
19 years. Whether they have grown by one percent,
20 two percent, or five percent, I think that is
21 insignificant so that it’s a statistical
22 abhorrence to say that it’s getting better, it’s
23 not getting better. The only way it’s going to
24 get better is through the collaboration of
25 parents, of teachers, and of students, and I’m
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2 here to learn from you.
3 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you, and I
4 should have recognized your service on that key
5 committee six years ago, and I thank you, and it
6 crystallizes for us our task today, which is an
7 examination of the renewal of this key issue.
8 I would like to have our witnesses start.
9 Other colleagues want to make a statement, so I
10 want to let them do so. It’s nice to have you
11 here.
12 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Thank you. As a
13 lifelong supporter of public education, I
14 certainly wanted my voice to be added to those
15 who are speaking today.
16 I am very concerned about our public
17 schools and the fact that we haven’t seen the
18 progress that everyone thought was going to – I
19 can’t say everyone, but most people thought was
20 going to be accomplished over these years. And
21 one of the things that I’m very concerned about
22 is that we not just make the necessary changes
23 that we see today without also putting in a
24 provision for a sunset so that we can review
25 those changes and see if they’ve really been
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2 effective.
3 Without constantly monitoring and looking
4 to accountability, we will not be successful, and
5 I urge every parent in here today to always keep
6 your schools accountable for your child’s
7 education and the education of all the children
8 who are in that school.
9 I’m still concerned about the fact that
10 monies were provided to reduce class size, but
11 the classes are still burgeoning in our schools
12 today. There are so many issues on the table
13 that still need to be addressed, and I am
14 certainly glad to see this turnout today and I
15 look forward to hearing your responses.
16 Thank you.
17 ASSEMBLYWOMAN ARROYO: Good morning,
18 everyone. It’s a beautiful day in the Bronx.
19 It’s so great. I have to tell you. I was one
20 that voted against mayoral control 10 years ago
21 because I was not satisfied. They put District 7
22 together with District 2 in a district to defeat
23 me in the next election. But, I’m here, ladies
24 and gentlemen. There are two issues that bothers
25 me, and I have been working hard on it, bilingual
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2 education, education for those children that
3 doesn’t speak English that come here from other
4 countries, and now they are – it’s a mess. There
5 are children coming from Africa, from Europe,
6 from all over the world. It’s not only Spanish.
7 The beginning was English and Spanish. Now
8 there are more than 100 languages, and the
9 Department of Education is not prepared to deal
10 with it. We have to enforce our voice, and,
11 believe me, as chair of the bilingual Education
12 Committee, your voice is there with me.
13 We are working hard. We are going to
14 make sure that this organization we take care of
15 those children that doesn’t speak English and
16 need to be educated. We take care of teachers
17 and prepare them to work with their students in
18 the classroom, starting with this culture, or
19 changing school, and moving children around
20 without any plan to have them educated.
21 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Good morning,
22 everyone. Buenos dias. It’s a pleasure to see
23 that so many of you turned out here today on such
24 an issue that is so important. I think that when
25 those of us who are up here on this panel as
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2 legislators speak of other issues like housing
3 and healthcare, when it’s all said and done, what
4 we want is to provide a better future for our
5 children, and so we are all here to ensure that
6 we have a better educational system, and, in
7 doing so, over the last 12 years I’ve been a
8 member of the Education Committee.
9 I want to applaud the efforts of our
10 chairwoman, she’s been education chair now the
11 last couple of years, done a fantastic job, not
12 only with her hearings, but with her outreach and
13 communication towards the elected officials, as
14 well in the information she provides to us, we
15 see a number of issues of pertinent importance of
16 people of New York State and New York City, we
17 always – in New York City we always here about
18 parental involvement, we hear about maybe there
19 should be an independent auditing, these are some
20 of the things that I want to hear about in terms
21 of the Department of Education.
22 We speak of resources to have parents for
23 the PA’s to reach out to parents, or the lack of
24 resources. Maybe empowering the education panel
25 in this new structure of mayoral control, as well
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2 as the issue that I’ve been personally involved
3 in, which is standardized testing, I want to hear
4 some of that stuff.
5 But I want to be a little selfish here
6 this morning. The one thing that I want as we
7 move forward, regardless of where we stand and
8 what your area of expertise is, is that for far
9 too long this borough, the borough of the Bronx
10 has been shortchanged. That, when we look at
11 state funding, we look at New York City as one
12 school district, and we send money from New York
13 State into city hall, and we send it to the
14 chancellor, and this is not a shot at anyone, but
15 we only see that in the Bronx we get the short
16 end of the stick. I’m tired of that. I don’t
17 know about you, but I’m tired of that.
18 So I look forward to an informative
19 discussion. I look forward to getting a lot of
20 good ideas, but when it’s all said and done, if
21 we don’t have our fair share of resources ,if we
22 don’t make ourselves smart about funding formulas
23 and what it means for this borough, then this
24 discussion would be for naught.
25 So I appreciate all of you being here,
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2 and I like to see so many of my colleagues here,
3 and I look forward to learning.
4 Thank you.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
6 We’ve also been joined by a great friend
7 and colleague and a great supporter, and I should
8 say my sister’s assemblyman, since my sister
9 lives in the Bronx, as does my sister-in-law, he
10 represents both of them, and that’s Assemblyman
11 Jeffrey Dinowitz. Thank you, Jeff.
12 Let’s start. I want to thank everybody
13 and some of my colleagues have been kind enough
14 to skip an opening statement also because we want
15 to get started. So we thank everybody very very
16 much. I thank everyone who spoke. They
17 crystallized the issues. Thanks to those who did
18 not. Let’s get started. Thank you very very
19 much.
20 MS. MAJOR: Can you hear me?
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Yes. There is
22 someone here from the college, so as we work
23 through, and I want to thank our stenographer,
24 always, for the their great patience, and also we
25 have like 90 people registered to speak. So
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2 we’re going to try to just keep going so pull it
3 close and just keep talking.
4 MS. MAJOR: I do want to apologize
5 first.
6 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Just say your name
7 for the record.
8 MS. MAJOR: My name is Monica Major and
9 I am a parent on the parent commission. I want
10 to apologize because we don’t have signs. We all
11 use our own printers. We went to Kinkos to make
12 copies. So we didn’t have a well-up of money to
13 make posters, but we are here with a voice and we
14 hope that you will be able to hear us anyway.
15 Again, my name is Monica Major. I am a
16 member of the parent commission and a president
17 of District 11 Community Education Council, and I
18 am the parent of a second grader at PS-121 in the
19 Bronx, and a son who is an alumni of District 2.
20 I, myself, am a graduate of the New York
21 City public system, and when attended school, our
22 schools were a safe haven for many of our
23 children as they are today. They serve as a
24 place where freedom, friends, food and shelter
25 can be provided for at least six hours a day.
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2 It’s something that a child should be able to
3 count on, as well as a place where their full
4 potential can be achieved.
5 Our parent commission is a group of
6 concerned public school parents that came
7 together in July to start crafting proposals on
8 how the current governance system should be
9 changed when the sun sets in June. Our
10 communities need a real voice, and in the Bronx
11 we need an even bigger voice, in our children
12 will be educated and how our schools need our
13 input to succeed.
14 At every level of the system our voices
15 have been silenced or ignored under this
16 administration at the school district and
17 citywide level. Parents deserve a place at the
18 table and our children’s need to be involved to
19 protect their interests. Parent engagement is at
20 an all time low. Parents are frustrated and
21 confused by the chaos created by DOE. It is six
22 years in an parents still don’t know what a CEC
23 is. We’re the local school board.
24 Perhaps this is not surprising since our
25 CECs have been granted so little respect and
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2 allowed so little power from the people at the
3 top. Many parents have given up and removed
4 their children from the New York City public
5 system and others are crossing their fingers,
6 keeping silent, and hoping things will work out
7 for the best.
8 Instead of the spirit of collaboration,
9 we have experienced a harsh dictatorship in which
10 our sincere and intelligent input is responded to
11 with disdain and contempt. The rightful
12 authority of the school leadership teams have
13 been undermined. The community education
14 councils have been ignored and the panel on
15 education policy has been a rubber stamp for
16 whatever fad or ideas the DOE has this week or
17 next. It is time to stop it.
18 Instead of a dictatorship, we demand
19 partnership, a real productive partnership with
20 the mayor and other public officials so that we
21 can collaborate together for the benefit of
22 improving our children’s education. No man can
23 or should have the right to determine our
24 children’s futures on his own. This is not right
25 and it’s not democratic.
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2 Democracy as the rule of law is
3 important, as our forefathers recognized, not
4 just because each individual has a right to help
5 determine the way in which he or she is governed,
6 but also because many of our voices and
7 perspectives will come – from our voices and
8 perspectives will come better policies and a
9 fair, more equitable system as a whole.
10 We have a governance proposal in several
11 areas today that we will be talking about today,
12 that, if adopted, we believe will ensure that the
13 views of parents, the most important stakeholders
14 in the system will be taken seriously by our next
15 mayor or chancellor.
16 The parent commission believes that if
17 New York City is to have a school system that
18 would allow each child to reach his or her
19 highest potential, it is essential to have a
20 community of parents with the resources,
21 training, skills, to work together with other
22 stakeholders and our elected officials to build a
23 better system.
24 Teachers, supervisors, custodians,
25 paraprofessionals, food kitchen employees, all of
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2 these groups have unions to protect – to provide
3 technical legal research assistance in their
4 interactions and negotiations with city education
5 officials. We, as parents, must have an
6 organization of our own that can provide the
7 necessary support that all of these stakeholders
8 take for granted. The establishment of such an
9 organization would provide us with an enhanced
10 ability to participate in decision-making.
11 The parent commission recommends today a
12 publically funded independent parent organization
13 and an associated, independent parent academy.
14 These two bodies would be authorized by the state
15 and have a dedicated source of funding drawn on
16 parent outreach of the budget line of the New
17 York City public school.
18 Their purpose would be to strengthen the
19 voice of parents at the school district and
20 citywide levels. The independent parent academy
21 will provide appropriate technical support and
22 training for parent members of school leadership
23 teams to help them learn, to set goals and
24 objectives, and develop comprehensive education
25 plans as well as school-based budgets.
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2 In the Bronx and throughout the city, all
3 parent associations are not created equal. In
4 certain areas we need more support, more
5 resources to train our parents to advocate for
6 their children. The parent commission feels
7 strongly that a parent academy would allow an
8 independent voice and parents to attend that
9 academy to learn on their own how to advocate.
10 It is much more than a 45 minute PowerPoint
11 production at OFEA training.
12 The independent parent academy would
13 train all community education councils and inform
14 them of their rightful authority in how to
15 respond to it appropriately. The independent
16 parent academy would help educate all parents
17 about the latest initiatives of Tweed and what
18 they could mean in terms of our children’s
19 education, the cost of providing these skills to
20 parents must be recognized as an important part
21 of providing our children with an adequate
22 education.
23 We, too, are very tired of not being
24 heard as parents. So we ask the panel today to
25 take into account our recommendations, and for
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2 now, I will now turn this over to Don Freeman,
3 another member of the parent commission who will
4 speak about the need for accountability, checks
5 and balances, in a future governance system.
6 Thank you for the opportunity.
7 MR. FREEMAN: Thank you, Monica.
8 My name is Donald Freeman. I’m a member
9 of Time Out from Testing which is a member of the
10 parent commission. However, I’m also a retired
11 New York City Public School principal, Fannie Lou
12 Hamer Freedom High School in the South Bronx.
13 If you want to know anything about the
14 school, very frankly, you can just talk to my
15 good friend, Ruben Diaz, Jr., who is my
16 assemblyperson when I was there.
17 New York City has a mayor, and a
18 chancellor, who talk constantly about
19 accountability, and yet treat our children’s
20 public schools as their personal fiefdoms, doing
21 as they please, under strain by either city or
22 state law, obviously that has to change.
23 They open and close schools without any
24 community input, eliminate meaningful parental
25 input, overcrowded classrooms, neglect the needs
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2 of special ed students, and drown the school
3 system in testing and test prep, a misguided
4 policy that takes the focus away from real
5 teaching and learning.
6 Despite all the problems with the New
7 York City Public school system under Bloomberg,
8 the mayor hits us with a false dichotomy of
9 possibilities when he speaks about renewing
10 mayoral control. Either give me what I want or
11 they’ll be riots in the street. That’s a
12 particularly outrageous statement, when you look
13 at the February 20th Marist poll that shows that
14 the majority of New York City votes, 52 to 40,
15 disapproves of the way that Bloomberg has run the
16 New York City public schools. Let’s get real
17 about this. In fact, there’s serious problems
18 with mayoral control and tweaking will not solve
19 those problems.
20 I’m here today with the parent commission
21 to lay out a governance proposal that will create
22 a much more honest, accountable, transparent
23 system, that will include the mayor as a partner,
24 but will also empower parents and include New
25 York City political leaders who have an important
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2 role to play in our New York City public schools.
3 We need to begin with an independent Board of
4 Education that is a true partnership of decision
5 makers who will make the policy and budgetary
6 decisions that will impact on our children’s
7 schools.
8 In our plan, the board will include the
9 following: six parent representatives, five
10 parent members who would be elected directly by
11 the members of the community education councils,
12 each representing a discreet geographic area
13 roughly equal in size in terms of student
14 population. One additional seat would be
15 allocated for the parent of a special education
16 student because they need to be represented,
17 they’ve had virtually no say in this Bloomberg
18 administration.
19 We would also include three mayoral
20 appointees, one public advocate appointee, one
21 City Council appointee, and, in addition, the
22 board would choose four additional members with
23 expertise, because we need that there, in a
24 specific policy area where the board feels it
25 needs to be strengthened. The board would have
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2 approval over all major contracts including every
3 no bid contract over half a million dollars as
4 well as private donations that start out things
5 like the leadership academy, but then very
6 quietly are moved in to the city budget where
7 taxpayers are paying for it. That stuff would
8 have to be approved by the Board of Education.
9 To ensure that the board is accountable,
10 accessible and transparent to the public, and
11 actually Betty Rosa is kind of an example with
12 the Board of Regents, we want meetings moved to
13 the web so that people can watch what’s actually
14 going on. We want agendas in advance. We want
15 transcripts afterwards. We want the public to
16 see what’s really going on at Board of Education
17 meetings rather than what’s occurring today where
18 it’s basically in secret.
19 We also must have a chance to understand
20 schools, the important of communicating with
21 parents, and what it means to effectively educate
22 children. The chancellor must be an educator
23 with at least three years of experience as
24 teacher and also as a principal. And no waivers,
25 by the way.
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2 Three candidates for chancellor would be
3 named by the Board of Education, and the mayor
4 would choose from those three. So we would have
5 a choice but he doesn’t start the process.
6 As a principal, it was incredibly
7 important for me to have accurate data about my
8 school’s performance. Anything other than that
9 would have led to misguided decisions harmful to
10 the school and the students. Incorrect and
11 misleading data as frequently occurs under
12 Chancellor Klein can damage a school’s
13 reputation, push principals to revise curriculum
14 in ways that is structured to teaching and
15 learning, and negatively impact on the schools
16 ability to access grant money and enlist
17 community support.
18 Our proposal includes an independent
19 accountability office that is staffed by experts
20 on testing and statistics that would have full
21 access to the DOE data, and would be able to call
22 the chancellor on any issue where the data is
23 incorrect or misleading. We need to get to the
24 point where we’re dealing with the real numbers
25 of schools and the schools being evaluated by
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2 what they’re actually doing and not by the
3 incorrect data that is now out there.
4 If you have a look at the school progress
5 report, in most cases, they’re destructive, not
6 helpful to schools, rearranging curriculum,
7 praising the poor schools infrequently, being
8 very destructive to some of the best schools in
9 our city. That needs to change. The independent
10 accountability office will be able to do that.
11 We are also calling for the establishment
12 of an inspector general’s office with a fixed
13 four-year term. The inspector general would be
14 appointed by the district attorneys from all five
15 boroughs and would be answerable to the public.
16 He would have a broad mandate to investigate any
17 evidence or complaint of malfeasance, corruption,
18 or mismanagement including allegations from
19 whistle blowers or members of the public, or
20 substantiated reports by this office would be
21 released to the public.
22 Let’s be very clear about this, we have a
23 mayor and a chancellor who have had no hesitation
24 to break the law when it comes to education. The
25 IGU would be in charge of investigating that and
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2 the chancellor and the Board of Education would
3 be very clear then, be subject to the city and
4 state law, and I say with great irony, the
5 chancellor’s regulations, which they frequently
6 break.
7 In my 30 years as a principal, I’m a long
8 time veteran of the system, obviously, I have
9 never known parents to feel as disempowered as
10 they do today, so we’re also calling for the
11 establishment of the office of ombuds person who
12 would have the legal authority when a parent
13 feels like they can’t talk to a principal, they
14 can’t talk to someone in the district office, to
15 really really get their complaint heard and get
16 something done about it. The ombuds person would
17 have the legal authority to do that. Right now,
18 parents are sent to an office, I believe it’s
19 called OFEA, and it’s kind of a way of
20 distracting them, but it’s not a way of helping
21 them get their problems heard.
22 What the parent commission has put
23 together is a system, and I want everybody to be
24 aware that it’s not just a plan, it’s a system.
25 We’re trying to cover all the areas where we see
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2 problems that have come through with mayoral
3 control. There’s so much here, I think I’ve
4 taken enough time. I can go on. The parent
5 commission is also focused on the important role
6 of the school districts and community education
7 councils and the roles that they should play in
8 our governing structure.
9 Lisa Donlan will speak about this part of
10 our proposed system.
11 MS. DONLAN: Good morning. I thank you
12 very much for the opportunity to address you. I
13 am the parent of two public school children, a
14 high school senior, and a child starting high
15 school, and they’ve gone from pre-K in the public
16 school system. I am also the president of the
17 Education Council in District 1, which is on the
18 lower east side and the East Village of
19 Manhattan. I’ve served on that council for the
20 last four years. It’s in my role as a parent
21 leader on the frontlines of parent involvement in
22 my community schools that I’ve been able to
23 assess the effectiveness of the current
24 governance structure and the consequences on mine
25 and other communities.
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2 I’m sure you’ll recall that advocates of
3 mayoral control of the schools portrayed district
4 offices and community school boards as
5 dysfunctional, corrupt, patronage mills which
6 were unaccountable, incompetent, squandering
7 public dollars on contracts for cronies. Mayoral
8 control, we were promised, would put an end to
9 corruption, introducing accountability,
10 transparency, and technocratic competence.
11 Well, some district offices and maybe
12 some community school boards may have deserved
13 some of that criticism; many, however, deserved
14 none of it. Rather than working to improve the
15 systemic failures of local control under a
16 centralized authority and board, the new
17 Department of Education destroyed all school
18 boards, and closed all the district offices.
19 The ensuing, frequently-changing,
20 confusing centralized procedures have resulted in
21 less than effective decision-making, a total
22 disengagement by parents, and many policies and
23 procedures that have harmed more than they’ve
24 helped our children and schools.
25 The DOE’s ballooning no-bid, unvetted,
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2 and often unsuccessful vendor contracts, I’m sure
3 you’ll remember the school buses, for one
4 example, have grown from $700,000 to more than
5 $40 million, making any problems or abuse that we
6 could connect with the prior contracting
7 methodology pale by comparison.
8 We in the parent commission refuse to buy
9 into the false dichotomy between retaining
10 dictatorial mayoral control or reverting to the
11 allegedly “unfixable” system of the past.
12 Our vision is for a third way, a
13 balancing of the best of centralization and local
14 decision-making, based on the restoration of
15 democratic procedures in a government and
16 community partnership.
17 We envision community school districts
18 together with community district education
19 councils as the basic unit of school governments
20 with adequate and appropriate resources,
21 financial and human, to nurture parental and
22 community involvement, make decisions on
23 educational priorities, zoning, and enrollment,
24 oversee schools, and facilitate improvement of
25 teaching and learning.
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2 To ensure a more meaningful role for
3 community school districts, we recommend the
4 following:
5 First of all, the CDECs need to provide
6 input to the Board of Education, that’s now
7 called the panel of education policy, before
8 policy decisions are made. We recommend that
9 there be a public hearing period, and that the
10 borough president appointee members report input
11 from the CDECs and their borough in order to
12 carry parents and community voices forward.
13 We also would like to see that the CDECs
14 have the full authority under the law to approve
15 school sightings, selection, restructuring,
16 expansion, and reconfiguration of schools, as
17 well as their closing, opening, and relocating,
18 and that would include all traditional public and
19 charter schools in the districts.
20 We would like to see community school
21 districts become more meaningful with the
22 reinstatement of rightful responsibilities and
23 authority of our district superintendents. We
24 would like to see superintendents spend at least
25 90 percent of their time within their own
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2 districts supporting and improving instruction in
3 their community schools and helping to address
4 parent problems and concerns.
5 We would like to see the CDECs, along
6 with the district president councils help develop
7 the annual capital plan, the class-size reduction
8 plan, the Contract for Excellence spending, and
9 the district comprehensive education plan.
10 We would also like to have CDEC play a
11 central role in selecting and evaluating the
12 superintendent. We’re suggesting that the CDEC
13 nominate three candidates in consultation with
14 the president’s council, and allowing the
15 chancellor to choose one of them.
16 We would also encourage a meaningful
17 partnership be forged between the CDECs and the
18 community boards, they can and they should work
19 closely together on issues such as zoning,
20 budgeting, school overcrowding, and community
21 development. CDECs should be involved in every
22 step of the capital plan and not just approving
23 it at the end.
24 We would like to see the CDEC election
25 process and composition also be reformed. We
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2 think every parent in the district should have a
3 real vote, not a straw vote, with a possibility
4 of extending this right to all registered voters
5 in the district. We’re proposing a CDEC that has
6 11 voting members, including one borough
7 president appointee, nine members elected by
8 parents, and one community resident appointed by
9 the CDEC itself.
10 We would like to suggest that at least
11 one seat be reserved for a high school parent,
12 and one seat for a parent of a child with an IEP,
13 and one seat for a parent of an English language
14 learner. We would also like to see one seat
15 open, although not necessarily reserved for a
16 parent of a charter school student. We would
17 also like to continue the high school students
18 with two non-voting high school students selected
19 by their peers in the district.
20 We would also like to see high schools in
21 six through 12 be able to get better
22 representation by putting seats back in their
23 geographic district in addition to the Citywide
24 Council for High Schools.
25 We would also suggest expanding the
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2 Citywide Council on Special Education to
3 represent not just District 75 students and
4 parents, but all children who receive a continuum
5 of services mandated by an IEP.
6 Finally, we suggest reserving a seat for
7 a parent of a special education student, not just
8 on the Community District Education Council and
9 the Citywide Council on High Schools, and these
10 would serve as liaisons to provide crucial
11 frontline input to the CCSE, and a seat on the
12 Board of Education should also be set aside for
13 such a parent to be elected by the special
14 education members of the CDECs, the CCHS, and the
15 CCSE.
16 My colleague Josh Karan will continue our
17 presentation of the parent commission proposal by
18 exposing a fundamental reform mechanism that aims
19 to guarantee equity and education and more to
20 every child in New York City.
21 Thank you.
22 MR. KARAN: Thank you. My name is Josh
23 Karan. Good morning to all of you, especially to
24 Councilmember Martinez who represents part of my
25 district, District 6, and who needs his own name
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2 placard on the table so that everybody knows who
3 he is.
4 With our last speaker coming up, we will
5 return to issues of governance, but I’m going to
6 first introduce another idea. I’m a member of
7 the Constitution Committee of the Parent
8 Commission on School Governance and Mayoral
9 Control. My message concerns our final
10 recommendation, which is for the Education
11 Committee and the legislature, as a whole, to use
12 this timely opportunity to address more than
13 governance in order for significant improvement
14 to occur in the outcomes for the major of
15 students.
16 I’ve been an organizer in the field of
17 New York City public education for more than 30
18 years. My first 15 years, spanning the 1970s and
19 80s were in District 19, the East New York
20 section of Brooklyn. For the past 15 years, my
21 neighborhood has been District 6 of the
22 Washington Heights section of Manhattan and
23 Inwood where I raised a daughter who graduated
24 from high school last year.
25 My years in Washington Heights have been
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2 as an active participant in attempting to ensure
3 fulfillment of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity
4 which was initiated in my district. I’ve been a
5 liaison for Councilmember Robert Jackson to the
6 District 6 Community School Board, and to its
7 successor, the CEC, prior to being appointed to
8 the District 6 CEC by the Manhattan Borough
9 President. I have served for four years on that
10 CEC, including one year as its president.
11 As the preceding testimony has indicated,
12 the Parent Commission believes that mandating
13 greater transparency, accountability, involvement
14 of parents, and local control will allow for
15 inclusion of views that are essential components
16 of sound educational policy. But structural
17 change is insufficient.
18 In my lifetime of engagement, there have
19 been many changes of structure, vacillating
20 between varying forms of centralization and
21 decentralization, with chancellors who have been
22 educators and those who were not.
23 Yet, by every measure, graduation rates,
24 language and scientific literacy skills,
25 preparation for democratic citizenry, little has
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2 changed for the majority of students in the
3 system who are primarily low-income children of
4 color.
5 Reestablishing measures of accountability
6 and transparency can be truly important only if
7 there are shared principals and goals that define
8 what to be accountable and transparent for.
9 Structures can matter, but only to uphold such
10 principals and goals.
11 Schools have comprehensive education
12 plans, so do districts. But the system as a
13 whole does not have such a comprehensive
14 education plan. What is needed is an explicit
15 and legally binding articulation of purpose
16 stating what we are attempting to accomplish.
17 This statement needs to be embodied in a
18 Constitution for the New York City Public School
19 System which can provide the vision and mandates
20 necessary to provide all our city’s children with
21 a truly comprehensive, public and democratic
22 education regardless of who governs the system,
23 through any future changes in governing
24 structure.
25 The parent commission has drafted a
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2 sample illustrating that. Some mandates could
3 involve resources to provide the facilities that
4 a comprehensive curricula require and to ensure
5 provision of trained instructional and support
6 staff in sufficient numbers to meet the
7 recommendations of the professional judgment
8 panels at CFE for appropriate class size. Some
9 mandates could involve educational philosophy to
10 ensure that schools utilize multiple forms of
11 assessment that staff is made sensitive to the
12 diversity of ethnicity, race and class in the
13 system, but be reflective of the demographics of
14 the student population, but racial and economic
15 integration of schools and classes is seen as a
16 value to be promoted for its educational
17 importance.
18 Additional mandates could define schools
19 as interrelated with the communities so that they
20 offer full universal preschool, as well as
21 partner in the provision of comprehensive
22 healthcare, afterschool recreation sites, and
23 adult education.
24 A Constitution would codify in law what
25 our schools have never before had – namely, a
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2 shared mission with core principles, primary
3 goals and a policy framework that must be
4 respected and upheld by whomever is governing the
5 system.
6 Only in this way can our public servants
7 be held to account for the money, programs,
8 staff, and space required for providing
9 educational excellence for all.
10 The model is that of the victory of the
11 Campaign for Fiscal Equity. That lawsuit was
12 made possible only because of language in the New
13 York State Constitution guaranteeing the right to
14 “a sound basic education.” It’s time to go
15 beyond that framework and mandate the conditions
16 to produce true educational excellence for all,
17 not just a sound basic education.
18 The parent commission, therefore, calls
19 on the New York State legislature and the New
20 York City Council, jointly, to establish an
21 independent commission or task force to draft
22 such a constitution, a commission whose members
23 are drawn from the ranks of parents, students,
24 teachers, administrators, and community members
25 assisted and supported by education experts, who
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2 collectively reflect the diversity found in our
3 public school communities.
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
5 MR. KARAN: The specifics of our
6 constitution will be contained in our full report
7 which will be released shortly and I will now
8 turn this over to Vern Ballard, our last speaker
9 who shows the range of our commission and our
10 common concern. For me, whose child who’s
11 graduated to one whose children are yet to enter
12 school, but who cares immensely about the system
13 that they will enter.
14 Thank you.
15 MR. BALLARD: Good morning. My name is
16 Vernon Ballard. I am a member of Manhattan’s
17 Community Board 9, much of which is represented
18 by Assemblyman O’Donnell, and a father of a two
19 year old daughter, with another due to born next
20 week. So if I’m a little nervous, it’s because
21 if I get a call, that’s why. I’m also a member
22 of the parent commission because I believe we
23 need a constitutional education system with
24 independent checks and balances and authentic
25 civic engagement. This is the system I want to
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2 spend the better part of two decades shepherding
3 my daughters through, for how better to learn the
4 value of civic engagement than through our public
5 schools? I’m here to get an early start.
6 Ironically, as my fellow panelists have
7 already testified, under mayoral control, the
8 mayor and chancellor refuse to be accountable to
9 city and state law; refuse to cooperate with
10 independent audits of finances and test scores;
11 and routinely undermine decisions of the
12 judiciary.
13 Indeed, their ambivalence towards their
14 own policies is such that five times in seven
15 years they have arbitrarily implemented
16 contradictory reorganization plans.
17 Maybe, as they suggest, this has been one
18 harmonic eight-year master plan. More like their
19 critics are right and these five reorganizations
20 and their marginal improvements demonstrate
21 continued failure. Without independent auditing
22 and open civic engagement, how can we know?
23 We should not be impressed. We do know
24 that mayoral authoritarian control is a failed
25 experiment. Under their stewardship, hundreds of
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2 thousands of students continue to drop out and/or
3 receive deficient educations. As a result, too
4 many parents feel alienated and bamboozled,
5 teachers are demoralized, administrators are
6 frustrated and elected officials are baffled.
7 Ironically, our special needs children with IEPs
8 have been disenfranchised and estranged by the
9 very byzantine support structures designed to
10 protect them.
11 I was schooled in one of the worst
12 schools in central Pennsylvania and yet I’ve
13 thrived in part because I had a series of
14 phenomenal teachers and my father was encouraged
15 to be an engaged parent.
16 As a new father, I expect to be included
17 in shaping my daughter’s education. I’m here to
18 testify on the parental input component of our
19 proposal.
20 On paper and by state law, parent
21 participation in school-based planning and shared
22 decision-making are institutionalized in the
23 School Leadership Teams, SLTs.
24 This acknowledges a simple truth,
25 successful schools need supportive parents. The
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2 fundamental purpose of each SLT is to give the
3 local school community the ability to participate
4 in determining the school’s overall education
5 vision, its goals and priorities, the strategies
6 that would be used to achieve this vision, and
7 the alignment of fiscal and material resources to
8 accomplish its goals. These plans and strategies
9 should be articulated in the school’s
10 Comprehensive Educational Plan, CEP.
11 However, in December 2007, after five
12 years of control, the chancellor brazenly
13 stripped parents of their rightful, shared role
14 in helping to develop the CEP and the school-
15 based budget, by giving the final decision-making
16 authority over these plans to the principal
17 alone.
18 Although the New York State Commissioner
19 of Education Richard P. Mills found in December
20 of 2008 that the process by which the chancellor
21 eviscerated the authority of SLTs was
22 illegitimate, and that the resulting language
23 violated the State Education Law, no new
24 regulation has yet been proposed by the
25 chancellor. When the state legislation that
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2 originally established SLTs sunsets in June,
3 along with mayoral control, it must be replaced
4 with a plan that re-empowers parents by
5 acknowledging our legitimate authority, along
6 with that of principals and district
7 superintendents to be involved in decision-making
8 at the school level.
9 This is why we are urging that part of
10 the changing governance, the role of school
11 leadership teams in creating the comprehensive
12 educational plan should be clarified in law, as
13 well as the right to develop a school-based
14 budget and staffing plan aligned with the CEP.
15 The role of parents to be involved in
16 selecting their school’s principal should be
17 ensured, by reinstating the earlier C-30 process
18 – in which a committee of staff and parents
19 select candidates for principal and submit them
20 to the district superintendent for his or her
21 final approval. As the administration has
22 silenced our voices, there is a critical need to
23 ensure vigorous parental input is never again
24 muted at the school, district or citywide levels.
25 As we’ve summarized here today, our proposals
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2 would ensure that parents would have a meaningful
3 partnership at the school, district, and citywide
4 levels.
5 Again, we need a coherent constitutional
6 system of school governance, founded on civic and
7 democratic principles, bound by independent
8 checks and balances. Like any well-functioning
9 government, it should be a robust, reliable, and
10 resilient partnership. Its purpose should be
11 providing all our children, from special
12 education through gifted and talented, with at
13 least a dozen years of access to excellence,
14 regardless of special needs, cyclical fads, and
15 political circumstances and personalities.
16 Not long ago, there was a hearing at the
17 City Council on the issue of the cell phone ban.
18 The Council was proposing to pass legislation
19 that would allow students to bring their cell
20 phones to school and Deputy Mayor Walcott was
21 there to testify that the administration would
22 refuse to comply with the law.
23 One of the council members, I think
24 Robert Jackson, my councilmember, pointed out
25 that a group of high school students and added
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2 that such a refusal set such a terrible example
3 of democracy. Mr. Walcott replied that, no, this
4 was a democracy because they were hearing the
5 debate, but debate ending with the law flagrantly
6 violated is not democracy, it’s dictatorship.
7 When I attend community board and CEC
8 meetings throughout the city, invariably the
9 mayor and chancellor come out sounding like self-
10 righteous vigilantes on a sanctimonious mission,
11 determined to dispense their singular vision of
12 justice. But New York City’s schools aren’t
13 Gotham City’s; the mayor and chancellor aren’t
14 Batman and Robin; and our children aren’t
15 cartoons or criminals.
16 In these perilous times of dubious
17 authority, the mayor and chancellor manifest a
18 disturbingly Wall Street mentality of “trust us,
19 we know what we’re doing.” Alas, we can no
20 longer afford the luxury of blind trust in
21 superegos. The mayor and the chancellor must be
22 required to obey federal, state, and city laws
23 and regulations, and to cooperate in good faith
24 with an independent, validating peerage of
25 parents, teachers, administrators, and
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2 professional advocates.
3 It’s not just our children’s futures that
4 are at stake, but also the future of our city and
5 our nation. President Obama has declared a sound
6 education a civic responsibility. We must do
7 better. Instead of reauthorizing a variant of
8 mayoral control, it’s time to implement a new
9 harmonious era of civic partnership.
10 As our full plan articulates, deviating
11 from mayoral authoritarian control is not a
12 reversion to chaos and disorder, as some will no
13 doubt suggest, it is an evolution to something
14 better. We hope you will read the parent
15 commission report and evaluate it fully on its
16 merits.
17 It will be available next week at
18 parentcommission.org. Thank you for the
19 opportunity to speak today.
20 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. I want to
21 thank all of you for speaking today. It’s
22 getting tough. We have 90 people registered, so
23 we’re going to have to ask people to keep moving.
24 Christopher Cerf, our deputy chancellor;
25 Maria Santos, executive director of the Office of
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2 English Language Learners; and Linda Wernikoff
3 from the office of special education. I know Dr.
4 Lyles is here also, but we’d like to ask them to
5 come forward. The panel left. I didn’t want to
6 cut any of my colleagues off.
7 We’ve been joined by Assemblyman Danny
8 O’Donnell of Manhattan and Assemblyman Carl
9 Heastie of the Bronx, a great leader in the
10 Bronx. If they have a quick question. They
11 scooted out. I apologize.
12 Councilman, Yes?
13 COUNCILMAN MARTINEZ: Madam Chair, I
14 just wanted to – while the panel assembles, I
15 just want to thank you for allowing me to be part
16 of the distinguished committee and its members
17 and I also wanted to highlight that there is
18 clearly a need for strengthening the parent
19 involvement.
20 I will also suggest, Madam Chair, that we
21 look at returning to a process similar to the
22 previous seat 30 process, which allowed parents
23 and others at school level to interview and make
24 recommendations for candidates for principals and
25 other supervisors.
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2 In addition t that, Madam Chair, the
3 school governance legislation must be amended to
4 expand the legislative authority of the New York
5 City Council. The City Council should be allowed
6 to legislate over issues relating to
7 transportation, procurement, safety, capital
8 planning, and school sighting.
9 School governance legislation should also
10 be amended to clarify that all contracts
11 administered by the Department of Education are
12 subject to the City Contract Law and Procurement.
13 And that all relevant contracts should be
14 registered and audited by the New York City
15 Controller’s Office.
16 In addition, stronger language is needed
17 to ensure that the Department of Education
18 budgeting system are fully integrated with the
19 city financial management system.
20 And, finally, Madam Chair, the role of
21 the independent budget office should be expanded
22 to take on vital tasks of providing timely
23 independent analysis of the Department of
24 Education data and issue annual performance’s
25 reports in addition to budget reports.
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2 Thank you, Madam Chair, for allowing me
3 the opportunity, and I look forward to working
4 with the committee.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. We
6 appreciate, you know, everyone’s good humor and
7 patience, patience with each other. I did want
8 to comment earlier about signs. Everyone does
9 have a first amendment right. We just remind –
10 and I thank this group because we haven’t had a
11 problem. There are people in back of you, so if
12 you raise it too high you’re going to block their
13 view and that creates another problem. Right now
14 we’re in good shape on that.
15 I want to thank those parent
16 representatives, and I want to thank my
17 colleagues. I mentioned, we have really a full
18 house and I think it shows you the importance
19 that members are placing on this hearing.
20 I think I’ve acknowledged all my
21 colleagues and, councilman, thank you for being
22 with us, Councilman Martinez.
23 Also I mentioned earlier we’re really
24 very honored for the Bronx hearing to have a
25 member of the Board of Regents, which is the
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2 oldest established educational policy body in the
3 country, and Dr. Betty Rosa is here with us and
4 we thank you, Dr. Rosa, for your leadership and
5 commitment to the Bronx.
6 We also want to thank, and I want to
7 stress again, and I wanted to acknowledge
8 Assemblyman Peter Rivera when he said he was on
9 the original group six years ago. This law
10 sunsets June 30th. So these hearings are
11 important to us as we go through the process and
12 so we are very pleased to have with us today, and
13 I know my colleagues will have questions for this
14 panel.
15 We will be getting back to some of our
16 other parent groups with additional follow-up
17 questions. I want to thank them for deferring
18 questions so we can put this group on.
19 We have with us today, I mentioned
20 earlier, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott; Deputy
21 Chancellor Christopher Cerf; Executive Director
22 Maria Santos, Office of English Language
23 Learners; and Linda Wernikoff from the Office of
24 Special Education.
25 I also want to acknowledge Nicolas
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2 Storelli-Castro our wonderful analyst for the
3 Education Committee who helped put this together
4 and we, fortunately, for me, Nicolas is fluent in
5 Spanish, and we have some other people as well
6 who are fluent Spanish speakers, and maybe a few
7 other languages in our great multi-lingual city
8 so, as we move through parent groups, we want
9 everyone to feel comfortable in expressing
10 themselves however they wish.
11 I think we’re going to start with Deputy
12 Chancellor Cerf.
13 MR. CERF: Thank you, Chairwoman, and
14 thank you to the members of the committee and
15 other assembly members. It’s a pleasure to be
16 before you again.
17 Before I proceed, I would like to say
18 Happy Birthday -
19 MR. WALCOTT: My name is Dennis Walcott.
20 I’m the Deputy Mayor for the City of New York.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: No, no. We don’t do
22 that here. We want to have that great Bronx
23 welcome that we know we’re gong to have for
24 everybody.
25 MR. WALCOTT: Thank you very much. I
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2 appreciate it. And to the chairwoman, I want to
3 say happy birthday to you, and to all of your
4 dedication for all the hard work, and we have
5 been listening and we have learned a lot over the
6 past, I guess, three hearings, and we look
7 forward to participating at the next hearing as
8 well.
9 I will be extremely brief by just saying
10 that we will have testimony from Maria Santos and
11 Linda Wernikoff, who was unfortunately not able
12 to make the Staten Island hearing, and address
13 any specific questions that you may have.
14 I would like to turn the microphone over
15 to Maria.
16 MS. SANTOS: Good morning, Chairperson
17 Nolan, and members of the New York State Senate
18 Standing Committee on Education as well as City
19 Council members that have joined us.
20 I appreciate this invitation to share
21 with you the progress of our English language
22 learners, or as I will refer to them as ELLs
23 under mayoral control.
24 I am Maria Santos, and I am the executive
25 director of the Office for English Language
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2 Learners. The strides forward that I have seen
3 New York City schools and educators make in the
4 lives of almost 150,000 ELLs are significant and
5 real.
6 I will share with you today what is
7 available to ELLs, who is succeeding among them,
8 and who continues to require more targeted
9 support. Mayoral control and its accompanying
10 reforms have allowed us to build strong system-
11 wide structures that make teaching and learning
12 of ELLs a priority in each and every school.
13 Because we have continuously implemented,
14 evaluated and refined reform efforts to be
15 responsive, the climate that existed six years
16 ago for ELLs has dramatically changed.
17 We have transformed a disjointed system
18 that offered students varying levels of service
19 into a stronger, more service-oriented system.
20 This transformation has allowed us to broaden the
21 access that our English language learners have to
22 a rigorous education, and to deepen our
23 understanding of their achievements and
24 challenges. This has helped us create more and
25 better educational opportunities for these
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2 students to succeed.
3 In 2003, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor
4 Klein launched a bold reform agenda called
5 Children First. Specifically for ELLs, reform
6 directed us to align ELL programs to the new
7 English language arts and mathematics core
8 curriculum and standards; provide coherent
9 system-wide language allocation guidelines; build
10 the capacity of all educators to deliver coherent
11 programs and high quality instruction; implement
12 effective assessments; hold schools and
13 principals accountable; and increase parental
14 participation in the education of ELLs.
15 Along with unprecedented allocation of
16 ELL resources, the Children First strategy helped
17 us to create lasting change in New York City’s
18 way of serving English language learners. From
19 the beginning, it was clear that we were seeking
20 something bigger than incremental change. Our
21 first step in providing rigorous and coherent
22 programs for ELLs, was creating a citywide policy
23 that formally established the native language and
24 English use in each program model. Whether it
25 was transitional bilingual, dual language, or
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2 English as a second language.
3 Today, under citywide language allocation
4 guidelines, schools offer ELLs instructional
5 programs that are aligned to the state standards
6 and are designed based on the schools own review
7 of students demographic and performance data.
8 Schools must now create their own language
9 allocation policy as part of their comprehensive
10 education plan, making ELLs an integral part of
11 programming for the entire school, a process not
12 included before reforms.
13 Also, administrators and teachers used
14 periodic and formal assessments to differentiate
15 instruction for ELLs with the results readily
16 available through new technologies. In the area
17 of English language arts, ELLs fully participate
18 in the balance literacy program implemented
19 throughout the city. Robust lessons for ELLs
20 routinely align ESL standards with English
21 language art standards if both the design and
22 delivery is a key to literacy development.
23 ELL educators have received additional
24 classroom resources such as native language
25 libraries, professional support, professional
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2 development support, technical assistance, and
3 intervention programs to accelerate academic
4 language acquisition and critical writing skills,
5 not just in English language arts, but in
6 critical subjects like mathematics, social
7 studies and science.
8 Since 2003, more than 26,000 teachers of
9 ELLs, not just ESL teachers and bilingual
10 teachers, but all teachers of all specializations
11 in content areas have engaged in professional
12 development sessions targeted at building the
13 skills to deliver standard-aligned instruction
14 for ELLs.
15 Unlike in the past, all teachers are
16 certified, and recruitment programs, like the
17 housing incentive, the New York City Partnership
18 for Teacher Excellence, and the Teaching Fellows
19 Program target high-needs areas and provides our
20 programs with diverse and talented recruits.
21 Administrators and teachers receive on-
22 site technical assistance and instructional
23 support from dedicated ELL performance
24 specialists and network specialists who built
25 capacity at the ground level and in a tailored
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2 way.
3 New reporting requirements and funding
4 structures prioritize the needs of ELLs,
5 recognizing their importance to the school’s
6 overall performance and the resources required to
7 meet their diverse needs. For instance, Metrics
8 holds schools more accountable for ELLs by
9 including them as part of each principal’s
10 performance review and each school’s progress
11 report. To accelerate gains among ELLs, schools
12 are encouraged to establish inquiry teams
13 focusing on those students, especially for those
14 who might be struggling academically.
15 In terms of funding, the initial $20
16 million allocation of tax levy money when reforms
17 were announced signaled the level of commitment
18 for creating real changes for ELLs. Since 2004,
19 we instituted a mid-year reserve funding
20 allocation for schools that experienced
21 demographic shifts during the school year.
22 When funding for school was restructured
23 in 2007, additional funding for ELLs was included
24 in the fair student funding formula. Since 2003,
25 schools have been able to apply for a special
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2 funding based on their needs, including
3 supplemental funding for students with
4 interrupted formal education and long-term ELLs,
5 dual language programs, and, more recently,
6 incentive grants to provide better, more
7 responsive programs that create more options for
8 parents.
9 Of course, true change in the lives of
10 students could not have been without close
11 involvement of parents and community, something
12 Children First reforms have recognized from the
13 outset. Parent participation is especially
14 poignant for ELLs, as parents are possibly the
15 richest source of cultural and linguistic
16 confidence ELLs require to succeed in our
17 schools. As part of the reforms, each school was
18 assigned a new parent coordinator to reach out to
19 families.
20 To equip parent coordinators with the
21 information and resources they require to reach
22 ELL parents, the office of ELLs created the ELL
23 Parent Information Case, a resource used across
24 the city to reinforce periodic workshops and
25 events.
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2 Also, each year, thousands of ELL parents
3 participate in conferences and workshops targeted
4 at developing their capacity to fully participate
5 in schools. Our last and most successful
6 conference to date in October welcomed almost
7 1,500 parents. We plan to have another one in
8 May as well.
9 Events and immigration are accessible to
10 immigrant parents because of the department’s
11 translation and interpretation rules supported by
12 a dedicated unit within the department. Our ties
13 to the community are greatly enhanced by the
14 participation and support of ELL advocates whose
15 members I see here today, instrumental in
16 providing direction and support in regular
17 meetings throughout the year.
18 Finally, we are developing expertise in
19 resources in partnership with the research
20 community, like the new diagnostic that helps us
21 identify students with interrupted formal
22 education, which was developed in partnership
23 with researchers from the City University of New
24 York. As I mentioned earlier, these structures
25 were required early on to service a foundation
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2 from which we can build new and better ways to
3 meet the needs of ELLs. Success for us is
4 measured not only in terms of measureable
5 improvement in ELL performance, but also better
6 access in more schooling options best suited to
7 their needs.
8 ELLs now routinely participate in options
9 that were either not available before the reform,
10 like using native language libraries, or that
11 were available to a very limited number of
12 students like college preparatory tests. True
13 equity and access ensures that ELL participation
14 continues to increase in all areas as more
15 options become available.
16 For instance, dual language programs that
17 provide instruction in home language and English
18 to both English language learners and English
19 speakers have expanded to 50 in 2004 to 82 this
20 year. Programs are provided in Spanish, Chinese,
21 French, Korean, Russian, Haitian, Creole, and
22 Yiddish. These programs not only serve more than
23 5,500 ELLs, but also serve as many English
24 proficient students who want to become bilingual.
25 These numbers do not include the 10 state
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2 approved pre-k programs that operate with the
3 dual-language component, ELLs focus,
4 international schools, newcomer programs, and
5 alternative schools, and serve more than 6,500
6 students this year.
7 Our work with the new school’s
8 development team focuses on developing new small
9 school models that serve the full range of ELLs
10 including subpopulations. Gifted and talented
11 programs are just beginning to show gains in ELL
12 participation due to better processes for
13 eligibility and admission that includes students
14 with home languages other than English.
15 Since 2002, the number of ELLs receiving
16 extra academic support through the supplemental
17 education services under No Child Left Behind has
18 risen from 3,654 ELLs to 33,098 ELLs. More
19 students with the home language other than
20 English, many of whom are ELLs are participating
21 in college entrance exams like the PSAT. Now,
22 free of charge for 10th and 11th graders. And SAT
23 is up seven percent between 2005 and 2008, and
24 preparatory programs like the new Title 3
25 immigrant fund college bond program expect to
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2 reach 500 immigrant students this year with
3 classes in college phase-ins.
4 We can now monitor the performance of
5 ELLs due to wider ELL participation on state
6 tests and more comprehensive data analysis by
7 subpopulations.
8 Overall, ELLs have made gains on state
9 tests of language, literacy, and mathematics
10 since Children First reforms were first enacted
11 in 2003.
12 For instance, in 2008, 13.4 percent of
13 ELLs reached English proficiency as determined by
14 the New York State English as a second language
15 test, or NYSESLAT, compared with 3.7 percent in
16 2003.
17 Results from state English language arts
18 using combined 3 through 8 data, or more reliable
19 4th and 8th grade data over time show ELLs making
20 gains often on par with those of English
21 proficient students. ELLs are making larger and
22 more pronounced gains on math, state math tests,
23 3 through 8, with the majority of ELLs meeting
24 standards this year, that’s 58.6 percent, and
25 gain outperforming English proficient students.
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2 Since 2003, ELLs scoring in the lowest
3 categories on each of these tests has dropped
4 dramatically, meaning ELLs are swiftly receiving
5 a coherent set of basic skills and are not left
6 to languish at the lowest levels of proficiency.
7 Much like general education students, elementary
8 ELLs continue to make larger gains than middle
9 school ELLs.
10 The less dramatic gains by middle school
11 ELLs relatively flat regent numbers and
12 graduation rates, and dropout rates higher than
13 English proficient students underscore the
14 immediate demand for deeper, more focused
15 attention on adolescent ELLs. Subpopulations
16 like students with interrupted formal education
17 and long-term ELLs are far more prevalent in the
18 upper grades and require interventions that
19 accelerate academic literacy and language support
20 to keep them engaged academically. Now that
21 graduation requirements are stricter, the charge
22 to understand what works best and for whom at the
23 secondary level is more critical than ever.
24 Dramatically improving the outcomes of
25 secondary ELLs requires a deployment of resources
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2 and information at the high school level, and in
3 middle school, where adolescent ELLs begin to
4 prepare academically for the challenges of high
5 school.
6 Currently, we are dovetailing our efforts
7 with a wider system-wide campaign to improve
8 middle schools, and focusing on sustained
9 professional development for secondary school
10 teachers, research-based resources for schools,
11 and targeted funding for struggling learners.
12 Also, we work closely with schools to
13 ensure that they establish an infrastructure that
14 creates positive changes for ELLs including
15 professional development, academic language
16 development, native language support, extended
17 day programs, and small class size and
18 technological support.
19 It is important to note that the high
20 rate of current ELLs still enrolled, over 40
21 percent in 2007, is evidence that many of these
22 students need more than four years to master
23 English and meet increasingly stricter graduation
24 requirements. We see these numbers as
25 encouraging, not only because these students are
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2 still engaged, but because follow-up data on
3 graduation cohorts consistently show many of
4 these students go on to graduate in five to seven
5 years. ELL graduation rates that would
6 anticipate or capture what typically happens to
7 students engaged beyond four years would provide
8 a more complete picture of our student’s work.
9 Just as data helps us target support for
10 students who need extra help, it also allows us
11 to see if students who have received services and
12 exited from programs have the academic foundation
13 necessary to succeed in general education
14 classes.
15 What we find is that students who have
16 tested out of ELL services, or former ELLs,
17 outperform all other groups on state literacy and
18 math tests at all levels, and have higher
19 graduation rates set over 70 percent, and lower
20 dropout rates than even English proficient
21 students that were never ELLs.
22 Measures of ELL success must consider
23 this performance, as they too are the
24 beneficiaries of departmental and school
25 improvement targets for ELLs. That they are
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2 performing decisively better than all other
3 groups in every way speaks to the power of the
4 programs, the benefits of multilingualism, and
5 the academic promise our schools hold.
6 Before Children First reforms, the
7 outlook for students who did not know English was
8 far less promising than it is today. There were
9 few tests where participation was high enough to
10 be able to even compare ELL performance to that
11 of English proficient students. Graduation
12 requirements were looser and ELL rates were
13 inflated by combining former ELLs and ELLs.
14 Fierce ideological battles of how best to
15 serve these students focused more on what type of
16 instructional program was politically favorable,
17 when researchers and policymakers agreed that
18 program consistency and better teacher
19 certification for all programs would go a long
20 way to addressing the poor performance of ELLs.
21 The state of ELL education depended far more on
22 what district you were in, and advocates and
23 politicians shared concerns that these students
24 were not equipped with the academic foundation to
25 succeed in general education programs, let alone
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2 in college or careers.
3 Six years later, we have moved away from
4 political and ideological struggles to focus on
5 things that are not nearly as sensational, but
6 that are –
7 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We really have to try
8 to be patient with each other. I apologize, I
9 try not to cut witnesses off, Ms. Santos has a
10 key position in the city, I just ask people to be
11 patient. Finish up, please.
12 MS. SANTOS: In finishing up, I want to
13 emphasize the six years later, our main concern
14 is about the unique subgroups of middle school
15 and high school ELLs. These students face the
16 challenges of learning new languages, meeting
17 tougher requirements, and preparing for an
18 incredible outcome. We have shown that students
19 in middle schools and elementary schools are
20 doing better, that students with parallel student
21 education are doing better, that we have work to
22 do with those students who are struggling the
23 most and that is where we will be focusing our
24 attention.
25 Thank you.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Our plan was to have
3 the city’s representatives speak and then take
4 questions, but it was very lengthy testimony so
5 it’s running up against schedules.
6 Just keep going and then we’ll go to
7 questions.
8 MR. WALCOTT: Madam Chair –
9 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: And I have
10 questions too for Ms. Santos.
11 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I’ll tell you what.
12 If you would – it’s not easy to chair a hearing
13 like this, it’s not easy to chair these hearings.
14 I would just ask people to give us their
15 indulgence. We would like you to wait. We had
16 some questions on special ed and class size as
17 well, but since it was very lengthy testimony and
18 very comprehensive testimony, I know my
19 colleagues have some questions.
20 I would like to ask Assemblywoman Arroyo,
21 since she chairs our subcommittee on English
22 language learners to start us off. Then we’ll go
23 from there.
24 ASSEMBLYWOMAN ARROYO: Let me do this.
25 Okay.
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2 I’m going to make my question in Spanish
3 first because Maria is bilingual.
4 (Speaking in Spanish.)
5 My question was, who prepared this report
6 to Mrs. Maria, and Maria answered to me, I did
7 it. My answer to her was, she’s a liar, because
8 this report, and there are people sitting at this
9 table that is studying material every day and
10 agree that she is lying. The majority of this
11 report is not true.
12 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We have to have that
13 respect and courtesy for each other.
14 Assemblywoman, I want to let her ask her
15 questions, please be patient. I’m here for as
16 long as it takes. I want everyone to feel
17 comfortable. Sometimes the issues are
18 contentious. Please.
19 ASSEMBLYWOMAN ARROYO: Okay.
20 (Speaking in Spanish.)
21 Do you have enough teachers prepared to
22 work with the children that doesn’t speak
23 English?
24 Go ahead. Answer the question, please.
25 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I ask you again,
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2 please. Please.
3 ASSEMBLYWOMAN ARROYO: Answer the
4 question, please.
5 MS. SANTOS: Certainly, the area of
6 bilingual education and English language learners
7 is an area where we’re constantly seeking
8 teachers to work in this area, and working
9 closely with the human resources department to
10 recruit.
11 There is always a need for additional
12 teachers in bilingual education and for ESL,
13 given the rich diversity of our student body and
14 the growing numbers, so we continuously seek
15 these students –
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We’re not going to
17 allow – I really have to ask you, please.
18 MS. SANTOS: (Speaking in Spanish.)
19 Okay. My question is to Maria, she said
20 that it’s not enough teachers prepared to go into
21 the schools and teach the children that doesn’t
22 speak English. Okay. That was the answer. Is
23 that correct, Maria?
24 MS. SANTO: It’s correct. We’re
25 continuously working on doing that.
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2 ASSEMBLYWOMAN ARROYO: I want to propose
3 to Maria to the people that assist the mayor,
4 that we should establish a program with the
5 University of Puerto Rico to prepare teachers in
6 Spanish, we can do that with other countries,
7 according to the language that the children
8 speak. Because we have to go to the problem, not
9 in the political matters, but to the facts that
10 we need the teachers and the teachers that not
11 there and we have to prepare them.
12 My proposition is to establish a program
13 beginning with the University of Puerto Rico,
14 that we could do it, what we have to do is assign
15 money to that in order to prepare bilingual
16 teachers.
17 MR. WALCOTT: Madam Chair, just a quick
18 response. One of the things we did is provide an
19 incentive for those teachers and we look forward
20 to those ideas.
21 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: I just have a
22 couple of questions, Maria. They’re not as
23 controversial as my colleague, they’re much more
24 simple.
25 The first question is about the parental
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2 participation of the ELL students. Has there
3 been a change in the participation of parents of
4 ELL students within the school system, and are
5 they equal to the participation of non-ELL
6 students?
7 MS. SANTOS: Well, certainly, this is a
8 work in progress, with the translation support,
9 there is more access for parents in the schools
10 and more information available for them. There
11 is a continuous effort to get more parents –
12 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: But have you
13 noticed a change though, is there a change?
14 MS. SANTOS: Yes.
15 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: If you can quantify
16 it, how do you quantify it?
17 MS. SANTOS: I think that what we find
18 is that not only are parents participating more
19 in the activities at the school site, but also in
20 the leadership at the school site since we have
21 been developing parents through parent leadership
22 initiatives. So we are seeing more parents
23 taking charge and getting involved in the
24 schools.
25 In terms of actual numbers, we would
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2 certainly have to survey that to get to that.
3 One of the challenges we see with parents of
4 ELLs, and when we think of parents of ELLs, it’s
5 not just English language learner parents
6 currently, but about 40 percent of our student
7 body comes from homes that speak a language other
8 than English. So it’s not just parents of ELLs
9 but it’s parents who have the dominant language
10 at home, that their students are English
11 proficient and we need to reach out to them as
12 well to get them involved.
13 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: I want to talk
14 about graduation rates. You mention that – I’ve
15 always been disappointed at the graduation rate
16 of ELLs. Has there been a change, and I’m not
17 talking about a one percent, two percent, three
18 percent, I’m saying a significant change of the
19 graduation rate of ELL students over the last
20 eight years?
21 MS. SANTOS: What we can speak to is
22 growth in students that have come to us with
23 parallel education. When we look at the high
24 school program, and we look at the student body
25 in high school, we have to understand that we
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2 have gotten a larger number of students with
3 interrupted formal education. These are students
4 that have less schooling. They don’t come to us
5 with -
6 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: But that was true
7 before eight years ago.
8 MS. SANTOS: Yes, but the numbers are
9 much larger now. When we’re receiving 5,000
10 students each year -
11 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: But I’m interested
12 in an absolute number. Has there been a change
13 in the graduation rate of ELL students? Has it
14 gone down?
15 MS. SANTOS: I want to clarify this.
16 Since we’ve been counting ELLs separate from
17 former ELLs because in the past we used to put
18 them both together, since we’ve been counting
19 ELLs separate from former ELLs, the level of
20 graduation has stayed steady for ELLs. As the
21 graduation requirements have increased -
22 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: I’m sorry?
23 MS. SANTOS: As the graduation
24 requirements have increased -
25 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: But there has been
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2 basically -
3 MS. SANTOS: It’s been static.
4 ASSEMBLYMAN RIVERA: It’s been a static
5 change. Thank you very much.
6 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I want to please say
7 again, please, please, Assemblywoman Greene, and
8 then I know Regent Rosa, and Assemblyman
9 Dinowitz, and then we’ve also been joined by
10 Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera, a great friend and
11 colleague, also active in our women’s caucus.
12 Naomi, thank you.
13 Assemblywoman Greene, thank you.
14 And I just appreciate – I want our panel
15 – we want to hear some additional thoughts and we
16 want everyone treated with respect and we
17 appreciate everyone’s testimony very much.
18 I happen to have a loud voice. Some
19 people are softer spoken. So we just want to
20 keep moving forward as we can.
21 Thank you, Aurelia.
22 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: I’m concerned
23 because in my community I have a significant
24 African population, many of whom speak French,
25 and I’m wondering what the statistics are for
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2 them?
3 MS. SANTOS: We can get back to you with
4 particular statistics for that community.
5 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Then I want the
6 breakdown from eight years ago, what it was, and
7 what it is today.
8 MS. SANTOS: Certainly.
9 MR. WALCOTT: Can I just say one thing,
10 something I think Maria was trying to say as
11 well?
12 When you compare eight years ago in this
13 category with where we are today, as we know, the
14 graduation requirements have increased as well.
15 So what we’ll do is just aggregate that based on
16 where it was eight years ago, and then also
17 overlay that with a new requirement so you’ll
18 have that type of comparison.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Go ahead. Regent
20 Rosa?
21 MS. ROSA: Yes. Can I pick up on
22 Assemblyman Peter Rivera’s comment?
23 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Yes. Let me just
24 ask. We are very grateful that Regent Rosa is
25 here, and we normally, as we did with the
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2 councilman, if you have a question, we would like
3 you to – absolutely.
4 MS. ROSA: Thank you. I would just like
5 to pick up. Just to your comment about the
6 graduation rate changing. It’s changed for
7 everybody, but we’ve seen growth for others. So
8 while we talk about changes, that’s perfectly
9 fine, but the fact of the matter is, the ELLs are
10 staying flat and everybody else is growing, I
11 have to say that there is a serious concern about
12 the ELLs.
13 So I think in sharing the information, we
14 have to be very very respectful of telling not
15 the truth, but the whole truth.
16 MR. WALCOTT: I totally agree with you.
17 MS. SANTOS: We agree. We agree that
18 it’s important and we also look at the ELL
19 program not only as it relates to kids when they
20 are currently ELLs, but what is it that we do to
21 prepare them so that they can exit the program
22 and become former ELLs? When we look at those
23 numbers, we see significant gains for those
24 students.
25 Certainly, we need to do the work for the
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2 kids that are currently in that status, and maybe
3 one of the things that we need to look at and the
4 state can maybe help us with that area is to look
5 at performance, looking at when kids enter in
6 ninth grade as ELLs, how do they exit? Whether
7 they exit as ELLs, or whether they exit as former
8 ELLs, how are they doing? Because children
9 status within high school changes, even though
10 they enter as English language learners, and that
11 would give us a more accurate picture of our
12 graduation rates.
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Jeff?
14 ASSEMBLYMAN DINOWITZ: Well, first of
15 all, thank you Chairwoman Nolan and Dr. Rosa for
16 being here. Before I ask my question, I just
17 want to publically thank Deputy Mayor Walcott for
18 his role in helping us creation the Ampark School
19 in Van Cortland Village as well as helping us get
20 the White Hall Anex back to the neighborhood.
21 Actually, my question is for the deputy
22 chancellor. Given the terrible fiscal situation
23 we’re in, we’re all concerned about money and how
24 it’s spent throughout the city and throughout the
25 state particularly with the Department of Ed, and
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2 my concern in particular are in several areas and
3 maybe you can either give me figures, and maybe
4 if you can’t because you don’t have them at your
5 fingertips, perhaps you can get back to
6 Assemblywoman Nolan next week, but I’m concerned
7 about how much money has been spent, for example,
8 on no bid contracts over the past several years
9 by the Department of Ed.
10 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Assemblyman Dinowitz,
11 I want to apologize. I didn’t realize, I thought
12 your questions was on English language. If you
13 could just hold it. I would like to just finish
14 with the English language learner topic, have the
15 other two witnesses testify, and then that will
16 be our first question as we go forward. I
17 apologize.
18 ASSEMBLYMAN DINOWITZ: I thought maybe
19 she wanted a break, she spoke so long. I’ll be
20 happy to wait.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: My error. My
22 apologies. On English language learners, Mr.
23 O’Donnell, a question on English language
24 learners, and if Regent Rosa wants to follow-up.
25 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: Thank you,
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2 chair.
3 Ms. Santos, in your testimony you state
4 that when funding for schools was restructured in
5 2007, additional funding weights for ELLs were
6 included in the fair student funding formula.
7 That’s a direct quote, and you testify what I
8 would describe as a fairly rosy picture about the
9 success of educating ELLs.
10 So I’m curious to know why it is then
11 that in the schools that the DOE is phasing out,
12 these are the percentages of the ELLs in those
13 schools, 26.7, 22.2, 29.8, 13.2, 32.4, 21.4,
14 34.3, 34, 21, 12.9, all schools that you folks
15 have announced you’re phasing out, when you look
16 at the statistics from your own website, tells a
17 very different picture from what you just
18 testified to.
19 It baffles my mind to be able to readily
20 access this information from your website that
21 says that these are what the numbers are.
22 Have you come and say that you provided
23 additional funding for those schools that have
24 the ELLs, and yet you seem to think that you’re
25 going in the right direction, and I would humbly
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2 suggest that if you have schools with high
3 portions of ELLs and those are the schools that
4 you are choosing to close, that that would
5 suggest to me that even you don’t believe that
6 you are successful in your education of the ELL
7 population.
8 Would you comment on that, please?
9 MS. SANTOS: Certainly, we have schools
10 with large percentages of ELLs that are
11 succeeding, and we also have schools with large
12 percentages of ELLs that need significant
13 attention and are not doing as well.
14 One of the things that is key to this
15 work is working with those communities, both
16 those that are – learning from those that are
17 succeeding and helping those that need more help
18 to get it right.
19 Certainly the effort of closing schools
20 that are failing is recognizing that in those
21 environments we have not put in place the
22 structures and the supports for those students,
23 and instead of continuing to let those schools
24 fail, take a stand and create new environments
25 that holds a new promise for students. I think
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2 that we certainly pay attention to the data,
3 invest in these schools, and, at a given point,
4 say to ourselves, enough is enough, we need to
5 open up a school that has a promise of success
6 and get closed down schools that continue to
7 fail.
8 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: So I want to
9 just read this. This is from the CEP Section 3
10 school profile, part B, School Demographics and
11 Accountability Snapshot, Version 1B, November
12 2008.
13 So my question is, why is it then, if
14 that’s your plan, why are you replacing public
15 school buildings with charter schools, why is it
16 that this form is unavailable for the charter
17 schools you intend to put into my district, and
18 why would that be that Harlem Success Academy has
19 zero percent ELLs?
20 So the question really is, if you are
21 closing schools that are failing and you say that
22 you are interested in educating this population
23 that lives there, why are you turning to entities
24 that have no proven success record in educating
25 those ELLs and turning over valuable real estate
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2 to those very entities?
3 MR. CERF: If I may respond?
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Yes, just say your
5 name for the record and then we will finish up
6 this section. We have a few more questions and
7 then we’ll continue to move on, but, yes.
8 MR. CERF: Again, my name is Christopher
9 Cerf and I very much appreciate the opportunity
10 to be here with you today and to answer your
11 questions.
12 We have a very rather simple view of how
13 we think about closing schools and how we think
14 about citing schools. We are only interested in
15 one question. One question only. And that has
16 nothing to do with how a school comes into being,
17 whether it’s via a charter school law or whether
18 it’s a creation under traditional means.
19 Our only question is what is best for the
20 children in an educational sense. As a result,
21 many of the issues that have been debated back
22 and forth and troubled folks about charter
23 schools, we try very very hard to focus on the
24 question, do we always get it right, I am sure we
25 do not, but we ask ourselves the question, if a
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2 school is consistently failing children,
3 notwithstanding major interventions, and far too
4 many schools in New York City are failing
5 children and we do not walk away from that
6 conclusion, we ask what would be in the best
7 interest of those children and we design a school
8 intervention around that objective.
9 In some instances, it means opening other
10 options for children in the form of charter
11 schools. In some instances, it’s other academic
12 interventions.
13 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: Madam Chair, if
14 I may have just one brief follow up? I’m not
15 sure that you’re getting my point.
16 This is what my point is. I agree with
17 you, I want the children to be educated, all the
18 children, so the question I have for you is, one,
19 why can I not get this information about the
20 schools that you wish to bring in to my community
21 from you, and, two, if you are interested in
22 educating a population in this particular subset,
23 ELLs, why would you turn to someone or an entity
24 that has no experience educating ELLs, and,
25 currently, has zero percent in their school body
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2 as a mechanism to solve that problem.
3 What I want to know is, what goes into
4 that thought process. I am not here to scream
5 about charter schools, or to be opposed to
6 charter schools, I’m simply trying to figure out
7 how you make that kind of decision with an entity
8 that has not success or experience educating
9 ELLs?
10 MR. CERF: I respectfully disagree with
11 the factual premise of your question. We have
12 plenty of charter schools that serve ELLs.
13 Moreover, it’s an unassailable fact that the
14 academic achievement in our charter schools is
15 far surpassing comparable schools in the city,
16 and there – and, by the way, these are not
17 debatable facts, these are objective facts that
18 are discernable to anybody on the public record,
19 and I would be delighted to sit down with anybody
20 to go through those.
21 So you are right. I think there’s a
22 factual matter, Mr. Assemblyman, that when a new
23 charter school entity opens a school, in some
24 instances it has prior experience, and in some it
25 does not.
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2 We have a very very careful and I hope
3 thoughtful process to evaluate, and many many
4 many more applications are turned away that are
5 in fact granted, and we stand here very proud of
6 the achievement of the charter schools in the
7 city.
8 Thank you.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Daniel is done,
10 Regent Rosa a real quick follow-up, Assemblyman
11 Weprin, Assemblywoman Arroyo, and we’re just
12 quickly moving, we want to get to some of the
13 special ed and Contract for Excellence issues.
14 This is English language learners.
15 MS. ROSA: This is English language
16 learners and I’m going to give it one more shot.
17 I think what was being stated is the following.
18 I think what we know to be a fact that very few
19 special education children and very few ELLs have
20 been a part of the charter schools that have been
21 established, very few. I mean, they’ve been –
22 for example, Harlem Success Academy has zero
23 ELLs.
24 So let’s use that as an example, concrete
25 example. Harlem Success Academy has zero ELLs,
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2 so if you say to me these are the very children
3 we want to help, then these are the very children
4 that should be going into these successful
5 programs so they become part of the conversation.
6 To that extent, I think that when you look at
7 someone’s community and say, I’m going to bring a
8 particular program into that school, but they
9 have no track record with ELLs, then it becomes a
10 question which is I think what the assemblyman is
11 saying, how do you bring someone into my
12 community when, in fact, the program that you’re
13 bringing in has no track record with that
14 particular population.
15 MR. CERF: So thank you for your
16 clarification. I actually fundamentally agree
17 with you on I think the central point of your
18 question.
19 I heard the question before to say that
20 there are no ELLs in charter schools. I believe
21 that was – that’s just not true. I do not know,
22 but I would be happy to get to you the facts for
23 the Harlem Success Academy. I do know the
24 charter schools serve considerably more children
25 of Latino background, for example, than the
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2 average population in the City of New York –
3 excuse me. And that the special education
4 population, for example, which was also
5 referenced in the questions is comparable, and I
6 also know that students in charter schools are
7 considerably more likely in percentage terms to
8 be economically disadvantaged, so I would say
9 that I’ve actually been around this move in one
10 form or another for quite a while, but the
11 initial thought that these would become outposts
12 or refuges for the effluent or for the folks of
13 traditional Caucasian background, that proved
14 actually in the movement as a whole to be
15 completely inaccurate.
16 But I really do take your point that
17 greater engagement around what kind of school
18 comes into a community is something that we can
19 do a better job of, and I support that.
20 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: Hi, Ms. Santos.
21 Thank you very much for being here. You
22 mentioned how test scores are up for the English
23 language learners. I was just curious whether
24 Stanley Kaplan or some test prep company designs
25 specific month long, month on month long test
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2 preps for English language learners?.
3 MS. SANTOS: I’m not aware if they do –
4 I imagine they might, but they’re not really a
5 program that we engage in. We do have,
6 throughout the system, diagnostic assessments
7 that are available for use for English language
8 learners that come through our own programs.
9 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: So the ELL people
10 don’t do what the general ed population does,
11 which is spend months and months on test prep
12 drills by company’s packets and stuff?.
13 MS. SANTOS: Our focus on English
14 language learners is really to build their
15 academics. If people are spending a significant
16 amount on test prep, they’re really not
17 developing the language and the academics for the
18 students, and that would not show – it would show
19 negatively for our students because, first of
20 all, most testing environments require that
21 students understand deeply and – to be able to
22 perform.
23 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: I couldn’t agree
24 more. I wasn’t being confrontational on that
25 question.
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2 MR. WALCOTT: And it doesn’t mean that
3 she agrees with the basic premise of your
4 question.
5 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: Well, that’s where
6 we have the debate. But there is test prep going
7 on for the English-speaking people, I don’t think
8 anyone denies that. You’re saying they don’t do
9 it for ELL, or you’re just trying to downplay
10 that you don’t do it much? That’s a big
11 question.
12 MS. SANTOS: The key question for any
13 student is certainly the testing environment is a
14 very unique environment and every student should
15 be prepared for that environment. So there is
16 some preparation of students for that
17 environment, but it – certainly, the program, we
18 do not engage in a program that is just about
19 test prep.
20 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: I honestly didn’t
21 know the answer, so I was curious.
22 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Assemblyman Benjamin.
23 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: Ms. Santos, hi.
24 First I wanted to preface my remarks by
25 saying to our audience, when you give respect,
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2 you get respect. The important thing is, if we
3 really want to have more parental involvement,
4 you have to feel as though you’re going to
5 contribute something positively, even if you
6 disagree with what you hear, you still have to
7 listen and take it in and then later on refute
8 what you hear.
9 I would like to talk about, we have two
10 worlds, we have the Star Trek universe,
11 everything is perfect, nothing is ever paid for.
12 Then we have the real world, when rubber hits
13 the road.
14 Mayoral control has not been perfect. It
15 has faults in it. It needs to be refined. When
16 we look at the area of English language learners,
17 there are three cohorts; you have elementary
18 children, you have middle school children, and
19 you have high school students.
20 Elementary schools students, as I
21 understand it, do a little better because they
22 absorb language a lot faster than older students.
23 When you get to the middle schools, you
24 have a little more difficulty with the ELL
25 learner, and high school is even more difficult.
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2 What is it you feel we have to do to
3 improve the outcomes for ELLs in our middle
4 schools and in our high schools? Our middle
5 schools are horrible for all our students,
6 whether they are ELLs or they’re, you know,
7 English language students.
8 What can the department do to make it
9 better for them and to also work with their
10 parents who don’t have the English ability as
11 well? Therefore, you don’t have their
12 involvement. What can we do to engage them as
13 well?
14 MS. SANTOS: Well, one of the key things
15 is that students, English language learners in
16 secondary school, not only are in isolated
17 classrooms with ESL teachers and bilingual
18 teachers, they are in classrooms with the math
19 teacher, the social science teacher, with all of
20 the core academic teachers so that every teacher
21 needs to be prepared to work with students to
22 develop their academic language because it’s not
23 about the conversational language, it’s about the
24 discourse of school language that needs to be
25 developed, not only for ELLs but for all of our
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2 students, because this is true also for our low-
3 income students, our students that are not
4 exposed to the rich discourse of the disciplines.
5 This has to be explicitly taught, and this is a
6 major area of work that we’re doing throughout
7 the city.
8 In addition, the students need –
9 especially our students that come new to us, need
10 significant support in the native languages to
11 move forward in their academics, because when
12 you’re proficient in your first language, whether
13 it’s Spanish or French or whatever, and you come
14 into this country with parallel schooling, you’re
15 going to move out of our programs in about three
16 and a half years, because you already have the
17 background knowledge and you have the skill-set.
18 If you come to us with very low literacy
19 skills, never having gone to school, it’s going
20 to take you a lot longer. So giving the kid that
21 comes to us at high school with that strong
22 native language skill-set, resources in their
23 language, support in their language, accelerates
24 their learning while they’re learning their
25 English. These are areas that we’re working on
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2 across the system, in addition to providing them
3 additional time, because you’re doing double the
4 work to graduate from those schools as an English
5 language learner.
6 And if you’re pre-literate or have not
7 been literate, you’re doing triple the work. So
8 extra time, smaller class size for individualized
9 support makes a difference as well. All our
10 areas we’re working on.
11 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: Do you have the
12 data to support what you’re saying?.
13 MS. SANTOS: Certainly.
14 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: And you’re using
15 that data to make it possible – to have better
16 academic achievements?.
17 MS. SANTOS: Exactly. And we’re also
18 researching the work at the schools that are
19 doing these practices. In schools that we have
20 these kinds of practices, we’re looking closely
21 to see what the impact is with the students and
22 we’re seeing positive gains, and we’re also
23 seeing stronger course completion rates.
24 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: On last comment.
25 My colleague, Assemblywoman Greene, talked about
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2 French speaking West Africans, but the primary
3 language is also Fulani – many of them across
4 west Africa have Fulani as a unifying language.
5 So you may have to partner with the University of
6 Ganja in order to get the Fulani speakers to come
7 and teach in our educational systems.
8 MS. SANTOS: Thank you.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Assemblywoman Arroyo
10 for a follow-up and then we’re starting to wrap
11 up this section and then we’re going to ask some
12 other questions.
13 ASSEMBLYWOMAN ARROYO: I’m coming to a
14 very technical question here because I have in my
15 hands a report.
16 We have in the Bronx five schools facing
17 out. I’m going to read the numbers of the
18 schools. PS – in District 12, PS-198; in
19 District 10, MS-399; in District 9, Junior High
20 School 166 that Roberto Clemente Junior High
21 School; in District 9, PS-90; in District 9, PS-
22 2; and we have one in el barrio, 241. 80 percent
23 point 1, Title 1 students, and in PS-2 82 percent
24 nine, in 90, 49 percent, in 166, 94 percent, 399,
25 89.3 percent, and 198, 95.9.
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2 Okay, my question is simple. You know,
3 five schools in the Bronx, Mr. Borough President,
4 you better take care of that. Finally, the
5 people on the people – I want to address myself
6 to all of you, I don’t want answers, because you
7 don’t have the answers, but I’m going to make a
8 little mandate here that the people that they
9 elected me in the Assembly District 84 gave me
10 the power to do that, you guys have to go back
11 and review the curriculum, the administration,
12 and the way that the mayoral control is managing
13 the schools because it’s ridiculous to have five
14 in the Bronx ready to close.
15 We are willing to help with you, believe
16 me, I’m not criticizing, I criticize myself, I
17 want to be part of the team. You will have our
18 support, but you have the power and don’t come to
19 tell me, the remedies that you established, I
20 want to hear what remedies have been established
21 in each one of those schools.
22 I’m very concerned because I’m sure that
23 as I go to each one of those schools and I’m
24 going to do it, the statistics are going to tell
25 me that the children are Hispanics or Africans.
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2 We have to look out to see where we put the
3 taxpayer’s money. That’s what we’re talking
4 about here, where we put the taxpayer’s money to
5 prevent that our children fail, because it’s not
6 the failure of the school, it’s not the failure
7 of the mayor, it’s not the failure of the
8 professionals that I have in front of me, it’s
9 the failure of the students, and these are the
10 students of our future.
11 I’m going to make a research and I hope
12 that Dr. Rosa help me on this. I want to see the
13 statistic in each one of the schools, and I’m
14 just bringing this to the floor, because if we
15 have to vote again for mayoral control, we guys
16 have to sit down and see to it that it’s
17 developed in a way that the taxpayer’s money goes
18 to the classroom to help the students,
19 regardless.
20 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
21 Would you like to make a brief response?
22 MR. WALCOTT: My response is really very
23 simple. We would love to take you up on your
24 offer to sit down with you with Dr. Rosa and go
25 through each school. We go through a very
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2 comprehensive process in determining which
3 schools will be phased out and we have the facts
4 and figures to back us up and we’ll follow up
5 with you, assembly member, to do that, because we
6 have a very rigorous standard that we apply.
7 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Let me just ask now a
8 couple of questions and then we’re going to move
9 to the area of special ed and some other things.
10 Let me just ask on English language
11 learners. The Contract for Excellence which is,
12 as you know, the state has initiated over the
13 last two years, it does mean that options and
14 we’re expanded, the language was enlarged to
15 include programs for English language learners as
16 one of the areas that the contract could move
17 forward in.
18 Can you describe any programs that the
19 New York City Department of Education has
20 initiated with the C for E dollars, the Contract
21 for Excellence dollars, that targeted English
22 language learners?.
23 MS. SANTOS: Well, we currently have in
24 place a program called ELL success, it’s a
25 program that we have across the schools where, in
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2 this initiative, the schools are working on
3 support structures for struggling English
4 language learners, and also other schools are
5 working to expand or open up more bilingual
6 programs. So that these schools have worked on
7 developing grants that will focus on these two
8 areas in particular.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: All right. The city
10 has talked to us about the Contract for
11 Excellence language.
12 How is what you just said reflected in
13 the city’s concerns about the Contract for
14 Excellence?
15 MR. CERF: I don’t mean to step –
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Go ahead. You can
17 answer.
18 MR. CERF: Thank you very much. First
19 of all, we’re extraordinarily appreciative and
20 grateful for the leadership you and the assembly
21 showed in providing funding for the Contract for
22 Excellence, and I know we are all struggling with
23 a changed fiscal environment, but we – I want to
24 assure you, Madam Chairwoman, that it’s a good
25 law and a law that we have sought with every
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2 capacity we have to follow and honor.
3 You’re quite right that one of the
4 buckets, if you will, that is a – an allowable
5 appropriate expense under the Contract for
6 Excellence is ELL funding, and we have very
7 carefully sort of tracked how those dollars were
8 spent to make sure they are indeed being matched
9 against support of ELL funding, and we would be
10 glad to walk you or your staff through that.
11 Thank you.
12 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We appreciate that.
13 We’ve received a lot of information as a result
14 of these hearings and, as you know, prior to
15 these hearings on mayoral control, we’ve had
16 several years worth of hearings on English
17 language learners, and I think this is at least
18 the fourth time that we’ve touched on the topic,
19 and this is an area of information we would like
20 to formally request.
21 MR. CERF: We would love to follow up.
22 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: What I would like to
23 do now is ask if Deputy Mayor Walcott would like
24 to have the other two people at least introduce
25 themselves, or – I don’t know if you have
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2 prepared testimony, or –
3 MR. WALCOTT: No.
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: And then we can go to
5 something else.
6 MR. WALCOTT: No, we do not. We’re here
7 to answer your questions and Linda Wernikoff, who
8 was not able to make our hearing in Staten Island
9 on special education, and -
10 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I have a number of
11 questions, but I know Assemblyman Dinowitz was
12 very very patient, so I would like to start with
13 him, and then Assemblyman Benedetto who chairs
14 our subcommittee on special education, and then
15 we’ll go from there.
16 ASSEMBLYMAN DINOWITZ: My questions are
17 really all statistical information which I would
18 like for you to get, I don’t know if you have it
19 all in your head at your fingertips, but I just
20 want to start by saying two quick things, one is,
21 I, for one, did not appreciate the threats that
22 were made to fire 15,000 teachers if the DOE
23 didn’t get its way, and I certainly didn’t
24 appreciate the remark that was made that there
25 would be riots in the street if we didn’t renew
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2 mayoral control. That’s what we’re here for, to
3 determine whether to renew it, and, if so, how to
4 possibly change it.
5 But, in any case, you’ve had mayoral
6 control now for five and a half years, I guess,
7 approximately? We passed the law in June of
8 2003, so let’s – we passed it six years ago –
9 it’s six years, okay, not seven.
10 How much has the DOE spent since mayoral
11 control on no-bid contracts? My recollection was
12 that under the Board of Education, and I’m not
13 advocating going back to the Board of Education,
14 but that they had to approve contracts greater
15 than $50,000, I think. Now I don’t think there’s
16 any such process whatsoever, so I was just
17 wondering how many tens or hundreds of millions
18 of dollars there have been.
19 MR. CERF: Well, first of all I
20 appreciate the question very much because there
21 are a lot of misunderstandings about that, and I
22 would be delighted to prepare for you a very
23 comprehensive report, but I do have some
24 information for you now that may start the
25 conversation.
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2 First of all, it’s important to
3 understand that so-called no-bid contracts
4 consist of approximately two percent of the total
5 contracts that are bid out by the Department of
6 Education, and that number has remained
7 relatively constant over time.
8 I will tell you that in the year before
9 Mayor Bloomberg took office, the total amount of
10 no-bid contracts was 62.5 – and they’re actually
11 called exception to bid contracts, our lawyers
12 keep telling me to not do that, but exception to
13 bid contracts was in the realm of $62.5 million.
14 This year – last year, last fiscal, it
15 was $47.4 million. This year to date it’s
16 basically on track to be – it’s about $15 million
17 to date.
18 So if you look in the main at the trends,
19 not much has changed.
20 MR. WALCOTT: Let me just disagree with
21 my colleague here. A lot has changed -
22 ASSEMBLYMAN DINOWITZ: Yes, please
23 disagree with each other.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: You know, I have to
25 ask this – and there’s that old joke about a
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2 Bronx cheer. We’re not here for that. We’re
3 here for a welcome, and we thank you for being
4 here. We try to give everyone that moment, but I
5 really have to ask for everyone’s patience and
6 cooperation. Thank you.
7 MR. WALCOTT: Well, Chris said a lot has
8 not – it’s basically gone down since the figure
9 that Chris talked about. But the overall budget
10 of the department – and I think we have to put it
11 in context, of the base budget, back in 2001, the
12 base budget was roughly, and we can double check,
13 but roughly $10 billion when we’re now looking at
14 a budget roughly of $20 billion. So, Chris,
15 percentage-wise -
16 MR. CERF: Sure.
17 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Jeff, would you like
18 a follow-up?
19 ASSEMBLYMAN DINOWITZ: Well, that was
20 only one part of my question, but – let me ask
21 this. The contract for those report cards, for
22 example, that was a lot of money, wasn’t it?
23 MR. CERF: Are you talking about the
24 progress reports, sir?
25 ASSEMBLYMAN DINOWITZ: I’m talking about
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2 the –
3 MR. CERF: The A, B, C, D, E ones?
4 ASSEMBLYMAN DINOWITZ: Those – I don’t
5 want to use the word silly, those report cards,
6 the progress reports.
7 MR. CERF: I will have to check that but
8 I don’t believe that’s true. But I may – I’ll
9 check that. If I might just elaborate a little
10 bit on my prior answer. It’s important to
11 understand when you look at these figures which
12 are very small either in percentage terms or in
13 general, I think it’s important to understand why
14 some of these – not all of them, but there are
15 actually large categories, a large percentage of
16 those figures actually come in areas that it’s
17 probably worth spending a minute to understand.
18 One is, there are certain appropriations
19 that, particularly in the UPK thing, that come
20 down from the state at such a late date that in
21 order to hire the program – the only way to do it
22 would be to do it on that basis.
23 Secondly, there are certain
24 appropriations that come from the City Council
25 that are literally earmarked for a particular
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2 vendor, and then, the third large category is so
3 called extensions, we did have – there was
4 absolutely aboriginal year in fiscal year ’05
5 where a decision was made to extend the existing
6 bus contracts. They were – they had already been
7 fully bid out on a competitive basis, but the
8 extension was done on that basis.
9 So I know everyone’s instinct, starting
10 with my own, is to say if it’s no-bid it must be
11 bad, but there are actually some categories
12 within it that I think are understandable.
13 But I cut you off, I apologize.
14 ASSEMBLYMAN DINOWITZ: Let me ask one
15 question with several parts, since if I ask
16 several questions, I may not be able to do it, so
17 you may have to get back to us on it. But the
18 information I need to know is, how many people
19 are at Tweed – how many highly paid consultants
20 are at Tweed, and when I say “highly paid,” say
21 $100,000 or more people who perhaps are former
22 employees who are now consultants, how much does
23 that cost the city?
24 How much money is spent on your public
25 relations department and how many people work
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2 there?
3 How many cars do you have that people are
4 assigned – cars that are assigned to people and
5 how much does that cost?
6 And related to all that, how many kids,
7 say in District 10 where I represent this
8 district that we’re sitting in, how many kids out
9 of the 40 plus thousand kids are a part of gifted
10 and talented programs?
11 And, finally – and maybe you would have
12 to research this, I’m sure you would. In our
13 last – and I’m not advocating going back to
14 school – but in our last school board election we
15 had over 10,000 people who voted yet in the
16 district of the CECs, the Community Education
17 Council elections, my understanding is that
18 perhaps a handful of people actually vote to pick
19 those.
20 So I would just be interested to know how
21 much participation there is in that process to
22 know if there’s any truly representative bodies,
23 anywhere in the city for that matter, and if
24 there’s any real participation, certainly not by
25 the public but by parents, I guess?
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2 MR. CERF: Sure. I will happily get you
3 all of that information, I’m just going to touch
4 on a couple of those areas at risk of taking more
5 time than the chairwoman wants.
6 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I want to say we
7 appreciate it because this is really a first for
8 us to be able to have all of you here like this.
9 As you know, we spoke at the other hearings,
10 it’s a long desired goal of the committee to have
11 this type of dialogue, so please feel free.
12 MR. CERF: I think it’s a very
13 interesting question on the voter participation
14 and I have some sort of general figures, and then
15 we’ll get you the specifics for your district.
16 What’s interesting to me is that prior to 2002,
17 the percentage of folks who voted in community
18 school board elections was somewhere between two
19 and a half and three and a half percent, so it
20 have very very low participation.
21 With regard to – they were held in off-
22 year elections and it was not – and I’m giving
23 you the city figure and I’d be happy to
24 disaggregate it for you. And I think it’s an
25 interesting – in general to an earlier point, we
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2 don’t believe that this is a law from which we
3 have not learned important lessons over the last
4 seven years, and we are certainly interested in
5 having a collaborative dialogue with you all
6 around ways to improve it. It is interesting
7 that in the initial law, as I understand it, CEC
8 elections were not so called direct elections.
9 If you go back, there were not direct
10 parents voting for CEC members, but in fact a
11 specified group of electors vote for the CEC
12 members. I’m sure there was some thought behind
13 that, I wasn’t present at the creation, but I
14 think that is a fruitful area for discussion.
15 Thank you.
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: They’ll be an
17 additional follow-up on that issue.
18 I want to let Assemblyman Ruben Diaz ask
19 his questions, and then we’ll move forward.
20 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Thank you, Madam
21 Chair. My questions are geared more towards
22 Deputy Mayor Walcott.
23 You and I, every time I’ve placed a call,
24 you’ve always returned the call and we’ve had
25 many conversations, so let’s have one right now,
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2 but let’s pretend that no one else is in this
3 room. So let me start with the questions then.
4 MR. WALCOTT: Sure.
5 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: I often see, in terms
6 of mayoral control, how there are obviously many
7 people who want to tweak, and many people who
8 don’t want any more mayoral control.
9 The only thing that I hear from City Hall
10 is that we should continue to have mayoral
11 control. I just want to get your point of view.
12 Is it the city’s position that mayoral
13 control is perfect?
14 MR. WALCOTT: No. And at prior
15 testimonies I’ve indicated that and I think the
16 mayoral has talked about how we improved the
17 system as well.
18 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Is it the city’s
19 position that parents need to be more informed
20 and need to be better responded to by the
21 educational system?
22 MR. WALCOTT: We always feel that we
23 need to increase the level of parental
24 involvement as well as information going to
25 parents and we always strive to try to improve it
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2 each year.
3 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: What are some of the
4 things that the city is doing to try to address
5 that?
6 MR. WALCOTT: I think one of the first
7 things we did was the creation of the parent
8 coordinator position and allocating resources to
9 have parent coordinators in all schools, 200 more
10 students.
11 We created the Office of Parent
12 Engagement. We hired Martine Guerrier as the
13 chief executive officer of the office and we
14 created positions both in the district. So I
15 think we’ve done a number of things to increase
16 the information flow.
17 We also talked about the development, the
18 mayor talked about in the State of the City, of
19 the P311 system where there will be instant
20 access of information to parents by calling up
21 the 311 system and getting that information. So
22 we’re looking at a number of ways.
23 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Do you believe that
24 the parent coordinators or the parent association
25 should have a budget so that they can do parental
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2 outreach?
3 MR. WALCOTT: I don’t know about the
4 parent coordinator, but do the PA’s, the PTAs?
5 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Yes. You know,
6 sometimes the PA’s, in order to put that
7 outreach, they need money for mailing, for
8 stamps, just to -
9 MR. WALCOTT: I think we should be in a
10 position of helping the parent bodies in the
11 schools get information on a regular basis, but
12 it shouldn’t absorb a lot of money, but at the
13 same time we should make sure that there’s
14 ability for parents to get information on a
15 regular basis.
16 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Is it the city’s
17 position that we should have an independent
18 auditing vehicle that oversees the DOE?
19 MR. WALCOTT: We have always talked
20 about and we have testified before about having
21 an independent arm to verify figures. We look
22 forward to that. Our figures, state figures, are
23 something that should be verified.
24 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Is it the city’s
25 position that all of the CFE money should go to
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2 every single school in the City of New York?
3 MR. WALCOTT: We have to follow the law,
4 but at the same time we don’t want to create a
5 further disparity of C for E dollars as far as
6 creating a wide space between certain districts
7 that may or may not qualify and working with the
8 assembly and working with the Board of Regents
9 and working with the State Education Department
10 on how we develop that balance that meets all the
11 various needs of the C for E dollars.
12 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Does the city
13 recognize that areas like the Bronx feel like
14 we’ve been shortchanged?
15 MR. WALCOTT: We respect that, but at
16 the same time, as indicated in Maria’s testimony,
17 with the fair student funding, the fair student
18 funding was put in place to address the
19 inequities of the past to make sure that the
20 dollars followed the needs of the students no
21 matter where those students were located and, in
22 addition to that, for the Bronx in particular, we
23 haven’t talked about the capital plan today, we
24 made a specific focus on developing new classroom
25 seats and relieving overcrowding that had been
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2 taken place in the Bronx for a number of years,
3 so as a result of that, we’ve had way more seats
4 developed in the Bronx than ever before.
5 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: While you talk – and
6 you speak of new classrooms and new seats, can
7 you appreciate – does the city appreciate why
8 parents feel like they’ve been left out of the
9 process on closures of schools?
10 MR. WALCOTT: I can respect that. I
11 think -
12 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: What are you guys
13 doing to address that?
14 MR. WALCOTT: What we’ve done is, we’ve
15 put in place systems to notify not just the
16 parents but also the local elected officials a
17 lot sooner, and -
18 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: So is this done after
19 the decision is already made?
20 MR. WALCOTT: Since we’re having the
21 conversation, I love the conversation because, I
22 mean one of the things we’re always striving to
23 do is to improve the information going out to
24 people and making sure that there’s a dialogue
25 about that, and we’re always looking forward to
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2 suggestions.
3 I want to give a perfect example when we
4 were talking before about closures. We had a
5 school here in the Bronx, Walton High School that
6 had failing students in the number of years and
7 we had never acted on that. We decided to close
8 the school and then phase in new schools and in
9 those new schools included Celia Cruz and others
10 who are doing extremely well, and that’s the
11 process we always look forward to, engaging the
12 parents as well as the local elected officials on
13 how decisions are reached, but, at the same time
14 as we said before, we need to make sure that
15 there’s accountability built in, the decision is
16 made and there isn’t waffling around the
17 decision.
18 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Speaking about
19 accountability, is it the city’s position that
20 the education panel should remain with the same
21 amount of members on that panel?
22 MR. WALCOTT: Yes.
23 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Do you see how folks
24 are concerned that the mayor has eight members on
25 that panel?
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2 MR. WALCOTT: I understand. I don’t
3 agree, but I understand what people are saying.
4 But at the same time I think, when we talk about
5 mayoral authority, having schools under the
6 mayor, the mayor should have the majority of the
7 people on the panel itself.
8 I think that the panel has not received
9 the respect that they should receive because they
10 have made very serious policy decisions, and at
11 the same time, as a reminder of the past, and I
12 think it’s always important to put it in the
13 context of the past, when we had board members on
14 the old board of ed which I was one at one point,
15 who were there for fixed terms, who went off on
16 their own, did not listen to the people who
17 appointed them, and we had cases like that
18 throughout the city.
19 That is why the law was put in place in
20 the past by all of you or some of you as far as
21 making sure that not just the mayor, but the
22 people who have the appointing powers to those
23 people who are part of the panel, have the
24 accountability rest with them, and not have
25 people who are free agents out there.
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2 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: But you can see how
3 there are entire boroughs that maybe the borough
4 president, with marching orders from parents, or
5 their panelists go to these meetings and one will
6 vote a certain way and in the broad stroke, the
7 mayor has made decisions, or the mayor’s
8 panelists have made decisions without the
9 consideration of segments of this population of
10 the City of New York.
11 MR. WALCOTT: Let me, if I may, in our
12 conversation, let me pick up on that theme.
13 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: We’re making believe
14 no one else is here.
15 MR. WALCOTT: That’s an important point
16 because that has only happened in the one time in
17 the seven years and that was around a critical
18 issue in laying the foundation for the future
19 success of our children, and that was around a
20 third grade social promotion policy and that we
21 were continuing to promote children who were not
22 prepared for the next grade. We felt very
23 strongly about that policy and there were a
24 variety of discussions taking place back and
25 forth between panel members, community members,
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2 the union, and there was a lot a development of
3 information that was going in to the panel in the
4 formulation of that particular policy.
5 At the end of the day, when it was time
6 for a vote, people wanted to delay it a year, and
7 we felt that was unconscionable. Why delay a
8 policy that will impact children for one year
9 when that policy could be put in place right
10 away? We exercised the authority of the power
11 that was given to us in making sure that the
12 panel members who we had appointed who did not
13 believe in the policy that the mayor was
14 advocating were removed and appointed two people.
15 That’s why that law was put there and, at
16 the same time, if you go back to what was there
17 in the past, if you remember, there were a number
18 of decisions that were reached by the independent
19 board of ed that were contrary to the beliefs of
20 the people who appointed them and they went off
21 on their own.
22 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Is it the city’s
23 position that perhaps these panelists should have
24 children in the school system in the City of New
25 York?
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2 MR. WALCOTT: It’s interesting in that
3 one of the pieces that we advocated earlier on in
4 the formulation of that particular panel was that
5 people should have children and, as a result of
6 that, I think the borough president
7 representatives are mandated to have children in
8 the school system, and the others are not
9 necessarily mandated, and we also advocated for
10 the CEC.
11 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Is it the city’s
12 position that you would be willing to embrace the
13 concept that was laid before us here earlier
14 maybe in a parent academy and help in the funding
15 of that?
16 MR. WALCOTT: I would love for us to
17 talk about ways to increase the consciousness of
18 parents, what’s happening not just in the system,
19 but ways of what’s happening in children’s lives,
20 and I think what we’ve been able to do is create
21 those opportunities through both the new
22 information that’s going out, the ARIS system
23 that we developed which will have a family portal
24 where parents will be able to get real time
25 information on how well their child is doing and
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2 making sure that we – that the dynamic of
3 parent/teacher conferences will change from this
4 point on by having access to that and whether
5 it’s through our parent academy or having an
6 independent organization that took that on when I
7 was president of the New York Urban League. We
8 were big advocates in the school leadership teams
9 and what they’re about.
10 I think there should be somebody, whether
11 it’s built in within the Department of Education,
12 or separate 501C3 organization that has the role
13 and responsibility of training parents. One of
14 the things that that was touched on earlier in
15 the panel is the role of OFEA, the Office of
16 Family Engagement, and I think OFEA has done a
17 very good job in making sure that they’re out
18 there working with parents, working with the
19 CECs, training parents as well, and we could
20 always do a better job.
21 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: What is the city’s
22 position on standardized examinations?
23 MR. WALCOTT: We believe in them
24 strongly. I think the world is based on
25 examinations. The assembly member from District
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2 26, Assembly Member Weprin and I, the mayor and
3 the chancellor have some basic disagreements on
4 test prep, we’re measured on tests and I think we
5 have a job to make sure that it’s not just
6 teaching to the tests, but it is teaching on the
7 content of what students are learning, and then
8 the students know how to take the tests.
9 For example, I know when I was child like
10 a lot of you here in this panel that we went to
11 SAT prep programs that were sponsored by
12 different organizations to give us insight on how
13 to take the SAT, but at the same time, our system
14 should not be teaching to test students. Our
15 teaching should be around the content area in
16 making sure students understand how to take
17 tests. That’s what life is about and that’s how
18 people prepare. But our students need to compete
19 in tests for the measurement of people to
20 understand how well -
21 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Can you appreciate
22 maybe how standardized testing, where testing one
23 size doesn’t fit all, when you have students in
24 portfolio schools?
25 MR. WALCOTT: Chris is not as rude as I
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2 am in jumping in, he asked me quietly in my ear.
3 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Let me table that
4 question. I want to keep my conversation going
5 with the deputy mayor. You can answer that last.
6 Once upon a time when I was in high
7 school, I went to Lehman High School and
8 Stevenson High School, but there were also
9 schools like Alfred E. Smith, which is a
10 vocational school. I think that we steered away
11 from that. When you have the conversation of
12 green color jobs and green, the environment, what
13 is the city’s position in going back to insuring
14 that some of our kids who perhaps know that they
15 want to use their hands and build things and be
16 green, what is the city’s plan on -
17 MR. WALCOTT: We’ve been very clear in
18 articulating our position and the mayor, in the
19 State of City, two years ago, two State of the
20 Cities ago, talked about the creation of career
21 technical education schools and this year we’ll
22 be opening up five new career technical education
23 schools as promised hitting our benchmark and it
24 will involve a variety of different careers, not
25 just solely as a vocational option, but as a rich
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2 environment on both merging technical education
3 along with college preparation as well and having
4 that child well-prepared on what he or she wants
5 to do in the future, so we want to take the old
6 vocational concept that you’re referring to to
7 the 21st Century and that’s why the mayor
8 proposed, along with the chancellor, to create
9 new CTE schools and we’re going to meet that goal
10 this coming September.
11 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Thank you, Mr. Deputy
12 Mayor.
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Assemblywoman Green,
14 and the final question of Ruben. Go ahead.
15 MR. CERF: Two things. I forgot to get
16 to your question about the $15,000, and, if
17 you’re still interested, I would be delighted to
18 get back to that, and I apologize for not
19 including that in my response.
20 This question of tests is a really
21 interesting one that divides a lot of people, and
22 I just thought it might be interesting to hear
23 our collective respective on that.
24 There is no one I know at the Department
25 of Education who believe that an education system
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2 that is devoted solely to tests or evaluates the
3 quality of education solely on the basis of the
4 standardized tests –
5 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: But that’s what’s
6 happening, sir.
7 MR. CERF: If I may. Is it the right
8 way to go? But I will tell you this. That these
9 tests – I make myself take these tests every
10 year, and I pass now and now, by the way, I make
11 myself take these tests and I want to tell you
12 that the facts are profoundly tragic that if
13 children fall behind as measured by these tests
14 early in life, and if that gap, and it’s very
15 difficult to close, between the third and the
16 eighth grade, but if it is not closed, these
17 children, in all likelihood will not graduate
18 from high school and will not be prepared for
19 life.
20 When you start translating that into real
21 world life outcomes, which include contact with
22 the judicial system, health, lifetime earnings,
23 probability of employment and so on, these are
24 very very meaningful indicators.
25 Now, I view these as a floor, not as the
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2 be-all and end-all, but any educational system
3 that does not have its children meeting these
4 minimum definitions of proficiency in my judgment
5 is not serving a central purpose of its
6 existence.
7 And I’ll say one last thing. Everybody
8 believes in the standards movement. Some people
9 here were very central in thinking about that.
10 In the bad old days, I hope we all agree on this,
11 no one knew what anything meant. My child is A
12 and your child is A, and in other states A had
13 very very little meaning.
14 We decided in the early 1990s, at a
15 policy level, to decide that there’s a certain
16 body of knowledge and set of schools that
17 children should master by particular milestones
18 in life. That’s called standard based education.
19 You can’t have standards without assessments.
20 To have a standard and not have an assessment is
21 ultimately meaningless.
22 The question is, are we doing this as
23 well as we should and my full-out answer is no, I
24 think these tests are imperfect. I do not
25 believe teaching test-taking skills in the end is
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2 educationally meaningful or creates sustainable
3 gains. I believe that teaching the content that
4 we have decided and then assessing whether they
5 have learned it – I happen to be 54 years old – I
6 had a test every Friday, and if I didn’t learn my
7 logarithms, I called a chapter test.
8 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: And if I may just
9 abuse one minute. The reason why I say this is
10 because when you say that we want to prepare
11 children for life and life experiences – and I
12 have two sons, 14 and 16, sometimes they have a
13 spelling test or something, they memorize the
14 words, they memorize how to spell it, and then
15 they forget it.
16 MR. CERF: I was one of those.
17 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: I was one of those as
18 well. When I go and visit schools like Fannie
19 Lou Hamer, and kids already know at a high school
20 age that they want to be environmentalists and
21 activists and they see that for two or three
22 years, the way they study environmental issues,
23 and I sit on the Encon Committee in Albany, and
24 when I sit with these kids, many of them know
25 more about the environment, know more about
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2 pollution, know more about how to fix those
3 problems than some of the members that I sit with
4 on the Encon Committee, and they already know
5 they want to be environmentalists. That’s the
6 way we should go. Because at the same time you
7 have, with teachers, who know that they can do
8 certain things with kids but the pressure on them
9 with testing, testing, testing, testing, and then
10 ultimately we’re getting it wrong.
11 MR. CERF: We have to find the right
12 balance. There’s not a lot of kids who can take
13 AP physics or environmental biology who can’t
14 read and do basic math, so we have to find the
15 right balance and as a society, and as this
16 conversation reflects, we have to keep struggling
17 with that.
18 ASSEMBLYMAN DIAZ: Thank you very much.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Our speaker pro
20 tempur, Aurelia Greene.
21 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Thank you. And I
22 happen to agree with the assemblyman that too
23 much time is spent on test-taking techniques and
24 preparing children for testing as opposed to
25 giving them the content and really the foundation
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2 of the lesson, and I not only hear this from
3 parents and see it with children, I hear it from
4 teachers as well. So let me put that on the
5 table.
6 The other issue that has not been raised
7 today is over class size and the fact that we
8 have not yet heard what is being done in terms of
9 reducing class size.
10 Can you give us an update?
11 MR. CERF: I can and I would be glad to
12 follow-up with as many details as you have an
13 interest in hearing.
14 There are several trends that are worth
15 noting. One is, if you look at the long stretch
16 of time between 2002 and the present, class sizes
17 are down in every grade. If you look at the last
18 year, they went up fractionally. When I say
19 “fractionally,” by, in many grade, like a 10th of
20 a percent. We also saw over the course of the
21 last year a significant decrease in those – I
22 believe it was 75 or 100 schools that were the
23 worst offenders, if you will, the ones who had
24 the highest class size, and I can tell you that
25 we have a great deal of energy.
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2 And I will also tell you, in case there
3 is any doubt about this, that we believe in – and
4 I taught high school for four years, I believe in
5 lower class size as a value. I will also tell
6 you that we also have to live in a complicated
7 world of limited budgets. And I’m going to give
8 you some statistics which I don’t know have been
9 put out in the public domain before, but you may
10 find them interesting.
11 A reduction of class size, purely from an
12 operating budget of 10 percent, 10 percent,
13 that’s going from 27 and a half to 25, for
14 example, the operating budget cost of that would
15 be about $800 million, and the capital budget
16 associated with that is measured in the tens of
17 billions of dollars.
18 We have made a lot of choices. We hope
19 that many of them are right. We have increased
20 teacher’s salaries by 43 percent for example.
21 That is massively expensive. We have very very
22 substantial and rising costs in the realm of
23 special education, that is massively expensive.
24 We can’t live in the simple world of
25 simply taking one educational priority, and some
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2 of these are imposed on us by law, as you all
3 know in the realm of special education.
4 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Yes, and monies
5 were provided by the state for the reduction.
6 Can you get to that point?
7 MR. CERF: I would be delighted to get
8 to that point. Again, it’s important to size
9 that and I will offer these figures and follow
10 them up with precision as you are more than
11 entitled to. We have about a $20 billion budget
12 today, the C for E dollars, the dollars to which
13 you’re referring that were devoted, that needed
14 to be spent on one of the – if I have this right,
15 Madam Chairwoman, these six - under Contract for
16 Excellence, which include improving teacher
17 quality, class-size reduction, and five other
18 areas. I believe that was in the realm of $400
19 million last year and I believe $150 million – I
20 hope I’m close, and about $150 million of that
21 was specifically targeted to class-size
22 reduction.
23 We feel very confident that as those
24 dollars are audited and tracked, they did indeed
25 go to class-size reduction. And, again, the
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2 facts are interesting. Last year, in the first
3 year that the funds came from the Contract for
4 Excellence, even that while our pupil register
5 went down, we had a net increase of about 1,800
6 classroom teachers in the system. Last year, and
7 I know you all had to struggle with a challenging
8 budget long before the fiscal crisis hit, last
9 year we had a relatively modest cut in the middle
10 of the year of about $100 million, I believe it
11 is.
12 What appears to have happened –
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Not in state aid.
14 MR. CERF: Correct. Yes, and thank you
15 for the absolutely accurate clarification, but
16 that budget reduction caused the budget managers,
17 and that would be the principals and their teams,
18 to lead to a net decrease of total teachers,
19 classroom teachers, of about 440 individuals.
20 And so that’s why you saw – it’s something like
21 76,000 teachers across the entire system. So you
22 saw a small decrease – you saw the arrow go in
23 the wrong direction, although albeit fractionally
24 to reflect that 440 last year. By the way, not
25 in all grades, not in all schools.
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2 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: You still didn’t
3 answer my question.
4 MR. CERF: I’ll try again, I’m sorry.
5 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: That was really,
6 what is your projection for reducing class size?
7 I don’t buy the excuse that the population went
8 down in our schools, because in my district it
9 escalated, and I’m speaking specifically about
10 the Highbridge community where we are trying now
11 to get a middle school for Highbridge. I’m
12 speaking about the fact that you’re talking about
13 building a school for 398 students, when we have
14 1,200 students in that one community in need of a
15 facility. That’s what I’m talking about.
16 MR. WALCOTT: Specifically to the
17 Highbridge question, I think there’s a meeting
18 scheduled for this Monday of which I will be a
19 part of to discuss Highbridge with local folks.
20 I can check and be rude in a second and look at
21 my calendar to see who will be there, but I know
22 there’s a specific – I know there’s a meeting set
23 up for this Monday of which I will be a part of
24 to discuss Highbridge and the questions that
25 you’re raising. Going specifically to your
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2 question, what we’ll do is get the specific
3 information about the schools in your area around
4 the class-size reduction -
5 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: I want to know
6 about the reduction of class size throughout the
7 city of New York.
8 MR. WALCOTT: Sure. We can lay that
9 out. That’s what Chris was trying to say. We’ll
10 lay that out for you on the broad scale and give
11 you – because we show that in our mayor’s
12 management report as well on an annual basis
13 where we show both the prior decreases and
14 whether the upticks that Chris talked about, what
15 grades those are in, and we’ll get you that exact
16 information.
17 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: I’ve been asked
18 to ask this question. Does this mean that you
19 believe the class-size reduction mandate approved
20 by the state legislature is voluntary? And the
21 statement continues that a recent analysis found
22 that of the 336 schools that received targeted
23 funding to reduce class size, only 165 schools
24 actually lowered class size. In 164 schools,
25 class sizes increased, and in seven schools,
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2 class sizes remained the same.
3 Do you mean that DOE should not be held
4 responsible for the hundreds of millions in
5 Contract for Excellence funds that the department
6 promised would be used to reduce class size, but
7 was not?
8 MR. CERF: I don’t believe that – I will
9 want to get back to you to verify the facts on
10 that question. My recollection tells me that
11 they are absolutely not accurate including what
12 the obligations are under the law. But I will
13 tell you a direct answer to a direct question.
14 We believe we have an obligation to follow the
15 directions of the law.
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you, Aurela.
17 Assemblyman Benjamin has some questions.
18 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: As I sit here,
19 contending with my headache, this hearing I think
20 on mayoral control sort of justifies having a
21 hearing on mayoral control. Had there not been
22 mayoral control, we wouldn’t be able to ask you
23 these questions and have the questions answered
24 by the source.
25 As a child, I grew up in a public school.
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2 I remember the old Board of Education, the
3 issues around that byzantine bureaucracy.
4 Bureaucracies have a tendency to be byzantine.
5 I listened to the advocates earlier talk
6 about the need to involve more parents to have
7 more structures in place to have more elections.
8 I’m not quite sure if you can answer this
9 for me, do we need to have more layers of
10 bureaucracy or do we need to have someone or
11 department or mayor or chancellor whether we like
12 them or not, whether they’re democrats or
13 republicans, independents, whatever, for us to be
14 able to have someone to address what the issues
15 are, what our questions are, and how do we get
16 redress for our students and for our parents?
17 MR. CERF: Well, I’m going to try to
18 answer your question, and please steer me if I’ve
19 mistaken the intent of your question.
20 What I believe that the preexisting
21 system which on its surface put a huge premium on
22 having countless for engagement, that governance
23 structure did have the advantage of more public
24 opportunity for engagement and that’s on the good
25 side. I think when it came to the output of
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2 that, the outcome of that, to serve the better
3 interest of children, almost invariably, we can
4 have an interesting discussion about why those
5 two points are related, almost invariably fell
6 victim to either interest group capture or micro-
7 political interests or – and, by the way, I
8 happen to think that the disadvantaged children
9 who disproportionately are children of color were
10 the true voices in that system, and I think that
11 that was a tragedy and I’m so grateful to the
12 courage of the assembly for having taken a chance
13 on this, and I think folks should feel very very
14 good about that.
15 At the same time, I don’t believe that
16 our approach to engagement, whether it’s parent
17 engagement, is something that cannot be improved
18 on. I think there are ways to do that, I think
19 we could have a very interesting discussion off
20 line or here if you prefer as to what some ways –
21 I heard a very creative idea earlier, and I
22 didn’t have a chance to process this, so I don’t
23 have a point of view about a sort of parent –
24 separately funded parent idea. I think that’s an
25 interesting idea.
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2 So I think that finding opportunities for
3 more engagement, more input, more input prior to
4 the moment that decisions are announced are all
5 for the good.
6 MR. WALCOTT: If I may, just from my
7 perspective, really fast, is that I think that we
8 all believe in a flatter bureaucracy and what
9 we’ve tried to do redirect more money as a result
10 of the flattening of the bureaucracy to the
11 schools directly, and I think that the access
12 points that you’re providing us here for this
13 type of dialogue need to be increased more and
14 more and we are never shy about engaging in
15 discussion whether we agree or disagree around
16 policies or specific programs in the areas that
17 you serve and we’re always available to do that.
18 That’s the way we operate.
19 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: The follow-up I
20 have has to do with the – you and I always have
21 these conversations, it’s always about our middle
22 schools, how to improve them, particularly when
23 it comes to our gifted and talented and talented
24 and in making sure that students of color who are
25 Black and Hispanic have an opportunity in greater
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2 numbers to attend the high school Jeff Dinowitz
3 and I attended, Bronx Science, specialized high
4 schools.
5 It remains to me an increasing shame in
6 our city that the same percentage of Black
7 students who were there 35 years ago when I was a
8 student at Bronx Science still remains the same.
9 What is it that this administration is
10 going to do to improve that outcome and to make
11 sure that the other programs that exist for our
12 gifted and talented students actually exist and
13 have good outcomes?
14 MR. WALCOTT: Well, a couple of things.
15 With the specialized high schools in particular,
16 and we agree with you, we are not satisfied with
17 the percentage of students of color who are
18 attending the older specialized high school like
19 Bronx High School of Science, or Stuyvesant, but,
20 at the same time, what we’ve done as part of an
21 administration is create more specialized high
22 schools as well, like Brooklyn, Latin, and other
23 schools. We’re at our highest number of
24 specialized high schools than ever before, still
25 maintaining a high standard for those specialized
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2 high schools and have more students of color who
3 are attending those schools. So that’s one thing
4 that the administration has done.
5 What we did also was created our
6 specialized program for working with students and
7 identifying students and – I think the sixth
8 grade or the seventh grade to take this special
9 academy to prepare for taking the test for the
10 specialized high school.
11 We were sued. We had to make sure that
12 we were open in the process of who participated
13 in this specialized program, but we were very
14 clear about the emphasis of this program was to
15 draw more students of color into the specialized
16 high schools, and I think the final thing that
17 we’ve done as an administration is create more
18 options for parents at the high school level as
19 well, whether it’s at the specialized level, or
20 having more special schools that have themes that
21 attract students as well, having the smaller
22 schools, and making sure that the students of
23 color are able to get higher quality education at
24 these schools, and I think the final thing, on
25 the reverse side of your question is that a lot
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2 of the schools that have been failing students of
3 color, we closed down and, as a result of that,
4 we reformatted that, as Chris talked about
5 before, and we have the facts to back that up,
6 that you’re having higher graduation rates at
7 these schools, including a number of schools in
8 the Bronx than the historical schools that had
9 been there before.
10 MR. CERF: If I may add, to sort of take
11 it up one level, it is – one of the things that
12 we found when we got here, that the distribution
13 of talent, if you will, and the data could not be
14 more compelling, that the quality of the teacher
15 is the single greatest variable, particularly for
16 disadvantaged children in determining academic
17 outcomes, and access to the Bronx Science and the
18 Stuyvesants and so on.
19 We found that in the schools that were
20 serving disproportionately children of color, or
21 economically disadvantaged children, they were
22 far less likely to be certified, to have – by
23 virtually every metric that you want – and we
24 have substantially corrected that. We got here,
25 83 percent of the teachers were certified, 100
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2 percent are, a recent study showed that –
3 measured by what school they went to, their SAD
4 scores, their passing rate on their competency
5 tests and so on, that the distribution of
6 teaching talent is much more equalized now than
7 it was before.
8 I give that as one example, but I think
9 the single best way to address what we can
10 absolutely agree is a shameful, unequal
11 distribution when it comes to who is going to
12 these top schools, is to make sure that all
13 schools and all children are getting a quality
14 education. We have moved the needle in that
15 direction, but we have a long, long, long way to
16 go.
17 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: One last issue
18 that I want to raise.
19 When we talk about closing and
20 reformatting and reformulating schools that are
21 “failing or not productive,” and we compare them
22 to the charter schools, which, when they reach
23 their five-year limit for review, you have
24 hearings, you have open meetings with the parents
25 to discuss what’s happening at the school. What
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2 I would like to understand, why isn’t a similar
3 process instituted for the traditional public
4 school that is failing and maybe closed and
5 reformatted involving parents the same way you’re
6 forced to involve the parents of our charter
7 schools to discuss that?
8 The last thing for us to understand is
9 that our charter schools are public schools with
10 public school students and, in my particular
11 assembly district, I have about five or six
12 charter schools, with the exception of one,
13 they’re all doing better than their local
14 neighborhood school, and they draw from the same
15 students.
16 So can you sort of explain or share with
17 me your view as to how mayoral control has made
18 it possible not only for our charter schools to
19 have improved, but for the neighboring school in
20 some way to also sort of catch up?
21 MR. CERF: I think the experience in
22 your district is very typical of the charter
23 school experience across the city, and the
24 question is, as I understand it, is how has
25 mayoral control enabled that to happen. I think
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2 in the following sentence, over the last 10
3 years, we have gone from a point where there was
4 almost uniform political hostility at all levels,
5 by the way, at all levels of the government to
6 charter schools to one of considerably more
7 general consensus culminating in President
8 Obama’s very explicit and repeated endorsements
9 of charter schools, most recently, I believe, 48
10 hours ago.
11 If the mayor and the chancellor, frankly,
12 had to respond to the immediate political wins on
13 the charter school thing, there is no way in the
14 world that we would have seen the growth of
15 charter schools as we’ve seen before. People
16 feel passionately on this issue. Even a school
17 that is not successful by any measure, when you
18 move to close it and replace it with one that’s
19 better inspires an enormous amount of allegiance
20 and these are politically extremely challenging
21 and, frankly, high decibal moments in the life of
22 a community when a school closes and another one
23 comes in.
24 To be insulated from that is what has, to
25 a large degree, enabled New York City to be as
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2 charter friendly as it’s been, and to be a
3 national pacesetter in that regard. I think
4 there’s a direct correlation.
5 You also had a very interesting point, by
6 the way, about the process by which charter
7 schools are closed. So I need to go back and
8 learn more, but you’ve indicated there’s a
9 hearing to discuss in the public forum.
10 At the end of the day though, the
11 decision whether to close a charter school is not
12 made on the basis of a vote, it’s made on the
13 basis of the input of folks at a hearing, and
14 then somebody is charged with what’s in the best
15 interest of the children attending this school.
16 I think that’s a system that, to my ear,
17 makes a lot of sense. In other words, it’s not
18 done in isolation by people in an ivory tower,
19 but there actually is serious substantive
20 engagement, but the ultimate decision has to
21 reside by those who are charged with the people
22 who are serving the best interest of children.
23 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: Thank you.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I think I would like
25 Assemblyman Benedetto, who has been very patient,
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2 and who has great expertise in the area of
3 special education, if we could move on, we have
4 some follow up. I would like to let him have
5 some questions.
6 I appreciate that Ms. Wernikoff was not
7 able to be with us in Staten Island and is here
8 today, and I do appreciate everyone’s patience as
9 we follow up. We’re here. We’re here.
10 Actually, deputy chancellor, we may have
11 something else for you, so if you could just –
12 okay, thank you. Go right ahead.
13 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: Thank you, Madam
14 Chairman, and let me say, just to begin with, I
15 want to sincerely thank Chairperson Nolan for
16 having these hearings.
17 If it wasn’t for Chairperson Nolan
18 pushing for these hearings we wouldn’t be here
19 today. This is the fourth of five and that’s not
20 been recognized as much as it should. I also
21 want to thank the panel for spending so much time
22 with us today. I know your time is precious and
23 we certainly appreciate that.
24 Ms. Wernikoff, you seem like you were
25 just neglected all day long. I do have a couple
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2 of questions in my own mind. I had been in
3 special education for so many years and there
4 always was a saying in special education, once
5 in, never out.
6 What are the percentages of children who
7 are in special education and are eventually
8 decertified, have we made progress with that over
9 the last six years?
10 MS. WERNIKOFF: Yes, we have made
11 progress. We have larger numbers of kids being
12 decertified from special education. We have made
13 improvements in the number of students who have
14 been decertified from special ed. Those numbers
15 have been going up, but I think there are a
16 couple of things we’ve also done. One of the
17 things that’s very important is to also make sure
18 that we’re not unnecessarily referring students
19 to special ed who are not truly disabled.
20 For a very long time, the knee-jerk
21 reaction for a student was struggling, they had
22 to go to special ed. That meant that they had to
23 go to some segregated classroom that was
24 disengaged from the regular curriculum, so we
25 have done a lot of work with struggling students.
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2 How do we identify those students who are at
3 risk and we know literacy is the biggest reason
4 why most of our students in the early grades are
5 referred to special ed.
6 And what we heard from parents across the
7 city six years ago was in private school I can
8 get Orton Gheeling hand-based reading program
9 which is a reading program that’s pretty much
10 evidence based for children with dyslexia. Why
11 can’t we get that in the public schools? You
12 know what? Now we have it. We have Fundations
13 Program, the Wilson Reading Program which we are
14 using in over 500 of our elementary schools, and
15 because of those kinds of things, I think we are
16 stopping that unnecessary referral to special ed.
17 I also think there’s a parent piece here.
18 Parents must consent to having their children
19 decertified from special education so we are
20 working with parents to get them to have the
21 confidence that their students can now make it
22 without some extra support.
23 So what we we’ve tried to do is something
24 called transitional support. You don’t want to
25 go cold turkey, take away all the supports for a
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2 child, so what we’ve been trying to do is look at
3 how do we reduce the services so that the child
4 continues to get some and then have for a year
5 after they’re decertified getting some level of
6 support so that if they need some continued
7 transition they get it.
8 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: Well, of course
9 it goes back to 1979 with the Lora case when so
10 many minority students were channeled into
11 classes for the emotionally disturbed, and there
12 was system-wide training for teachers so that
13 wouldn’t happen, so that was a progress from 30
14 years ago, and we need to go more.
15 MS. WERNIKOFF: I was here.
16 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: I understand
17 that, but when you say you’ve put more kids, or,
18 rather, decertified children from special
19 education, can we talk in percentages? Do we
20 have a baseline? I know it used to be something
21 like four percent.
22 MS. WERNIKOFF: It used to something
23 close to like two percent and it’s probably up to
24 almost four percent. The other thing that we’ve
25 done – and remember, it’s not the same across the
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2 city. One of the things we heard from parents
3 was, it’s great to have citywide numbers. I
4 would like to know how my school is doing about
5 delivering special ed services.
6 So what we did last year, we put up on
7 every school’s website a special ed service
8 delivery report, which said for your school,
9 here’s how many students with disabilities,
10 here’s the decertification rate of this school
11 compared to the citywide rate. Here’s the
12 initial referral rate if this school compared to
13 the citywide rate. Here’s how many kids are
14 getting served.
15 It was put up last June for the entire
16 school year and, if anybody is interested, we
17 just put it on line now for a mid year snapshot
18 for every school in the city on their website.
19 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: Well, of course
20 it would vary from school to school and what kind
21 of a special education population they educate.
22 If you’ve got children who are mentally retarded,
23 obviously they’re not going to be decertified,
24 okay? So the percentages would change from
25 school to school.
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2 MS. WERNIKOFF: The only thing, I think
3 you’re absolutely right, there are some students
4 who have significant disabilities and need
5 special ed supports for their entire educational
6 career, and we certainly would not want to remove
7 those. I think we also have to look though, if
8 you are doing a better job at making sure that
9 the students who are receiving special ed
10 services are truly disabled, then you may not see
11 the higher decertification rate because you’re
12 actually giving services to kids who truly need
13 them.
14 So we look at both the initial referrals
15 which have gone down and decertification rates
16 going up saying we’re doing a better job on both
17 ends.
18 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: I get calls
19 every once in a while in my office in regards to
20 a school being out of compliance with the IEP on
21 their students. So I know back in my time in the
22 classroom we used to have the 30/30 rule which I
23 know now is something like 40/40 or something
24 like that, evaluation and placement.
25 How are we doing percentage-wise? Once a
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2 child is recommended, what percent of the kids
3 finally reach the classroom in that correct
4 compliant time zone?
5 MS. WERNIKOFF: A couple of things.
6 First of all, I think we are providing a higher
7 level of special ed services in a more timely way
8 than we ever have. So our – you’re correct the
9 timelines in the federal and state law have
10 changed a number of times in the last 25-30
11 years, but I would say, on average, 90 percent of
12 our students are evaluated on a timely basis.
13 I also know that the provision of
14 services has been more timely, even though we
15 understand that some of these special ed areas,
16 as I’m sure you know, represent severe shortage
17 areas, we have increased the numbers of students
18 getting there both related services, classroom
19 services, evaluations.
20 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: And that was
21 going to be my next question.
22 So the related services, what are the
23 areas of shortages in -
24 MS. WERNIKOFF: The most severe
25 shortages are speech and language therapists,
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2 occupational therapists, and physical therapists,
3 and what we’ve tried to do – obviously we have
4 pretty aggressive recruitment, but we also have
5 scholarship programs. Right now we have over 280
6 people enrolled in our scholarship program where
7 we pay them, actually go to school and enter
8 these fields, and then, of course, they give us a
9 work commitment back, and then we assign these
10 staff to high-needs areas that were underserved,
11 and that has been a great effort for us in
12 recruiting and retaining staff.
13 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: How are we doing
14 – when you mentioned speech and language
15 services, but, in particular, and maybe, Ms.
16 Santos, maybe you’re the best one to ask on this
17 question, how are we doing with bilingual speech
18 and language teachers? I know that that used to
19 be a monster problem, is it still?
20 MS. WERNIKOFF: Give me one second and I
21 actually have that for you. For bilingual speech
22 and language teachers, we believe that we are
23 still in need of about 80 additional teachers.
24 We were able to hire some and new ones, as I
25 said, we have some in our bilingual, but we feel
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2 we need about 80 more bilingual special speech
3 teachers, but, remember, in the interim, until we
4 recruit Department of Ed staff, we have other
5 mechanisms of providing services. We have
6 agencies under contract to us, and we also have
7 independent providers, but we need about 80 more
8 bilingual teachers.
9 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: 80 did you say?
10 MS. WERNIKOFF: Yes, 80. And that’s why
11 we have – it’s one of our scholarship programs.
12 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: One last
13 question. With portfolio assessment, I know that
14 for some of the children who are more severely
15 handicapped, there’s portfolio assessment. How
16 do we rate the quality of these assessments? How
17 are they graded? I would think it would vary
18 from school to school, and it might be open for
19 arbitrary opinion.
20 Can you clarify that in my mind, please?
21 MS. WERNIKOFF: Sure. There are
22 students who have significant cognitive
23 disabilities, and they are getting alternate
24 learning standards, and the state doesn’t call it
25 a portfolio, they call it a data-folio. And
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2 basically what you’re doing is, you’re looking at
3 student work over time and the teachers are
4 looking at this work and I think that – is it as
5 objective as a standardized exam, probably not
6 because it’s individual people looking at student
7 work, but I think that the state recognizes that,
8 and these are state tests, these are alternative
9 assessment, and they are taking a look at that,
10 how to make those alternative assessments even
11 more – even a little more objective. But I do
12 think the important thing, prior to having these
13 alternate assessments, these students had no
14 assessments, so, as a parent, you didn’t have any
15 information, any collection of student work. You
16 went up for something, and everybody else had
17 something to look at and I didn’t have anything
18 to look at for my own child.
19 So I think, yes, can they be improved,
20 absolutely, but have they helped inform parents
21 about where their children are and how they can
22 help with them at home and how a school is doing,
23 absolutely.
24 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: I agree with
25 you, there was no prior uniform type of
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2 assessment. But who does the assessment? Does
3 someone come in from the city to say, okay, well
4 this school is assessing at a better level than
5 the other school? Who does this?
6 MS. WERNIKOFF: The way the assessments
7 work, they’re state assessments, it’s called the
8 state alternate assessment and they’re only for
9 students who have severe cognitive disabilities,
10 and actually on their individual education plan,
11 it says they’re going to participate in alternate
12 assessments.
13 The teachers, for a time period, I think,
14 off the top of my head, like October to February,
15 they collect student work. It could be
16 videotaping, it could be – whatever student work,
17 and then they have groups of teachers, not the
18 same teachers, come in and actually use a
19 guideline, a rubric and say, how is this child
20 doing, and it’s level one, two, three or four.
21 So it’s not the same teacher, it’s other
22 teachers looking at this data-folio.
23 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: So it’s an
24 independent group of teachers coming from the
25 outside from the Department of Education itself
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2 or from the state?
3 MS. WERNIKOFF: From the Department of
4 Education.
5 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: And who appoints
6 those particular teachers?
7 MS. WERNIKOFF: I think there are
8 different – within the schools, and within the
9 school support networks, they get different
10 special ed teachers to come and look at work as
11 long as they’re not in the same school that they
12 are teaching it.
13 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: I want to thank
14 you very much.
15 MS. WERNIKOFF: You’re welcome. My
16 pleasure.
17 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: I think Mr.
18 O’Donnell has a question.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: And then Mr. Weprin.
20 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: Special ed
21 populations are also historically more difficult
22 to educate, is that correct, that costs more
23 resources?
24 MS. WERNIKOFF: Absolutely.
25 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: I’m back to the
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2 closing schools. Mr. Walcott, I don’t want to
3 debate whether or not the schools should or
4 shouldn’t be closed, that’s really not why I’m
5 here. But let me be clear why I am here.
6 I’m here to figure out whether or not I
7 think I should vote for mayoral control. That’s
8 why I’m here, okay?
9 So you are phasing out 15 schools, and
10 the special ed populations are the following,
11 22.8, 13.7, 18, 16.8, 40.1, 12.6, 21.7, 21, and
12 31.2. When you add those numbers into the
13 numbers of ELLs, they range from 45 to 61
14 percent.
15 So the question I have for you, Mr.
16 Walcott, is, why is it that I shouldn’t couldn’t
17 that you have failed in that you’ve run the
18 schools for seven years, the school in my
19 district you allow to have 45 percent of the kids
20 in that school be special ed or ELLs, you don’t
21 provide them with enough resources to address
22 that problem and then you say you want to close
23 the school.
24 Again, I don’t want to talk whether or
25 not closing is the appropriate or inappropriate
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2 remedy, but if we had had mayoral control for one
3 year, or 18 months, and you were to come to me
4 and say, we’re going to make this work – you’ve
5 had it for seven years and, yet, it seems to me
6 that 15 schools, you have not been the adequate
7 guardian of in terms of ensuring that the
8 children in those schools get the education they
9 deserve.
10 MR. WALCOTT: Sure. And I want to be
11 very clear because I thought with the last
12 question that you posed, I didn’t want to enter
13 into a debate and I didn’t, and I wanted to also
14 get back to the last question because I feel that
15 each of you that presents a question to us
16 deserves an answer and deserves an answer based
17 on the facts.
18 Sometimes, only when we’re giving you a
19 general response, it’s just because we don’t have
20 the same information in front of us that you may
21 have, so, as a result of that –
22 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: MR. WALCOTT: I
23 didn’t make this up. It’s all on your website.
24 I printed it out from your forms.
25 MR. WALCOTT: I didn’t accuse you of
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2 making it up.
3 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: I want to make
4 sure that the audience understands where this
5 information came from, your website.
6 MR. WALCOTT: I never questioned the
7 veracity of the information, assemblyman, I just
8 said that I didn’t have it in front of me. With
9 that, that way, once I get the information, we
10 can get back to you with specific responses. Now
11 to your general question and I’ll defer to Chris,
12 as far as why you should say we have or have not
13 failed, because I think one of the things that
14 we’ve done, and not just restricted to your
15 assembly district but to the city, is put more
16 tension from a citywide perspective on a variety
17 of these issues including ELLs and special eds,
18 we devoted more resources to the English language
19 learners, as well as to the special ed population
20 as well as the general education population.
21 Then we also, and I think this is part of
22 the accountability piece that you talked about,
23 when a situation, whether it’s a school or
24 program that hasn’t worked, we’re the first to
25 say that we need to move to a different
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2 direction.
3 I know Chris wanted to respond to that as
4 well.
5 MR. CERF: Thank you. And I hope that
6 I’m close enough to the microphone to be heard.
7 If the question you’re asking is, are
8 there schools in this city that after seven years
9 or so remain educational failures, the answer is
10 absolutely. Absolutely. I would respectfully
11 suggest that the question by which you should
12 answer – you should pursue your legislative
13 duties as to what position you end up taking on
14 mayoral control is not that question.
15 The question is, compared to where we
16 were in 2002, how much progress has we made to
17 reduce that number and we have reduced it
18 dramatically by almost every measure, including
19 most recently the number of schools under review
20 that the state just indicated.
21 Anybody who has ever had any involvement
22 in running or managing or exercising legislative
23 oversight over a school system has to have
24 tremendous humility around the magnitude of the
25 job and the urgency, the moral urgency of getting
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2 it right.
3 Anyone who suggests that we have gotten
4 it right, and that we are where we need to be, I
5 think doesn’t deserve his or her job. We have
6 lots and lots of problems and issues and
7 failures.
8 What I would suggest to you is that we
9 are making tremendous progress as far a journey
10 still lies ahead of us, and by that measure, and
11 I think that the gradient is steeply and
12 unequivocally up by virtually every measure, not
13 every measure, but virtually every measure, and I
14 think that’s the judgment that needs to be made.
15 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: So can I get to
16 241 for a second? If you combined ELLs and
17 special ed, that’s 45 percent of the population.
18 Can’t this transformation fact sheet about 241
19 in 2006-7, math levels three and four, 44
20 percent, math levels in seven eight is 46
21 percent, and if you average it out, it’s 45
22 percent.
23 Do you think it’s a correlation between
24 those numbers that that number that 45 percent of
25 the students are in the ELL special ed population
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2 and that 45 percent of them are performing at
3 math levels?
4 MR. CERF: To be able to give you a
5 really helpful response to your question, I would
6 need to look not only at the schools you’re
7 citing, but at all of the schools, all of the 80
8 plus schools that have been closed over the last
9 six or seven years because I am sure that there
10 have been plenty of schools that have been closed
11 that do not have the numbers you indicate.
12 I also know that there are schools that
13 have percentages along the lines you’re talking
14 about that are very successful. So I would be
15 very reluctant to reach the conclusion that this
16 is a school that is showing persistent education
17 failure because it has populations of that
18 magnitude.
19 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: I don’t have
20 this information in front of me but call me
21 Kreskin, and I would say that I am almost certain
22 that there is no other school in District 3 that
23 has those numbers.
24 The question I would say to you is, how
25 did you let this happen? How, over seven years,
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2 did you allow one school in District 3 to become
3 the place where the numbers of ELLs and special
4 eds are so high as to make it more difficult, and
5 why is it when you compare those numbers to the
6 numbers of the other schools in the district,
7 they are profoundly different.
8 I have an answer in my head as to why
9 that’s the case, but I will choose not to answer.
10 Perhaps you can come back to me and tell me what
11 all the numbers are and I will be shocked if you
12 can find one school in District 3 in Manhattan
13 that has 45 percent of its population in those
14 two groups.
15 MR. CERF: If I many, and you asked a
16 basic question helping you to inform your
17 decision-making on the vote that will be coming
18 up at some point in the very near future, I think
19 that one of the measures for us is making sure
20 that we do get back to you and holding us
21 accountable. So as I’ve indicated in prior
22 hearings and I want to indicate again to any
23 member of the panel, especially you since you’re
24 raising this particular question is that, we will
25 get back to you with the facts. And if the facts
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2 show that we did not do our job in that one
3 particular school, we will be the first to admit
4 it as well. It’s about the accountability and we
5 will get back to you with all the detail and
6 having the facts and figures for you, sir.
7 ASSEMBLYMAN O’DONNELL: When you’re
8 doing that, can you get back to me on why it is
9 that the school profile that you managed to put
10 out about every school in the system is not
11 something that you provide to us about the
12 education of our children in charter schools
13 which are paid with public dollars, because this
14 information is not available and it makes it very
15 difficult for me to make certain decisions and
16 advocate, and also makes it unfortunately much
17 more difficult because when you close 241 and
18 tell the parents that their option is to go into
19 a lottery to get into a charter school, they
20 don’t even have the ability to get this piece of
21 paper off the internet that would tell them what
22 the information is. I think that will be a huge
23 step forward in providing accountability for the
24 parents.
25 MR. WALCOTT: I’m glad you raised that
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2 again because, I mean, when you had asked the
3 question before, I wanted to in the closing
4 remarks at some point, but I’ll do it right now
5 to say, you raise a very fair point and we’ll
6 take a look at that and see how we approve it.
7 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
8 Assemblyman Weprin.
9 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: Deputy Mayor
10 Walcott – if I could call you Dennis, I prefer to
11 do that, not as a sign of disrespect, but just
12 the opposite, because of how much I am fond of
13 you, would like to follow the lead of the future
14 borough president just to talk to you a little
15 bit about what I’m thinking. Try not to showboat
16 for a second, of course, later on I’m going to
17 ask you about testing and then I’ll showboat.
18 MR. WALCOTT: Okay.
19 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: This is very
20 difficult what we’re doing here. We’re looking
21 at the school governance law and we’re hearing
22 everything under the sun, change this, change
23 that, add this many people, add that many people,
24 change the way we do this, do the budgeting
25 different. It’s going to be impossible for us to
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2 sort through this and make everybody happy, so
3 we’re going to try to focus on certain aspects of
4 this law as we move forward.
5 When we last saw each other in Queens you
6 made me a little nervous because I got the
7 feeling you were asking us to do a yes or no vote
8 kind of on school governance and didn’t seem as
9 willing to make changes to the law as I would
10 have like and I may have misinterpreted that, and
11 I have since talked to the chancellor who seemed
12 willing to listen to at least the idea of
13 changes.
14 I was just wondering, what is your
15 position as far as making – I don’t want to call
16 them tweaks, because that belittles them a little
17 bit, but some changes to the way the law is
18 written?
19 MR. WALCOTT: I think in response to my
20 conversation with Assemblyman Diaz that we’re
21 always looking to improve it, and if I
22 misconveyed it when I testified, I think part of
23 my testimony was that we’re always looking for
24 ways to improve it, and as Chris has indicated, I
25 think all of us have indicated that we need to do
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2 things better.
3 I think it’s also fair to put this in
4 context in that whether it’s six or seven years,
5 the system has only been in place for six or
6 seven years as compared to 38 years of the old
7 system. So how we improve it, I mean, we always
8 look forward to do that.
9 I think you and others have hit on some
10 central themes that we are always looking to
11 engage in further discussion. I know I was in
12 Albany around a week and a half ago meeting with
13 a number of members, talking about how we could
14 improve it, I’ll be up in Albany again in another
15 couple of weeks to do the same thing. We’re
16 interested, and we’re sponges to make sure that
17 the system is better.
18 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: I want to be clear.
19 I believe that you’re hoping to improve the
20 system every day, I’m sure you’re trying to
21 improve the system. The difference is, whether
22 it’s going to be improved, have the law changed
23 to improve or whether it’s just you making more
24 of an effort to do certain things, there’s a very
25 big distinction there, and I think – the sense
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2 that I get from talking to my colleagues is, we
3 want to make changes to the law.
4 One of the biggest problems I know a
5 number of us have and it was raised before sort
6 of in passing but my biggest issue was the – what
7 I think was a haphazard bureaucracy and this
8 crazy change of structure which, to this day, I
9 don’t understand why they felt the need to do
10 that, so many of things that you’ve tried to
11 accomplish whether I think they were good or bad,
12 you could have done under the old structure of
13 school districts with a superintendent – not just
14 a superintendent, someone said they wanted to
15 have a superintendent there, but a structure
16 around that superintendent to help principals.
17 You say you want to make principals CEOs, I’m all
18 for that, but CEOs have people that they can
19 reach out to, but my CEO in my building have no
20 one to help them, unless they want to pay out of
21 their budget which they don’t have enough of to
22 get help.
23 MR. WALCOTT: I know Chris wants to jump
24 into this as well, I can see it out of the corner
25 of my eye, and I can feel Chris’ desire to
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2 participate in this part, in that, one, I don’t
3 necessarily agree with you, in all due respect, I
4 mean, in that I think the old system with the
5 districts and the offices, the way they were
6 structured before, were not necessarily good and
7 created a system that was dysfunctional, created
8 a system that had unequal application of what the
9 system was supposed to be about, and there wasn’t
10 a uniformity as far as making sure that standards
11 were at a certain level, and the results showed
12 it that way.
13 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: They were run by
14 school boards back then and that’s no longer the
15 case. They’re not – they would have been run by
16 the chancellor if they still stayed in place as
17 school districts. I’m not talking about school
18 boards running. Still the chancellor could
19 decide who is the superintendent and get rid of
20 them when they want.
21 MR. WALCOTT: I think again, and I’ll
22 defer – the reality is that we have been able to
23 again, as I said before, flatten a bureaucracy,
24 redirect way more resources directly to the
25 schools instead of having them in district
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2 offices or even at Tweed.
3 The facts speak for themselves in that –
4 Chris, is it $355 million? That has been
5 directed solely from the bureaucracy itself, and
6 that includes district offices. But at the same
7 time, we have been able to I think improve
8 ourselves over the last several years in our
9 communication efforts, and we need to improve it
10 even more so. From a law point of view, we look
11 forward to the dialogue around how we look at the
12 law to make the system better.
13 Chris?
14 MR. CERF: Yes. It’s a long debate, but
15 I did want to make sure that we were very clear
16 on one point, and I think Dennis just was is
17 that, when you talk about improving, yes, we try
18 to improve the system every day, we’re talking
19 about improving the law, so I wanted to be very
20 clear on that.
21 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: The District 1’s
22 are a sensitive issue only because we were very
23 specific to put it in there and it wasn’t just
24 for the sake of putting it in there, and I know
25 we litigated it and technically you have a
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2 superintendent, but that wasn’t the intent of the
3 law to have a superintendent, it was to have a
4 district and a district office.
5 MR. CERF: I think that’s one area that
6 we’re going to look at together, and the – we
7 have really really focused on pushing power down
8 to the sort of commanders on the ground, power
9 and money and resources. We can have an
10 interesting discussion about whether we have gone
11 too far or not far enough.
12 As Deputy Mayor Walcott says, it’s about
13 $400 million has been pushed down from the
14 central bureaucracy, and I just got some numbers
15 the other day that you may find interesting.
16 That from 2002 to 2008, funds that go to
17 the schools have increased by 37 percent, while
18 funds budget, the central field office, have
19 actually decreased by 17 percent.
20 A lot of that is organized around letting
21 the whole preexisting system, was organized
22 around – we know what you need, and we’re going
23 to tell you to do it, right? Our basic bias is
24 now in favor of – you’re accountable for student
25 results. You figure out what you need, and we’re
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2 going to give you the money and the discretion to
3 do it.
4 In that transition, there’s a very
5 interesting question about how much support to
6 provide, whether you want it or not, and how much
7 you’ll let them figure out on their own. We’re
8 still struggling with that. We do know if you
9 look at the surveys and so on, the level of
10 satisfaction that we’re seeing from principals,
11 because we do survey them a lot around the
12 satisfaction with what we call the ISCs, or CFNs
13 or so on – it’s about – it’s approaching 87
14 percent now, so we’re seeing some pretty good
15 sense of articulation of principal satisfaction
16 with the support.
17 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: I question that
18 number, not that that’s not the number you were
19 given, I question whether principals are being
20 candid with you because the conversations I have
21 with principals individually, and I’m not saying
22 some, I’m saying almost all, are they’re not
23 happy. I know the principal’s union testified,
24 and they weren’t as adamant as the principals I
25 talked to.
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2 But the problem is this, and now I’m
3 going to get into testing on that same topic.
4 Principals, because they’re being forced to do
5 all this paperwork and administrative work, and
6 be CO’s, except they’re told every week what to
7 do, because they get principal weeklies for 30
8 pages, 35 pages that tell them what to do. CO’s
9 don’t get that. So they kind of be left alone
10 and not doing what I think is their job which is
11 to walk around in their schools, and then
12 teachers, now I just got to take exception to
13 what you said before. It’s funny because it’s
14 almost like, you said one thing one hand which
15 is, we need to teach subject matter and not teach
16 test-prep drills. It’s almost like you’re
17 putting your head in the sand because they’re
18 teaching test prep drills out there, and I didn’t
19 mean to – the way I asked that question wasn’t
20 fair because I was just curious whether they’re
21 doing the same thing with the ELLs as they’re
22 doing with the general population, which is
23 teaching test-prep drills, and, not only that,
24 they’re cheating.
25 There’s cheating going on all over the
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2 city. Teachers are cheating in the proctoring of
3 these tests. Kids are cheating because they’re
4 learning how to get the right answer not getting
5 the information. I’m telling you. It’s
6 happening. I hear about it all the time.
7 MR. WALCOTT: I have to just jump in
8 there. If there’s cheating, then that should be
9 reported. That’s why we have an office of
10 special of investigations to follow up on that
11 right away. We will not tolerate cheating in the
12 system at all.
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We’re going to wrap
14 up. We have other members.
15 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: I wanted to make
16 the last point, Cathy, and then I’m done.
17 You made a comment though, Dennis, about
18 SATs and that when we were young we took an SAT
19 prep course, and I did too, and not everybody
20 did, but I actually took one. If you were to
21 give test prep courses in high school, I’d be
22 okay with that. In order to take the SATs, in
23 order to get them into a better college, I would
24 be okay with that. Because that helps that
25 student get into a better college, but testing
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2 and test prepping – this is key here, it’s not
3 learning information to take a test that’s – they
4 are learning tricks, they come home with tricks.
5 If the choice says always or never it’s wrong,
6 so that teaches my son what? Or a son what?
7 Or they’re telling them, check C if you
8 run out of time because it’s the most likely
9 answer. They’re trying to get the right answer
10 so that kid looks better, and a cynical person,
11 and I’m not saying I’m a cynical person, but a
12 cynical person might say, the reason you’re
13 putting your head in the sand on this topic and
14 know that the test prep is going on, you should
15 just not have the test prep and just give the
16 exams even though they’re spending – fourth
17 graders are spending 18 days taking standardized
18 tests if you count the interim assessments. 18
19 days. That’s 10 percent of the school year just
20 on the tests. Then twice that on prepping it.
21 But the cynical person would say, this
22 helps – this is the problem with having a single
23 person accountable because the Machiavellian
24 concept of the end justifies the means takes over
25 because if we can get test scores up, we look
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2 like we’re doing great, and they’re doing it, but
3 they’re not doing it by kids knowing more,
4 they’re doing it by them testing them – testing
5 higher because they’re getting the right answers
6 on tests. I’m telling you, they’re learning a
7 lot less in my district because of these tests.
8 MR. WALCOTT: I have to comment on this
9 and Chris will probably give a more intellectual
10 response than I can give, but at the same time I
11 think that takes a lot away from both our
12 teachers and our children, and for people –
13 seriously, and I’m not saying that you’re saying
14 that, Mark, but I think for people to applaud, it
15 diminishes what our children are accomplishing.
16 Our children are learning. We may not be
17 happy with some of our policies, and we respect
18 that, but our children are learning and they’re
19 learning at better rates, they’re graduating at
20 better rates than ever before, and the facts are
21 the facts.
22 They’re state tests, they’re not
23 administered by – they’re not city tests any
24 longer, that’s what’s going on. I think in all
25 of our debate in our back and forth around test
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2 prep and everything else, I don’t want to take
3 anything away from our children because our
4 students are doing better, and that’s what this
5 is about.
6 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: And this is an issue
7 that we have discussed at length at all four
8 hearings, and we appreciate that, and I want to
9 thank Assemblyman Weprin because he has been a
10 very active member of our committee, and I
11 apologize if I’m cutting him off a little bit,
12 but Assemblywoman Rivera has not had a chance to
13 ask any questions yet.
14 Also, I just want to acknowledge, you
15 know, so that people know that we Nolans have
16 some Bronx roots. The recently retired budget
17 director form the Bronx, borough president’s
18 office, my wonderful cousin, Bob Nolan, Bob, I’m
19 so glad that you’re here. It keeps me sane and
20 focused on the issues all the time. So thank you
21 very much for being with us.
22 Naomi, and then Mark if you want to
23 follow-up, I just want to let Naomi ask a few
24 questions.
25 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: Thank you. And
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2 I, too, would like to thank you Assemblywoman
3 Nolan for hosting this here in the Bronx, this
4 very important hearing.
5 Graduation rates are better overall but
6 not necessarily in every community and that
7 speaks volumes. I was listening to my colleague
8 and very disturbed by what he was saying, and
9 what he – I could read his mind because number
10 speak volumes, the demographics in a particular
11 school, the population in the school that is
12 succeeding or failing speaks volumes, so when my
13 colleague was specific to one school in District
14 3 and he said he could think of why that school
15 is failing and why it is closing, it left me to
16 think.
17 Then we know that we have five schools
18 here in the Bronx that are closing and we wonder
19 why. And why aren’t all kids across the board
20 graduating? There’s a real disconnect. There’s
21 a disparity that is clear. I look forward to
22 receiving the same information that you sent to
23 Assemblyman O’Donnell, and I’m going to assure
24 you that that will absolutely shape my decision
25 as to whether or not I will vote for mayoral
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2 control.
3 We know that the fact that public
4 officials run for office on the basis of their
5 performance in their record and creates a built
6 in institutional incentive to percent matters in
7 a possible – in the best possible light,
8 especially when it comes to education.
9 There are some that believe that there is
10 a need for an independent source of data
11 concerning the performance of the school system.
12 What is your position on that?
13 MR. WALCOTT: I think as I indicated
14 before, assemblywoman, that we agree about an
15 independent source. What that independent source
16 is is something for us to discuss, but I think
17 both in my first testimony, the chancellor’s
18 testimony, and even today we said we would
19 support that.
20 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: I wasn’t here for
21 that, so that’s good to hear. That’s good to
22 know.
23 MR. CERF: I would also like to add
24 something.
25 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: I have a question
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2 for you too. I’ve also heard that having the
3 chancellor serve as the chair of Pep undermines
4 the reporting relationship to the panel, and that
5 maybe there should be a selection from the
6 panel’s own membership, and the chancellor serve
7 as an ex officio. How do you – what is your
8 position on that?
9 MR. CERF: Well, we’re open to discuss
10 that, but our position is that having the
11 chancellor chair the PEP just makes better
12 administrative sense.
13 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: For?
14 MR. CERF: For the orderly nature of the
15 meeting, for the making sure that agendas are
16 appropriately prepared, for making sure that
17 there is an alignment between the agenda of the
18 meeting and what’s going on in running a school
19 system. I’m not sure that’s a distinction of
20 huge significance, but I do think that, if it
21 were me, I’d say that it makes sense.
22 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: I’m sure it would
23 for you. We also spoke earlier about parental
24 involvement, and, Mr. Wilcox, you mentioned that
25 you agree that parental involvement is very
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2 important to, not you, but the administration,
3 so much so that you’ve created the office of
4 parental involvement and parent coordinators, so
5 forth and so on. However, you don’t necessarily
6 believe that there needs to be – and I’m not sure
7 if this is what you said, I don’t want to put
8 words into your mouth, a funding source for them
9 to go to.
10 Let me ask you, what does the
11 administration believe is a good ratio of
12 parental involvement to student population?
13 MR. WALCOTT: I’m not sure of the
14 question. I mean, we believe in 100 percent
15 involvement of parents in knowing what’s
16 happening.
17 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: Well, acceptable.
18 Knowing that we don’t have 100 percent, what is
19 acceptable? And I’ll tell you why. Because I’m
20 curious to know how you gauge what you say that
21 parental involvement is important, so much so
22 that you’ve developed the office of parent
23 involvement, parent coordinators, so if you’re
24 looking at this, then you’re trying to reach for
25 something, no?
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2 MR. CERF: Yes. Let me try to take that
3 on. First of all, there’s an important
4 definitional question about what you mean by
5 parent involvement. There are some things that
6 you may find interesting is that we have had over
7 1,200 trainings and workshops for parents and
8 we’ve had over 60,000 calls come in. We’ve had –
9 I can’t tell you how many meetings, we invest
10 millions of dollars, I mean, many millions of
11 dollars in parent coordinators.
12 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: This is so that
13 parents can participate as a vehicle for -
14 MR. CERF: There are many ways a parent
15 can be engaged and this is a term that’s often
16 thrown around without pausing to understand what
17 we mean.
18 Let me suggest three possible ways. One
19 is engagement in your child’s education, that is
20 to care deeply, to help him or her do their
21 homework, to care what teacher you get, to come
22 to the PTA meetings to support that child.
23 A second is to make sure that your voice
24 is heard.
25 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: So are you
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2 gauging how many schools have a good number of
3 parents that are involved?
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Let me just follow-
5 up. At one of our hearings – the assemblywoman’s
6 question is very well taken because we did ask
7 what was the percentage of schools that did not,
8 for example, have an active PTA, and actually I
9 think you had given us a number but were going to
10 get back to us with a little more detail by
11 borough. So maybe if you could respond to that
12 now, if not, we would raise it again in Brooklyn
13 because it’s a very good question.
14 MR. CERF: Yes, we do absolutely track
15 every one of those metrics. But I also want to
16 get to the question –
17 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: But do you have that
18 for us yet?
19 MR. CERF: I don’t, but – I think we
20 did.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I didn’t see it on
22 the PTAs.
23 MR. CERF: We will give you all of that.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We just got something
25 from you which we appreciate on English language
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2 learners, and we got something on special ed, but
3 of course we didn’t get to review it in time for
4 this hearing, it will be on the agenda for
5 Brookyn.
6 Just so that you know, Naomi, it did come
7 up and it’s a very important question, and we
8 wanted it broken down by borough so that we had a
9 better snapshot.
10 MR. CERF: I did want to add in response
11 to the earlier question about graduation rates
12 that it’s certainly true that they’re headed up
13 and it’s also true that it’s not equally so, but
14 I’m very pleased to report that in your
15 legislative district it’s gone from 43.2 percent
16 to 73.7 percent. So that is one area where we’re
17 seeing the trend line looking very good.
18 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: And I appreciate
19 that. I know the make of my district and I know
20 the group that I’m referring to, that I’m
21 speaking to.
22 Thank you.
23 MR. CERF: Just in response to your
24 question. We sent a letter so I’m not sure where
25 the disconnect was, but we’ll send it again,
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2 because we sent it right after the hearing.
3 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Let me just say. We
4 appreciate everyone’s patience. It’s a long day.
5 We’re going to call another series of witnesses.
6 I would just like to ask. We would like
7 to follow-up. As chair, I try to not to ask a
8 lot of questions, but the one question for deputy
9 chancellor, if you would just, recently in the
10 times you had had a quote about the principals
11 and the class-size issue, and you said, well,
12 they determined that their money was better spent
13 elsewhere and the focus on class size was wrong-
14 headed.
15 As a follow-up to what Assemblywoman
16 Greene asked, how did you feel you could make
17 that statement since we’ve had all this
18 legislation that says that class size expresses
19 the wishes of the people in the presence of their
20 elected representatives?
21 We understand that your vision for the
22 principals is very interesting one, but I’m just
23 curious how you could make that statement because
24 I will tell you that it prompted great comment in
25 the legislature as to whether the city was not
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2 complying with our issues.
3 MR. CERF: I’m glad that I have an
4 opportunity to address that. I think you will
5 notice that that article that you read did not
6 quote me as saying they were wrong-headed, that
7 was a word that was supplied by the newspapers,
8 and I don’t believe is wrong-headed, but what I
9 believe is that we’re working very hard to reduce
10 class size, and it’s an important value, but
11 there’s also a level of realism to this that is
12 sometimes missing in the public discourse.
13 You have to choose in a world of limited
14 resources between priorities. Everybody’s
15 priority is the most important thing to them,
16 whether it’s early childhood education, raising
17 teachers’ salaries by 43 percent, and we have to
18 make balanced decisions within the context of –
19 and I’m faithfully following the directions of
20 the law which we believe we’re doing.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: The legislature
22 understands the need for choices and competing
23 priorities, that’s what we do. We make choices
24 in competing priorities. And I appreciate your
25 reminding us of that important directive both for
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2 us and for you. But I do think there is a
3 tremendous concern in the short time that I’ve
4 had the privilege of chairing this committee that
5 the city’s class sizes, for example, are really
6 quite a bit larger than many other regions of the
7 state that face similar problems, whether it’s
8 Buffalo or Syracuse or Albany, and it continues
9 to be of concern.
10 It may be that it’s also something that,
11 as a parent, that I can understand. If my
12 choices are to send my child to a middle school
13 with 34 children in the class, that’s a very big
14 number. I continue to be amazed at people who
15 seem to feel that that’s okay when private
16 schools have 16 in a class and most – many many
17 other parts of the state have 19, 20, 21, 22, so
18 we know you have competing priorities and
19 competing choices, but this is a choice – an area
20 that many many people in the legislature – and
21 this gets to the heart of governance, because
22 this is something that people are asking for.
23 You have a responsibility and
24 accountability to the mayor to respond to what
25 people are asking for. It is not necessarily
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2 wrong-headed. If you didn’t say it, we’ll go
3 back and re-read the article.
4 MR. CERF: Please.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: The will of the
6 people has a measure of importance that needs to
7 be reflected in the policies of the department.
8 MR. CERF: And make this so – I, of
9 course, thoroughly agree with that, and what
10 makes this so thoroughly hard – and everybody
11 here, and I’m certain it’s true that everybody at
12 the table over there comes at this with the best
13 possible intentions to do what’s right for
14 children.
15 If you look at the other cities, the ones
16 you mentioned, Buffalo, and the big four, so to
17 speak, in New York State, New York City’s
18 academic performance and graduation rates and so
19 on, we have substantially beat all of those, so
20 it’s hard to elicit from that the conclusion that
21 class size alone is the dependent variable.
22 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: But when you talk
23 about what parents are looking for when you’re a
24 middle class family, a working class family, a
25 poor family, you want to feel that you are on the
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2 same par with Long Island.
3 MR. CERF: I understand that.
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: People in Floral
5 Park, in Assemblyman Weprin’s district, if you
6 live on one side of the street, you have 34
7 children in the class, and if you live on the
8 other, you have 18. So it’s true that on some
9 measures the city’s performance has increased and
10 we are, all of us, deeply grateful that the
11 amount of money that the state has put in to the
12 public schools is huge, beyond measure, $21
13 billion. It’s beyond measure of my brain,
14 certainly, to understand it. And I guess, I will
15 repeat a little bit of what I said in that same
16 article, as a parent, and someone who endorsed
17 mayoral control, I don’t understand why they’re
18 still programming the high schools with the 36
19 kids because they know, “they,” meaning the DOE,
20 that they’ll be 10 of them dropping out by
21 October.
22 So it’s frustrating for us and it’s a key
23 issues, particularly when we see the performance
24 of the middle schools. I want to say again
25 something that I’ve said before. Everybody love
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2 an adorable kindergarten student, but the
3 difficult eighth grader whose a little fresh,
4 that’s another challenge, and so when we look at
5 these problems I, myself, am not feeling and not
6 seeing the resolution for the middle school
7 grades and high school grades that I expected,
8 not as an assemblywoman, as a parent myself. I’m
9 not seeing it. I guess maybe class size is the
10 expression of that frustration because it’s
11 simple to understand.
12 MR. WALCOTT: Just to respond to a
13 couple of things and just to reinforce Chris’
14 point.
15 One of the things that we firmly believe
16 in is the ability to follow the law and we will
17 comply with the law. What Chris is talking about
18 is just the multilayer issues that we have to
19 address like any system in making sure that we
20 comply with the law to make sure we also improve
21 teacher quality.
22 Going to the point that you raise around
23 both middle schools and high schools, with middle
24 schools, as you know, assemblywoman, we’ve
25 created the middle school success program under
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2 Dr. Marsha Lyles, and that’s been working very
3 well, and she’s sitting in the audience, and we
4 can have a separate session talking about our
5 work in middle schools.
6 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We will.
7 MR. WALCOTT: And we look forward to
8 that.
9 And the other piece as you well know is
10 the difficulty when you talk about high schools
11 of the ability to build high schools, to cite
12 high schools, and what that means especially in
13 overcrowded districts, and the type of resistance
14 that we receive in building that, and I think
15 again, while we didn’t talk about today, that’s
16 one of the other strengths of what we have in
17 place now with the current system and trying to
18 make sure that we target areas of overcrowded
19 neighborhoods to build schools, whether they’re
20 high schools, middle schools, or elementary
21 schools.
22 And the final thing, and I know you’re
23 ending our panel, is that we look forward to
24 coming back separate and apart of this discussion
25 around mayoral control to discuss issues. It’s a
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2 long time in coming. We are here as a result of
3 that, and we will get into specific topics of
4 concerns by the members and also show where we
5 need to do better and I think that will go a long
6 way as far as making sure we keep that gap and
7 open up that communication.
8 Thank you.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. We will
10 follow up in all of those areas. I want to thank
11 you and thank the indulgence of our audience for
12 such a lengthy session.
13 I would like to call Jesse Mojica from
14 the Director of Education Policy from the Bronx
15 Borough President, if they are still here, and I
16 recognize that maybe some people had to leave
17 testimony, people can come back, we’re going to
18 try to accommodate people.
19 Katherine Eckstein and Alana Riley from
20 the Children’s Aid Society; Rosanna Rosado, the
21 publisher and CEO of El Diario; and Sy Fliegel,
22 the executive director for the Center for
23 Educational Innovation, Public Education
24 Association, if they can come up front and get to
25 the panel, that would be great.
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2 In the on-deck circle is Jane Hirschman,
3 the co-chair of Time Out from Testing; Ann Cook,
4 the co-director of the New York Performance
5 Standards Consortium; and Pablo Villavicencio,
6 Academic Dean, Urban Science Academy.
7 I want to thank everyone again for their
8 testimony. I’m going to ask, assemblymen, please
9 understand I’m just slipping out for a minute.
10 Assemblyman Benedetto is going to chair the
11 hearing for those few minutes, and if you would
12 like to start, do you have any preference? Go
13 ahead.
14 MR. MOJICA: Good afternoon, Chairperson
15 Nolan and members of the New York State Assembly
16 Education Committee.
17 My name is Jesse Mojica and I’m the
18 director of education policy for the Bronx
19 Borough President. On behalf of acting borough
20 president Earl Brown, I thank the committee for
21 the opportunity to add our voice to this very
22 important conversation on mayoral control.
23 In September of 2007, at the request of
24 Assemblywoman Nolan, the commission on school
25 governance was appointed by public advocate Betsy
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2 Gotbaum. The commission’s purpose was to reach
3 out and solicit input from a wide and diverse
4 group of citizens, organizations, educators,
5 experts, and public officials about their
6 thoughts on mayoral control.
7 The panel conducted parent forums in each
8 of the five boroughs. Our office was pleased to
9 host the commission for the Bronx forum and felt
10 the conversation and structure of the meeting was
11 both productive and informative.
12 There are two findings and
13 recommendations that came out of the commission’s
14 report that our office would like to highlight at
15 today’s hearing and propose to the committee for
16 their consideration. The first quote from the
17 commission’s report, “mayoral control of the
18 schools should be maintained so the mayor can
19 remain the principal public official who charts
20 the direction of the school system and through
21 the chancellor is ultimately responsible for
22 operating the schools on a day-to-day basis.”
23 Putting policy disagreements aside for
24 one moment. Our office agrees that having the
25 mayor in charge of the school system has focused
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2 greater attention, emphasis and action onto the
3 issues of education within the New York City
4 public school system. Education spending has
5 increased dramatically since mayoral control, and
6 the school system has seen greater reform and
7 attention throughout this time than in any period
8 in recent history.
9 For too many years, generation upon
10 generation of children, who are often the victims
11 of a removable system that was often disabled by
12 its own bureaucracies and inefficiencies, we can
13 never go back to the failed structures of the
14 past and since education of our children is our
15 city’s greatest responsibility, we must allow its
16 leader to maintain control of the system and hold
17 that leader accountable.
18 However, progress has been made
19 throughout the system since 2002 but progress
20 does not mean perfection. The commission’s
21 finding also stated the following: “the law
22 needs to be revised to ensure more opportunity
23 for meaningful input by parents and communities
24 and education decision-making.”
25 Since the beginning of mayoral control,
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2 we have heard from many individuals who have
3 expressed their frustration in having their
4 voices and ideas absent from policy discussion
5 and decisions. Community education councils
6 replaced old school boards, but were not given
7 the power of the vote, thus leaving many who
8 serve on the councils frustrated.
9 In addition, many parents and community
10 members felt that the composition of the panel
11 for educational policy where the mayor appoints
12 the majority of the members to the panel,
13 discourages healthy debate and does not
14 facilitate the emergence of different points of
15 view on Department of Education policy.
16 Parents and communities are in need of a
17 representative body that is on the front line of
18 the policy conversation with the vote attached to
19 ensure impact. Restructuring the panel where the
20 mayor does not have the majority of appointments
21 would, in our opinion allow for greater debate
22 and conversation amongst all stakeholders as well
23 as ensure the inclusion of the necessary checks
24 and balances that are needed within any
25 organization.
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2 I thank the committee for the opportunity
3 to express our opinion on this important matter.
4 Thank you very much.
5 MS. ECKSTEIN: Good afternoon. My name
6 is Katherine Eckstein and I’m the director of
7 public policy of the Children’s Aid Society. I
8 would like to thank Chair Nolan and all members
9 of the Education Committee for giving us the
10 opportunity to testify today.
11 The Children’s Aid Society, which was
12 founded in 1853, provides comprehensive services
13 for more than 100,000 of New York City’s children
14 and families. You should have my full testimony
15 in front of you today so I’m not going to read
16 it, but I will summarize its main points. I know
17 there are many many people who have lots of
18 important things to say.
19 The Children’s Aid Society comes to this
20 issue with 20 years of experience partnering with
21 New York City public schools. We have worked
22 with eight chancellors and four mayors. We have
23 worked with district superintendents and
24 community boards, CECs, school support
25 organizations and Empowerment Zones. We have
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2 many beliefs about the school system, how it was
3 run and how it is being run. We support mayoral
4 control of the public schools, and there are two
5 issues about which we care very deeply that we
6 hope will inform decisions moving forward.
7 The first, and I think we’ve heard so
8 much about it this morning, and I will just
9 highlight a couple of points, is the need to
10 increase multiple opportunities for authentic
11 parent and community engagement in schools. When
12 we say parents, we mean families, and when we say
13 communities, we mean community members,
14 community-based organizations, businesses, higher
15 education, health providers, et cetera.
16 The second point about which we care very
17 deeply is one promise of mayoral control that we
18 believe has yet to be realized and that is the
19 opportunity to harness the power of city agencies
20 to respond in an integrated and coordinated way
21 to the real and multiple needs that children and
22 families have using schools as the vehicle to do
23 that.
24 So, before I speak briefly about parent
25 and community engagement, I want to talk a little
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2 bit about our context working in public schools.
3 We partner directly in 20 public schools in New
4 York City, and some of them are in your districts
5 in what we call community schools, and we define
6 community schools as schools that combine
7 educational opportunities for children with a
8 wide range of enrichment and social service
9 opportunities for them, so this includes
10 comprehensive after school programs, sometimes
11 medical clinics, parent engagement programs, et
12 cetera.
13 In each and every one of our schools is a
14 community school director and that person acts as
15 the partner to the principal to really organize
16 all of the non-academic resources in the school
17 because we know that principals have so much on
18 their plates dealing with teaching and learning.
19 We know that schools can’t do it alone
20 and that we need to combine the resources of the
21 human services sector and the education sector to
22 address the needs of children and families, and
23 results from our own work and the work of
24 community schools all over the country have shown
25 good results for kids; increase in student
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2 achievement, increase in attendance, increase in
3 parent engagement.
4 So when we speak about parent engagement
5 and this is the first issue that I would like to
6 talk briefly about. We believe that parents
7 should and can be respected and welcomed as
8 leaders, teachers, learners, and advocates. We
9 want to help parents be advocates in support of
10 good schools, and we’ve been working in schools
11 on parent engagement, as I said, for over 20
12 years.
13 We have seen parents discouraged and
14 angry when decisions are made about their
15 children’s schools with little or no input from
16 families or the community. We’ve heard people
17 talk about how frustrating it is when decisions
18 are made about school closings.
19 While ultimately it might be the best
20 decision, and we’re not here to talk about
21 whether it is a good decision or not, I think
22 what’s important here is that parents need to not
23 just be informed about the decision, but to be
24 involved in the discussion. I think providing
25 opportunities for authentic engagement, such as a
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2 well functioning school leadership team, and
3 parent guardian associations are a really good
4 start.
5 Folks have talked about the need for a
6 parent academy. I think we have a really good
7 model of that in Washington Heights. It’s called
8 the parent leadership institute. It has a focus
9 on two things. It’s education for parents and
10 it’s leadership and advocacy for parents. We’d
11 love to have a conversation about what that
12 means, what would it mean to do this in districts
13 around the city.
14 But this Parent Leadership Institute has
15 done things like partnered with the City Bar
16 Association to have an immigration clinic in a
17 school; or organized a green market, and it’s
18 happened at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School
19 here in the Bronx to address issues of childhood
20 obesity, because we know that all of these other
21 factors impact how children do in school and
22 impact student outcome.
23 I note these parent and community
24 engagement models because we believe that there
25 are schools in the system, we know that there are
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2 schools in the system, often in partnership with
3 community based organizations that are
4 demonstrating great success in this area, and it
5 needs to be an intentional strategy moving
6 forward.
7 The second area I would like to address
8 is often left out of conversations regarding
9 mayoral control and that is harnessing the
10 resources of all city agencies using schools as
11 vehicles to address the very real needs of
12 children and families.
13 Our experience has taught us that if a
14 child is depressed, hungry, scared of walking to
15 and from school, has chronic asthma, is homeless,
16 or whose parents are abusive or neglectful, will
17 not be able to take advantage of the
18 opportunities in school even if schools have the
19 most innovative teaching, the smallest classrooms
20 and the most up to date curricula.
21 Often these services exist in communities
22 but parents don’t know how to access these
23 services and they’re not coordinated with the
24 schools. So systemic problems, such as early
25 chronic absenteeism, and that is that 90,000 in
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2 New York City between grades K to 5 are missing a
3 month or more of school a year, 90,000 children.
4 That’s a systemic problem and it demands a
5 systemic solution.
6 We believe that mayoral leadership can
7 facilitate the kind of coordination and
8 integration that is necessary to tackle these
9 problems. Multiple agencies have to be involved
10 in the solution and we think that one example of
11 this, and we would like to see many more examples
12 of this, and that is the city’s out of school
13 time initiative, which has created many many
14 after-school programs in New York City, and is a
15 partnership between the Department of Community
16 and Youth Development and the Department of
17 Education.
18 We know that during these very tough
19 economic times, families who are already
20 vulnerable are suffering the most. Because we
21 know that there isn’t just one factor that
22 contributes to children not succeeding in school,
23 we need a multi-sector, cross agency coordinated
24 response.
25 We would like to see city commissioners
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2 and the chancellor held accountable by the mayor
3 to think and plan innovatively together about how
4 to relocate certain services into schools. Think
5 of what it would mean if the mayor declared that
6 1.1 million children in New York City public
7 schools should have health insurance, and then
8 mobilize the Department of Health to locate
9 facilitated enrollers in those schools. Or maybe
10 this means redeploying housing workers into
11 schools with particularly high family
12 mobilization rates.
13 The secretary of education, the new
14 secretary of education in this country, Arnie
15 Duncan, presided over the largest community
16 school’s initiative in this country, 150 schools
17 in Chicago when he was CEO of Chicago public
18 schools, which is another city with mayoral
19 control. We know it’s possible and it’s time for
20 New York to catch on.
21 So as you, honorable members of the
22 legislature, make the decision about the
23 governance of New York City public schools,
24 please remember that we need parents and
25 communities to be authentically engaged in
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2 schools and that in order for us to tackle the
3 very great challenges of our city, we need more
4 than the school system to make that happen. Both
5 of those we believe are possible under mayoral
6 control.
7 Thank you so much for giving me the
8 opportunity to speak this morning.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I want to thank you
10 and I want to say to you that I did have an
11 opportunity to meet some people from Children’s
12 Aid this week in Albany, so I don’t want you to
13 think I didn’t – some of it we went over, but I
14 just had to run out for a minute.
15 So thank you very much. And to our
16 friend from the borough president’s office, we
17 will get your copy of the written testimony and
18 make sure it’s included. Thank you.
19 MS. ECKSTEIN: Thank you.
20 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: You can start.
21 MS. RILEY: Good afternoon. I would
22 like to thank you for giving me the opportunity
23 to speak here today. My name is Alana Riley and
24 my daughter is a student at Herman Ridder Middle
25 School, IS-98 in the Bronx.
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2 My daughter has attended this school
3 since the fifth grade. She is now in the eighth
4 grade. IS-98 is a Children’s Aid Society
5 Community School. She has been part of the
6 Children’s Aid Society’s after-school program for
7 three years.
8 Sometimes as a parent it is difficult to
9 be involved in your child’s education. Single
10 parents often work full-time jobs and don’t have
11 time to be as present as they would like. There
12 are people in schools who make it difficult to
13 get questions answered and who act as barriers,
14 and there are parents who don’t take the time out
15 to find out what their children’s interests are
16 in school.
17 Having an after-school program inside of
18 my daughter’s school not only made it easier for
19 me to be become more involved, it made my
20 daughter more interested in school as well.
21 Seeing my daughter begin to excel in her grades
22 and take part in extracurricular activities like
23 Youth Council made me more interested in what she
24 was doing.
25 In Youth Council she has gained
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2 confidence and leadership skills. I was welcomed
3 with open arms in a way that I hadn’t been before
4 in any other schools my daughter attended. I
5 begin to attend more school functions and begin
6 to build a relationship with her day school
7 teachers as well as the community school
8 director, and the director of the after-school
9 program.
10 From this relationship, I just started to
11 work at my daughter’s school for the after-school
12 program. My role is to reach out to parents and
13 to connect them and their children with resources
14 through workshops and community service acts. So
15 many parents don’t know who to go to to talk
16 about resources. Taking on this role makes me,
17 as well as my daughter, feel confident and
18 comfortable about being in the school. I hope
19 that through my involvement, it will encourage
20 other parents ;to come out and be a part of their
21 children’s education.
22 All most parents care is that our
23 children get a quality education. We want to
24 feel welcome in our children’s schools, and we
25 want to have the opportunity to voice our
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2 opinions and have people listen. We want to be
3 involved in big decisions made about our schools
4 and our children.
5 I can only speak from my experience, but
6 being in a community school has helped me become
7 much more involved in my daughter’s education.
8 Thank you.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
10 Are you active in a PTA yourself?
11 MS. RILEY: I am actually the parent
12 coordinator for the Children’s Aid Society.
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
14 MS. ROSADO: Good afternoon. Thank you,
15 Chairwoman Nolan, and to all of you on the
16 Education Committee for convening these hearings
17 and for listening to my testimony today.
18 My name is Rosanna Rosado and I am the
19 publisher of El Diario, the largest Spanish
20 language newspaper in New York and the oldest in
21 the country.
22 I have never testified before an assembly
23 hearing before.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We’re honored to have
25 you here.
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2 MS. ROSADO: Which shows how important
3 this issue is to me. I want to start by letting
4 you know that I’m a proud product of the New York
5 City school system. I know the New York schools
6 can work because they worked for me and I
7 graduated from Adlai E. Stevenson High School,
8 and I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I was in
9 the class of 1979, so you don’t have to figure
10 that out.
11 I remember the push for decentralization
12 and I saw over the years how it did not work at
13 least the way we intended it to.
14 A few years ago, almost a decade ago, we
15 were dealing with 32 neighborhood school boards.
16 Central Board of Education members were feuding
17 with each other and whoever the chancellor
18 happened to be at the time. And no one really
19 had ownership over the kids, the actual kids in
20 the school and in the neighborhood.
21 As a mom, I didn’t feel I could send my
22 own children to our local schools. I could not
23 get a meeting with the principal of PS-69 where
24 my son was zoned to go.
25 Our schools got to a point of desperation
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2 and we demanded accountability and the
3 legislature knew it, which is when you all
4 stepped in and rightly decided that we could not
5 go one more day in that old system,
6 accountability is the reason that I believe
7 mayoral control can work. When my sister, whose
8 kids are younger than mine decided she could
9 probably send her children to IS-174 and PS-83, I
10 knew that the schools had gotten better. My
11 nephew is at the Bronx School of Visual Arts
12 right now.
13 Some say they want to renew mayoral
14 control with just a few small changes, and I
15 think changes are good and necessary. But when
16 changes completely destroy the main feature of
17 the system which is to have a central point of
18 accountability, I don’t think that’s a small
19 change, and when we talk about checks and
20 balances, we want to, I think, maintain the
21 control of – you know, the mayoral control and
22 the control of one person who we hold
23 accountable.
24 I don’t think you can have it both ways.
25 Either one person is in charge or no one is. I
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2 believe that community input is important, is
3 imperative, but these new proposals, some of them
4 are implying that the only way to get parental
5 involvement is through a political process, and
6 this should not be a political process. I really
7 believe it has to be about the children. I’ve
8 always said that everyone in the school building
9 has a union except for the children. I don’t
10 think that the implementation has been perfect,
11 and I believe we have to increase transparency
12 and more to engage parents.
13 We’ve heard a lot about parental
14 involvement and I think the key issue is parental
15 access to information. I think that the
16 Department of Education has failed in that
17 subject but we don’t kick out a kid from school
18 for failing one subject and we should not undo
19 mayoral control for its flaws.
20 I also respectfully disagree with the
21 administration no the cell phone ban, that’s just
22 my pet peeve, but I think we need the chancellor
23 to hear what parents think before making policy
24 changes, and I would respectfully suggest to this
25 committee that in future hearings you have the
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2 DOE people sitting there listening to parents
3 testify first and put them on last, and maybe
4 they’ll hear some things and learn some things.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We certainly tried to
6 achieve that. I’ll let you use your great
7 influence to suggest it.
8 MS. ROSADO: Today parents are engaged
9 in a real high school selection process that just
10 10 years ago was impossible, so I want to be
11 brief. After everything that I’ve seen, I
12 believe we must have accountability and put in
13 control of our schools with the mayor, whoever
14 the mayor happens to be, demands accountability,
15 building a system designed to support and protect
16 our most vulnerable communities will force any
17 mayor, should force any mayor to be an education
18 mayor.
19 So I urge you to renew and reinvigorate
20 the efforts to improve public school education in
21 New York City.
22 Gracias.
23 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
24 I apologize. I carried this cold through all
25 the hearings, and I never get that day off to see
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2 the doctor.
3 Anybody on this side have a question?
4 Go ahead, Naomi.
5 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: Thank you for
6 testifying here today and being here with us.
7 I heard you say that you – I think in
8 your testimony you said that you would agree that
9 the number of appointees by the mayor should be
10 fewer, is that what you said, not the majority?
11 MR. MOJICA: Correct.
12 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: Let me ask you
13 because – having members of the panel on
14 education policy serve at the pleasure of the
15 official school appoint them, some say undermine
16 the independence of the panel, and we understand
17 that each of the borough presidents also have a
18 selection.
19 What would you say to that?
20 MR. MOJICA: I have the experience of
21 being a member on the panel. I was a member of
22 the panel from 2004 to 2006, assemblywoman, and
23 never once did I feel, as a representative of the
24 Office of the Borough President, that I wasn’t
25 serving the best interest of the constituents
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2 that came to us.
3 I think that there is – as was said
4 before, we hear from our constituents. We hear
5 from the people that we serve, and their issues
6 are brought to us, and those issues are weighed
7 into what our decisions are going to be. So I
8 didn’t feel as a member of the panel – I felt
9 that that actually was an asset, where, as a
10 member of PEP, I was hearing from the Bronx
11 community, I was hearing from those who represent
12 the Bronx community and was bringing forth those
13 points of view to PEP, and our feeling is that as
14 we’re having this conversation today, on a
15 variety of different issues, and it’s been an
16 exhilarating conversation, but so many different
17 issues have come up.
18 This type of discourse, this type of
19 conversation is best served also at the panel
20 level where there could be a to and fro and that
21 where there isn’t – where everyone’s point of
22 view has an opportunity to advance -
23 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: Let me ask you,
24 and I hope you can be candid, having the
25 chancellor chair the PEP, some say that he should
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2 be an ex officio member serving on the panel.
3 What do you say to that?
4 MR. MOJICA: I don’t have a disagreement
5 with the chancellor serving as the chair of the
6 PEP, I don’t.
7 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: And having the
8 authority to vote.
9 MR. MOJICA: I don’t have an opposition
10 to that. What our concerns are, Assemblywoman,
11 is to even the balance. I do believe, and I
12 understand the fear that we don’t want to go back
13 to the past where we create a bureaucratic engine
14 to stall progress, but I do feel that having a
15 body that decides on education policy, that we
16 can have a vibrant discourse, as we’re having
17 today, and responsibly come back with a decision,
18 and then having different points of view, and
19 having an honest discourse only strengthens, I
20 feel, strengthens policy, and adds everyone’s
21 voice to the discussion.
22 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: And how do you
23 feel to the idea that members of the panel should
24 serve for fixed terms?
25 MR. MOJICA: I think that it’s a fair
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2 point, assemblywoman, I think it’s a fair point.
3 I served at the pleasure of the borough
4 president, but I think it’s a fair point to have
5 a limit to when someone can serve and I think
6 that new ideas and fresh ideas are always
7 important. In our audience right now we have our
8 new representative to the panel, Ms. Ana Santos,
9 and it’s important to have different points of
10 view and I wouldn’t oppose that, I think that’s a
11 good, fair point.
12 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: Thank you.
13 I’m going to ask one more question. I
14 have to run actually to pick up my son. I know
15 what it’s like to be a working mother, in Albany
16 four days of the week, and this is the one day I
17 get to pick him up from school so he doesn’t have
18 to go to after school.
19 Katherine, you mentioned a systemic
20 problem about 90,000 children who miss 30 days of
21 school, and this is an approximation.
22 Let me ask you, has that number increased
23 or decreased or remained stagnant during the time
24 of mayoral control?
25 MS. ECKSTEIN: I don’t know the answer
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2 to that question. That number – what my
3 understanding – it came out in a report by the
4 Center for New York City Affairs at Molano, The
5 New School, and, to my understanding, neither
6 advocates, nor academics, nor the system had
7 looked at chronic early absence numbers in those
8 ways before, so probably one could go back in the
9 system to see if it’s improved or has not
10 improved.
11 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: Chairperson, I
12 think that would be some data that we should have
13 some access to if we could. Thank you.
14 MS. ECKSTEIN: So I know now that as
15 everyone has now become aware that the report
16 came out in October, as folks are now aware of
17 the issue, both the department and a number of
18 partners are trying to figure out how to address
19 this, but, as I said, I think it’s a much bigger
20 issue than just the department can handle alone.
21 ASSEMBLYWOMAN RIVERA: And to Ms. Riley
22 and Rosanna Rosado, thank you for testifying
23 before us today, we do appreciate your
24 information, your welcomed information.
25 Thank you.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you,
3 Assemblywoman Rivera.
4 Assemblywoman Green has a question also.
5 I recently met with the Children’s Aid Society
6 in Albany and I understand we’re going to be
7 meeting with one in New York which Ms. Rosado
8 serves on the board of. So we look forward to
9 the continuing dialogue.
10 Assemblywoman Greene has a question.
11 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Yes. It’s
12 addressed to Ms. Rosado, because in your
13 testimony you testified that you were involved
14 with our efforts way back for community control.
15 Do you feel that mayoral control has
16 achieved that goal?
17 MS. ROSADO: I think – well, it took us
18 a long time to judge decentralization, I think
19 like over 25 years, and I think that seven years
20 is not a long period of time to kind of judge it
21 along the same standards, and this is all my
22 personal opinion, I’m not an expert on anything
23 except what I’m briefed on. But – the paper has
24 been supportive of mayoral control because of the
25 dysfunction of the system as it was. It drove my
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2 paper, which services a very diverse community,
3 to support the creation of charter schools, and
4 also to support school vouchers, which is kind of
5 radical for a paper like ours, but we felt that
6 some – some people felt like, we want to fix the
7 system, but we can’t sacrifice our own kids in
8 order to do it, so the positive things that we’ve
9 seen out of this structural change are still
10 positive even though we have a lot of problems
11 with some of the stuff that hasn’t worked which
12 all the problems that you’ve heard in that you
13 guys are much more schooled in.
14 For example, I had a young man who was a
15 junior in high school start an internship, he was
16 going to do a six-week internship at the paper in
17 my office and in the newsroom. He started
18 yesterday, and he’s 15, 16, he’s junior. But he
19 came to this country only when he was 13 from
20 Honduras. He came to us from a school called the
21 Bromda Aruda Academy which is one of the small
22 high schools that have been set up, so it was his
23 first day of work. His English has really
24 improved, obviously he’s only been here for like
25 three years, but his Spanish is perfect, and he’s
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2 in a newsroom where he’s speaking Spanish anyway.
3 It turns out at the end of day that the school
4 is one of the small schools like Stevenson High
5 School which is the school that I graduated from.
6 Just ten years ago, we couldn’t even get
7 anyone to do principal for a day at Stevenson
8 High School, the school had such a bad
9 reputation. I used to brag about it being at the
10 list of the worst schools in the city and I
11 graduated from there back in the ‘70s.
12 So I see the positive change in the kind
13 of kids that we’re getting and the kid who has
14 been here for three years and is excelling, has
15 some language issues, but can still do an
16 internship and still graduate on time, and those
17 are kind of the anecdotal things that tell me
18 that there has been improvement, and that’s not
19 to say that it’s a perfect structure, but I would
20 hope that it doesn’t take us 25 years to judge
21 this as it did with decentralization so I think
22 this process is very important and we’re right to
23 take their feet the fire on the implementation.
24 By the same token, I wouldn’t throw the
25 baby out with the bathwater because we’re making
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2 progress, and I see the evidence in the kids that
3 we’re seeing.
4 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: So do you agree
5 with me that we need to put in a sunset on this
6 if we do extend mayoral control?
7 MS. ROSADO: I agree that you should put
8 parameters around mayoral control, yes, I would
9 do that with any system, change and stuff, and
10 I’m not schooled on the details of it, and I’m
11 not sure what the sunset is -
12 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: That’s just to
13 put a time limit like we’re doing now to review.
14 MS. ROSADO: I congratulate you on the
15 process, I think that this is a good process, and
16 I don’t think that any government entity should
17 be defensive about the problems that, you know,
18 anything s going to have after seven-year
19 implementation in not a perfect world.
20 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Thank you.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
22 As I said, we look forward, as I said, to more
23 of a dialogue and maybe you can influence them to
24 stay, they flew out of here, so that’s one reason
25 we put some parents on first. That’s what was
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2 happening at the other hearings and people were
3 just going crazy. So we’re trying to balance out
4 all those factors. It’s a lot of fun, I can’t
5 complain. I have a fifth grader who is getting
6 picked up by a friend of mine today so I’m hoping
7 all will go well. So I understand that it is to
8 want your child to have the best and making the
9 sacrifices we all make as working moms.
10 Thank you all very much.
11 Jane Hirschmann, Time Out from Testing;
12 Ann Cook, New York Performance Standards
13 Consortium; Pablo Villavicencio, Academic Dean,
14 Urban Science; and then Eric Contreras and Ann
15 Keegan, if they’re here.
16 Let me just say again, this panel is Jane
17 Hirschmann, who I see, Ann Cook, Pablo –
18 MS. HIRSCHMANN: He’s not on this panel.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Not here?
20 MS. HIRSCHMANN: I don’t know if he’s
21 here.
22 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Eric Contreras? Do
23 you want to come down, why don’t you do that?
24 And Ann Keegan. Okay. Some people had to leave.
25 Louie Torres, Principal of PS-55; Jason Levy,
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2 Principal, CIS 339; Mark Sternberg, Principal,
3 Bronx Lab School; Dakota Keyes, Principal, PS
4 272; Felice Lepore, Principal, Urban Assembly;
5 Elizabeth Lawrence, Principal, MS 118; Maria
6 Cruz, Assistant Principal, PS 33.
7 I’ll call them again, we have a group of
8 principals and school leaders that will be next.
9 Why don’t we start with Ms. Hirschmann.
10 It’s good to see you again.
11 MS. HIRSCHMANN: It’s good to see you,
12 and Ann and I are presenting as a panel of what’s
13 wrong and what to do about it,
14 I think the question before you is quite
15 simple. I guess you’re surprised to hear that,
16 but the question really is, has mayoral control
17 made our schools better, our children better
18 educated because of the mayor, and if the answer
19 is yes, obviously you should give the mayor all
20 the power that he needs and wants.
21 If the answer is a resounding no, then I
22 think it behooves you to really look at it and
23 overhaul it and change it drastically.
24 In order to answer this question, it is
25 important to look at the facts and the reality,
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2 not the spin. I think you heard this morning the
3 spin. What one of you have asked the panel from
4 the Department of Education, what’s your budget,
5 PR budget, and how many people work for you.
6 I’m surprised they couldn’t tell you
7 because we know that information. They have 14
8 people working in the PR department and they have
9 a budget of $1.3 million. They’re spin has been
10 very good. They have sold around the country,
11 that we have here, the New York Miracle. Perhaps
12 after I speak, you’ll realize it’s really the New
13 York Disaster.
14 Testing and data collection has been at
15 the heart, the center piece of the Bloomberg
16 administration and that makes total sense because
17 he’s a businessman, he’s not an educator.
18 Businessmen know data, so he is very very
19 concerned about collecting data and his testing
20 scores measures students, measures schools,
21 determines promotions, dole out bonuses, and
22 judge success, including his own.
23 So I think we have to start by saying,
24 are test scores up? The mayor would say yes. He
25 boasted recently of a 6.9 percent rise in English
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2 test scores, and what he didn’t tell you and what
3 the department doesn’t tell you is that he says
4 we’re on par with the suburbs, but what he didn’t
5 tell you is that the five major other cities in
6 New York have greater increases; Buffalo, 12.4;
7 Rochester, 8.2; Syracuse, 8 percent; and those
8 gains were not made with giving cash, huge
9 amounts of cash to McGraw Hill and ETS and hiring
10 paid CEOs that New Yorkers had to endure.
11 But I think that the most important
12 statistic is to look at our eighth graders today
13 because our eighth graders, he is totally
14 responsible for. They came in when he came in
15 and they’re outcomes are totally flat. The NAEP,
16 I’m sure you know, the National Assessment of
17 Educational Progress, the gold standard, the
18 national gold standard of testing said, there has
19 been no progress shown in reading and math since
20 mayoral control went into effect. No significant
21 narrowing of test scores between white children
22 and children of color, and, furthermore, the
23 scores in fourth and eighth grade reading and
24 eighth grade math remain totally totally flat.
25 Is this what you consider mayoral
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2 success? I really mean it. Look at the eighth
3 graders because he’s responsible for them.
4 Are our children graduating at higher
5 rates? That’s important to look at. The mayor
6 says yes. The fact is that we only graduate 34
7 percent of our Black and Latino students. Does
8 everybody understand that that is the fact?
9 Recently, the Harvard Civil Rights project did a
10 study in the country and they declared that New
11 York is last in the country, behind Mississippi
12 and South Carolina to graduate our children of
13 color. This is very very serious.
14 Last year, one third of our children of
15 color received a Regent’s diploma. Now, his spin
16 says that we graduate 60 percent of our children.
17 How did he get to 60 percent. Well, when you
18 don’t count 18,000 discharge students, you don’t
19 count children with IEPs, but you do count
20 children who have GEDs, who are not even in the
21 system, and then you add a program that New York
22 City has just added called credit recovery. A
23 child who does not have enough credits to
24 graduate can sit at home, work for ten hours,
25 write three essays and get credit to graduate.
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2 The state ed department is now looking into this
3 program. That is how you get 60 percent.
4 When the real fact is that we graduate a
5 little less than 50 percent of our students, but
6 only 34 percent of our Black and Latino students.
7 So is this what you would consider mayoral
8 success?
9 How are our children doing at college?
10 Well, there was just a study that came out of
11 CUNY’s two year colleges. They determined that
12 83 percent of the incoming freshman, mostly New
13 York City school children had failed the
14 placement test, and needed remediation in
15 reading, writing and math. Is that mayoral
16 success?
17 Let’s look at, has he really narrowed the
18 achievement gap, because that’s what he says he
19 can do and he promised that to us. First of all,
20 the specialized high schools, contrary to the
21 spin of the DOE, fewer and fewer children of
22 color are entering those schools. Let’s look at
23 the gifted and talented program. This year’s
24 kindergarten class has the lowest number of
25 children of color than ever before. Is this
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2 mayoral success?
3 Let’s look at Anenberg Institute. They
4 have just done a report that says that it is
5 expected that 12,000 more children every year
6 will drop out because there’s an end to local
7 diplomas now as of this entering class, 12,000
8 more of our children. Is this mayoral success.
9 Then, of course, I do want to mention
10 overcrowding at schools and how the charter
11 schools have creamed from the top and removed the
12 highest performing children as you so well
13 pointed out, that there are no children who are
14 in special ed, there are no children who are ELL
15 children. They have taken the highest
16 performance children from these neighborhoods and
17 left the local schools bereft. Is this mayoral
18 success?
19 Has the mayor made sure that our hard
20 earned tax monies have gone to teachers, support
21 professional development, and classroom
22 instruction? Every day we’re bombarded with the
23 news, the latest fiasco, the no-bid contracts,
24 the DOE hirings, the salaries run a muck. The
25 latest was the 371,000 given to Eva Moskowitz,
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2 the money wasted in oversight. I will just name
3 a few how they have wasted our money, 80 million
4 to IBM to set up a computer system called ARIS
5 which still does not work correctly and which is
6 a duplication of the state’s, the state has a
7 system that tracks our children’s data, but 80
8 million to IBM.
9 80 million to McGraw Hill for periodic
10 assessment tests. That’s the six week test to
11 prepare your children for more tests. They have
12 not delivered on their contracts, they were not
13 able to set it up right, and yet they got paid
14 just the same.
15 21 million over two years to Champion
16 Learning, and I know this program personally,
17 because two of my children applied and go in as
18 tutors and then they said that they refused to
19 tutor in this environment of test, test, testing.
20 They got 21 million, yet their contract says
21 that they’re supposed to pay these tutors $79.
22 My kids got paid $15 and the rest got pocketed by
23 Champion Learning. This is where our money is
24 going to.
25 At this moment, these kids who are hired,
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2 including my own kids, they have no kids to tutor
3 since January. There’s not a pool of kids to
4 tutor. Is this mayoral success?
5 5 million for a courier system that
6 delivered one piece of paper to the principals,
7 one piece of paper, they sent by courier, at a
8 time when we have to cut back in the schools,
9 they go on with their private couriers. Is this
10 success?
11 100 new positions filled by central
12 staff, the staff at the chancellor’s office is
13 doubled, the accountability office has exploded
14 while we are all cutting back in the school.
15 Two million to Accenture, a consulting
16 giant whose bid was four times higher than any
17 other bid, and we all know about the bus fiasco,
18 the 15.8 million which ended up leaving our
19 children on the streets during the dead of
20 winter, 15.8 million.
21 And, finally, the last statistic which
22 one of you tried to get out of the DOE, but they
23 never had these available, we have all their
24 statistics, $400 million this year in consulting
25 fees. That’s 33 million more than the total
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2 staff at Tweed, might as well get rid of Tweed if
3 they need all these consultants.
4 How many teachers could we have hired
5 with that money? How many schools could we have
6 opened? $400 million just this year. My list
7 could go on and on, and I will not continue.
8 But the question to you is this, is this
9 what you consider mayoral success?
10 And, finally, the most important point,
11 are our children better educated and are the
12 standards higher? I sort of want to wait a
13 second because this last point is really crucial
14 and I wanted you to hear it, assemblywoman.
15 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Please don’t do that.
16 Please finish your testimony.
17 MS. HIRSCHMANN: The most important
18 point is are the children better educated, and we
19 had a discussion in the hall, and this was part
20 of our -
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: This is our fifth
22 hour of testimony. Please continue.
23 MS. HIRSCHMANN: I’m sorry. I want to
24 tell you how the tests are graded and you decide
25 if the standards are higher. For example, the
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2 math 2009 test that was just given. You would
3 think that a 65 meant 65 percent of the questions
4 were answered correctly. The way that they grade
5 the tests is that if the student got 31 questions
6 correct out of 87 questions, they would get a
7 passing grade of 65, that means that they only
8 have to answer 36 percent of the questions
9 correct to pass.
10 There’s a law of how many you can guess
11 and get correct. So this is the standard that
12 the mayor thinks is so wonderful for our
13 children. Why haven’t the private elite schools
14 bought into this system? They refuse to do this
15 high stakes testing and that is because we have
16 had and they know that with the curriculum, what
17 it really does is, we have to eliminate the arts,
18 music theatre class trips, any in-depth thinking,
19 any critical analysis because we don’t have time,
20 we have to train these kids for the tests.
21 I just want to finish by saying that
22 President Obama is sending his kids to a school
23 where 30 percent of their daily activity is given
24 over to enrichment. 30 percent. This is what we
25 want to for our children. These are the very
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2 programs that had been cut under mayoral control.
3 So the question is, is this the miracle we
4 deserve, and these aren’t idle questions, because
5 your decision is so critical for those of us who
6 have children in the New York City public school
7 system. We want what the Obama children have,
8 and we’re looking to you to help us get that, and
9 mayoral control is not the way.
10 Thank you.
11 MS. COOK: Before I start, I just want
12 to respond to a question that Assemblyman
13 Benjamin had. I got the statistics for what’s
14 happened at Bronx High School of Science in terms
15 of kids of color.
16 So 1999, Bronx Science had nine percent
17 African American kids. In 2008, they had four
18 percent. In 1999, they had nine percent Hispanic
19 kids, and 2008 they have seven. In 1999,
20 Stuyvesant had 3.7, and now they have two
21 percent. In 1999, they had 3.9 Hispanic, and now
22 they have three percent. And the biggest change
23 that surprised me was that at Brooklyn Tech where
24 in 1999, the African American kids made up 24
25 percent, and it dropped in 2008 to 18 percent.
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2 Hispanics went from 13 percent in 1999 to eight
3 percent.
4 I think, just to make sure we understand
5 how to put that into perspective, Mr. Walcott
6 indicated that those kids had gone to a lot of
7 these other schools. I think it would bear
8 looking at because my impression, from looking at
9 those screened schools, is that actually they are
10 not schools that have a high percentage of Black
11 and Latino youngsters. So something is happening
12 in terms of the preparation of those kids and I
13 think it is disturbing.
14 One other thing before I say a few words
15 about some ideas and, that is, there was mention
16 this morning about – there was a question I
17 believe about the 2003 issue with the retention
18 and the holdover, the social promotion.
19 That was a disturbing event because we
20 got told that there was social promotion rampant
21 in the system, and I would argue that if you
22 looked at the data at that time, that actually
23 was not the case, and the way you look at it is
24 look at the ninth graders, and if you had looked
25 at ninth graders in 2003 what you would have seen
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2 is that 40 percent of them were over age. They
3 entered ninth grade over age. So that tells you
4 at some point retained.
5 Now, retention is a very problematic
6 solution to children needing help because what
7 the data shows on retention is that if you hold
8 kids over once, you increase the possibility that
9 they will drop out by 50 percent. And if you
10 hold that same child over again, that percentage
11 goes up to 90 percent. So holding over,
12 retaining, is not necessarily a good educational
13 policy. There are other ways to help kids, and I
14 think we need to be looking at those, but to make
15 a sort of political issue out of social
16 promotion, I think, a, it wasn’t true, and, b,
17 it’s not a good solution.
18 So that brings me to the main point of
19 what I want to say and that is, you have a very
20 difficult task ahead of you, and the only thing I
21 would, as an educator hope you do, is keep
22 education at the center of your agenda. There
23 are a lot of issues, and we’ve heard a lot of
24 them, and I’m really impressed with the chair and
25 the whole issue around the question of class
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2 size, because that is in fact an issue that is
3 critically important to teaching, and learning,
4 and parents and kids, and that is at the heart of
5 the educational agenda, so I wanted to just
6 mention that.
7 As the pundits are daily reminding us, in
8 the midst of the current fiscal crisis, it’s
9 important to remember that it’s the lack of
10 regulation that got us here. Unregulated
11 anything is a bad idea. Unregulated mayoral
12 control of schools is no exception. The specific
13 details of the consequences, the unintended, and
14 intended, have been documented by all the
15 previous speakers before us, but the question is,
16 what do we do?
17 I think we’ve had a very good suggestion.
18 We’ve heard from the parents commission about
19 how to actually restructure so we can reintroduce
20 citizen participation and we can get democratic
21 rule brought back to the governance of schools,
22 and I think we just have to make sure that with
23 every proposal you consider, I urge you to
24 examine it through the lens of the central
25 question, does the recommendation or solution
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2 restore education to the center of the
3 educational agenda? No governance system is
4 worth adopting if it doesn’t consider how
5 teaching and learning, curriculum and
6 instruction, the centerpieces of schooling, are
7 served by whatever changes are made.
8 So I applaud the parent’s commission and
9 their checks and balances and their concern about
10 transparency and access. I think it’s the right
11 direction, and I think their ideas are very
12 sound.
13 I would say from a parent’s and a
14 teacher’s point of view, the most important thing
15 is the issue of teachers and instruction. The
16 current administration has sacrificed, I believe,
17 professional community, good teaching, and in-
18 depth curriculum for sake of data driven
19 algorithms and spreadsheets.
20 Let’s take school report cards. They
21 have been issued through a very complicated
22 algorithm, by the way, brought to us by Governor
23 Jebb Bush of Florida, which is where they came
24 from and the folks in Florida have now roundly
25 rejected them, we don’t seem to, and I want to
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2 just quote something that Warren Buffet said,
3 which I think is appropriate, he said, “some
4 skepticism about mathematical models is overdue.”
5 His advice, “beware of geeks bearing formulas.”
6 Good advice.
7 Think of the irony, highly salaried folks
8 who majored in business, law, or communications,
9 sitting in the Tweed building telling the
10 teachers of East New York and the South Bronx how
11 they should be running their classrooms and their
12 schools.
13 Now, learning is complex. I want to
14 focus on one aspect in the last part of my
15 remarks. Assessment, if learning is complex,
16 assessment should be too. Under mayoral control,
17 as Assemblyman Weprin pointed out, this
18 administration has placed far too much emphasis
19 on the use of high stakes standardized tests.
20 Contracts amounting to millions of
21 dollars have been spent on interim test prep, and
22 since the mayor has identified the test scores as
23 the single most important measure of his
24 administration’s success, schooling has become
25 synonymous with test prep. Here’s something that
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2 all the test experts say. The more you test, the
3 less value the test has.
4 So that’s why Jane Hirschmann called the
5 NAEP the gold standard, because the NAEP is the
6 sampling test. You cannot prepare for it. It’s
7 a sample. They don’t give it to every kid, and
8 that’s why you can tell what’s happening across
9 the country. That’s why we can say what we’ve
10 said about New York, that the scores are flat.
11 So if you look at what’s happened in New
12 York to replace – what the tests have replaced,
13 they’ve replaced art, we’ve now spent – we spent
14 approximately, our children spend approximately
15 three percent, so your children in most schools
16 are spending approximately three percent of their
17 time on the arts and on enrichment.
18 Now, contrary to the research findings
19 and the recommendations of test companies
20 themselves, test scores dictate promotion
21 policies, and principal and teacher bonuses, and
22 school report card grades, by the way, 85 percent
23 of the grade is on test scores. They even affect
24 property values.
25 But, you know, there’s a different way to
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2 do it. The legislature, it seems to me, must
3 promote a governance system that allows for, a,
4 open debate about the value of such practices,
5 one that encourages an exploration of various
6 methods of accountability, including alternatives
7 to high stakes tests. Now, let’s look at Europe
8 for a minute.
9 Many success European countries, in fact,
10 the ones that come out absolutely top of the list
11 on all the international measurements, do not use
12 high stakes standardized tests. Many of them use
13 sampling, and many many of them use performance
14 based assessment.
15 In our own State of New York, we have
16 more than 30 schools that have been given
17 permission by the Regents to use a system of
18 performance based assessment. Those schools are
19 functioning extremely well. There have been
20 studies done, published studies that show that –
21 two things, one is that they have a very good
22 graduation rate, very low drop-out rate, that
23 when they get to college, they are actually
24 taking college – credit-bearing courses, and
25 they’re being – they’re still there in their
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2 third semester which is what the study looked at.
3 In terms of all the discussion about ELL
4 this morning; the kids at the ELL school where
5 there are only ELL students, Manhattan
6 International, in a study done by Dr. Michele
7 Fine, what she found was, if you go to the fifth
8 year, for graduation, those kids are graduating
9 at a higher rate than students who are non-ELL in
10 our city schools, and they’re going on to college
11 and they’re doing okay.
12 So I think we have some very good
13 examples of other ways to do assessment and
14 accountability. So we urge the legislature to
15 rethink the governance of the city school system,
16 and we implore you to consider how your decisions
17 will impact on teaching and learning of all our
18 public school children.
19 Thank you.
20 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
21 For our next witness, I had the privilege
22 of visiting the school where you work, and it was
23 a great pleasure and I’m very glad you were able
24 to travel from Queens – although unable to be at
25 the Queens hearing, and it did go on so long,
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2 we’re very happy you’re here.
3 MR. CONTRERAS: Thank you.
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We’re going to do
5 questions at the end. I want to say, I took the
6 liberty as chair, I had asked Dr. Louis Reyes to
7 be at this hearing and he did not think he could
8 be able to, so he’s not listed, but since he was
9 able to make to make it, I’m going to include him
10 in this panel. We’re very very grateful that you
11 were able to be here. I know it was very very
12 difficult for you to arrange that, so thank you.
13 DR. REYES: First, good afternoon, and
14 thank you, Chairwoman Nolan, and members of the
15 assembly for convening these hearings and for
16 listening to all the voices.
17 We all know that New Yorkers are highly
18 opinionated people, and I’m sure you heard at
19 least eight million opinions on the issue of
20 mayoral control, but I thank you once again.
21 I also want to thank the Bronx. It’s
22 nice to be back. The Bronx is originally where I
23 began. It’s the borough where I began my career
24 as a teacher, and I also thank the borough for
25 hosting this session. The reason it’s pertinent
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2 is because the Bronx has always been a leader in
3 educational reform.
4 When schools were failing, the Bronx was
5 first to adopt small schools, it was the first to
6 think outside of the box and to think of
7 community collaboration such as those in Hunts
8 Point with the Point Organization, and it always
9 understood that even when there was success in
10 pockets of social capital, things needed to be
11 different because they weren’t working in areas
12 in the Bronx, and it’s a pleasure to be back and
13 it’s an honor to be back in this borough.
14 MR. CONTRERAS: Once again, good
15 afternoon. My name is Eric Contreras. I am a
16 proud product of the New York City school system,
17 and I am also a parent of two children in the
18 public schools, so I like to put my kids in
19 schools so that my actions are a testament to
20 what – you do what you say. I’m a little
21 nervous. I’m not accustomed to speaking in front
22 of a panel.
23 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: You’re doing
24 beautiful. Just keep going.
25 MR. CONTRERAS: I’m also a veteran
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2 educator in the Department of Education having
3 spent 10 years in the classroom, and the last
4 four years as a New York City administrator. I
5 come to you with the vantage point as a resident,
6 as a parent, a student, a teacher, a coach, and
7 now an administrator. So I can speak from multi
8 positions on the issue of mayoral control.
9 Currently, I am the principal at the
10 Queens High School of Teaching, a school that
11 developed under mayoral control, and for the past
12 six years has been successful in engaging
13 children and parents alike. It’s a school that
14 has been allowed to develop innovative programs
15 and partnerships to support a personalized
16 learning environment that addresses the needs of
17 all students, of all abilities. We have a mixed
18 ability, full inclusive educational classroom,
19 and we do count our IEP students in our
20 graduation statistics.
21 A school with a daily attendance rate of
22 90 percent or higher, actually this past month it
23 was 93, since we opened, and we’re not a
24 specialized school. We take kids of all
25 abilities of all backgrounds.
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2 I am proud of our achievement, but I am
3 also extremely thankful that the assembly, the
4 mayor, the chancellor and union decided seven
5 years ago to give schools the opportunities and
6 supports to address the local needs and concerns
7 of our students. The work is hard. The work is
8 hard and difficult, and because information under
9 the mayor is transparent and public, at times, as
10 a principal, the work is very stressful.
11 But, the bottom line, the needs of our
12 children have been put first. My entry point
13 into the New York City school system began in the
14 70s as a student of limited English proficiency,
15 a mother who did not understand or comprehend the
16 language of the system. There were many times at
17 an early age where I had to become my own
18 advocate, fighting battles in the system as a
19 five year old that had multiple faces and
20 disconnected accountability. Whether it was a
21 fight to get extra English support or a question
22 why I did not get the form in Spanish, there was
23 not a parent coordinator or an office of parental
24 engagement.
25 My mother, a housekeeper, did not have
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2 the right connections, did not know the right
3 people, or have the right access as parents do
4 today in a 311 system, where she could ask for
5 help.
6 My experience in the system is one where
7 I ultimately found success but was laced
8 unnecessary battles and struggles with a Board of
9 Education that was not accountable and was not
10 responsive. As a parent of two children in our
11 schools under mayoral control, the contrast could
12 not be greater. I can go on line and see my
13 children’s schools, there’s a progress report,
14 there’s survey results, the quality review
15 evaluation, the budget, and multiple links for
16 parent support.
17 I can speak to a parent coordinator when
18 I need assistance. I can also contact the office
19 of parent engagement or family advocacy, or the
20 district family advocate. As a matter of fact,
21 there are redundant systems for parent engagement
22 and communications. I know because both as a
23 principal, I am the recipient and I hear those
24 systems, and as a parent I have used them myself.
25 And if all else fails I can contact 311,
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2 since, under mayoral control, there is a
3 coordinated management of municipal services that
4 is accountable and collaborative under one mayor.
5 As principal under mayoral control, there
6 are clear systems to hold us all accountable. I
7 share with my PTA, my school leadership team, and
8 the general body at the school, information
9 regarding instruction, our budget and our yearly
10 plans, and we make decisions together.
11 Under mayoral control, the Department of
12 Education has joined the flat interconnected
13 world. With the development of online reports
14 and management tools to support schools and
15 parents, there is a great degree of parent choice
16 in their school selection programs. Schools have
17 been empowered to link up with partners and, as a
18 matter of fact, just this week, I have three
19 partnership developments that we’re currently
20 working on, develop programs and consider
21 different ways to challenge problems.
22 I, as principal, and as a school, we are
23 held accountable in a very public way. There are
24 days when I think if we returned to the past
25 things would actually be a lot easier. We
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2 answered to the parents with the greatest
3 resources. The best connected. Today we answer
4 to all parents. The work is transparent, goal-
5 oriented and specific.
6 Sometimes, on a personal note, I would
7 rather not have all the accountability systems, I
8 might sleep better at night. The stress of all
9 these systems bearing down on you can actually be
10 very stressful as an administrator.
11 The thought of a parent contacting 311,
12 by the way, a parent contacts 311, you get the
13 phone call the same day or the next day to
14 resolve the problem. The pressure to deliver
15 constant communication to parents and the very
16 public accountable way that my job is held,
17 creates very stressful moments for the job.
18 But real change comes with hard work that
19 is uncomfortable and different from the old
20 status quo. What is easy is not what always
21 what’s in the best interest of our children. We
22 are not here for what works best for adults, but
23 what works best for kids and their parents.
24 Mayoral control has empowered and
25 informed all parents. I have a union. The
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2 teachers have a union. The kids are the ones
3 left without protection. Mayoral control has
4 spoken for these kids. For those such as that
5 five year old kid, son of an immigrant mother who
6 spoke no English, the very constituency who was a
7 silent majority in the past has now been given
8 the voice.
9 An openness that did not exist before
10 through a – has been addressed through a highly
11 informative system, school report cards, parent
12 surveys. For the first time, kids are being
13 asked, what do you think about the system? That
14 is – that was unheard of when I began as a
15 teacher, it was unheard of when I began as a
16 student, parents are being asked, what do you
17 think of your schools?
18 I know for many this means more work, it
19 means more responsibility, but I go back to the
20 premise that our system is set up to support
21 students. I encourage you to continue mayoral
22 control and accountability. In the past,
23 accountability was here, there, everywhere, and
24 ultimately nowhere. The system was disconnected,
25 dysfunctional and detached from the needs of
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2 children. For the sake of our students and as a
3 graduate parent and educator in the Department of
4 Ed, I ask that you keep mayoral control and not
5 dilute its ability to support children.
6 The system is not perfect, I understand
7 that. There are many areas that need
8 improvement. However, I recommend that the panel
9 consider a list of recommendations with set time
10 lines for addressing those recommendations, but
11 recommendations cannot be fulfilled if you dis-
12 empower the system. You have to allow the system
13 to maintain its power, it’s only been seven
14 years, and there’s a lot of things that need to
15 be worked out.
16 In six years, mayoral control has
17 transformed our educational system in positive
18 ways, not possible under the old status quo.
19 Let’s allow mayoral control to follow through on
20 its efforts, and let’s come together like we did
21 six years ago and do what’s best for the needs of
22 our children.
23 I want to – I understand -
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I know that you have
25 this testimony. We’re trying to get copies made.
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2 What we want to try to do, if you have something
3 in addition to your written testimony, just
4 summarize it up, okay?
5 MR. CONTRERAS: Sounds good. New York
6 City is a city of about eight million people and
7 the difficulty is, sometimes we try to function
8 like a small school board of a town of 250.
9 Because we are a city of bright eight million
10 people, sometimes we can get mired in our own
11 diversity of intellect. Everyone has an opinion.
12 Everyone has an opinion of how to best run the
13 system, but the problem is, in a system as large
14 as ours, we must be able to listen to the voice
15 of one without allowing that voice of one to
16 alter the course that’s been unbalanced, a
17 positive course of action.
18 As far as – I just want to address
19 quickly the issue of testing. I am not for
20 testing. If you visit my school, my school is
21 not a testing school. Our classrooms rarely
22 institute testing as a form of assessment. As a
23 matter of fact, when you walk past our
24 classrooms, you can see project based student,
25 hands-on, student-centered instruction.
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2 The mayor – any mayor that runs the
3 system is going to have to mediate testing that
4 comes from the federal government and that comes
5 from Albany.
6 So New York City, the mayor has had to
7 mediate mandates of testing such as no child left
8 behind and the Regents that come directly from
9 the commissioner and allow schools to find
10 responsive ways to still be in compliance with
11 those federal and state mandates and still allow
12 schools to be innovative in their approaches to
13 teaching.
14 Once again, I thank you, and I’m sorry
15 for being a little nervous.
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: No. It was
17 wonderful. Everyone has been wonderful. Again,
18 we ask that you bear with us as people in and out
19 maybe to take a little break as we go on and on
20 and on.
21 Dr. Reyes, I know also, again, I really
22 appreciate it, former member of the Board of Ed,
23 very long time education activist, and my most
24 prolific e-mailer. I get a lot of information
25 from you all the time. I marvel at how you find
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2 the articles and the depth of knowledge really
3 that you’ve shared with us. So we’re very
4 grateful.
5 If there are some questions for any
6 member of the panel, we try in these panels to
7 have a diversity of opinion so we that we’re
8 hearing different things and we’ll keep going.
9 I want to thank Aurelia and Mike and Mark
10 and Danny and Mike Benjamin, I appreciate that.
11 Dr. Reyes.
12 DR. REYES: Members of the Assembly and
13 Regent Rosa as well. I’m here because of her.
14 We were both at the New York State Association of
15 bilingual education legislative conferences, and
16 I didn’t see any legislators, and I knew this is
17 the place to come.
18 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Well, I’ll be there
19 tomorrow.
20 DR. REYES: To the legislators, I want
21 to say that you may have heard we need one voice
22 versus diverse voices. I’d like to think of
23 myself as a voice in the wilderness which is that
24 in 2003 when the mayor decided to create an
25 initiative, a reform initiative on the birthday
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2 of Martin Luther King at the Schomburg Center in
3 Harlem, there were two groups who were absent
4 from that initiative, and those were special ed
5 students and English language learners.
6 The mayor indicated at the time on
7 January the 15th that he had the right person to
8 deal with those issues but it would take more
9 time. He said the reason why it would take more
10 time is because the chancellor who had gone to
11 court in the Department of Justice against
12 Microsoft monopoly would deal with the quagmire
13 or the legal labyrinth which is Jose P and Aspeda
14 Consentacri, those are two judicial mandates as a
15 result of parents going to court over many years
16 to obtain equal education opportunity in federal
17 courts for English language learners and students
18 with disabilities.
19 I say this because if mayoral control is
20 hiring a chancellor who is not an educator and
21 who approach initially to English language
22 learners and special ed was to try to sunset
23 those provisions with the help of lawyers, we
24 started out on the wrong foot six years ago. The
25 only reason why we are here is because
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2 legislators, including legislators from the
3 Bronx, Carmen Arroyo and others among them, went
4 to the then mayor and still mayor and said
5 there’s no way to permit you to gut the legal
6 rights and mandates for these children.
7 So what I’m trying to tell you is that
8 the legislature, both houses, the governor, the
9 state Board of Regents, and the commissioner have
10 obligations under law, under federal law, under
11 state law, 1970-72, the law that provides
12 instruction to ELLs, under Title 1 and Title 3 of
13 the federal law now and original Title 7. A
14 sound basic education is not President Obama’s
15 responsibility, it’s the responsibility of the
16 state legislature and the governor, and given to
17 the Regents and the commissioner to enforce.
18 A sound basic education took 15 years in
19 terms of another lawsuit, Campaign for Fiscal
20 Equity, and in that lawsuit, there were dollars
21 that were promised and dollars that were
22 delivered by your legislature and the past
23 governor and a commitment was made of multi-
24 billion dollars.
25 However, that legislation has issues that
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2 have yet to be addressed to ensure that the
3 monies get to our children. So what I’m trying
4 to say about mayoral control is, there has to be
5 accountability from the legislature, not only in
6 the governance structure of the school system,
7 but also in the budgetary requirements that you
8 put when you send money to the school system, and
9 in the budgetary requirements to ensure that the
10 monies are being used for the purposes that you
11 intend them to be used. You have sent $70
12 million more this year to New York City just for
13 ELLs as a result for the Contract for Excellence
14 in the state budget.
15 The city, through the chancellor and
16 through the principals in our city, have
17 committed to spending only $11 million of those
18 $70 million for ELL students, although ELLs have
19 generated $70 million new dollars because the
20 principals have choice, they have autonomy as
21 CEOs in their building.
22 In fact, the situation for ELLs in the
23 city as well as in the Bronx is that we have a
24 population that is high needs. Among ELL
25 students in the Bronx and in the city, 38, more
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2 than one out of three are ELLs with special ed
3 disabilities. ELLs who are more than six years
4 and still ELLs and no longer generating state
5 funds. And, third, ELLs who have arrived in this
6 country and have two or three years less
7 schooling than their grade level and our below
8 reading and math levels at least two or three
9 years.
10 We have a graduation rate - at the state
11 level the commission says the city has a 23.5
12 percent graduation rate, and the school system in
13 New York City says it’s a 30 percent, the count
14 GED, they count special ed diplomas and they
15 count summer school.
16 30 percent or 23 percent is less than
17 half the overall. It’s a failing outcome, not a
18 succeeding outcome. You can’t say former ELLs
19 are doing better and be happy with that because
20 the former ELLs didn’t enter high school as ELLs.
21 The former ELLs of students who used to be ELLs
22 before they got to high school.
23 So what I’m trying to say, at the high
24 school level, Maria Santos, who spoke this
25 morning, in her report says two thirds of the
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2 high school students are in these high needs
3 categories. So a high school principal who,
4 under mayoral control, is allowed to create a
5 school for 300, 400 students, who has no
6 requirement in state certification to be as
7 knowledgeable as the teachers have to be under
8 certification of teachers in ELL. If you want to
9 be a bilingual or ESL teacher, you have to be
10 certified.
11 In fact, 20 percent of the bilingual
12 teachers are not certified. So a sound basic
13 education according to the state constitution,
14 your obligation, our obligation says that you
15 have to have qualified teachers, that you have to
16 have class sizes that are appropriate, you have
17 to have materials.
18 In fact, one third of the high school
19 ELLs in the city, and that would include the
20 Bronx that has a large population of ELLs, are
21 not even receiving ESL.
22 The report that was put out on the
23 website yesterday, the day before -
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I want to interrupt
25 for a minute. We were quite frustrated,
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2 obviously we asked for that report a long time
3 ago. They were coming today, boom, it shows up
4 at 4:00 or 3:00 yesterday.
5 DR. REYES: It’s funny that you didn’t
6 get a press release along with it.
7 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: But I was very glad
8 that you got it to us. We thank you for that.
9 DR. REYES: This report doesn’t say that
10 one third of the ELLs are not even getting ESL in
11 the small high school. So the good news is here,
12 and the bad news that only 21 percent of the ELLs
13 in the city are in bilingual programs down from
14 50 percent eight years ago when mayoral control
15 took over, and, yet, all of the research before
16 then and since then, nationally and locally, says
17 that students have higher levels of academic
18 achievement, both in learning English and in
19 passing Regents-like exams when they have native
20 language instruction as well as ESL, the school
21 system is going in the opposite direction, what
22 will they say? Parental choice.
23 Parents don’t have a choice if their
24 school doesn’t have a bilingual program. If you
25 live on 59th or 60th Street and the bilingual
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2 program is on 110th Street, you’re not going to
3 send a kindergarten child, I’m talking the west
4 side of Manhattan where I live. A parent is not
5 going to send their child 50 blocks, there is no
6 transportation subsidy there, et cetera.
7 So under mayoral control, the focus has
8 been on outcomes, No Child Left Behind, et
9 cetera, but not on the inputs, and somebody, the
10 Regents, the State Education Department, need to
11 enforce those inputs to ensure that kids are
12 being taught by qualified, certified teachers.
13 That principals who have the charge to run a
14 school are meeting the part 154 regulations that
15 go with the dollars that you send as a
16 legislature and that the governor sends.
17 Parent engagement, both the state and
18 federal mandate is that parents be told about
19 their choices. Most parents don’t know what
20 their choices are. They certainly don’t get – if
21 you got it two days ago, imagine an immigrant
22 parent in the South Bronx, or a Puerto Rican
23 parent in Williamsburg, or African American
24 parent in Harlem? They don’t get this
25 information in any way that’s available to them.
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2 Mayoral control, or whatever changes you
3 make to it, including checks and balances, 2012,
4 in three years, four years, the students who
5 enter the ninth grade this September will have no
6 choice about a local diploma versus a Regent’s
7 diploma.
8 Right now it’s 23 percent get a diploma,
9 that’s a local diploma, only 11 percent of our
10 ELLs got a Regent’s diploma. So imagine if four
11 years from now it was all of them only can get a
12 Regent’s diploma.
13 The reason why you provided money is
14 because we need things like a longer school day,
15 Saturday summer school, but one of the choices
16 that principals and bureaucrats make when there
17 are budget cuts, they cut after-school programs,
18 they cut tutoring, they cut Saturday and summer
19 school. Who are the ones that suffer? It’s the
20 population that is thought of after the fact, the
21 ELL population.
22 So I would urge you to make sure that
23 there’s teeth in the legislation, and that
24 parents, you don’t engage parents by informing –
25 hold a meeting the day before you decide to close
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2 a school – the day after, excuse me, PS-241. So
3 engagement is partnership – when you get engaged
4 to get married, you get married as equal
5 partners. Parents are not equal partners under
6 mayoral control. Parents are, at best, seen as
7 customers, and they’re not being heard and they
8 need to be heard, and there are all kinds of
9 specific words they can be heard, but I think
10 I’ve said more than I need to say.
11 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: No, we’ve very glad
12 that you’re here and I appreciate you working
13 this into your schedule.
14 I think that Mr. Villavicencio, I would
15 like to ask him to come down. And while he’s
16 coming down, if my colleagues have questions, I
17 would be happy to let me ask.
18 Mark?
19 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: Eric, you inspired
20 my questions, so I got to ask this.
21 I’m a little stunned to hear your
22 comments, Mr. Contreras, because I speak to
23 principals in the area and I’ve been to your
24 school, it’s a terrific school, you’re doing a
25 great job. You’re giving much to much credit to
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2 this school governance program, I’ve got to say
3 it. I don’t want to be critical of the mayor’s
4 control, but your school would have existed
5 without this mayor, well before this mayor. We
6 talked about building that school, and so many
7 things you’re doing in the school are not because
8 of the school governance law, and that’s not a
9 criticism of the school governance law, that’s a
10 compliment to your school.
11 MR. CONTRERAS: Thank you.
12 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: But a couple of
13 things you said I’ve got to respond to.
14 The idea that parents have input and that
15 they get to say what they think of the school,
16 that’s great, but the problem is, they don’t
17 listen to that. They do progress reports, you
18 know this, because you and I have talked about
19 test scores in the past. They do progress
20 reports which is the report cards everyone talks
21 about, and they judge a school with an A or a B
22 or a D or an F based 85 percent, not even on test
23 scores, but whether the test score went up from
24 the year before. So one kid – you’re not talking
25 about a huge sample all the time, so one kid
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2 being sick could change the whole report card.
3 And 15 percent of that report card are
4 everything everyone cares about which is arts,
5 music, and parent involvement where it’s safe,
6 whether the teachers are good, all those things
7 that we care about, and you care about as a
8 parent, and I know you and I care about as a
9 parent, they get like – nobody seems to care
10 about that.
11 We live in New York City, greatest city
12 in the world, and they don’t want to use New York
13 City anymore because they are so focused on those
14 test score which you, too, don’t like. They
15 don’t go to school trips, they don’t take
16 advantage.
17 Can you imagine learning about business
18 and Wall Street and New York City, we can really
19 use some people learning about Wall Street in
20 this city, we have that ability in New York City
21 that they don’t have in western Virginia and
22 other places. But it sometimes surprises people,
23 and thank God for this mayor –
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I just want to say,
25 everyone is allowed to – you have your view, he
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2 has his, everybody –
3 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: He’s actually a
4 friend, so I’m willing to attack him.
5 MR. CONTRERAS: So here’s my response to
6 that. First, I would like to not have principals
7 place, at least in the role of bureaucrats,
8 because I work 10 to 11 hours a day for seven and
9 a half hours of pay. I’m there on the weekends
10 pro bono, and I love my kids, I’m in the
11 trenches, and I take a little bit of insult to be
12 placed I the same category as anyone that’s a
13 bureaucrat. I’m there talking to kids in the
14 hallways, I’m there talking to kids in the
15 classroom. This is not a response to you, this
16 is a response to a comment before.
17 Mark and I are friends, actually, so –
18 and I think this is a type of lively debate that
19 friends engage in. You know, we can make the
20 argument that the success that I’ve had at the
21 school that I’m in are – can be attributed to
22 just the nature of the teachers that work, and,
23 yes, I have amazing teachers. I have amazing
24 AP’s, and parents that I really work with.
25 I happen to really listen to my parents.
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2 You know, I sit down with them once a month. I
3 look at the data, we look at results, we look at
4 innovative ways of doing things, we look at
5 different ways of doing even summer school, and
6 every time I get a 311 call I take it as if it
7 were one of my children and I sit down and I
8 talk.
9 I think bottom line I have the memory,
10 and this is where the personal part comes in. I
11 have the memory, and my wife too, being educated
12 in the schools, that we’re not responsive, and
13 this was pre-mayoral control. These were schools
14 that were not functioning.
15 I just recently went to a school in
16 Brooklyn, Bushwick High School that now has five
17 schools in it. I was there before it had five
18 schools and it was very – it was a difficult
19 challenging place and now I walk the halls and
20 kids are engaged in different themes, it’s
21 vibrant.
22 There are schools that are struggling,
23 and I understand that. There are schools – the
24 system is not perfect, but I do feel that we live
25 in a city of eight million voices and there needs
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2 to be a central place where decisions are made to
3 follow through on decisions.
4 ASSEMBLYMAN WEPRIN: Which I agree with.
5 And Cathy’s giving me the evil eye, I know, in a
6 nice way, but the system is responsive, as you
7 just described, because you are responsive, and
8 not because anybody else outside is being
9 responsive.
10 MS. COOK: There are a lot of small
11 schools that existed back in the 80s and 90s and,
12 in fact, the Department got the idea of the small
13 schools from the schools that preceded mayoral
14 control, so I just think that historically it’s
15 important to point out that there were dozens and
16 dozens of small schools that were very very
17 successful and that they were the antecedents of
18 these schools that exist today, that’s number
19 one.
20 Secondly, I just want to say this, I sat
21 with 50 school people yesterday, principals and
22 teachers, and we were discussing the school
23 quality review process. I couldn’t get one
24 person in that room to tell me that that had been
25 a useful experience. It was one gruesome story
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2 after another. It makes you wonder, where are we
3 going with all of this. Actually when you look
4 at the progress report, it’s only 15 percent
5 where the school quality review factors in. It’s
6 a very small percentage given the other things
7 that are factored in, and people were feeling so
8 stressed – you used the word about eight times, I
9 have to say, and I think that is in fact what a
10 lot of people feel. I don’t think that that
11 should be the case.
12 I don’t think principals, I’m the co-
13 director of a school, I don’t think that we
14 should have to feel stressed.
15 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Let me let
16 Assemblyman Benjamin – and I want to thank the
17 dean here, Mr. Villavicencio, I didn’t realize
18 that you were going to be translating for a
19 parent. We’re so happy to hear from a parent, so
20 if you just bear with us another minute, and then
21 Assemblyman Benjamin and then we’ll -
22 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: Please forgive my
23 question, I guess the tone of it. My wife
24 complains that I tend to be too dispassionate
25 when I discuss subjects. In being here all day
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2 and then listening to the testimony, I hear two
3 different things. I hear a discussion of mayoral
4 control, the issue of mayoral control, and then
5 the passion of the way in which it’s not carried
6 out to your satisfaction. So I think that’s two
7 issues.
8 One is, do we continue mayoral control of
9 our schools, versus the way in which it’s been
10 carried out by the Bloomberg Klein
11 administration. I need to find out, is
12 everything being said colored around the issue,
13 the concept of mayoral control, or the colored
14 around people’s visceral responses to the
15 bureaucracy that’s grown out of it through the
16 Bloomberg/Klein administration?
17 MS. HIRSCHMANN: That’s an excellent
18 question because the parent’s commission which
19 went first this morning, laid out a whole
20 proposal about how to change the PEP to a Board
21 of Education, and it’s based on not who is the
22 mayor – I mean this mayor was the most
23 undemocratic and authoritarian mayor to rule the
24 school system, but this is not geared towards if
25 we had a different mayor, we would want him to
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2 rule in the same way, have ultimate control, it
3 really is a change in the system, so it’s not
4 about just getting rid of Bloomberg and putting
5 another mayor in who would then have control. We
6 really want a total democratic different process.
7 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: Ms. Cook, you
8 wanted to respond also?
9 MS. COOK: Yes. I think that’s a really
10 central question. I think that this particular
11 administration took on – and here’s where I think
12 the problem came first. The minute that this
13 mayor declared himself that he was going to be
14 judged on the test scores of the kids, I think we
15 were in deep water, because the minute you do
16 that, then you set up an entire apparatus to make
17 it possible for him to be success and that’s
18 what’s driven the system. The tests have driven
19 the system and the data has driven the system,
20 and what we don’t have is the instruction in the
21 curriculum and the professional development and
22 the schools as community and the parent as
23 partnerships, that’s not what’s driving the
24 system. So I think the problem that you find is
25 that there are principals who could get beyond
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2 it, and there are principals who can make
3 something work in their school, and we have a lot
4 of pretty good places for kids, but what is it –
5 what’s happened to the parent participation?
6 If you go into a school and talk to the
7 security guards, what do they feel? They’re the
8 front line when the parent walks in the building.
9 What’s going on there? There’s lots of little
10 indicators that things are not welcoming, that
11 they’re not focused on curriculum, they’re not
12 focused on teaching and learning, that when we
13 get done, I mean, I’m a high school person, I can
14 tell you that we’ve had seven years of this, I’m
15 not getting kids coming into my high school
16 saying, Gee, I’ve had seven years of this
17 wonderful reading, emphasis on reading, what’s
18 the first book we’re going to read this year? I
19 get kids who are so turned off print, it takes us
20 three years to get them back connected with the
21 idea of the pleasure of reading a book. There’s
22 something not happening in the schools when that
23 is consistent. We’re getting kids from all over
24 the city. So I think that what we’ve got to do
25 is go back to thinking, what is the purpose of
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2 education?
3 What is it we want from the parents, what
4 is it we want from the teachers? And what I
5 don’t want, what I absolutely don’t want is
6 something that emphasizes test scores, test
7 scores, test scores. Because I know that unless
8 we teach these kids to write good papers, unless
9 we teach them how to do social science research,
10 unless we teach them how to do social science
11 research, unless we teach them how to do
12 mathematics and science, when they get to
13 college, they’re going to struggle, and I want to
14 make sure when kids go on, they have meaningful
15 options. So if college is their option, it’s got
16 to be meaningful. I think that what we’ve done
17 is to turn teachers and principals into data
18 collectors and put much too much emphasis on that
19 aspect of education.
20 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: Dr. Reyes, and
21 then if Michael will have a follow-up.
22 DR. REYES: It’s in response to the
23 question. It isn’t about who the mayor is, and
24 whether the mayor has done a good job, and if we
25 replace the mayor, somebody else will do a worse
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2 job or a better job, it’s about checks and
3 balances in a system that requires different
4 players, first oversight. Oversight – the
5 Department of Education is one third of the
6 city’s budgetary functions and yet, it’s a state
7 agency and so it doesn’t have – there’s no
8 oversight requirements as far as contracts and
9 procurement in the budget. The Department of
10 Ed’s budget is different from other city
11 agencies, and, why? Because we’re a state
12 agency, we don’t have to follow city
13 requirements. You need oversight of not just the
14 budget but also the data about the school system,
15 where the students are, how many, how they’re
16 doing, so that you don’t have a bureaucracy or an
17 administration that manages the data so that we
18 provide the positive stuff and we hide or
19 downplay the issues which are not – that aren’t
20 so positive.
21 So having an independent audit office is
22 a function of a checks and balances to mayoral
23 control. Whether Bill Thompson, or Michael
24 Bloomberg, or anybody else, or Tony Avella,
25 sorry, I don’t mean to be biased, zoning issues,
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2 overcrowding issues, capital budget issues,
3 budget allocation and educational plans. The
4 school leadership teams, the education councils,
5 the policy panel, if they’re just paper tigers
6 for show and have no power for consultation, for
7 real advisement, then we have – we’re going to
8 have a repeat of the last six years of the
9 parents feeling left out.
10 Right now, the – we’re going to have the
11 elections, and we may have lower election turnout
12 than we had for the last school boards because of
13 the cynicism that people have about that whole
14 process, in terms of what power do they have, and
15 to determine their school education plan, as it’s
16 supposed to by the commissioner’s regulations, to
17 determine that the budget is aligned with that
18 education plan, as required by state regulations.
19 So part of the checks and balances and
20 for you to ensure that the state education
21 department follows up on whatever rules, so that
22 it acts to ensure that there is checks – there
23 are checks and balances built in, they’re being
24 ignored. The chancellor changes regulations, the
25 commissioner has to come in and say, no, no, no,
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2 you can’t change the regulations. We waited
3 three or four years before the commissioner is
4 ready to retire, for the first time he said, no,
5 you can’t do that.
6 So the City Council oversight,
7 independent audit oversight, and these bodies
8 where parents actually have a voice and power
9 that has to do with consultation are very
10 important and that’s not the fashion, that’s the
11 law, that’s the mechanism that you built into the
12 law passed June 30th.
13 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: My question, and
14 I’m glad you mentioned it, everybody talks about
15 checks and balances, but the very fact that we’re
16 here is a form of checks and balances, where the
17 legislature checks the executive. Whether the
18 executive is the governor, or, in this case, the
19 mayor of the city of New York, and Chancellor
20 Klein of the Department of Education. And, as I
21 understand it now, the state comptroller now has
22 the authority to look at the books and even the
23 curricula of our school districts, and he’s been
24 doing that with charter schools and Long Island
25 school districts, et cetera, so you have that
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2 level of checks and balances that are beginning
3 to show itself. I’m not quite sure if the proper
4 checks and balance is put in legislative mandates
5 into the mayoral control legislation, or it’s
6 creating a parental bureaucracy and other
7 bureaucracies oversee the system.
8 What you said, the quote about geeks
9 bearing statistics. We experienced that 40 years
10 ago when Robert McNamara ran DOD and the war in
11 Vietnam and the whole disaster that was, but we
12 didn’t create – Congress didn’t create oversight
13 for the soldiers and generals in the field.
14 Congress oversaw the President and the war. The
15 voters voted for Richard Nixon and everyone else
16 after that, but I think that Congress did its job
17 by overseeing what DOD was doing, and how the war
18 was conducted in Vietnam. I can’t quite see
19 doing something different and having other bodies
20 superseding or doing what legislators should do
21 in providing the appropriate checks and balances
22 as we’re doing now. I don’t think it’s
23 appropriate for us to put legislative mandates
24 and tell me why you think I’m wrong into mayoral
25 control legislation saying what they should have
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2 or should not have.
3 MS. COOK: You have no independent look
4 from the outside at the data, so we have a
5 discrepancy right now, we have the state saying
6 we graduate 52 percent. We have the city saying
7 we graduate 60 percent. There is nobody that is
8 looking at how – at sort of - some of us – the
9 people who are interested in looking at the
10 research to pull the stuff out and set it out.
11 There’s no – you need an audit of the data, you
12 need an oversight of the data. I would say the
13 same thing is true of the budget. I mean, Louis
14 is talking about - we have no transparency in
15 terms of the budget.
16 So I think the checks and balances is a
17 matter of who has the power to do what, and who
18 checks who. And then you need transparency both
19 in terms of the data, in terms of the finances,
20 so that some of these things are out there that
21 you can understand. Nobody – you talk to Betsy
22 Gotbaum’s office, they can’t – the budget was in
23 huge buckets of funds. You can’t pull it apart
24 so you don’t know, what are they actually funding
25 out of what? So you need some oversight of that
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2 and you need transparency.
3 And the other thing I think you need is
4 access. I think in order to be public, the
5 public needs access to those very things. They
6 need access to the data, access to the schools,
7 access to information.
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Let me just – I
9 really want to apologize to everyone, but I had
10 called on the dean of the school, I didn’t
11 realize that you were representing a parent. I
12 would like her to be able to speak and have you
13 translate for her and maybe – are we finished
14 with this panel? All right. Thank you.
15 Then we’ll call the next panel. We’re
16 really honored to have you here today and I thank
17 you for that.
18 MR. VILLAVICENCIO: Hello panel. My
19 name is Pablo Villavicencio and I’m the academic
20 dean of English language learners, and this is
21 one of our parents of two of our children, and
22 two other children she has. So I’m going to let
23 her speak and I’ll translate.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: If you just wait, I
25 want to find our staff person because he can help
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2 me understand. Go ahead.
3 PARENT: Good day. My name is -
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: You have two children
5 in the school. That much I understood. And
6 you’ve been able to take some classes on your own
7 to help what you’re doing as a parent. I want
8 you to translate for us.
9 (Translation by Mr. Villavicencio.)
10 MR. VILLAVICENCIO: She said that she’s
11 here representing MS-325, and she has two
12 children that are at the school, and that she has
13 seen that there is a benefit of mayoral control,
14 a school that has mayoral control, and that her
15 children have been able to attend smaller classes
16 as a result of mayoral control, and that she’s
17 also seen equity between rich and poor, that they
18 should have access to the same education, and
19 that that’s also been possible because of mayoral
20 control.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: How many students are
22 at the Urban Academy and what is the class size
23 of her children’s classes?
24 MR. VILLAVICENCIO: We currently have
25 225 English language learners. There are 500
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2 students in our school. We have been able to
3 reduce our class sizes in English language arts
4 which is three periods a day to 13 to 16 children
5 during that time for three period of English
6 instruction.
7 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
8 MR. VILLAVICENCIO: She says that she’s
9 nervous and she just wants to share her support
10 for mayoral control and just the growth that her
11 children have had at her school.
12 She says also she has two children, Juan
13 Mora who is in the eighth grade of MS-325, and
14 Maria Mora, who is 11 years old who is in the
15 sixth grade. And she just feel that all children
16 should have the right to an equal opportunity
17 education and that she just feels it’s a human
18 right that should not be distinguished between
19 rich and poor.
20 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
21 What we would like to do now - our
22 stenographer has to do that. I don’t know how he
23 stood as long as he has. I just want to read
24 again names of people who had to leave or are
25 going to leave their testimony; Ann Keegan,
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2 principal, PS-209, and if they’re here, this is
3 your moment to tell us; Luis Torres, PS-55; Jason
4 Levy, 339; Mark Sternberg, Bronx Lab School;
5 Dakota Keyes, 272; Felice Lepore, Urban Assembly
6 School; Elizabeth Lawrence, 118; Maria Cruz, 33;
7 and then Vincent – come down if you’re here.
8 Vincent Wojsnis, 399; Joyce Hinton, 399; Vanessa
9 Wallace, 100; Aurora Martinez, 118; Teresa
10 Jordan, MS-118; Lisa Monge, Bronx Academy of
11 Letters.
12 If any of those people are here, we would
13 like them to come down, understanding though, be
14 careful on those steps.
15 Also, if Lucy Friedman is still here, I
16 know she said she had to leave, but if she can
17 come down, and we’ll try to do that. Then we
18 have a number of young people from Democracy Prep
19 who attended our last hearing and we’re going to
20 try to work them in. And then we have a number
21 of other people as well. So we’re going to take
22 a break.
23 I also want to say, some one raised the
24 issue with me about whether the auditorium would
25 continue to be open. We have the auditorium
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2 pretty much as long as we need it, so we’re
3 comfortable with that, we’re not closing at 5:00
4 or anything like that. We will be here until
5 about 8:00 p.m., and after that we’ll see if we
6 could work it out.
7 We’re going to take a little break. Get
8 yourselves together. Just relax. Get your
9 parents together, and we’ll be right back.
10 (Whereupon, a break was taken.)
11 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We would like to
12 resume. You can be first, you can start. I want
13 to thank our stenographer for working so many
14 hours without a break and ask everyone’s
15 understanding and we’re happy to continue.
16 Please say your name. We’re going to do
17 the whole panel so, if you want to speak and have
18 someone assist you, that’s fine too.
19 MR. WOJSNIS: My name is Vincent Wojsnis
20 and I am an eighth grade social studies teacher.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Just talk a little
22 bit louder.
23 MR. VILLAVICENCIO: I’m an eighth grade
24 social studies teacher at Middle School 399.
25 I’ll be speaking about mayoral control as it
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2 relates to school closings because my school is
3 being phased out.
4 On December 8th, 2008, the City
5 Department of Education announced that it was
6 phasing out our school over the next two years
7 despite significant progress that the school
8 achieved. Although the DOE has acknowledged that
9 the school did make some progress, it is also
10 said that the progress made was insufficient.
11 The DOE is planning to phase out our school over
12 the next two years while phasing in two new
13 schools in the same building, a last minute
14 attempt to save the school by the UFT Vice
15 President Richard Farkus failed to persuade DOE
16 officials to reverse their decision.
17 I should add that I’m seeking as a
18 teacher and my opinions are my own, but I am also
19 the UFT chapter leader at the school.
20 For the last seven and a half years, I
21 have been part of a dedicated faculty that has
22 been part of and witness to many positive
23 developments at our school. Middle School 399,
24 the Elizabeth Barrett Browning School is located
25 one block south of Fordham Road, and one block
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2 west of the Grand Concourse. The school is
3 situated in a very tough neighborhood plagued by
4 poverty, drugs, and gang-related activity. It’s
5 always been a tough place to teach.
6 Demographically our population is
7 overwhelming immigrant, majority is Latin
8 American with growing numbers from West Africa
9 and Southeast Asia. Needless to say, the social
10 and cultural makeup of the school of the
11 neighborhood, along with the problems and
12 challenges associated with it are reflected in
13 the student population.
14 English language learners or ELLs
15 comprise more than 36 percent of the student
16 population, and a high percentage of them are
17 designated as limited English proficient, about
18 20 percent are bilingual. The school has come a
19 long way. When I first joined the staff in 2001,
20 at that time, MS-399 had just replaced MS-319,
21 which was phased out the year before.
22 The situation then was extremely chaotic.
23 Classes were overcrowded, food fights and real
24 fights were daily occurrences. Bulletin boards
25 were torn down as quickly as they could be put
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2 up. False fire alarms went off several times a
3 day.
4 The school was notably underfunded.
5 Teachers were made to feel as if they had to fend
6 for themselves. There was lack of leadership in
7 the building. We went through three principals
8 that year.
9 That ended in 2002 when Ms. Yolanda
10 Torres was introduced as principal. Under her
11 five-year tenure, and with the support of the
12 staff, the school made measurable progress.
13 Discipline was restored, a school uniform policy
14 was implemented, and student movement between
15 classes was curtailed and controlled. Progress
16 was slow but steady.
17 In 2004, the school was designated a serf
18 school and while no one among us welcomed that
19 designation, the additional funding that went
20 along with it really helped. I can’t emphasize
21 that enough, the additional funding really
22 helped. While math scores remained a particular
23 challenge, the school showed measureable
24 improvement in ELA scores among our ELL students
25 in particular. Our school improved, and in 2007,
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2 the principal, Ms. Torres, was promoted to
3 community superintendent of District 7.
4 In the Fall of 2007, Mr. Angelo Ledda was
5 appointed principal. Mr. Ledda sought to build
6 on the progress made in literacy while focusing
7 on improving the math scores. A concerted effort
8 to build up academic intervention services for
9 AIS, that year yielded mixed results.
10 On the positive side, our math scores on
11 standardized tests improved by 12 percent over
12 the year before. ELA scores, on the other hand,
13 dipped by nearly 8 percent. Consequently, the
14 overall grade on the school’s second annual
15 progress report went from a C to a D.
16 The progress report was a shock to the
17 administration and the staff alike, we didn’t
18 think that we deserved it. Most of us thought
19 that there were things that were being
20 overlooked. However, the letter grades
21 associated with the progress reports, we believe
22 are misleading. The process is not as
23 transparent as the chancellor would have people
24 believe. Furthermore, we believe that the
25 process is flawed because it relies far too much
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2 on data taken from standardized tests without
3 taking into account many of the pertinent
4 factors.
5 Among those factors was the school’s
6 quality review. I have a copy of it here. I’ll
7 give you a copy. MS 399 received a proficient
8 rating with well-developed features for two years
9 in a row in its quality review. The City of New
10 York spent $6.5 million to a British based
11 company, Cambridge Education Associates, to
12 perform quality reviews last year alone.
13 Whatever problems or deficiencies may have had,
14 according to the DOE’s own consultants was that
15 the school was and still is proficient. Why did
16 the DOE disregard the opinion of its own
17 consultant?
18 Another factor in school safety of the
19 overall learning environment. There is a well
20 developed sense of community at our school and a
21 strong school culture. Our school mascot, the
22 Panther, was chosen by students. In a middle
23 school of 750 students, there is nearly total
24 compliance with the uniform policy. Our student
25 council is well organized. Its members are vocal
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2 and articulate. They have become our best
3 ambassadors in defense of saving the school.
4 All members of the student council
5 participate in “Operation Respect,” which works
6 to help students resolve conflicts peacefully.
7 This has played an important role in curtailing
8 violence at the school. There is also a well-
9 developed parents association and a functioning
10 school leadership team. The parent on patrol
11 program helps to involve parents in maintaining
12 discipline at the school.
13 There is a cooperative relationship
14 between the administration and staff. And while
15 some may view the neighborhood as dangerous, the
16 school building itself is by far the safest place
17 in that neighborhood.
18 This year MS-399 was taken off of New
19 York State’s list of persistently dangerous
20 schools. This was a major milestone for our
21 school. Why weren’t these factors given greater
22 consideration? There are no miracles here, just
23 measurable progress in an ongoing struggle to
24 improve on it. Test scores and progress before
25 reveal only part of the story. What is not
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2 needed is to close our school but to support the
3 administration and staff with solid material
4 support.
5 We lost six full time, out of classroom
6 AIS positions this year due to budget cuts.
7 These small group and individual AIS services
8 played a significant role in the improvement of
9 those math scores. It was no accident. They can
10 play an equally similar role in literacy and
11 other content areas. In explaining the
12 chancellor’s decision to close our schools, DOE
13 representatives stated that the data shows that
14 smaller school communities yield more positive
15 results. That’s debatable.
16 The small school communities that they
17 spoke of would still have 32 students or more in
18 a classroom. Nowhere did they mention that the
19 class sizes would be smaller. They would still
20 be in the same building with much of the same
21 staff with the same social problems we’ve been
22 dealing with all along. Creating three schools
23 in one building means creating three separate
24 bureaucracies, aligned with three separate
25 support organizations competing for already scare
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2 resources. How does that help our children?
3 Further still, in light of the city’s
4 fiscal crisis and the mayor’s dooms day scenario,
5 I challenge anyone at the DOE to justify the
6 layoff of one teacher when they’re planning to
7 spend thousands or tens of thousands in setting
8 up three separate bureaucracies in one building.
9 The additional cost of the principal
10 salaries alone would equal a quarter of a million
11 dollars.
12 The DOE went ahead with this decision
13 without even knowing if our building could
14 accommodate three separate schools. It’s kind of
15 like buying your shoes before you measure your
16 feet. How does this help our children?
17 There is a difference between the city
18 and state approach to school closures. As noted
19 earlier, MS-399 is a serf school. The building
20 has undergone many remakes over the years. It
21 was once MS-115, then it was once MS-319 before
22 it was MS-399. But there is a notable difference
23 between the city and the state regarding school
24 closures.
25 Under New York State Education Department
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2 protocol, the struggling school is supported.
3 We’ve been witness to that. We are a serf
4 school. They are given time and the opportunity
5 to improve. The process is transparent and
6 collaborative. This is in contrast to the
7 arrogant and indifferent attitude of the New York
8 City Department of Education. One can speculate
9 as to why Chancellor Klein has decided to close
10 so many schools over the last year, or why the
11 chancellor reorganized the entire system three
12 times in five years, but that’s the problem.
13 Under the current law, he doesn’t have to
14 explain it. The law concerning New York City
15 school governance permits a policy of systematic
16 school closing that are seen by many as arbitrary
17 and unfair.
18 Arrogance and indifference. On Friday,
19 January 9th, and this is when we were informed,
20 parents, that is, representatives of the DOE
21 Office of Portfolio Development met in the
22 library of middle school 399 with all segments of
23 the school community including parents from MS-
24 399, PS-79, PS-33, and PS-91, as well as the
25 principals from all the feeder schools. Though
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2 the stated purpose of the meeting was to gather
3 input into what kind of school the community –
4 schools the community thought should replace 399,
5 it soon became obvious that the DOE folks could
6 care little about what the community thought, in
7 fact, they had it all worked out.
8 One of our schools, they said, would be a
9 school for the performing arts. Its principals
10 currently working as an assistant principal at
11 another school would make a fine leader. The
12 other school would be known as the Creston
13 Academy for Responsibility and Excellence, a/k/a
14 CARE. Its principal is a seasoned veteran who is
15 currently working at a phased out school and
16 therefore understands the challenges of phasing
17 in and phasing out schools under the reign of
18 Chancellor Joel Klein.
19 Neither principal was names at the time,
20 nor was there an explanation as to why students
21 struggling with English necessarily needed a
22 performing arts school. A decision was made,
23 that’s it. When those gathered did voice their
24 opinions, whether a parent, a teacher, or a
25 principal, they all agreed, Middle School 399
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2 should remain open, and its principal, Angelo
3 Ledda should be given more time.
4 Jesse Mojica who spoke earlier presented
5 an alternate proposal from the parents saying
6 that the school should be phased down, that is,
7 that it should remain open while sharing the
8 building with another smaller school that was
9 also rejected. The chancellor’s decision is
10 final. MS-399 will be closed. The decision has
11 been made. That’s it.
12 The following Tuesday, I attended a
13 meeting at PS-72 in East New York, Brooklyn. I
14 was invited there by staff members who wanted me
15 to share our experiences with them at their
16 community education council. The same people
17 from Portfolio were there with the same message.
18 As with 399, PS-72 is being phased out, as with
19 399, its principal has only been there for one
20 year. A copy of the quality review rated the
21 school proficient and it was distributed at the
22 meeting and yet the school’s overall score on it,
23 so-called progress report, went from a C to a D.
24 I could have mentioned PS-90 in the Bronx
25 or I said 10 here, but I guess it’s up to 20 now,
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2 schools that are going through the same process.
3 While each case is not identical, what remains
4 constant is the process. Decisions made through
5 an opaque and subjective procedure characterized
6 by arrogance and a difference on the part of the
7 DOE to the needs of the students, the concerns of
8 the parents and the experiences of the teachers.
9 In an article written in the New York
10 Times on February 2nd, Javier Hernandez made the
11 following observations on recent school closings.
12 He wrote, “But the decision to close schools is
13 inevitably subjective based on a mishmash of
14 factors like performance on standardized tests,
15 situations of violence, students demand for the
16 school and whether the school seems capable of
17 turning around. As such, the city inevitably
18 earns the fury of educators, parents and students
19 asking, “Why our school?”
20 Accountability has to work both ways. It
21 is a subjective mishmash indeed. Mayor Bloomberg
22 and Chancellor Klein like to throw that word
23 “accountability” around a lot. For teachers, it
24 usually means having the students perform well on
25 standardized tests to the near exclusion of
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2 everything else. But who are city officials
3 accountable to us?
4 One would think that the decision to
5 close the school would be a serious matter
6 encompassing many factors. One would think that
7 the decision would be based on objective criteria
8 made transparent to the public, the people to
9 whom they are accountable. In our case, they
10 might have considered asking their own
11 consultants, Cambridge Education Associates, why
12 they rated the school proficient for two
13 consecutive years.
14 Or they could have asked our math
15 teachers how they were able to get the math
16 scores to climb up 12 percent over the previous
17 year. They didn’t ask. They might have asked
18 our literacy coach and our lead teachers about
19 the challenges, problems and special needs of our
20 students that could improve our students’
21 performance on the next ELA exam. Maybe they
22 could have asked our bilingual and ESL
23 instructors about the steady progress they were
24 able to make with our English language learners.
25 They chose not to ask.
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2 Perhaps they could have asked the
3 principal, Mr. Ledda, how he was able to make
4 enough incremental changes in the school
5 environment to improve safety, or how the loss of
6 six full time AIS positions was going to affect
7 overall students’ performance. They chose not to
8 ask. They’ve never been there.
9 Mayoral control is out of control. It is
10 clear from our experience and the schools facing
11 closures that the procedure for phasing out
12 schools need to be revised. Under the current
13 law concerning New York City school governance,
14 the mayor and the chancellor have far too much
15 power. Their decisions have sweeping
16 consequences for students, parents, teachers, and
17 administrators, and, yet, the current system does
18 not permit review of major policy decisions such
19 as school closings. The UFT has issued a
20 statement which calls for school reform under the
21 current law. I could have added the parents
22 committee that was mentioned this morning or
23 Advocate Gotbaum’s proposals. I could have said
24 any of those things, but I think the consensus
25 that I would agree with and a number of people
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2 would agree with is that, yes, let’s give the
3 mayor his due on mayoral control. However, there
4 needs to be oversight now on particular problems
5 with this mayor and this chancellor. I think the
6 law itself has merit, but I do think that it
7 needs to be monitored when it comes to situations
8 such as school closings. You can’t have this
9 kind of absolute power.
10 Today we did meet with John White of the
11 Office of Portfolio Development, myself, Ms.
12 Hinton, who is our PA president, and a number of
13 parents and the principal met with him today, but
14 it took the effort of Assemblyman Castro to
15 arrange that meeting. It took two demonstrations
16 and 1,000 signatures on a petition drive.
17 I can also see she’s not here now, but
18 Regent Rosa played a big role in that as well and
19 has been very supportive of us.
20 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Can you give me the
21 address of the school?
22 MR. WOJSNIS: Sure. It’s 120 East 184th
23 Street.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I just wanted to
25 write it down. Do you want to sum up?
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2 MR. WOJSNIS: Other than that, there’s
3 just one other thing that came up. We brought it
4 up at the meeting this morning with Mr. White.
5 The DOE hasn’t really planned this thing out
6 pretty well. With all their talk about
7 efficiency, like I said, they kind of like bought
8 their shoes before they measured their feet.
9 They don’t even know if they could fit these
10 schools in there.
11 One of the things that they did that was
12 kind of disturbing. Our student population is a
13 17 to 20 percent bilingual. On the DOE website,
14 where they’re steering parents to the schools,
15 talking about the two new schools that are going
16 to be there, neither one of those schools offer
17 bilingual programs. They offer ESL, but they
18 don’t offer bilingual. Instead, a third option
19 was being raised that the students that would go
20 to the sixth grade in our school are instead
21 being directed here at Walton to East ISFLA, the
22 International School for Liberal Arts which is
23 exclusively bilingual. But that would mean that
24 our sixth graders would have to travel more than
25 a mile from the community school to come here.
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2 Now when we raised that, they said that
3 was a mistake, but there was no mistake that
4 Margaret Rogers, who is the director of
5 enrollment put that in there to deliberately
6 steer those kids to there. I believe, if we
7 didn’t make such a big deal about it, they
8 probably would have left it there.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. Ms.
10 Hinton, do you want to add a word?
11 MS. HINTON: Good afternoon. My name is
12 Joyce Hinton. I’m a co-president at MS-399. I
13 have two questions that the parents are concerned
14 about, would like to know also. One, they would
15 like to know what prompted the mayor and the
16 chancellor to take control of the school because
17 they figured that they don’t have an input when
18 it comes to the decision-making and things that
19 happen with the school, they don’t’ have no
20 input, they let them know at the last minute
21 what’s going on. Sometimes the parents don’t
22 have time to go to these things to find out
23 what’s going on because it is at the last minute.
24 So they wanted them to know what prompted them
25 to take control over the school.
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2 If you could give me an answer -
3 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Well, we can’t give
4 you that answer. That’s what this hearing is,
5 that we’re working to find out.
6 MS. HINTON: All right. Okay. Then
7 they also want to know too why aren’t parents
8 working closely with the mayor and the
9 chancellor. These are our children. They are
10 our responsibility. So we need – I think that we
11 need – we parents need to work closely with the
12 mayor and the chancellor when it comes to our
13 children in the school system. The school MS-
14 399, the school has improved also a lot. There
15 was a lot of violence and chaos around the school
16 and the last – over the last five years or so Ms.
17 Torres and now Mr. Ledda, they have been – not a
18 lot of fighting, not a lot of – you know, paper
19 throwing. The school has really brought out the
20 children a lot.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. That’s
22 what it’s all about so we appreciate you sharing
23 that.
24 We would like to have the names of the
25 two people with you. Stay a minute and then
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2 we’ll take some questions.
3 Would you like to go ahead?
4 MS. WALLACE: Good afternoon. My name
5 is Vanessa Wallace. I’m the PA president from
6 PS-100X. I’m the treasurer for District 8
7 President’s Council. I’m the sergeant of arms at
8 Community Board 3 and also a member of the
9 Education Committee.
10 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Busy lady. Always
11 the busy people though.
12 MS. WALLACE: I would like to thank the
13 Assembly Education Committee and the chair
14 assemblywoman, Catherine Nolan, for convening
15 this hearing and allowing my testimony.
16 My son started school in 2002, the same
17 year as mayoral control. I see the benefits of
18 this change; lower class size, more qualified
19 teachers, and in some instances, better grades.
20 Additionally, I see growth in the areas
21 of accountability. Mayoral control can be most
22 effective when the implementation process begins
23 with emphasis or supports to meet the challenges
24 faced by parents and school administration.
25 The parent association is the voice for
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2 the parents. And the vehicle to engage
3 administration and address the needs of the
4 students and their parents, we need more highly
5 functioning parent associations.
6 This year our school started a GED
7 program. During black history month, we
8 developed a protocol for over 250 students to
9 visit the Schomburg Center for Research in Black
10 culture.
11 Because of mayoral control, parents have
12 the ability to impact student learning process,
13 student development of the comprehensive
14 education plan through the school leadership
15 team. Parents are willing to volunteer their
16 time. As we move forward, we need parents to
17 assist in the development of training models that
18 are meaningful to them. These workshops must be
19 made available to the working and non-working
20 parent.
21 We want to make informed decisions and as
22 thought provoking questions that compete with
23 administrators and teachers whose job it is to
24 know school protocol, programs, initiatives and
25 strategies. They are knowledgeable to education
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2 lingo; SWP, AIS, Contract for Excellence, Title
3 1, Title 3, CTT, and Accuity. The next steps are
4 to fully equip parents to understand these
5 programs, content language and school process.
6 We have made progress but there is still more to
7 be done.
8 Mayoral control has significantly changed
9 the relationship between parents and
10 administrators. As we move forward, we need to
11 improve the dynamic of that relationship. When
12 the assembly considers legislation this spring to
13 renew mayoral control, it’s important to improve
14 the system of accountability so that we can all
15 keep up the pace of progress in our schools. The
16 accountability process should become more
17 transparent. Principals should be more
18 accountable to parents. Sometimes parents are
19 made to feel that they have no recourse.
20 We also need transparency at the district
21 level. Superintendents should be more
22 accountable to the community education councils
23 and president’s councils. We need a clear and
24 concise mechanism for parent complaints that go
25 beyond the district level. We need the new
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2 parent 311.
3 The potential for the CECs should also be
4 realized. We need school administrators to
5 listen to the recommendations of the parent
6 coordinators and district family advocates. We
7 need to eradicate all barriers to keep school
8 administrators and parents divided. We must have
9 improvements in the process of parent
10 involvement, engagement, advocacy, and education.
11 Dear members of the New York State
12 Assembly Education Committee, six years after
13 mayoral control was put in place, the system is
14 on the path to success. We need more time. As
15 we move forward, I am for continued mayoral
16 control with improvements to the implement
17 process.
18 Thank you.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
20 MS. LAWRENCE: I am Elizabeth Lawrence,
21 principal of Middle School 118, and this is
22 Teresa Jordan, one of my parents. I think Ms.
23 Jordan would like to speak first.
24 MS. JORDAN: Teresa Jordan.
25 MS. LAWRENCE: My PA president, Ms.
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2 Martinez, had to leave. She was here since early
3 this morning. This is Teresa Jordan.
4 MS. JORDAN: As a parent, I would like
5 to say that I arrived, I just arrived from the
6 country of Puerto Rico, and I have an eighth
7 grade student in a bilingual class, and another
8 child who will attend MS-118 gifted and talented
9 program in September 2009.
10 For families like mine who speak Spanish
11 at home, access to a high quality education is
12 incredibly important. Mayoral control has
13 improved my children’s school and schools across
14 the city. Mayoral control means that there is
15 fairness, equity across the system, and we can
16 hold one person, the mayor, accountable.
17 I came to this country so my children
18 could get a great education. I don’t know how
19 that could happen if there isn’t one person in
20 charge of making sure that the system works.
21 If we give too many people control,
22 nothing will get done because the system will
23 have too many cooks in the kitchen. Please leave
24 mayoral control as it is and let it continue
25 working. It is working in my child’s school and
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2 I want it to keep working well in the future for
3 all the children in the city.
4 That’s it. Thank you.
5 MS. LAWRENCE: My name is Elizabeth
6 Lawrence, and I am the lucky person who gets to
7 the principal of Middle School 118, on East 179th
8 Street in the Tremont section of the Bronx.
9 MS-118 is a Title 1 school with almost 84
10 percent of our 1,200 student population eligible
11 for free lunch. This year, 22 of our eighth
12 graders, all children of color, half of them ELLs
13 and two students with disabilities, were accepted
14 into specialized high schools. We’ve very proud
15 of these children and all of our children.
16 I have been a New York City middle school
17 educator for over 25 years, committed to the
18 belief that improved academic outcomes for our
19 students result in improved life outcomes. I
20 spent 17 of those 25 years in classrooms in
21 District 2, 8 and in Region 2.
22 Since mayoral control, I have noted
23 massive positive changes in the schools that I
24 have worked in across the board. Before mayoral
25 control, all schools were not held equally to
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2 consistent and rigorous standards. The new DOE
3 celebrates, encourages, and demands excellence,
4 transparency and accountability across the board.
5 Since mayoral control, principals have
6 the ability to thoughtfully and purposefully
7 analyze the data on their individual student
8 population. The ability to allocate funds to
9 those areas, that will result in an improved
10 outcome for their student population.
11 Since mayoral control, there is shared
12 accountability, teachers receive better
13 professional development customized to their
14 individual needs. Administrators have greater
15 freedom to hold teachers accountable for student
16 achievement and best teaching practices. As a
17 principal and member of the empowerment network,
18 and in consultation with my school community, I
19 have the power to choose what is best for our
20 students.
21 Before mayoral control, we did not have
22 parent coordinators. Parents are welcome to our
23 school by our outstanding parent coordinator,
24 Diana Owens. Together, we create multiple
25 opportunities for our parents to authentically be
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2 part of the school leadership team and the
3 decision-making process. Parent engagement is
4 alive, well, and thriving at MS-118. We have
5 standing room only at our parent book clubs.
6 Just last week we had a spirit rally with over
7 200 parents and even more children in attendance.
8 The week before that our parents thanked
9 our teachers with an incredible dinner served on
10 open school night. Mayoral control enabled
11 principals to be able to choose the school
12 support organization that provided the best
13 support for their individual schools. My
14 empowerment network team supports me, and they
15 are accountable to me. I am accountable to all
16 the stakeholders in my school, as well as the
17 superintendent, the chancellor and ultimately the
18 mayor. If I disagree with policy, I have
19 multiple opportunities to have my voice heard on
20 behalf of my school community, from meetings at
21 Tweed to e-mails to the chancellor and, yes, he
22 does answer e-mails. In the end, this is about
23 our children. Achieving starts with believing
24 that every child has the right to an equal and
25 excellent education.
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2 I passionately support and believe that
3 only through the continuation of mayoral control
4 will all New York City students have an equal
5 opportunity to achieve.
6 Thank you very much for this opportunity.
7 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Any questions?
8 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: I have no
9 questions to ask, I just want to tell Ms. Hinton,
10 I can feel your frustration. I want you to know,
11 we up here, we understand it completely. The
12 communication – or, rather, lack of it that comes
13 from the Department of Education, to us as well
14 as the community on major decisions quite often
15 is non-existent or after the fact, and it’s very
16 very frustrating. So we have it too, we feel it,
17 and we understand it.
18 I just wanted you to know that.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I was just curious.
20 You mentioned your child is in a gifted and
21 talented program?
22 MS. JORDAN: No, she will be attending
23 it.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: How did that happen?
25 Because there’s been a major – you may have
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2 heard today that that was something that was
3 reorganized, and there’s been a lot of questions
4 as to whether that has resulted in more diversity
5 or better results, so how did you find out about
6 it? How did your daughter – what grade is she
7 going in?
8 MS. JORDAN: My daughter is in the fifth
9 grade, and since we came from Puerto Rico, she
10 had good grades, and her teacher referred her.
11 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Did she have to take
12 a test? My son is in the fifth grade, for
13 example, and he went and took a test this year.
14 Did she take a test?
15 MS. JORDAN: Yes.
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Was that called the
17 Olsat test?
18 MS. JORDAN: No.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Just because one of
20 the things I was curious, we took that test with
21 about a thousand children and of course we have
22 yet to hear anything, and we’re looking at our
23 sixth grades and wondering what’s going to
24 happen, so I was curious as to why you were
25 already told that your daughter is in a sixth
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2 grade gifted and talented. I envy you that, and
3 I wondered what was different from my experience
4 from yours.
5 MS. JORDAN: Okay, when I meant gifted,
6 it’s because she is in the honor roll, and how
7 can I explain? It’s the Pace program that they
8 have in MS-118, and the Spectrum program.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Is MS-118 a K through
10 8 school?
11 MS. JORDAN: No.
12 MS. LAWRENCE: May I?
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Yes, sure.
14 MS. LAWRENCE: MS-118 is comprised of
15 four vertical academies, all grades six through
16 eight. We have one gifted and talented program,
17 the Pace Academy. We have an accelerated program
18 for ELLs called the Spectrum Academy, and we have
19 two other academies, Niles Prep, and the Academy
20 of Excellence. Those two academies are just six
21 months old. The other two academies have been
22 around more than 20 years. Those two academies,
23 Spectrum and Pace, there is – we do our own
24 recruitment from District 10 students only.
25 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I thought though that
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2 the DOE had instituted a citywide testing policy
3 for gifted and talented.
4 MS. LAWRENCE: The DOE is trying to
5 institute a citywide gifted and talented program,
6 citywide, but we have not yet participated in
7 that.
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: So you’re able still
9 to select who you wish to put into these programs
10 from a feeder school?
11 MS. LAWRENCE: Any child in District 10
12 that has a District 10 address and is recommended
13 by their guidance counselor, and their parents
14 are interested, they come to the orientation and
15 we have not yet delivered acceptances. We are
16 following very strictly that calendar given to us
17 by the DOE, but we are not part of that.
18 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: But it’s exciting,
19 I’m sure, for you to know that your daughter is
20 going to be going to a wonderful gifted and
21 talented program. Like I said, I envy that, we
22 don’t know in our district – what are the class
23 sizes in those gifted and talented programs?
24 MS. LAWRENCE: They range from – the
25 sixth grade classes tend to be about 30. By
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2 eighth grade due to just movement down to about
3 26 to 28.
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We didn’t do this on
5 purpose, when we put all the MS’s together, we
6 didn’t realize we were going to have one school
7 that’s an A, with a gifted and talented and one
8 school that’s going through the trauma of
9 closing, and they’re not that far apart,
10 geographically, so it’s illustrative.
11 What grades do you have at MS-399?
12 MR. WOJSNIS: Sixth through eight.
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Okay. Also. And are
14 you in academies? Do you have a gifted and
15 talented program?
16 MR. WOJSNIS: Yes, we do. Because of
17 the high ELL population, we have an ELLs academy,
18 so that’s the main – that’s a big part of the
19 school’s concentration is on English language
20 learners.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: But do you have a
22 gifted and talented?
23 MR. WOJSNIS: Yes, we have Regents
24 classes.
25 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Is it the same that
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2 she’s talking about?
3 MR. WOJSNIS: No, it’s not the same.
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: So you’re not drawing
5 from all over District 10 the way they are?
6 MR. WOJSNIS: No, it’s not the same.
7 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: So your gifted and
8 talented is zoned program?
9 MR. WOJSNIS: No, I’m not sure. I’m not
10 an administrator, but -
11 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: You can get back to
12 us. And it’s for English language learners only?
13 MR. WOJSNIS: No, it’s general
14 education. It’s not English language learners.
15 We do have an English language learning academy.
16 Our entire fourth floor is English language
17 learners, both bilingual and ESL.
18 We do not have a gifted and talented, we
19 have Regents classes which we have advanced
20 students who are taking the ninth grade Regents
21 in either science or math.
22 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: And how are those
23 students selected?
24 MR. WOJSNIS: Well, we have one that was
25 accepted to Bronx High School of Science, we have
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2 another one that was accepted to LaGuardia School
3 for performing arts.
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: But how are the
5 children in that class, how are they selected?
6 Because again, when I was mentioning, say, in
7 Queens, they’ve said that children have to take
8 this Olsat test, which I had my son take just for
9 the heck of it really, I’m not even that
10 interested in gifted and talented, but we thought
11 well, it’s available, let him take it, you know.
12 How are those children selected in your
13 school?
14 MR. WOJSNIS: To be honest, I’m not an
15 administrator, so I don’t really – I’m not in the
16 position to answer that question.
17 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Maybe we can find
18 out, it would be interesting to see what the
19 contrast is.
20 MS. WALLACE: I’m very interested in
21 DOE’s policy for the talented and gifted class
22 because in our district the children are not even
23 available to even participate in the running for
24 it unless they receive a 1408 on their fourth
25 grade scores. So I’m wondering why is Queens
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2 allowed to do one process -
3 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I have no idea. But
4 the point is, we don’t – District 24 has no
5 gifted and talented programs for my son, but they
6 told us if we took this test that they might have
7 some. So I’m just interested – and they told us
8 this was going to be a citywide policy, but
9 obviously maybe it isn’t, so what are they doing
10 in your area?
11 I’m asking this as much as a parent as an
12 assemblywoman, believe me.
13 What are they doing in your area?
14 MS. WALLACE: In our district, in order
15 for your child to be eligible for the talented
16 and gifted program, on the fourth grade
17 standardized tests, math and ELA, you have to
18 have a 1408. That’s the criteria they gave us.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I don’t even
20 understand that because those tests are one, two,
21 three, four.
22 MS. WALLACE: No, no. The raw score -
23 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Who did that?
24 MS. WALLACE: I’m wondering now.
25 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I never heard that at
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2 all where we are. We never heard that. Well,
3 it’s interesting. We have one more hearing,
4 obviously, coming up in Brooklyn, and one of the
5 things we do –
6 MS. WALLACE: Well, maybe you can ask
7 that question.
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I think we will
9 because one of the things that came out earlier
10 was that the number of students of color, African
11 American and Latino children are less now than
12 they were six years ago. So that’s been a big
13 debate, what are we doing, how come that
14 happened, so I’m very curious about this. I
15 really appreciate – you have sort of three
16 different things, and we were told it was
17 standardized, so we will be following up very
18 much so.
19 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Mr. Wojsnis, I
20 want to get back to you because in your testimony
21 you mentioned PS-90 and that’s in my district and
22 that’s scheduled to close. I thought it was
23 based on the fact that they weren’t able to
24 perform, but what I’m picking up from you, it
25 seems to be – the school has a high immigrant
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2 population, they seem to be more subject to
3 closure, is that what you’re saying? Because
4 there’s a very high African population in that
5 school. That’s what I’m trying to get a
6 clarification.
7 MR. WOJSNIS: I can’t speak for the DOE,
8 they say it’s based on performance. They told us
9 it was because the progress report went from a C
10 to a D. They said the same thing for PS-72 in
11 Brooklyn which was very similar to our situation.
12 What I know about PS-90 was what I read
13 in the Times and it seemed that their
14 justification was on performance, again, the
15 progress reports which, by the way, when we were
16 asked to fill out those surveys, I can tell you
17 as a chapter leader, we were told that those
18 surveys were not going to come back and harm us,
19 that it wouldn’t be something that would be
20 considered for school closures. We were told
21 that at the time, and if you read those surveys
22 they say strictly voluntary.
23 What we found was that they were really
24 being used against us, and back when they had the
25 CEC meeting, for example, and I’m mentioning them
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2 as well because I’d like to say that it’s just
3 MS-399, but it’s not. It’s a process.
4 They said, basically, well, the teachers
5 didn’t fill out your surveys very well, you said
6 bad things about the school. So if a teacher was
7 being honest, they used that as a justification
8 for phasing out the school.
9 I wish I knew more about PS-90, but I
10 can’t answer your question on that. Our
11 population is increasingly West African.
12 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: I’ll speak with
13 them. The thing that concerns me about this
14 whole thing, if it’s based on performance, and
15 the performance that they’re measuring it by is
16 by standardized tests, and the schools population
17 is primarily immigrant, wherein English is not
18 their basic language, we have cultural
19 difference, there’s terms and phrases that we use
20 that are not used in other languages, so the
21 child cannot necessarily understand the true
22 meaning of what a question is. I’m really very
23 suspect about this whole thing now.
24 MR. WOJSNIS: I would agree because of
25 the high English language learning population
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2 that we have, we think we’re at a disadvantage
3 when you start measuring standardized test scores
4 and using that as your yardstick. Not all
5 schools are the same and not all communities are
6 the same. We have special needs.
7 From our standpoint, if we’ve made
8 progress, and I did in my testimony, try to
9 explain the progression that we’ve made since
10 I’ve been there, which is eight years, that that
11 had to be taken into consideration and more
12 support was needed. Where we did improve we
13 found that if you focused on an area and you had
14 small group instruction, AIS services and
15 support, the difference between city and state,
16 when you go on a CER list, you get supported.
17 They come to you, they see, they check on you,
18 they’re there.
19 The DOE is not there. They don’t come
20 there. They don’t know us. They haven’t walked
21 our walk. They don’t know what we do, and they
22 could – all this talk about the children first I
23 think is so much crocodile tears.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Mr. Benjamin.
25 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Thank you.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I want to say too
3 that it’s very poignant, I feel how concerned you
4 are about your MS middle school, and how proud
5 you are of yours, and yours, and it’s very
6 poignant, and we’re hearing that and we’re just
7 trying to understand it a little better as we go
8 through it, because in one level we have two
9 different outcomes with two kind of – not too
10 different perhaps, and how does that happen?
11 I think for me a key thing is you’re
12 saying is that you had three principals in one
13 year, where, I would imagine, in your school,
14 you’ve had stable leadership over –
15 MS. LAWRENCE: This is my second year of
16 principalship, the prior principal, Julia Cox,
17 was there for five years, and I believe the prior
18 principal was there for maybe 30.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: So you have a school
20 with a leader for 35 years or so, and here we
21 have a school that had three in one year, it just
22 shows again how key certain things are, but,
23 Assemblyman Benjamin, I didn’t mean to jump in
24 there.
25 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: That’s fine.
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2 Like you, my interest is peaked even further at
3 the disparate experiences of two schools that are
4 probably a mile or two apart serving similar
5 populations.
6 MR. WOJSNIS: Ms. Lawrence was at our
7 school for a little while too.
8 MS. LAWRENCE: I was actually a
9 principal’s intern with Ms. Torres while I was in
10 the leadership academy at 399.
11 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: But earlier today
12 sitting where you’re sitting, Deputy Chancellor
13 Cerf spoke about pushing resources down into the
14 district, into the schools, to the principals, to
15 do as you wish with those resources to improve
16 education for your students.
17 It seems to be working at your school,
18 but it doesn’t seem – it seems to work in reverse
19 at your school to the point where your school is
20 being phased out. But my interest is also peaked
21 by – there is a claim, there is a one citywide
22 policy for gifted and talented and we’re told
23 that that policy changed. The reason why you had
24 fewer students applying, getting into the
25 programs was because there were fewer parents,
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2 students applying.
3 Now it appears, from your testimony, it
4 seems to appear that people didn’t bother
5 applying because the standards they were told
6 about were too high.
7 MS. WALLACE: Those are written
8 documents that they gave us.
9 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: So it seems some
10 parents were mislead.
11 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: And I have to tell
12 you, this is our fourth hearing. I have heard no
13 one say that those scores had to be added
14 together like an SAT and meet a number. I’m
15 flabbergasted. We’re going to find out why you
16 were told that because this gets to the heart of
17 why perhaps some people are not in the programs.
18 I don’t understand.
19 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: The other
20 question I have is that there appears to be an
21 exception made for certain schools, for whatever
22 reason, we’re told there’s one policy, now it
23 appears that your school is successful, I have no
24 argument with that, but it appears that you’re
25 exempt from this citywide policy.
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2 MS. LAWRENCE: I don’t think that we are
3 exempt. I think that this is a process that
4 they’re going through and that Pace Academy and
5 the Spectrum Academy have been in place for more
6 than 25 years in the community, and I think that
7 they really would very much like us to give the
8 process over to them, but the parents and the
9 teachers feel very strongly about keeping the
10 process in the school, and I just want to add
11 that Pace Academy, that is the one gifted and
12 talented program, is maybe 97 percent children of
13 color.
14 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: No one is
15 disputing that.
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: And, also, I don’t
17 know that there should be one citywide policy for
18 anything. My personal opinion is, this is a very
19 diverse city, and there has to be – with a
20 million children, there have to be many many
21 paths to success.
22 I was just intrigued because we were
23 told, no, it’s one city, one standard. And
24 obviously you’re having a different experience.
25 It’s a good experience. If it was up to me, I
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2 would encourage that experience, but it’s a
3 contrast to what we were given as the official
4 line, that’s all.
5 ASSEMBLYMAN BENJAMIN: I just want to
6 thank you for your testimony, it’s been very
7 enlightening.
8 MS. LAWRENCE: Thank you.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: That kind of sums it
10 then. So we thank you, all of you. It’s always
11 great when we get actual teachers and parents and
12 principals, we appreciate that very much. Okay.
13 We have Jason Levy who came in, we would
14 like to call him down. Lisa Monge, Bronx Academy
15 of Letters; Lucy Friedman; Mindy Duitz – is
16 Learning Leaders here? Manuel Castro, the
17 Mirabel Sisters Community Cultural Center; Jeff
18 Ginsberg, East Harlem Tutorial; Deycy Avitia; and
19 Nelson Mar from the Immigration Coalition; Maria
20 Polanco from the Dominican Council.
21 Are any of those people here? If you’re
22 here come sit up front.
23 Why don’t we start this way. I just want
24 to say thank you to everyone who has remained.
25 Thank you for your patience and your good humor
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2 and your good will.
3 Go ahead.
4 MR. CASTRO: Thank you, Assemblywoman
5 Catherine Nolan and members of the Assembly
6 Standing Committee on Education for allowing us
7 to testify.
8 I am Manuel Castro, an organizer from
9 Mirabel Sisters Cultural and Community Center in
10 West Harlem, Washington Heights, Manhattan.
11 As a membership community-based
12 organization, Mirabel Sisters is pleased to come
13 before the Assembly Standing Committee on
14 Education today to discuss mayoral control over
15 the New York City educational system and its
16 impact on immigrants and low income communities
17 and, most importantly, what we can do to improve
18 the quality of education for all New Yorkers.
19 While the end result of the mayor’s
20 public policies under the new school’s
21 accountability system through mayoral control
22 could turn into a political asset or a failure
23 for the mayor, for the students and their
24 families means more than that as their future
25 lingers on those results.
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2 The asset or failure of mayor’s policy on
3 public education directly shape and define the
4 access to high-living standards for parents and
5 students and therefore they remain as the most
6 vested stakeholders in the public education
7 domain.
8 While many would agree that numerous of
9 the changes that have occurred in our educational
10 system are working and should be kept;
11 nevertheless there are shortcomings in the way
12 mayoral control works, in particular as parental
13 involvement is concerned.
14 Many parents feel that their voice and
15 opinions do not count for the mayor; for example,
16 the elimination of dozens of school buses routes
17 and the enforcement of eligibility rules that
18 forced thousands of kids off yellow buses and
19 onto public transportation, or the new promotion
20 standard policy that imposed higher standards,
21 that we all agree, but failed to provide the
22 necessary tools to achieve the expected results.
23 In fact, some of the successful chapter
24 schools perceive that parental involvement as a
25 crucial step in achieving student success. In
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2 particular, the Harlem Success Academy Charter
3 School requires that parents must read to their
4 children an average of six books every week; a
5 detailed report must be filled in at the end of
6 the month. Beside, they ask each parent to
7 attend two meetings at least per month.
8 In sum, the Harlem Success Academy is
9 counting on parental involvement as a gateway to
10 students succeeding.
11 As we agree that parental involvement
12 plays a major role in the educational process, we
13 have to make sure that the mayor, the schools and
14 districts are guided by provisions that promote
15 significant parental and family participation in
16 the school policy making, reform, and other
17 school-related activities. A good place to start
18 is to reform the current selection process of the
19 Panel for Educational Policy, in which the mayor
20 has the sole power to appoint most of the
21 members, eight members, and each borough
22 president, one.
23 This, however, could stay as it is now
24 provided that the people chosen must be ratified
25 by the Education Committee of the New York City
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2 Council. In addition, the members of the Panel
3 for Educational Policy must serve at least a year
4 with an option to be reappointed for another
5 term, also subjected to New York City Education
6 Committee. The mayor and the Panel for
7 Educational Policy must be held accountable to
8 the parents. Toward that end, a check and
9 balance system must be in place to reward or
10 dismiss their result.
11 Besides the above suggested changes in
12 regards to the Panel for Educational Policy to
13 improve parental involvement, we would like you
14 to consider the following:
15 One, require every Title 1 funding “high
16 needs school” to provide literacy, family skills
17 and other programs to families that will empower
18 them to assist children’s learning; two, require
19 public reporting of school’s progress in
20 implementing parent involvement and support
21 policies; three, require the state and the city
22 the provision of meaningful technical assistance
23 and sufficient resources to implement systematic
24 changes that enable schools and districts for
25 fully implementing the parent involvement support
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2 provisions.
3 In conclusion, we trust that you will do
4 all in your power as a chairwoman of the Assembly
5 Education Committee to strengthen parent and
6 community involvement in school improvement and
7 ability of parents to help their children succeed
8 in a school by revisiting the way mayoral control
9 works, and to see that, although maintained,
10 mayoral control will open a space for parents to
11 become true partners in their child’s education.
12 Thank you.
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
14 MS. TORRES-RODRIGUEZ: Good afternoon.
15 My name is Catherine Torres-Rodriguez. I’m with
16 Family Life Academy Charter School. I do want to
17 excuse Marilyn Calo, who is the principal, she
18 was called into another meeting today.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Just say your name
20 very clearly because you’re substituting for
21 someone else.
22 MS. TORRES-RODRIGUEZ: No, no. I’m not
23 substituting. I’m Catherine Torres-Rodriguez.
24 It’s just Rodriguez there is what they did. But
25 Marilyn Calo is the principal and she is the
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2 first one on the list, but she had to excuse
3 herself for another meeting.
4 We are here with some parents and one of
5 the things that I didn’t write here when the
6 Honorable Councilwoman Green mentioned earlier
7 was the Highbridge area. Our school, Family Life
8 Academy was founded by Reverend Rivera, who you
9 have a personal relationship with, and we – when
10 we talk about ELLs, when we talk about special ed
11 needs in charter schools, because of the
12 application process and the lottery process which
13 is open, always to the public and to any members
14 at least for our school, we always have someone
15 also there from either the council member’s
16 office, or the assembly office there also, but
17 it’s open. And our percentage of 289 students,
18 we have 37 percent who are ELLs, which are 108
19 students. We have 11 percent which are 32
20 students for our school of special ed need
21 students.
22 Out of our school, we’re making – we’re
23 doing very well at this time.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Where is the Family
25 Life Academy?
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2 MS. TORRES-RODRIGUEZ: 170TH and Jerome.
3 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: And it’s a charter
4 school for?
5 MS. TORRES-RODRIGUEZ: K through 5.
6 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: How long have you -
7 MS. TORRES-RODRIGUEZ: We’ve been there
8 for eight years right now. We’re on a second
9 renewal right now because our first renewal was a
10 two year renewal. I’m just going to read some of
11 things that I wrote also. But that was just some
12 information.
13 Some of the changes that I have seen
14 firsthand since mayoral control was passed in
15 2002 have been accountability, parent choice, and
16 better student performance. Having one person to
17 be responsible and accountable for the system of
18 public education in our city is very necessary.
19 In the past, we all looked at our public school
20 system and school boards as good, bad or
21 indifferent depending on the community that we
22 lived in.
23 If that board had a great relationship
24 with the parents and the community, it was good,
25 and vice versa. As a parent who has been
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2 educated in the New York City public school
3 system, I remember the frustration of my parents,
4 my siblings and myself when we were forced to
5 attend a school that had no educational challenge
6 for us because of the zip code that determined it
7 so.
8 Providing parents a choice between the
9 local zoned school, many academies, regent
10 schools, and public charter schools has made a
11 difference in the education of many families
12 including mine, especially right now as we’re
13 going through the middle school process for our
14 children ourselves, and I have had to go through
15 that process for my daughter and also the
16 students in our school, and being able to take
17 our children to apply to various schools because
18 of their academic achievement has been a big
19 difference in being able to do that. We have 11
20 of our students who have been able to also apply
21 to some of the private independent schools also
22 because of their achievements.
23 This parent choice brought my children to
24 the Family Life Academy Charter School four miles
25 away from my house, and to the academic to my
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2 success that my children have achieved. How can
3 a law that provides parents with choices to do
4 what is best for their children not be renewed?
5 And most of all, let’s discuss how
6 mayoral choices have affected student performance
7 throughout the years. When I look at my schools
8 in my area and can see the school report cards
9 which came about because of mayoral control, I
10 can see clearly the schools that are achieving
11 better grades and the ones that are continuing to
12 decline.
13 As a parent who also works in the public
14 school system because charter schools are public,
15 I can see that the competition with the many
16 academies and the public charters have also
17 helped in the increase of school scores
18 throughout the city.
19 Our students are not being promoted
20 without merit as before and they are valuing the
21 diplomas they receive. They have new dreams and
22 hopes as they begin college and open the door to
23 a better future. So we must support the renewal
24 of the majority control law. We have changes
25 because it isn’t perfect.
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2 We cannot afford to do the great work
3 that has gone into our children’s education since
4 this time, and we must keep it going.
5 Thank you.
6 MS. GONZALES-RODRIGUEZ: First I have
7 two wonderful children that are in this school.
8 Also, I am a member of the New York Citywide
9 Headstart Council because I believe in the Early
10 Childhood Care.
11 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Can you say your name
12 again?
13 MS. GONZALES-RODRIGUEZ: My name is
14 Nilka Rodriguez. They put it Gonzales, that’s
15 okay, it’s Rodriguez, that’s okay, because my
16 children.
17 I’m also I’m a learning leader member for
18 five years and I’m a member of the PTA Family
19 Life Academy.
20 This is my testimony. I read it to you.
21 I come from a multi-cultural community. We have
22 barriers, language, religion and culture that
23 effect the education of our children.
24 Our children have many challenge in our
25 community and it is important in providing – the
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2 parents supporting in providing the basic needs
3 like food, shelter and their education.
4 Education is key to a better tomorrow and if
5 mayoral control, not renewed in June, I see a
6 bleak future for our children.
7 Renewing the mayoral control law will
8 help us to continue to work and improve on the
9 things that have come about since 2002. Our
10 children need to develop a skill and talents that
11 will carry them through to a better life and
12 since the change that happened since 2002. We
13 wanted to stay close our cause.
14 Since the mayoral control law, my
15 children law, my children have had the
16 opportunity to participate in a public charter
17 school where they offer us high quality education
18 to helping to achieve their goals. We live in a
19 low-income community, but this does not mean that
20 we cannot have the same good standard education
21 as other more affluent communities.
22 Our children are the future of our
23 nation. In order to support them, you must renew
24 the mayoral control law come June of this year.
25 We cannot afford to go back. Thank you.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. I’m a
3 learning leader myself.
4 MR. LEVY: Good afternoon. Thank you
5 for being here. My name is Jason Levy and I am
6 the principal of IS-339 which is a public middle
7 school in the Bronx. It’s a few blocks away from
8 here down on Webster Avenue. Just add a couple
9 of facts about my school because it was not in my
10 statement, but we’re actually – we’re a, like I
11 said, public school, we’re one to one laptop
12 program school. All the students have a laptop
13 and those laptops were made possible by a capital
14 money grant under Chancellor Klein and then
15 Deputy Chancellor Carmen Farina and then
16 shepherded by Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm,
17 we were able to secure capital money for big
18 laptop initiative 22 middle schools in New York
19 City were awarded these laptop devices and we’re
20 really proud to be able to implement that
21 program.
22 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: What grades do you
23 have?
24 MR. LEVY: Sixth, seventh, and eighth
25 grades. So we’re one of 22 large middle schools
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2 in the city that were determined to be the
3 recipients of this program. We’re an empowerment
4 school and we have many innovative techniques,
5 and a lot of our techniques that we’ve been using
6 have been – we’ve been identified as Google as a
7 really innovative school for our 21st Century
8 approach, and we’re going to be featured on PBS
9 Frontline because our kids are using digital
10 resources throughout their school day. So that’s
11 a little bit of promotion for the school.
12 I guess now, in terms of promotion that’s
13 gone on in the system, I’m positive that our city
14 school system has greatly improved since mayoral
15 control was established. We know about the
16 rising test scores and better graduation rates.
17 I’ve also observed incoming sixth graders from
18 the 15 plus elementary schools that we draw from
19 coming in better prepared academically and
20 socially over the past few years.
21 I’ve seen students succeeding in the
22 diverse range of terrific high schools, big and
23 small, as part of our city’s public education
24 renaissance.
25 It wasn’t always this way. I started
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2 teaching in the DOE in 1996, and I remember when
3 phone calls to district offices went unanswered,
4 messages were ignored and help was hard to find.
5 Everyone used to point fingers, and no one was
6 responsible. The entire system lacked hope. And
7 children, families, and educators suffered under
8 an incompetent bureaucracy determined to protect
9 the status quo. Student achievement wasn’t an
10 issue because it wasn’t a priority.
11 It wasn’t that the system was without
12 quality people – my parents were outstanding New
13 York City public school teachers for over 25
14 years, but it was a system without direction and
15 continuity. Most importantly, the city’s school
16 system was without leadership that was tied to
17 results. When mayors sat idly as the Board of
18 Education shuffled papers and shredded hopes,
19 they were labeled apathetic. When mayors got
20 heated as school crime rose and families blamed
21 the system, they were accused of posturing.
22 Now, the mayor of New York is accountable
23 for its schools and has the ability to lead. We
24 hold the chancellor, appointed by the mayor,
25 responsible. And as many positive things as I
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2 could list about Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor
3 Klein’s accomplishments, I also believe New York
4 City should provide mayoral school control as an
5 enduring policy, beyond the tenure of the current
6 administration.
7 When a plan lands in the Hudson, when a
8 crime spree hits, when a family is tragically
9 wiped out in a fire, we expect effective
10 execution by the city’s agencies. Seamless
11 coordination of care follows a chain of command
12 up through the mayor. All the vital services in
13 this fine city depend on outstanding leadership,
14 vision, and implementation overseen by the mayor
15 and the mayoral appointees. After city crises,
16 both those that end well and those that don’t,
17 mayoral appointees conduct rigorous reviews of
18 policies and procedures, systems, and techniques.
19 This happens because it’s the mayor’s job to
20 care about the quality of life in New York City.
21 For Americans, quality of life hinges
22 upon the quality of education. Why would we ever
23 permit a lower standard for our school system
24 than the rest of the city agencies? Should we
25 want – shouldn’t we demand a mayor willing to be
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2 held accountable, responsibly leading our city’s
3 educational system?
4 Under mayoral control, the Department of
5 Education has been more effective and efficient.
6 Principals have been given unique autonomy in
7 exchange for accountability. The quality of our
8 educational system has greatly improved – in
9 large part because of the innovative structures
10 and central governance. And for the first time
11 in our great city, we’re aspiring to a culture of
12 educational excellence.
13 New York City shouldn’t want a mayor
14 running the city who doesn’t want to control the
15 school system. We deserve mayors who want to do
16 the crucial work of educational oversight. For
17 the first time, students from all corners of New
18 York City have the opportunity to thrive at their
19 neighborhood schools. I know that our friends in
20 Albany will preserve the bright future for our
21 children made possible my mayoral leadership and
22 accountability.
23 Thank you.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
25 MS. SANDERS: I’m here with Family Life
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2 Academy Charter School. I’m not a parent. I
3 actually am an opportunist. I saw someone was
4 absent from the list and I asked if I can speak
5 here. I am actually a registered speaker, but my
6 name wasn’t on the list, and I asked if I can sit
7 in.
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: What is your name
9 again?
10 MS. SANDERS: Maria Sanders. My son,
11 he’s 13, he attends the Hyde Leadership Charter
12 School. He’s been there going on three years.
13 I would like to thank first and foremost
14 Assemblywoman Nolan for holding this hearing
15 today as well as the entire Education Committee
16 for being here for this very long day. I
17 appreciate the chance to testify.
18 Again, my name is Maria Sanders. I am a
19 parent of two children, ages 13 and 6. They have
20 both been diagnosed on the Autism spectrum, and
21 received early intervention services through the
22 New York DOE. My oldest aged out in
23 approximately 1998 before mayoral control
24 started.
25 I learned very quickly as I was
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2 navigating through the DOE, I learned about the
3 bureaucracy within the agency the hard way. I
4 would call on several occasions and request
5 testing, request evaluations, and for several
6 months, my children, both of them, actually, at
7 different intervals, hung in the balance while
8 people were playing bureaucratic games. I lost
9 months of education and resources and
10 intervention for my children waiting on the old
11 system of doing things.
12 It wasn’t until I moved my children out
13 of special education and one child into a
14 mainstream environment at a charter school that I
15 began to see everything turn around. At this
16 charter school where he attends now, there was a
17 teacher who specialized in getting children to
18 read that weren’t necessarily stimulated readers.
19 My fourth grader was decoding on a kindergarten
20 level. He was going to sixth grade, but he was
21 coding on kindergarten level. She knew
22 phonetically how to reach him. She had studied
23 psychology knew that children who weren’t reading
24 needed certain approaches to language. And she
25 knew language pathologies and knew how to reach
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2 him.
3 Now he has made honorable mention on the
4 honor roll three times. He is learning Latin.
5 He has challenged himself in ways that none of us
6 ever thought. After being in a Board of
7 Education public school for over – well, it was
8 kindergarten through fourth grade, and being told
9 he would never amount to anything, teachers would
10 threaten us and say they would hold him back in
11 kindergarten, hold him back in third grade,
12 rather than – instead of labeling him, I felt
13 that they should have used tactics to help him
14 with intervention and strategies to help him
15 around learning, but they never did.
16 My younger son, he aged out after the
17 mayoral control. What’s happening with him, I
18 put him in a private school setting for special
19 education learners. When I called the Board of
20 Education today with a new son, a new case, they
21 get back to me.
22 I’ve had impartial hearings for my son.
23 I’ve been able to navigate to through the system
24 for Nickerson letters, P3 and P4 letters for
25 tutors. I have gotten so much encouragement, and
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2 it’s almost as if it’s a collaborative effort to
3 help both my children. It’s almost just like day
4 and night. I am fortunate to be able to advocate
5 for my kids, but there are hundreds of families
6 that won’t ever see the resources that I have.
7 For that reason, I don’t think that we
8 should go back to the old Board of Ed and the old
9 system of doing things through a bureaucratic
10 structure, but instead keep things moving forward
11 in a more fair diverse system of helping a
12 diverse population of learners.
13 I also wanted to add that – Dr. Rosa
14 left, but I wanted to thank her because in 1983,
15 when I was graduating high school in the State of
16 Florida, the Board of Regents gave me a
17 scholarship to go to school. They said that
18 because I was overachieving in classes, but I was
19 underachieving on standardized tests, that they
20 would allow certain students to go to college on
21 a full scholarship. Because of the Board of
22 Regents, and programs, like the mayor wants to
23 set up in public schools and charter schools, I
24 was able to go to school. My SATs were very low,
25 but my GPA was high, because that’s the kind of
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2 learner I am. A lot of people don’t fit in a
3 box. We’re different and we have diverse ways of
4 being reached in the classroom.
5 I just want to say that now I’ve
6 committed myself as a parent council leader at
7 the high school. I also work for advocacy in and
8 around Brooklyn with Achievement First, which is
9 another charter school. I help families navigate
10 through the board of ed through what I went
11 through so they won’t have the obstacles that I
12 had.
13 I’m also an education consultant with
14 high school seniors. I’m finding colleges that
15 will work with children with IEPs so that
16 everyone will have a fair chance at education.
17 If there is a high school senior and they want to
18 go to college, whether they have learning
19 disabilities or not, they can go on a
20 scholarship. I’m also working as a teacher
21 trainer at the Bank Street School because I had
22 to learn the hard way that teachers in New York
23 City needed to go back to school for training.
24 They were working with my children but could not
25 reach them. So I am now training teachers on how
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2 to reach very diverse styles of learning for
3 children that learn in the classroom.
4 That’s it.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. I have
6 one quick question on the charter school. One of
7 the concerns that we have in the borough of
8 Queens and a little bit of it here, and that is
9 they’re only going to K to 5, and – what are we
10 doing to create, and has anyone suggested to you,
11 for example, that your children – that they’re
12 going to create a middle school or a high school
13 when they graduate that fifth grade?
14 MS. GONZALES-RODRIGUEZ: That’s what
15 we’ve been navigating through. Our school has
16 applied to add on through eighth grade, but we’re
17 waiting on approval, but through that time we’ve
18 had three graduations.
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: It’s frustrating,
20 isn’t it.
21 MS. GONZALES-RODRIGUEZ: No, we didn’t
22 choose to add on before because we also wanted to
23 make sure that what we had contracted ourselves
24 to do, which was our charter for the five years,
25 was to be able to meet those goals and give our
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2 children the excellent education that we could do
3 through those grades.
4 Once we felt that we were find in doing
5 what we need to do, we said now we’re ready to
6 move on and to request that we could do middle
7 school. So we have put that request in this year
8 and we are waiting for approval for disapproval
9 in April.
10 So that may be that our students will be
11 able to do that, but throughout these three years
12 we have navigated through that system.
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Do most of the
14 children who graduate your academy go to a
15 regular MS school here in the Bronx?
16 MS. GONZALES-RODRIGUEZ: Most of them
17 have in our past years. I have to say that we
18 have helped them through the system with making
19 sure that we are looking at all those different
20 academies and so forth and testing through them
21 and making sure that they are in better schools.
22 Still even – even through that, it is still a
23 different system for them, but it is a small
24 setting, it is almost like a private school
25 setting for them, so when they go to a bigger
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2 school it is just a big new world for them that
3 they have to get accustomed to and so forth, and
4 parents, because they’re used to being able to
5 having an open-door policy and so forth, and some
6 of the schools don’t have that and some of the
7 schools do, so we’ve been able to navigate some
8 of our parents to those middle schools that have
9 that option.
10 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I’m telling you, I’m
11 dreading it for my son, just dreading it. I have
12 to say that very honestly. It’s a small
13 elementary school, public – not a charter, but
14 just happens to be small.
15 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: The smaller class
16 definitely works and, as you said, because I know
17 my grandchildren, two of them came out of private
18 school where they had a very small intimate
19 class. When they had to go into a public junior
20 high school, the adjustment is very difficult for
21 them.
22 MS. GONZALES-RODRIGUEZ: You know, I
23 know that we can all say we all have this middle
24 school issue now, but we’ve had this middle
25 school issue for years. So we can’t all blame -
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I want to make
3 something very clear to you, we’re not blaming
4 anybody. This is the first opportunity that the
5 New York State Assembly Committee, these hearings
6 our committee has had in six years to really
7 question the DOE because they didn’t want to come
8 to a hearing. So they finally started coming
9 obviously because the law is expiring June 30th.
10 But some of this should have happened over the
11 last six years. They chose not to do that. So
12 we can’t help that that some of the questions are
13 going to be rigorous.
14 We’re moving forward. No one is looking
15 to return to – I voted for mayoral control, my
16 colleagues here did, and we want to assure you,
17 this is an open forum for us, a long awaited open
18 forum to hear the kind of feedback. I’ve
19 participated in a number of parent nights
20 obviously in the three years that I’ve chaired
21 the committee but this was the first for us to
22 get their attention.
23 Did you want to ask something about the
24 middle schools?
25 MS. GONZALES-RODRIGUEZ: No. I just
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2 wanted to say for me, my children are doing great
3 in the school, one of my child is the top child
4 in the school and his score is very high.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Where is he going to
6 go to middle school though?
7 MS. GONZALES-RODRIGUEZ: Good question.
8 We are waiting for the process that’s is
9 underway, but also the Family Life Academy
10 Charter School helped us to find out another way.
11 My child was – was in the way to the preferable
12 program. They had to take a test of a test of a
13 test to see if he meets all of that. That’s the
14 way that they use – also, the give you another
15 option, in waiting, I have hope. I have hope
16 that that middle school is coming this year, but
17 they’re giving research for us, seeking around
18 for another good school too.
19 MS. SANDERS: I wanted to add, at Hyde
20 we start at K and sixth and right now we’re K and
21 second, sixth, and eighth. We’re adding a year
22 every year we’re growing larger, all the way from
23 K through 12. That’s our goal. Hyde is a
24 character based school. We believe that
25 education is vital, but if we fix the inside, if
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2 we say, be a brother’s keeper, have the courage,
3 have the curiosity, respect of others, that’s
4 what we’re doing in the Bronx.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
6 We have a number of people, and I see some
7 people leaving and they’ve been here a long time.
8 We’re going to try to accommodate everybody, if
9 they want to let our staff know, I feel badly.
10 We have the young people here from the Democracy
11 Prep, we want to let the young people come down,
12 and the Reverend Michael Carrion, Father Frank
13 Skelly, Gina Ortiz, and Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter,
14 Pastor Francis Brown, Rabbi Saul Zucker.
15 If any of those important religious
16 leaders are still here, perhaps they can go on
17 the on-deck circle.
18 We’re going to take these ladies first
19 and then go to you. Go ahead.
20 MS. AVITIA: Hi. Good afternoon. First
21 of all, we want to thank you for holding this
22 important hearing. I think it’s really important
23 that we have a robust debate on mayoral control,
24 and also in particular for recognizing that the
25 story for ELLs is a little bit more complicated
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2 and needed for us to look a little bit closer at
3 what’s happening with ELLs.
4 So, again, my name is Deycy Avitia. I’m
5 the coordinator of education advocacy at the New
6 York Immigration Coalition.
7 Just as a little bit of background, the
8 New York Immigration Coalition is a policy and
9 advocacy organization. We’re an organization for
10 over 200 groups throughout New York State that
11 fight for justice and opportunities for
12 immigrants and we work on a variety of issues,
13 one of them being education.
14 For the last 12 years, we’ve coordinated
15 a collaborative working with a diverse set of
16 community groups throughout New York City and
17 also practitioners and researchers fighting for
18 access and opportunities for immigrant students.
19 The reason is, back then 12 years ago, we saw
20 huge educational deficit facing immigrant
21 students.
22 In particular, immigrant students back
23 then were attending schools that were unfunded,
24 were more likely to attend large schools and were
25 more likely to drop out.
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2 Fast forward 12 years later, and we
3 continue to work on these same issues because
4 these are the same issues that continue to affect
5 our community.
6 We’re also here as part of the Campaign
7 for Better Schools, which is a significant
8 enforced for mayoral control, which we believe
9 will strengthen the ELLs students as well.
10 The bottom line is that we’re here
11 because for immigrant and ELL stories, the
12 resources are simply not there. I provided you
13 with a fact sheet which I’ll refer to, and
14 basically these are statistics that are very
15 straight forward coming out of the New York State
16 Department of Education and go beyond the
17 powerful median machine that has been pumping –
18 or highlighting some of the successes, but failed
19 to mentioned the story for immigrant and ELL
20 students.
21 Basically, as you see on the first graph,
22 less than a quarter of ELL students are
23 graduating within four years. Even if we go by
24 the New York City statistics, less than half of
25 ELLs graduate over seven years, and the reason
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2 why we feel it’s more accurate to look at the
3 data coming out of the state is that, one, it’s
4 more neutral, and it – we’ve noticed that it
5 doesn’t change as much from year to year. It
6 also doesn’t include numbers for GED and IEP
7 students, which, for immigrant communities has
8 been a huge issue in terms of – in some cases,
9 schools pushing students out and sending them to
10 GED programs because they feel that these
11 students will not be able to graduate. So, for
12 us, it’s important that we don’t count GED
13 students.
14 In terms of ELLs, only one tenth of ELLs
15 are graduating with a Regents diploma. We know
16 the changes that are going into effect this year
17 which is going to make a dire situation for ELL
18 students even worse. If we look at the state ELA
19 scores from three to eighth grade, we see
20 unacceptable gaps. We recognize that some
21 progress has been made at the elementary level
22 which is line with trends at the national level,
23 but when we look at a five percent ELA score for
24 eighth graders, we could not be happy or content
25 with that.
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2 We’re also bleeding students in high
3 school. The last graph we have on the fact
4 sheet, directly out of the presentation that the
5 Department of Education had this morning, and we
6 basically see that the ninth and tenth grade,
7 there’s a pike in the number of immigrant
8 students joining our school system.
9 Unfortunately, what we also see is that
10 by 11th grade, we’ve lost our half of ELL
11 students. So we know that we’re bleeding ELLs
12 between the 10th and 11th grade, and we just
13 haven’t seen the type of reforms that are
14 necessary in order to turn things around. Again,
15 recognizing that together we have been able to
16 enact some changes such as putting forth a
17 translation into petition unit for parents,
18 funding and pilot programs for students that are
19 at risk of dropping out, but what we do need to
20 do is take this program to scale and make sure
21 that all students in all schools are benefitting
22 from them.
23 Again, the Campaign for Better Schools
24 has a robust proposal that would make sure that
25 mayoral control works for our students. By
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2 making sure that all of the reforms that are put
3 in place from the very beginning take into
4 consideration the needs of ELL students, and that
5 ELL students are not ignored.
6 A very concrete example which we work
7 really hard with our groups on was the case of
8 small schools. Most immigrant parents would
9 agree that immigrants – small schools are a great
10 choice for parents. Unfortunately what we saw
11 was that in the first two years, the new school
12 reform movement came into place, there was also
13 an exclusionary policy that allowed small schools
14 to exclude immigrant students, ELL students and
15 special education students, and this is a change
16 that we had to fight nail and tooth that we had
17 to reverse and now we’re happy that ELL students
18 have access to more schools, but we continue to
19 see that ELL students are more represented in our
20 schools. Small schools still do not have that
21 capacity to provide the services which are
22 legally required by law to ensure ELL students
23 receive the help that they need.
24 We’ve also seen a major number of
25 bilingual and dual-language programs in various
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2 languages closed and are not being replaced by
3 the new small schools that are opening.
4 The Campaign for Better Schools is also
5 putting forward proposal for strengthening
6 parental input and community involvement. We
7 believe that by having a stronger panel for
8 educational policy that we’ll make sure that the
9 community is able to look at reform, such as the
10 small school reforms and trouble shoot areas
11 which sometimes the Department of Education
12 hasn’t had the capacity to address. We will be
13 able to prevent some of the fiascos and troubles
14 that we’ve seen after the fact.
15 And also by strengthening training and
16 leadership development for parents, we will be
17 able to ensure that immigrant parents, along with
18 all parents feel that they are included in the
19 decision-making of the school system.
20 So, again, we want to thank you for the
21 opportunity to share this and we really want to
22 make sure that our school system is working for
23 all students and does not continue to leave a
24 generation of students behind.
25 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
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2 MS. RACCAH: Good afternoon. I would
3 like to thank you all, the Assembly Education
4 Committee and Assemblywoman Nolan for convening
5 these hearings.
6 My name is Miriam Raccah. I’m grateful
7 for this opportunity to speak to you about my
8 experiences of mayoral control. Currently I am a
9 charter school leader but I am also supporting
10 mayoral control based on my experience in
11 traditional public schools and as a parent.
12 You have seen the charts and the graphs.
13 Our schools are safer. More kids are
14 graduating, the test scores are up, teachers are
15 paid more and they are better qualified.
16 Today I also want to share some of my
17 personal experiences of the New York City school
18 system with and without mayoral control. I am
19 currently the executive director and founder of
20 Girls Preparatory Charter School on the lower
21 east side.
22 For starting Girls Prep I served as the
23 director of development for the Family Academy,
24 an alternative school in Harlem. I wanted to
25 tell you two stories, the first one about the
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2 school system without accountability, without
3 mayoral control and leadership, and that’s the
4 story of the family academy, and the second a bit
5 more upbeat, I wanted to tell you some of the
6 phenomenal things that we’re able to do at Girls
7 Prep with the support of mayoral control.
8 The Family Academy was a ten year project
9 of three passionate and dedicated educators in
10 Harlem. They figured out over the years what was
11 most important in teaching kids to read. They
12 were in front of the research in terms of the
13 importance of balance, literacy, and explicit
14 phonics instruction. They were extremely
15 successful in their first school.
16 Their students initially tested dead last
17 in the district. They were able to dramatically
18 improve those test scores as they focused on
19 their reading program.
20 At one point they were asked to take over
21 a failing school and so they merged the two
22 schools together. At the Family Academy, I saw
23 patronage and politics went over the needs of our
24 students.
25 One story stands out particularly in
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2 mind. One year, the principal was told he must
3 accept seven seniority transfer teachers. Most
4 of them were no longer passionate about teaching,
5 and many of them prevented the talented
6 assistants in the school who were trained and
7 committed to the Family Academy approach from
8 being promoted to teachers because the seniority
9 transfers had preference.
10 The principal tried to find a way to try
11 to undo or soften that decision understanding
12 that it would have a negative impact on the
13 school’s culture and on the student’s learning.
14 You have to remember principals at the
15 time were much less powerful – were much more
16 powerless to do what was right by their own
17 students in the schools. The convoluted details
18 that ensued were too complex and too frustrating
19 to recount here. These were the days of
20 traveling and waiting long hours for regional
21 superintendents and district superintendents and
22 school boards getting shuffled back and forth
23 with no answers. There are no happy endings for
24 problems that are not owned and solved.
25 Accountability is critical for success. The
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2 seven teachers remained, but the model that had
3 been so successful in turning around reading
4 scores and the failing school failed because the
5 principal was not able to make the changes he
6 needed and the decisions he needed to make about
7 who would be in the classroom teaching.
8 The Family Academy lost the support of
9 its funders and leaders and the school is slated
10 to close in 2012.
11 Now let me tell you a little bit about
12 Girls Prep. Four years ago, Girls Prep was New
13 York City’s first all girls charter school. This
14 is our fourth year. We are a complete elementary
15 school at this point serving 220 girls,
16 kindergarten to fourth grade with plans to extend
17 to eighth grade and serve middle school students.
18 The choice of an all girls school was
19 once only available to families who could afford
20 private academies, but with Girls Prep, for the
21 first time, a high quality education in a single
22 sex environment was affordable to all.
23 Not to be biased, but our school is doing
24 really wonderful things. 91 percent of our
25 families give our school an A plus or an A when
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2 asked how they rate the education their daughters
3 are receiving. The rest gave us a B. 100
4 percent of the parents feel welcome at the school
5 and six families applied for every available slot
6 last year. That number will be even higher this
7 year.
8 Our scores have been strong, 80 percent
9 above or at grade level in ELA and 100 percent at
10 or above grade level in math. We are able to run
11 such a wonderful program at a wonderful school
12 with support from Chancellor Klein and Mayor
13 Bloomberg. If mayoral control does not continue,
14 I am convinced that things may very well change
15 drastically for us and for other students.
16 We have a home in PS-188 where we work
17 really wonderfully with two other schools, one is
18 PS-188 which has been there for many years and
19 also special ed school that’s in the building.
20 The Department of Education worked with our
21 school and with the community to ensure that we
22 found a school that could house our school.
23 The community education council, at least
24 in our district, is not – has not been
25 tremendously supportive and my concern is that
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2 they will not help us to do the expansion that we
3 hope to do.
4 Next year, we also plan to open a school
5 in the Bronx, the south Bronx, where we’ve had 20
6 percent of our current students come from the
7 Bronx, we’ve shown the support for that school in
8 that effort.
9 Our school has four core values which is
10 scholarship, merit, sisterhood, and
11 responsibility. I want to mention about
12 responsibility for our girls who are kindergarten
13 to fourth grade now, responsibility means I do
14 the right thing even when no one is watching.
15 For those of us in education, responsibility and
16 accountability go hand in hand. If I am
17 responsible, I am accountable. Under Chancellor
18 Klein and with mayoral control, there is a single
19 set of clear expectations, rewards, and
20 consequences for every school in New York City.
21 The days of blame and defeat are over. He has
22 taken responsibility and so have many educators.
23 Things are getting better for the kids who need
24 it most and I see that every day.
25 So I ask you to please renew mayoral
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2 control and please make a responsible decision
3 for our girls and for every student in New York
4 City, and a decision that you could confidently
5 say was in the best interest of the students who
6 need it most. I can tell by the intensity of
7 your listening and your passion today that you
8 will do just that.
9 I just wanted to also mention two things
10 as I’ve listened. Several of our students took
11 the gifted and talented citywide test last year
12 and there were at least three girls who scored
13 high enough to be accepted into gifted programs,
14 and they decided to stay at Girls Prep because
15 they really preferred the education that they
16 were getting there and decided that that was what
17 they wanted to commit to, so I don’t know what’s
18 happening citywide, but just for one thing -
19 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Well, if our school
20 was a K to eight school, we would do the same
21 thing, but it’s not, so we have limited options.
22 That’s the difference.
23 But I agree with you. There’s no reason
24 to go into gifted and talented. I have very very
25 mixed feelings about it generally, but one of the
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2 things, the department has promoted it, and yet
3 the numbers of children of color have gone down
4 so you have to say, how did that happen.
5 I, myself, not personally, again, not as
6 the chair of the committee, but as a parent of
7 someone who is a student in New York City have
8 some mixed feelings about those types of programs
9 myself, but it was a question based on how the
10 city is selling it or spinning or promoting, or
11 whatever word that you want to use.
12 So thank you very much.
13 MS. RACCAH: Thank you.
14 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I would really love
15 one day to come out and see the school and I’m
16 sure would be very very enjoyable.
17 MS. RACCAH: That would be wonderful.
18 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Go ahead.
19 MR. KITTREDGE: Good evening, Chairwoman
20 Nolan, Assemblyman Benedetto, Assemblywoman
21 Greene, it’s really an honor to be here. My name
22 is Jeremiah Kittredge and I’m the director of
23 cynic initiatives at Democracy Prep Charter
24 School. It’s good to see you again. We’re
25 located in Manhattan. At the last hearing it was
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2 really wonderful to be there and we – I really
3 just want to say two things quickly and then I’m
4 going to turn it over to our scholars.
5 The first to thank you tremendously for
6 your listening and interest at this hour and many
7 hours to go. Also for supporting our scholars
8 and letting them be here as well.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We’re sorry we
10 couldn’t get them all, but –
11 MR. KITTREDGE: It’s all right. It’s
12 okay.
13 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: There’s a million
14 children in the New York City school system, and
15 I live with one everyday, so it’s great to hear
16 from them.
17 MR. KITTRIDGE: Yes, and it’s really
18 wonderful. I think that they had play practice
19 and they would have like to be here but we thank
20 you so so much.
21 I just want to say quickly, Democracy
22 Prep is a public charter school in District 5.
23 We serve students in grades six through 12. We
24 do quite well. We opened in 2006. Our students
25 enter on average three grade levels behind.
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2 They’ve made it up, basically 97 percent of them
3 had made it up by sixth grade, the end of sixth
4 grade. They are doing incredibly well at our
5 school and we are really proud of the success of
6 our scholars.
7 I have two of them with me today who are
8 going to give a little bit of testimony on the
9 issue. One of them is Ayanna Mason, an eighth
10 grader from the Bronx, as is Nia Hill-Minns,
11 another eighth grader from the Bronx. Ayanna is
12 from Amherst Advisory, and Nia Hill-Minns is from
13 the Tuffs Advisory.
14 So I will turn it over to Ayanna first
15 who I’m sure will be very interesting.
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you both.
17 MS. MASON: Good evening. My name is
18 Ayanna Mason. I’m an eighth grader at Democracy
19 Prep Charter School and I live in the Bronx.
20 Basically everybody has been speaking
21 accountability about what’s important, about why
22 it’s important for the mayor and schools to have
23 accountability.
24 I want to tell you a little bit more
25 about what accountability means to me. For me,
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2 accountability means that I must show the world
3 that I am succeeding, but also that I have the
4 choice and voice to choose to be successful and
5 have the resources to do it. I choose to be
6 accountable to myself and my school. I didn’t
7 always take school seriously and I take
8 accountability for the fact that sometimes I
9 didn’t work as hard as I should. But I choose to
10 work incredibly hard now and I am doing
11 incredibly well.
12 Last week I won a major award at a debate
13 tournament where almost all the other
14 participants were from elite private schools.
15 But I can’t do it alone. I need a great school
16 to help me succeed. My mom and teachers told me
17 that I am naturally and incredibly smart, but
18 without a great school I won’t have the access to
19 teaching and learning opportunities that I need.
20 My mom submitted I testify saying how
21 lucky it was that I got into Democracy Prep.
22 Believe me, I know that I am one of the luckiest
23 students in New York. My mom and I have choice
24 and voice, but so many families across New York
25 City do not. I am what President Obama calls on
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2 a Wednesday a pocket of excellence.
3 How do we create excellence for all
4 students? I think the answer is mayoral control
5 because it’s a tremendously important step
6 towards allowing all students to have choice and
7 voice, to know which schools are great and which
8 schools are not.
9 I have been to a failing school. My
10 mother found a school named Miscota New School
11 which promised the world but did not fulfill a
12 single thing that they had promised. If mayoral
13 control existed when I was in elementary school,
14 my mother would have known that Miscota was a bad
15 school with no results.
16 Mayoral control makes schools accountable
17 to parents and to themselves and makes schools
18 have the results to back up what they’re saying.
19 My mother chose to send me to Democracy Prep
20 because it had promise, numbers to support its
21 words and it did do what it said it was going to.
22 But my main point is that we can’t stop
23 now. I know how lucky I am. If mayoral control
24 ceases, pockets of excellence like mine will
25 disappear and the excellence schools, the ones
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2 with transparent numbers and results too will be
3 available to even fewer students.
4 I have heard people say that charter
5 schools don’t deserve support because there are
6 so few of them. To me, that’s not an argument
7 against charters it’s an argument against the
8 system.
9 Make all schools places where any parent
10 would choose to send their child, charter,
11 traditional public school, or otherwise. Make
12 school take accountability for their numbers and
13 parent’s choice won’t just take place in pocket
14 of excellence, it will give every child a chance
15 to succeed.
16 Also, based on a meeting that I went to
17 last night was a district meeting about what
18 would happen if mayoral control didn’t exist
19 right now, and how schools would be run, and it
20 didn’t seem as organized as it should be and the
21 people that should be running our school system.
22 Therefore, mayoral control is I think
23 what would be better for all schools and parents
24 to have that accountability and choice and voice.
25 Thank you very much.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
3 MS. HILL-MINNS: My name is Nia Hill-
4 Minns and I’m in the eighth grade at Democracy
5 Prep Charter School. I live in the Bronx.
6 As a 13 year old girl, I have many
7 responsibilities. For example, I have to be at
8 school on time and have all my homework done on
9 time. Just like me, the mayoral has many
10 responsibilities. One of these responsibilities
11 is giving children of New York the proper
12 education they need to be successful in life.
13 Before 2002 the Board of Education ran
14 New York’s schools. Having so many people
15 running one single system leads to a lack of
16 accountability. On Wednesday, President Barack
17 Obama stated that the time for pointing fingers
18 is over and, with mayoral control, this statement
19 could actually come true. This is because with
20 mayoral control it keeps one person accountable
21 for the positive and negative things that happen
22 in the educational system.
23 If it were not for mayoral control, I
24 wouldn’t be where I am today because mayoral
25 control – because the mayor holds himself
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2 accountable, he made the schools that produce
3 results get funding and the support they deserve.
4 In particular, the mayor and school’s
5 chancellor has made sure that good schools will
6 be able to grow in New York. Democracy Prep is
7 one of these schools. And my mother chose to
8 send me there because of the promising,
9 outstanding results. Students at Democracy Prep,
10 for example, make three grade levels of growth in
11 the first year. The school was held accountable
12 to both the mayor and to my mother who chose to
13 send me there so I can succeed in college.
14 Before mayoral control, I didn’t like
15 coming to school because I felt that no one cared
16 if I was there or not. My zoned school was
17 accountable to no one, especially my mother. So
18 if I was stuck there, I would have never got the
19 chance to live out what President Obama calls our
20 own American dream. Because of mayoral control,
21 I am not in a failing school.
22 Without mayoral control, my mother’s
23 voice will be silenced and she will be told to go
24 to a failing school in my zone. By emphasizing
25 results and accountability, mayoral control
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2 emphasizes my mother’s right to choose. There is
3 nothing more important than that.
4 Many people don’t like mayoral control
5 because they don’t like the mayor. However, when
6 it comes down to the wire, it’s not about the
7 mayor, it is about the children of the
8 generation. If you don’t like the mayor, don’t
9 take it out on the children. Accountability does
10 not mean that the mayor has total power. It
11 means that you have power to produce results. We
12 need a result-driven education system. Without
13 one, you are telling my generation to wait and we
14 can’t wait.
15 Thank you.
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you all very
17 much. You did a beautiful job. Two future
18 assemblywomen, or councilwomen, no question about
19 it. We appreciate you being here.
20 I just want to say to our friends at the
21 Immigration Coalition, we will be following up on
22 your very insightful testimony based on what we
23 heard earlier this morning. And it is always
24 that frustration that if we have the agency go
25 first, the questions sometimes come after, but
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2 we’re trying to move forward. I just quickly –
3 what is the class size in your girl’s school?
4 MS. RACCAH: 25, 24.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Class size in
6 Democracy Prep?
7 MS. MASON: 26.
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
9 We really appreciate it.
10 Yes, we should give those ladies a round
11 of applause.
12 Next is Reverend Michael Carrion, Father
13 Frank Skelly, Gene Ortiz, Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter,
14 Reverend Brown, Rabbi Saul Zucker from the
15 Orthodox Union.
16 Are they here, please come up. We thank
17 you for your patience. Some people have been
18 here all day long. I want to particularly
19 acknowledge my two colleagues who have been with
20 me the whole way and how important that is.
21 I want to again thank our staff and
22 Debbie McDonough who puts these hearings together
23 for the New York State Assembly, helps find the
24 locations, and our stenographer, and Nicolas, we
25 appreciate that.
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2 Go ahead and identify yourself.
3 MS. WILLIAMS: My name is Pamela
4 Williams and I’m a member of Greater Holy
5 Tabernacle Church.
6 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Just say it again
7 MS. WILLIAMS: My name is Pamela
8 Williams and I’m a member of Greater Holy
9 Tabernacle Church and I’m a resident of the
10 Morris Senior section of the Bronx. I have three
11 children who have passed through the New York
12 City public school system. I currently have
13 several grandchildren attending New York City’s
14 public schools, and I’m strongly in favor of
15 mayoral control of the schools.
16 Since the mayor has took over in 2002,
17 I’ve noticed that my grandchildren’s enthusiasm
18 and performance in school has improved a lot. I
19 often help one of my grandsons with his homework
20 and I’m always impressed by what he is learning.
21 There just seems to be much more detailed
22 curriculum and a better quality of teaching these
23 days than there was before.
24 I have also found that teachers and
25 administrators are much more involved and
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2 responsive than they were before. At my
3 grandson’s school, PS-4 in the Bronx, the
4 principal is great. He gets personal with the
5 kids, and the parents and the students are not
6 intimidated to speak with him and talk about
7 their problems or concerns. I’ve actually seen
8 more parental involvement now, and the school
9 officials are more willing to speak with parents
10 under the new system than they ever were under
11 the old one.
12 I thank the state legislature for finally
13 thinking about what is best for our children
14 instead of what is best for politicians. Instead
15 of dividing authority among a bunch of small
16 boards that can’t get anything done, the mayor is
17 accountable for making sure that the system
18 works. The schools are far from perfect at this
19 point, but mayoral control has definitely brought
20 about positive changes in the public schools and
21 I think it would be a great mistake to get rid of
22 it.
23 Thank you so much.
24 MS. BROWN: Good evening. My name is
25 Frances Brown from the Greater Holy Tabernacle
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2 Church in the Bronx, Third Avenue where we have
3 large group of young people from all different
4 school districts attending our church.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: And are you a pastor?
6 MS. BROWN: One of the pastors. I’m
7 speaking more from a personal standpoint. One of
8 my children went to Truman High School in the
9 Bronx, and another son attended Columbus High
10 School. In addition, I have volunteered in
11 elementary, junior high, and high schools in the
12 Bronx for years.
13 As someone who has seen the changes it
14 has brought to the public school system
15 firsthand, I must voice my strong support for
16 mayoral control of the schools.
17 Before mayoral control, Truman had lots
18 of problems including gangs, lots of gangs.
19 Under mayoral control, the school was broken up
20 into smaller schools and is now a much better and
21 safer place to learn. It was a bad school for
22 years and no one did anything about it until
23 mayoral control, under the new system, the mayor
24 is actually accountable for making sure that the
25 students learn and he has taken responsibility.
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2 I am not saying that the system is perfect, but
3 we have definitely made a lot of progress.
4 Personally, I have always hoped that at
5 some point there were would be a greater emphasis
6 on art education, but I knew from experience that
7 trying to get anything done with the old school
8 board system is next to impossible. At least now
9 I know that the mayor is in control, we can get
10 things done.
11 Three of my sisters also teach in the
12 public school system, and while they were
13 initially not happy about the move to mayoral
14 control, all three of them now have been – all
15 three of them have been pleasantly surprised.
16 They say they have found it much easier to teach
17 in safe schools that are not overcrowded and have
18 satisfaction in the fact that they can see that
19 their students are improving and growing from
20 year to year.
21 Overall, I think that mayoral control
22 have been great for our schools. We have made
23 great progress and we need to keep the ball
24 moving forward, not backward.
25 Thank you for your time.
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2 MS. FURS: Hi. My name is Sheila Furs.
3 Thank you to the New York State Assembly
4 Committee on Education for allowing me and my
5 fellow members of the public to speak to you
6 today on the most important issue of all, our
7 children.
8 Like I said, my name is Sheila Furs and I
9 was born and raised in the Brownsville
10 neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. I attend PS-
11 150 Junior High School, 166, and Clara Barton
12 Vocational High School. I had worked in public
13 service for most of my life.
14 When I went to school from 1955 to 1968,
15 before this centralization, teachers care about
16 the education. They wrote letters home when you
17 were doing well in school. They disciplined you
18 when you needed it. If you were not doing well,
19 they would not pass you on to the next grade.
20 Every school was teaching the same thing, and the
21 textbooks was the same, old and beat up.
22 Back then we had special education,
23 health education, and regular classes. They put
24 the children where they needed to be which was
25 good. Before, recently, I did not know about
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2 mayoral control, but after hearing about it, I
3 think it is a most needed change.
4 For over three decades, our children
5 suffered from a system that was mismanaged with
6 no one to hold responsible for the poor
7 performance of our children.
8 Now that I know about mayoral control and
9 that the state legislator had boldly given power
10 to the mayor to control the whole school system
11 in New York, I believe that this was change that
12 was needed for a long time. Now we have seen
13 better standards, especially in our community.
14 We have kids who were not doing well before.
15 Thank you to the assembly for allowing me to
16 testify. I stand here today to urge you to renew
17 mayoral control and keep helping our kids
18 succeed, and I did graduate from Clara Barton in
19 1968.
20 Thank you.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
22 MS. O’TOOLE: Hi. My name is Linda
23 O’Toole. I would like to thank the New York
24 State Assembly Committee on Education for this
25 opportunity to voice their opinion on this
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2 important issue. Again, my name is Linda O’Toole
3 and I live in Bushwick.
4 I went to school in PS-27 and PS-142. My
5 community has greatly benefitted from they
6 mayoral control legislation passed by New York
7 State Assembly in 2002 giving the mayor control
8 of the New York City public schools. I am
9 speaking today to ask you to respectfully renew
10 the New York State Law that gives control to New
11 York City Schools to the mayor.
12 I remember what things were like before
13 the state legislature was good enough to pass
14 mayoral control, and we cannot go back to an old
15 dysfunctional system run by the Board of
16 Education where there was no one in charge and no
17 one is accountable for the facts that our school
18 failed to provide basic education to our children
19 for so long.
20 While things are not perfect, and work
21 needs to be done in all parts of schools are
22 better today, we still need more money for books
23 and other things, but at least under the mayor’s
24 control, we know that the money goes to the
25 schools that need it and not to those who have
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2 the most powerful community boards, committees
3 like ours suffering greatly under this old
4 system.
5 This change in 2002 went to the state
6 legislature bravely voting to make the mayors
7 responsible for school’s performance and create a
8 single point of accountability. Mayoral control
9 isn’t perfect, but it has helped to create a
10 solution where they can talk about things like
11 equal for all communities, and striving towards
12 excellence for our children. Now standards are
13 higher. I have delighted in watching how our
14 schools and kids challenge to have that similar
15 standard across the board. The education of our
16 children is serious. A responsibility should be
17 held by someone who can actually make decisions
18 instead of too many voices with no real change.
19 I urge you to renew mayoral control for
20 our kids because our kids are our future.
21 Thank you very much.
22 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
23 MR. HARPER: Thank you for allowing me
24 to speak. My name is Reggie Harper. I went to
25 Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn and I am
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2 for mayoral control.
3 When I was in school, when something went
4 wrong with test scores and students failing, we
5 went to the Board of Education – we went to
6 anybody. Nobody took the blame for anything.
7 Everybody pointed fingers at each other. So when
8 it came to education, nobody was accountable.
9 For mayoral control, if there’s a problem, we, as
10 parents, can go to the source, and if the source
11 is a problem in not doing the right thing, we can
12 hold that person accountable. Education is
13 important again in New York City.
14 I know things are better, the school I
15 went to, Boys and Girls High School, used to be
16 one of the worst in the city, and now it is one
17 of the best in Brooklyn since mayoral control
18 started in 2002.
19 Everybody that came has their own opinion
20 and everything like that so I don’t want to say
21 too much.
22 But what I do want to say is that, please
23 make the right decision on this issue, do what’s
24 best for the kids. Renew mayoral control of our
25 schools. Thank you for your time.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you all very
3 very much. I live in Ridgewood so I’m not so far
4 away from the parents who came from Brooklyn,
5 from Bushwick, so it’s great to hear you talk
6 about it from that perspective because we know
7 that 32 was always a very challenged district.
8 I have just one quick question. For a
9 while we were in the same region, 24 and 32, and
10 I was very happy with it. I thought it was a
11 step forward to have more movement between 30, 24
12 and 32. They put it in and then they took it
13 out. I was just wondering if any of that
14 affected your children or your experiences. Did
15 you like it, not like it, because one of the
16 criticisms has been that there’s been three
17 reorganizations. Maybe it hasn’t meant anything
18 to you, but I just wondered if you wanted to
19 comment on it. We were in the same group and now
20 we’re not.
21 MS. O’TOOLE: Yes, and then once we were
22 all together, things got done much quicker. Now
23 they’re split up so it takes a little longer and
24 the kids suffer from that.
25 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: So to you the regions
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2 were a positive, right?
3 MS. O’TOOLE: At that time. That’s the
4 thing about us going to school. We’re sitting
5 here looking at you as great grandmothers and
6 grandmothers. Each century or generation school
7 changes and, little do people know we must change
8 with it. But the biggest thing in what we need
9 is change for the better. We need educated
10 children. Why are we behind in everywhere in the
11 world. I’m tired of being behind. I want to be
12 up front. If I can’t be up front, I want my
13 children to be.
14 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: You look way too
15 young to be a grandmother.
16 MS. O’TOOLE: I’m a great grandmother.
17 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you all.
18 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: Let me just say
19 to the reverend, okay, Truman High School is in
20 my district, so I know Truman High School, and I
21 know they have a wonderful principal there, and
22 it’s a very very nice model that they have in
23 that school because they have four different
24 schools but one principal. It’s not like four
25 different schools with four different principals
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2 and she’s a wonderful lady and they do good stuff
3 there, and one of the criticisms of what was done
4 to some of the other schools, like Evander Child
5 in the Bronx, where they divided it up into small
6 schools and they took out the special ed
7 component from those schools and sent them all to
8 Truman so it gave them the problems that that
9 principal had to deal with, and I don’t know if
10 that was right, but I applaud your comments on
11 Truman, and I’ll get it back to the principal.
12 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you all very
13 much.
14 I’m going to just go through our witness
15 list now. If you are here when I call your name,
16 then you should come down. Ann Keegan, Louis
17 Torres, Mark Sternberg, Dakota Keyes, Felice
18 Lapore, Maria Cruz, Metra Lucas, Dina Urstin,
19 Kristin Cucheas, Migua Kapilan, Aurora Martinez,
20 someone spoke for her, Lisa Monge, Lucy Friedman,
21 we know she had to leave. Mindy Duitz, Abdis
22 Shabid, Joe Hall, Santos Martinez, and Sonya
23 Dalmita, Reverend Carrion, Father Skelly, Gina
24 Ortiz, Desiree Pilgrim-Hunter, Rabbi Saul Zucker.
25 Our next group of people, and then we’ll
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2 get to – we appreciate who’s here, Verna
3 Montgomery and Gail Gatson, ACORN, Dawn Philip,
4 New York Lawyers for the Public Interest,
5 Ocynthia Williams, Elpidio Molina and Luz Balnes,
6 Edberto Rodrigues, Miguel Rodgriguez, Judith
7 Defour, Isis Ansar, Elihu McMahon, Diane Sargent,
8 Debra Brunson.
9 So you’re either coming down or you’re in
10 the on deck or you’re going to go in the back and
11 get them and we’re going to get rolling.
12 Now these two people, why don’t you
13 introduce yourselves.
14 MS. PORTER: We’re on behalf of the same
15 group that just left.
16 My name is Monique Porter, and I just
17 wanted to say thank you to Assembly Member Nolan,
18 Assembly Member Greene and Benedetto for holding
19 this hearing and allowing us the opportunity to
20 voice our opinions.
21 My testimony is brief. Before mayoral
22 control was courageously passed in 2002, our
23 school system was out of control. No one knew
24 who to blame for the struggles our kids went
25 through. Without one line of accountability,
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2 there was too much finger pointing and blaming
3 others.
4 Now we have one line of accountability,
5 the New York City mayor. I saw this firsthand in
6 my community. Now we’ve seen positive results.
7 More kids are graduating, 100 percent of teachers
8 are certified, and we are working towards closing
9 the racial gap – racial achievement gap. I am
10 glad to hear that funding now goes to where it’s
11 needed, not just to communities with the most
12 political influence.
13 We are closing schools that are failing
14 and holding teachers accountable for not being
15 successful. Mayoral control has not been the
16 answer that has solved everybody’s problems, but
17 of course the city, especially in poorer
18 communities, things are certainly looking up.
19 The kids in our program are getting a better
20 education now than they have ever gotten. Are
21 things perfect, certainly not. But I cannot
22 remember a time before mayoral control where I
23 felt the system was actually improving.
24 When things are not working now, we know
25 who to go to, we know who is responsible. I
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2 respectfully urge the legislature to renew the
3 mayoral control of school’s law the way it was
4 intended with them mayor still in charge.
5 Thank you.
6 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: You are a parent, or
7 what school -
8 MS. PORTER: I’m a parent but I work
9 with the church just like mentoring a lot of the
10 children.
11 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Do your children
12 attend New York City schools –
13 MS. PORTER: Graduated on to college
14 now.
15 MR. ELIJAH: Good evening. My name is
16 Samuel Elijah and I would like to thank
17 Assemblywoman Nolan, Benedetto, and Ms. Green for
18 allowing us to speak.
19 Again, my name is Samuel Elijah and I am
20 a resident of New York City, Brooklyn Proper. I
21 would like to thank the Assembly Committee on
22 Education for allowing me to voice my concerns
23 relative to education in New York City and
24 specifically regarding mayoral control.
25 I was VP of operations for the education
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2 and training foundation. The education and
3 training foundation was a non-profit organization
4 whose mission was to provide cooperative liaison
5 between students and the Board of Education as
6 well as corporations and their jobs.
7 So exactly what did we do? We provided
8 high school students in their junior and senior
9 years who had satisfactory grade point averages
10 and opportunity to work part time with
11 corporations like Brooklyn Union Gas, Federal
12 Express, and Con Edison. As a result of that
13 program, I was in and out of many high schools
14 throughout New York City.
15 One of the most noticeable differences
16 during the 1990s was the allocation of resources
17 from high school to high school. For example,
18 one high school had many computers in many
19 classrooms, while another had very few for
20 student use.
21 So getting to the core of my concern, it
22 is of paramount importance to have equal
23 distribution of resources across the entire
24 spectrum of schools regardless of location or
25 political connectedness or capital wealth of the
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2 area. Equitability across the board will give
3 all children of the city the best opportunity to
4 thrive in the educational process.
5 Having mayoral control of the New York
6 City’s Department of Education places the
7 responsibility for resource distribution
8 ultimately on the shoulders of the mayor. Since
9 2002, the Department of Education resource
10 dissemination has upwardly been more equitable
11 system-wide.
12 On this point, I see a strong need for
13 continuance of mayoral control of the New York
14 City’s Department of Education.
15 Thank you again for your consideration.
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. Do you
17 continue to work with this group?
18 MR. ELIJAH: Well, no, the group is no
19 longer operating.
20 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Do you do similar
21 work placing students in real-time jobs?
22 MR. ELIJAH: Well, at this point I’m
23 mentoring students, I’m not actively placing
24 them.
25 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Are you able to visit
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2 high schools, do you feel there is a fairer
3 distribution of resources?
4 MR. ELIJAH: Well, most recently I was
5 in Boys and Girls High School, and I definitely
6 see a dramatic difference from the way it was in
7 the – the last time prior to that I was in Boys
8 and Girls in like 1998 or 1999, and it’s
9 dramatically different on the positive level.
10 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. Good.
11 Wonderful. We have another group coming in.
12 There are other people here who want to
13 testify who are on our list, I would assume some
14 of the people who just came in in the back, we’ll
15 continue to – every so often I’ll call all the
16 names that weren’t here in case someone has shown
17 up, we’re trying to make sure that everyone has
18 the opportunity to speak with us today.
19 Would you like to start, sir?
20 MR. McMAHON: Yes. Good evening. My
21 name is Elihu McMahon. I’m a retired teacher,
22 and I’m a product of the New York City public
23 school system, and I graduated from City College.
24 Professionally I am a chemist.
25 All of my children attended public
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2 school. My eldest daughter – and they all went
3 to Bronx High School of Science, by the way. My
4 eldest daughter is a Cornell graduate and a
5 professional mother. My oldest son is a chief
6 engineer at the jet propulsion laboratory in
7 Pasadena, in fact, he’s launching a spacecraft
8 shortly. My second son has a PhD in engineering
9 who works in particle physics, and my last
10 daughter is an engineer also and she works for –
11 she worked for 3-M and then she worked for Target
12 designing things for them.
13 I say that to say that before there was
14 mayoral control my kids learned, I learned. I
15 went to school that had good teachers that were
16 concerned.
17 Firstly, my parents were concerned. They
18 made sure even though they could not do our
19 homework, they made sure we did it and they
20 questioned us on it. So I say that to say that I
21 don’t – when I listen to the mayor saying that
22 he’s responsible for success, I wonder where the
23 success is. In my neighborhood where I live in
24 the Bronx, the kids come out of school every day
25 in chaos.
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2 When I listen to their language, I wonder
3 what are they learning in the classroom. So I
4 don’t see any evidence of improvement in my
5 neighborhood. In fact, someone was saying that
6 they very seldom sent the person to the
7 specialized high schools because the just
8 couldn’t pass the exam.
9 Basically, the school now has a lot of
10 Hispanics, a lot of African Americans and so
11 forth, but they’re all English speaking and they
12 still do not do well. So I’m wondering, where is
13 the success for mayoral control. Now what I do
14 on weekend, I spend my time tutoring students
15 that go to the public school, and for the grade
16 level that they’re in. they don’t know very much.
17 When I question students, for instance,
18 who are taking say chemistry in the school, I’ll
19 say, are you taking the Regents, yes. What’s a
20 mole? They have no clue. So I’m saying, What
21 are they learning?
22 When I taught at the Bronx High School of
23 Science, I was told what to teach and how to
24 teach. I wasn’t very popular there. I asked the
25 principal, I said, well, how am I supposed to
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2 teach? Write everything on the blackboard and
3 then question them on what you put on the board.
4 I said, But that’s not learning. That’s not
5 learning. That’s simply repeating what I’ve
6 said. Now, this is the Bronx High School of
7 Science.
8 Also, in 1998, I took over classes for a
9 teacher who supposedly had a PhD in biophysics.
10 I took over her chemistry classes. In order to
11 make sure that the students learned the full
12 term’s work, I gave them a test. Those students
13 that were scoring very high, this is at Bronx
14 Science, were suddenly not scoring 85 or 90, they
15 were scoring 50, 55, and so forth. So I said, I
16 don’t understand. So my mother didn’t raise any
17 fools. What I did, I went back and got the mid-
18 year exam, gave them the same mid-year exam that
19 they took, I changed the questions around,
20 changed a few numbers, and they failed. So I
21 said to the principal, it must have been fixed.
22 Now, I completed the school year. Most
23 of the kids, I had 91 percent passing the
24 Regents, which was decent, six failures, really,
25 and simply those people that just didn’t come to
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2 school. However, the principal was not satisfied
3 with the grades, so far as their final grade was
4 concerned.
5 So what the principal did, went back and
6 changed all of my grades up. In some cases,
7 mostly five to 10 points up, sometimes eight
8 because the parents complained. So what I did, I
9 said why are you changing my grades, you didn’t
10 consult with me. I didn’t find out until two
11 years later, in 2000, when they brought me up on
12 charges for enforcing the disciplinary codes so
13 far as dress was concerned, and what I did, I
14 said, well, how did you change my grade, you
15 didn’t consult with me.
16 But this is what’s happening in the
17 public school system, not you, when the system
18 tells me that there’s an improvement, I know for
19 a fact – I have friends that still work in the
20 system, the principal has changed grades, they
21 give easier exams. In fact I was talking to a
22 gentlemen for Boys and Girls High who taught
23 physics and he said, he can’t really teach
24 physics because the kids are not getting the
25 concepts but they still pass.
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2 I have another friend who works here in
3 the Bronx and the principal changes math grades
4 so that kids pass. So I’m saying, yes, there may
5 be a marked improvement in scores, but they’re
6 fudged and I can provide proof. In fact, what I
7 would like –
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We’re going to make
9 sure Assemblyman Weprin who had to leave hears
10 your testimony because he made that point earlier
11 today to the DOE, so that’s always very
12 interesting to get the various -
13 MR. McMAHON: Right, and if you would
14 like to see all the grades that they changed when
15 I was at Bronx High School of Science, you’ll see
16 my grade, the final grade that they changed it to
17 without consulting me.
18 Finally, what I did, I brought a lawsuit
19 against them for academic freedom, freedom of
20 speech, first amendment rights, and the Board of
21 Education lost. What they did, they paid me off
22 to go away. Unfortunately, they took my license
23 away because girls were coming to school with
24 their midriffs showing, their breasts showing and
25 I said to the young ladies, you can’t sit in my
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2 class like that, so they said, well, I’m dressed
3 properly. I said, not for my class.
4 And they told the principal that I was
5 sexually harassing them and so finally they
6 removed my license. I’m 75, so it doesn’t really
7 matter too much anymore, but the idea that I was
8 forced out of the system because I didn’t tow the
9 line, I didn’t babysit, and I can tell you, by
10 the way, in fact, I should have told you that my
11 son Eli who now works with the jet propulsion
12 laboratory was a Westinghouse scholar, number six
13 in the country in 1983. In order to diminish his
14 thinking about himself, when the principal asked
15 him what school were you going to attend, he
16 says, well, I’ve made every other school that I
17 applied to, Carnegie Melon, and so forth, and so
18 forth, but I think I’m going to go to MIT. The
19 response from the principal was, why do you want
20 to go to MIT, why don’t you go to a school where
21 you can be the top student. Okay, he graduated
22 with a 4.4 out of a 5. He got his master’s
23 degree. My second son went to MIT. He was a 4.8
24 out of 5. My last daughter went to MIT. She was
25 a 4.4 out of a 5.
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2 So I’m saying mayoral control has nothing
3 to do with success. The success begins at home.
4 The first teacher that a child has is the
5 parent. If the parents are not involved in the
6 equation, you can’t send a child to me in school
7 that has not learned even how to write his name
8 and expect me to now make a master out of him.
9 It’s possible, and, of course, teachers try their
10 best, but I’m saying mayoral control, to me, I
11 don’t see any evidence of where it has really
12 worked. All I see is a lot of fudged grades, and
13 I don’t get evidence for you, if necessary, where
14 today they’re passing students.
15 In fact, I had one student that I was
16 tutoring. He went on to high school. He’s now
17 in the ninth grade, he doesn’t even belong in the
18 fourth grade, but he’s in high school. So the
19 social promotion is continuing, where’s the
20 mayor’s control of that.
21 And, lastly, so far as charter schools
22 are concerned, how many charter schools are
23 there? What’s the percentage, three percent?
24 What about the other 97 percent of the kids who
25 don’t go to the charter school?
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2 Thank you.
3 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
4 Do you have to leave?
5 MR. McMAHON: I – I’ll stay a few more
6 minutes.
7 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: First of all, you
8 are a breath of fresh air this afternoon, because
9 you’re telling what’s really going on, and I
10 appreciate your candidness. I happen to have a
11 friend who is now still fighting the Department
12 of Education over his dismissal. Isn’t it
13 interesting that he’s a chemistry teacher here in
14 the Bronx. The same kind of situation wherein he
15 wouldn’t allow the fudging of the scores.
16 MR. McMAHON: Before you go any further,
17 let me just say, they sat me in the rubber room.
18 In fact, I invented the term rubber room. They
19 sat me in the rubber room from 1989 to 2004 and I
20 taught – between those years, I taught exactly 28
21 months. So they’re not concerned with academia,
22 they’re concerned with control of thinking, and
23 if you don’t think the way they want you to
24 think, that’s what bothers me about principals
25 having the right to be able to remove people. If
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2 they don’t like you, you’re gone.
3 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Right, that’s
4 exactly it.
5 MR. McMAHON: Your question, please.
6 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: I just had one
7 question for you. Where is it that you live?
8 MR. McMAHON: I live on Wilkins Avenue
9 right near – between Wilkins Avenue between
10 Gratona Park East and Boston Road.
11 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Okay. I was
12 trying to figure out what school you were talking
13 about.
14 MR. McMAHON: Well, Herman Ritter and I
15 think 61 is up the street.
16 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: It’s interesting
17 that we had support of mayoral control from
18 somebody from that very same school that he’s
19 talking about.
20 MR. McMAHON: I was cringing.
21 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: We know the
22 games. Thank you.
23 MR. McMAHON: Thank you much. You must
24 excuse me.
25 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I just want to say to
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2 the gentleman, what a beautiful speaking voice
3 and it was a pleasure to listen to you. So thank
4 you.
5 MS. BRUNSON: Good afternoon. Before I
6 get started, I want to introduce myself. My name
7 is Debra Brunson. As our group is listed, we are
8 educators against academic genocide and racism.
9 I’m going to speak for my students,
10 because I was, like Mr. McMahon, terminated from
11 the Department of Miseducation, and I’m now
12 working in a program called Jobs for Youth. I’m
13 going to speak for my students first, because
14 they are victims of mayoral control.
15 Honorable Assembly Members, we the
16 students of Jobs for Youth, out of school
17 program, appreciate this opportunity to
18 contribute testimony against the continuation of
19 mayoral control. Our experiences and knowledge
20 of the harm Bloomberg, Klein, and the New York
21 City Department Board of Education has inflicted
22 on Black and Latino students will not be
23 forgotten.
24 The fact that we had to seek an
25 alternative educational program because of the
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2 failure of the public school system to even hire
3 qualified teachers and administrators is a major
4 issue that must be brought to life.
5 1, “Teachers” could not and/or would not
6 provide instruction because they had no knowledge
7 or background of the subject. They distributed
8 worksheets and wrote notes on the board with no
9 follow-up discussions or explanations.
10 2, “Teachers” did not care whether or not
11 we learned, A, more students could be found
12 outside the school than in the classrooms;
13 b, students were treated and/or perceived
14 as animals;
15 c, comments like I’ll get paid anyway,
16 and I already have my degree were common;
17 d, there were also teachers and school
18 workers more interested in having sex with
19 students.
20 3, few if any students passed required
21 classes.
22 4, because students had to repeat
23 courses, classes were overcrowded and created
24 conditions that continued to make it heard to
25 learn anything.
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2 These people have a lot of nerve calling
3 themselves teachers. Whoever interviewed and
4 agreed to allow these people to teach should be
5 ashamed. The population is growing too much to
6 keep the same uneducated teachers in schools
7 teaching nonsense. Nobody wants to drop out of
8 school. People from the community need programs
9 that benefit them. People from the community
10 should be trained as teachers. This might help
11 community unity and success stories for
12 generations to come. The only success that has
13 come out of Bloomberg’s mayoral control is
14 keeping students like us from getting a high
15 school diploma.
16 Now, at 18, students can sign themselves
17 out of high school without parental consent.
18 Where do they go after that? At Jobs for Youth,
19 we are trying to get back on track. Our teacher
20 explains things to us. We are getting help in
21 preparing for careers. We are learning we have
22 to make the best choices for ourselves.
23 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
24 And your colleague?
25 MS. SARGENT: I would like to applaud
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2 the assembly members that have such fortitude to
3 be here all day. I have to say that I was not
4 here, but I did want – but I was happy to join my
5 colleague here.
6 My name is Diane Sargent. I say I am a
7 former educator, but that is not correct, because
8 once you are a licensed professional, you are
9 always an educator. I happen to be a certified
10 mathematics teacher and, as the other gentleman
11 had said, I had left education more than 15 years
12 ago, and much before there was any discussion
13 about mayoral control, students learned, teachers
14 taught, parents did their best to try to
15 cooperate, so I don’t know the discussion. I
16 think today should center around a couple of
17 issues.
18 Most of my information will be anecdotal.
19 I don’t have prepared testimony. I don’t have a
20 list of facts and figures. I just talk to
21 people. I spend a significant amount of time at
22 Staples because I’m always making copies there
23 for some other business that I do, but I just
24 casually speak to people, and I was telling them
25 about this whole issue of mayoral control, just
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2 to kind of get some sense.
3 One of the answers seems to be that
4 parental involvement seems to be discouraged.
5 Many parents I know, with the economy, they spend
6 a lot of time trying to take care of their
7 children’s issues, but it seems that the ability
8 of even using 311 to try to make contact isn’t
9 that easy and simple, and many get easily
10 discouraged. So I think that is something that
11 needs to be looked into because parents don’t
12 have much time and the little bit of time that
13 they have, they need to keep that a part of it.
14 As a former educator, as I said, but I am
15 looking to return to education. The center of
16 activity which seems to be 65 Court Street, that
17 has not improved, that has not gotten any
18 different, and with the computer, the emphasis
19 now on trying to do many things through the
20 computer, that is very discouraging, so if there
21 is something that could be done about that, that
22 would be definitely an improvement.
23 My sister, I encouraged her, my family is
24 going through public education, I encouraged my
25 niece, she is now 25 and goes on to do great
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2 things, so I try to still get people to work
3 within the system.
4 One of them, my sister was working as a
5 volunteer. I offered to come in and try to do
6 maybe career, have some discussion with students,
7 she said forget about it, you will not be able t
8 to get into the schools, it’s very hard to get
9 past security, so even if you want to offer
10 yourself to say that you want to help out, that’s
11 difficult as well.
12 I ask, well, what about the computers, it
13 sounds like those are more coming into the
14 classroom, she said no, the computers sit there
15 idle because the teachers – and this is the
16 fourth grade, I believe that’s one of the gate
17 grades, and she mentioned the fact that, no, much
18 of the time is spent preparing for these
19 standardized tests and a lot it is to answer to
20 the way the test is formed.
21 I agree with the gentleman who said that
22 somebody needs to check what is being taught,
23 what about some critical reasoning skills that is
24 something that needs to be encouraged.
25 Thank you.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you both very
3 very much. We appreciate a group of
4 distinguished educators with a long history in
5 the system for coming forward.
6 MS. BRUNSON: There are some things that
7 have not been said that must be said and I want
8 it on the record. I just want to answer a couple
9 of things.
10 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Before you finish,
11 Ann Noonan, Marisol Marte, Cheryl Wyche,
12 Catherine Hill, Nia Hill-Minns, Mary McGee,
13 Antoinnette Green, Robert Press. If your name is
14 one of the names that I’ve called and you’re
15 still here, just come down into the on-deck as we
16 call it and we’ll try to get moving.
17 So you can finish up.
18 MS. BRUNSON: I just wanted to answer a
19 few questions that were asked earlier with regard
20 to budget. There is a code system. If you don’t
21 have key to the code you will not know where the
22 Campaign for Fiscal Equity or any other funding
23 goes.
24 For Mr. Dinowitz, the firing of a
25 percentage of that 15,000 teachers is still in
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2 the works. Through use of the 3020A professional
3 lynching, I guarantee you of the quality African
4 American teachers will be fired. I was one of
5 those teachers several years ago. I was
6 terminated in 2004, not because I cannot teach,
7 not because I am not well trained. I have all my
8 credentials, I am tenured, I also have many years
9 before I even entered the system where I
10 participated in a community program called New
11 York City mission society cadet core, so I have a
12 full background in full standing in the
13 community.
14 I also live here in the Bronx. I went to
15 Walton High School, I taught at Walton High
16 School, I was terminated from Walton High School,
17 once again, not because I cannot teach, but
18 because I stood up for the students and myself.
19 My students passed the Regents, not because they
20 weren’t able to learn anything. They came to
21 them, many of them, when they came to high
22 school, without even the schools they needed to
23 be in high school. I was able to bring them up
24 to speed, so they passed the Regents and
25 graduated on time.
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2 When I was teaching in Junior High School
3 22, I taught special ed. These students were put
4 in special ed allegedly because they were
5 uncontrollable. These children passed the
6 standardized tests once again, and when they got
7 to high school, they were mainstreamed into
8 regular classes, because I made sure I worked
9 with them.
10 I do not give up on my students, I will
11 not give up on the students that I brought here
12 today. We are all here to say that we are not
13 success stories because of mayoral control, we
14 are success stories because it did not exist. We
15 are success stories because we know what we want
16 to achieve and we can achieve it, and we’re going
17 to do it in spite of whatever.
18 We want to say, however, that mayoral
19 control was a great mistake because this
20 individual that is in charge now did not come to
21 New York City to be a mayor, he came to New York
22 City to be a king. What I am getting from him is
23 that he does not care about our communities here
24 in the Bronx and never will. If he did, the
25 situation would not exist. We would not have
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2 students wandering the streets because he has now
3 set up a system where they can now walk away from
4 school and really not know where to go next.
5 One thing more also I wanted to say that
6 Mr. Walcott made, that they do things by the law.
7 We were put into the situation of the 3020A
8 proceeding based on what could be basically
9 referred to as libel and slander. Libel and
10 slander are not legal. You cannot say that a
11 person is not doing the job and fire them for
12 doing the job. That is exactly what they did
13 with me. They fired me. I tried to follow up
14 the proceeding through the court system. Once
15 again, that did not work because you are expected
16 to have money to pay for this endless process of
17 fighting a system that we don’t have money for.
18 I don’t have the money because the salary that I
19 made as a teacher I don’t even make, and I’m
20 working three jobs now.
21 So once again, I will give further
22 testimony written, but there are things that I
23 felt that needed to be said.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We appreciate it. I
25 know you were here for the day.
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2 MS. BRUNSON: There are more like me out
3 there who are once again going to be put out very
4 soon, because I know of people in the rubber room
5 now, and I know he has their foot on the banana
6 peel, and he just said that he’s going to train
7 people from Wall Street, and I have a very strong
8 suspicion that he’s going to train them to
9 replace those people in the rubber room.
10 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. We
11 appreciate it so much, we really do. And the
12 people that were here for the whole day, I
13 appreciate it. I see another wave of people
14 coming in. We called a number of names, if any
15 of those people are here and they wanted to come
16 up, we would be happy to do that now.
17 Ann Noonan, Marisol Marte, Cheryl Wyche,
18 Catherine Hill, Nia Hill-Minns, Mary McGee,
19 Antoinnette Green and Robert Press.
20 Are you Mr. Press?
21 MR. PRESS: Yes.
22 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: If your name was one
23 of the names that I’ve called, and you’re still
24 here, just come down over here and we’ll try to
25 get moving.
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2 Mr. Press is a former member of the
3 chancellor’s parent advisory council. Is there
4 anybody else from the group of names that I
5 called?
6 We also have a group, Parent Action
7 Committee at New Settlement Apartments, some
8 people have just come in, you’ll be next. And
9 then United Parents of Highbridge, I see those
10 signs, so they’re here. And then they’ll be
11 after that, and then we have a final group.
12 Remember, we did start at 10:00, so I
13 would ask people to try to move us forward. We
14 were happy to stay to accommodate working
15 parents, but I would ask people to kind of keep
16 it going.
17 Go ahead, Mr. Press.
18 MR. PRESS: I want to thank
19 Assemblywoman Greene and Assemblyman Benedetto of
20 the Bronx for staying, and they know that I will
21 get the rest of the Bronx delegation. I don’t
22 know if you have my testimony or not, I handed it
23 in.
24 While I’ve waited these hours and hours,
25 I’ve written a few other points. There have been
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2 some – I am Robert Press, a former member of the
3 Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Council. There have
4 been some individual cases in certain schools
5 that have been brought up today. Some were good,
6 some were bad. However, this panel is to base
7 the city public school system as a whole and not
8 on an individual school basis.
9 As a member of the Chancellor’s Parent
10 Advisory Council, CPAC was asked to comment on
11 the position of parent coordinator when it was
12 created, and I say this because of what Mr.
13 Walcott said. It was the opinion of CPAC that
14 the parent coordinator not have a child in the
15 school where they worked. The chancellor just
16 ignored CPAC as he left our questions on this
17 issue unanswered as well as many other questions
18 that we had for the chancellor.
19 I just want to note that Deputy Mayor Ed
20 Skylar later said on New York One, the position
21 of parent coordinator was created because
22 principals are too busy to deal with parents.
23 That went for the chancellor too we found out as
24 time went on.
25 I attended a high school in Queens, Far
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2 Rockaway High School. It was the third best
3 academic high school when I attended it in the
4 Bronx behind – in Queens behind Bronx Science of
5 Brooklyn Tech. It is now one of the ten worst
6 schools in the city.
7 My daughter’s high school had promises of
8 four new foreign languages to it as she attended
9 it. The school is now down to one foreign
10 language. My daughter graduated four years ago.
11 Now on to my testimony. When mayoral
12 control came in, there was a huge feeling of
13 promised accountability by Mayor Bloomberg. In
14 the almost five years of mayoral control, there
15 has been no accountability and parent involvement
16 has dropped to almost zero. As a PA president,
17 president of School District 10’s President
18 Council, and a member of the chancellor’s parent
19 advisory council, I was one of the most involved
20 parents in New York City. I knew chancellor’s
21 regulation A660, parents associations and the
22 schools better known as the bible to parents
23 associations inside out from the page one to the
24 last word on the last page.
25 I applied for the new community district
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2 education council number 10 in my school district
3 in 2004 which was created by the state assembly
4 and state senate. I received the most votes in
5 District 10 more than the next two candidates
6 combined. This is the tally of the votes. I
7 like props too. I received a letter of
8 congratulations from the City of New York,
9 Department of Education that I was selected to
10 serve on CDEC 10. The letter was dated June 1st.
11 On June 3rd, however, I received another
12 letter that my son, which is wrong because I have
13 a daughter, will graduate in June of 2004. For
14 this reason, I have been deemed in eligible to
15 serve on CDEC 10. The decision it said was in
16 accordance with Chancellor’s regulation D140 and
17 that the letter recently submitted to the
18 principal concerning another student, whose name
19 I will not mention, but I will show you the
20 letter, is not consistent with chancellor’s
21 regulations defining parental relation and such
22 cannot be used to support your eligibility on
23 CDEC 10.
24 By the way, I was also named on the
25 child’s emergency card as the contact since there
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2 was an order of protection against the father.
3 Chancellor’s regulation D140 states a parent is
4 defined as a parent guardian or person in
5 parental relation to a child, which I was,
6 according to chancellor’s regulation A660 as of
7 May 2004. A person in parental relation is a
8 person who is directly responsible for the care
9 and custody of a child on a regular basis in lieu
10 of a parent or legal guardian.
11 I go on to the City of New York Law
12 Department in an 80 page reply to the Department
13 of Justice, Voting Section, Civil Rights Division
14 on page 54 dated October 31st, 2003, states that
15 the following under Section 5, proposed
16 amendments to chancellor’s regulation A660 in two
17 paragraphs, paragraph one is about changing the
18 dates of election for parents associations so
19 that the election can occur in May and not June
20 as previous, and paragraph two says that it
21 provides that parents, legal guardians, and
22 persons in parental relation of children
23 attending public schools are automatically
24 members of parent associations or PTAs.
25 It goes on to say that previous
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2 registration may have been allowed to happen for
3 that participation, but it is no longer required.
4 And, finally, chancellor’s regulation
5 A660 was revised to determine that PA membership
6 for the designation of a notarized letter, as I
7 showed you, by the child’s parent or guardian, is
8 no longer in effect. That revision is dated
9 April 6th, 2005, and is called the Robert Press
10 notation.
11 So why was I not eligible to sit on CDEC
12 in 2004 when the regulation was changed in 2005?
13 I repeat, there has been no accountability by
14 the chancellor or mayor, and that mayoral control
15 of the schools should end as it currently exists.
16 Even going back to elected community
17 school boards would bring back not only parent
18 involvement as we had hundreds of parents at
19 school board meetings, but it would also involve
20 the community that is around the schools in the
21 neighborhood. There is a saying, it takes a
22 village to raise a child.
23 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Thank you. Did
24 you have any questions? Okay. Our next speaker
25 is Parent Action Committee at New Settlement
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2 Apartments. Calling Ronnette Summers, Ernesto
3 Maldonado, Carlos Sierra, Samantha Fonseca,
4 Esperanza Vasquez, Shahid Van, Ana Maria Garcia,
5 Abdul-Karim Rahim, and Brenda Walton.
6 If any of you are here, I know that
7 Esperanza Vasquez is here, please come down to
8 the table.
9 MS. ARIAS: Good afternoon. My name is
10 Alda Arias. Ms. Vasquez speaks Spanish and I’m
11 here to interpret on her behalf.
12 MS. VASQUEZ: Good evening or good
13 afternoon to all the legislators who are staying
14 here to hear our voices. My name is Esperanza
15 Vasquez, and I am from the Parent Action
16 Committee of New Settlement Apartments from the
17 New York Coalition of Educational Justice and for
18 the Campaign for Better Schools.
19 As a parent of two children in public
20 schools, I’m here to say that I’m against the way
21 the mayor is currently running the education for
22 our children.
23 We parents want a voice. We want
24 principals, for example, to have hearings for us
25 to be able to know what’s going on and
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2 participate. For example, in relationship to the
3 closing of schools like PS-90, we want to be
4 informed prior to their schools being closed.
5 Our children need a better education. They are
6 the future of our country.
7 Thank you.
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. And you
9 have helped us translate before. Would you say
10 your name again?
11 MS. ARIAS: Alda Arias.
12 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I want to thank you,
13 Ms. Arias, and I want to say gracias. I would
14 like to ask her where her children go to school?
15 MS. VASQUEZ: I have one son in 7th
16 grade in MS-22, and one son in 2nd grade in PS-55.
17 My oldest son, the 7th grader is in a class with
18 34 children. My younger son, who is in special
19 education has 12 children in his classroom.
20 Specifically in my child’s school we’re
21 having a lot of problems. 89 percent of the
22 student population are Latino children, and
23 another great percent African American leaving
24 only about one percent of white students.
25 Many of the parents are frustrated,
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2 they’re not informed. Specifically this is an
3 issue here because it’s a middle school and they
4 do not know the requirements of the eighth grade.
5 Many of their children are being held back.
6 Again, they’re frustrated of not getting any
7 information. We parents want a voice, we want
8 more information and many of the issues are
9 related to translation. Parents don’t speak the
10 language, they don’t know what’s going on, they
11 try to get information, they get frustrated, and
12 the issue here is that their children are
13 American children and the parents don’t know what
14 to do to be able to help them.
15 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. It’s
16 wonderful that you’re here.
17 MS. VASQUEZ: One thing that I’d like to
18 do as a parent is to ask the committee to support
19 the CBS platform. This is something that our
20 children need. Our children are hungry for
21 progress, for respect and for the opportunity to
22 go to college. We are here and we want to be a
23 bigger part of the community.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
25 Would your colleague like to speak?
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2 MR. RAHIM: Good afternoon. My name is
3 Abdul Karim Rahim. I’m part of the parent action
4 committee, CEJ, as well as Campaign for Better
5 Schools.
6 I want to thank you for staying at this
7 late hour. We appreciate you being here. It
8 takes a lot for people to represent what you have
9 to represent, but also the fact that you want to
10 listen to us.
11 I believe that our biggest concern comes
12 basically on the fact that with mayoral control
13 being pushed on us, separately from when it was
14 asked of us, did we want to have term limits, and
15 then it was voted on. So now it wants to go in
16 another direction and it’s just wrong.
17 This has nothing to do with who is mayor,
18 this has something to do with the position and
19 the position is now saying it’s going to force us
20 to do things, or accept things, like she said
21 earlier, we don’t even understand. We’re not
22 getting information or anything of that nature.
23 So the whole thing for us at this point
24 is not that we’re in disagreement with if you
25 have mayoral control or not, but what it is is
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2 the checks and balances. We just had an election
3 with the presidency, they’re saying about
4 transparency, and our whole thing is the same
5 thing. We want to have the ability to be able to
6 see what’s going on with the money that’s being
7 spent, but if you have someone who has the power
8 or a position that has the power to take people
9 from like the PEP and if they don’t agree with
10 them, I’ll just get rid of you. No, it shouldn’t
11 be done that way. It should be in a simpler form
12 of where that position, the mayor’s position
13 would not be able to even put people on, actually
14 come from another source. So that this way you
15 have the power of putting someone on and them
16 having set terms so that this way you wouldn’t be
17 able to just vote a person off just because they
18 don’t agree with your particular position.
19 So the biggest frustration for parents I
20 believe right now is that we don’t have any say.
21 It’s like – you go into the schools and you ask
22 the principals certain things and they’re like,
23 well, I don’t have that right now, and you try to
24 go to whatever is the next step up and we don’t
25 have it available, but all of this is because of
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2 the way the mayor – and I’m not singling out the
3 particular mayor right now, but I’m saying
4 because of the system that they are trying to
5 enforce now, and with the chancellor being
6 somewhat of a mouthpiece for him, we don’t get
7 none of that in return. It’s totally taken away
8 from us.
9 So what we’re asking for is a checks and
10 balance that would allow us to, again, gain
11 control over what is being said, what is being
12 done for our children because our children are
13 important to us. No matter how much everybody
14 else things that what you do is something
15 political, that’s not children. They’re not
16 statistics. You know what I’m saying. It’s
17 important for us to understand that if we don’t
18 give our children the opportunity to advance,
19 then we’re the ones who are going to take a
20 greater loss. We’re the ones. That goes for all
21 of us, no matter what position you take, what you
22 do, what you work as or whatever, we’re the ones
23 who is going to take the greater loss because of
24 the fact that them children are going to find
25 another way and it may not be the way we like.
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2 I remember there was this movie recently
3 that was out, it was the Great Debate, and the
4 end of it ended in one simple term. He said,
5 it’s better for me to be civilly disobedient,
6 then for me to decide to pick up some and be
7 violent.
8 These children are turning towards
9 violence because they’re saying, well, our
10 parents can’t help us because the people who
11 really run this are not doing nothing for us.
12 All we’re asking for is the opportunity
13 for us not to allow one position, the mayor’s or
14 the chancellor’s to dominate over everything that
15 happens for our children, because we are the ones
16 who deal with them on a 24 hour basis outside of
17 the fact of when they do go into the schools.
18 And even in that it should be that we have that
19 type of control, that we’d be able to deal with
20 the teachers and the principals have a report
21 card, and the mayor gets a report card, and the
22 chancellor gets a report card, and everybody has
23 a way in which they can be checked for whatever
24 they make a decision on, because the one thing
25 that for sure that the decisions that we make
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2 today we’re going to have to live with. And
3 that’s the thing that hurts us so much.
4 I thank you for your time.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
6 You know, Assemblywoman Greene, who has such a
7 wonderful leadership role in our legislature and
8 knows some of the people, she called another
9 name, Ocynthia Williams.
10 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Yes, she’s coming
11 down right now.
12 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: All right. And this
13 gentleman can start right now. I just apologize,
14 I’m just checking in with my own family. Some of
15 you have just arrived. I explained that I have a
16 fifth grader in the New York City public schools.
17 We’re just juggling all the various
18 responsibilities, but thank you, go right ahead.
19 MR. SIERRA: Thank you. Thank you
20 members of the Assembly, thank you students, the
21 students that are here, and thank you to all of
22 the parents that are here.
23 My name is Carlos Sierra and I am a
24 member of New Settlement and also I am a member
25 of the Campaign for Better Schools. I simply
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2 want to echo what my friend Abdul just mentioned
3 as far as check and balance.
4 I strongly believe that we have to have
5 more representation, independent representation.
6 It’s about the future, it’s about the future of
7 our community. I can tell you that as a high
8 school dropout it was very difficult for me to
9 make it through school and get my GED. I ended
10 up getting my GED and because of that I was
11 fortunate enough to graduate from Lehman College
12 and I graduated from Lehman College with honor
13 and I thank God for giving me that opportunity,
14 but the reality here is that most of our youth
15 end up whether in jail or working at a McDonald’s
16 or – and I have some friends that unfortunately
17 they lose their life back in 1991, 1992, when
18 things were very bad, particularly at the high
19 school that I went to called Taft High School.
20 So I’m here today to ask for your advocacy on
21 behalf of bring a fair checks and balance to the
22 Department of Education, giving us, the parent,
23 the independent voice, so we can go out there and
24 do what needs to be done in favor of our
25 community, just the same thing that we’re doing
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2 here.
3 It’s not acceptable to, for example, to
4 choose PS-64 as an example, a school that has
5 been disenfranchised for many years. That
6 particular school got graded D a couple of years
7 ago. This past year it got graded C by the
8 department of education and those are the facts.
9 What are they telling you. It is not
10 acceptable. D, C, it is not acceptable. We have
11 to do better. That’s what we tell our kids. So
12 I’m here today to tell you to please, I’m
13 advocating what is right for the future of our
14 community. If you go out there, you don’t have
15 to really be a scientist to know that people are
16 going into shelters, more people are being
17 homeless, more of our children are ending up in
18 jails, more of our families – key family members
19 are ending up without jobs, so I’m asking you to
20 please do what needs to be done and that is
21 whatever is better for our children.
22 Thank you very much.
23 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
24 Say your name.
25 MS. WILLIAMS: Good evening. My name is
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2 Ocynthia Williams and I’m wearing about three or
3 four different hats tonight, but I’ll put on the
4 one for Campaign for Better Schools and I’m here
5 – first of all, thank you, Assemblywoman Greene,
6 Nolan, and Assembly Member Benedetto. I’m sorry,
7 I just had a hard time getting here, but I want
8 to say that when you decide to vote on whether or
9 not mayoral control remains or if it needs
10 amending, just take into consideration that
11 parent’s voices need to be taken into account.
12 The community voice needs to be taken into
13 account. The community-based organizations need
14 to be a part of improving the quality of our
15 kid’s schools.
16 The mayor and the chancellor are putting
17 out stuff about how well the schools are doing
18 and they have improved, the graduation rates have
19 improved under their management, but the gap
20 between Hispanic, African American, and kids in
21 poor communities have not improved. When you
22 have a community out there who are trying to and
23 developing ideas that are good reform for the
24 school and can’t get an ear of the mayor, of the
25 chancellor to make those changes, or to work in
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2 collaboration to make those things happen, then
3 we are failing our children.
4 So when you go back to Albany and you
5 make your vote on, or do your vote on whether
6 we’re going to have mayoral control again, and,
7 believe me, the Campaign for Better Schools do
8 not want the old system back, we do want mayoral
9 control, but we want it with checks and balances.
10 We want community input, we want parent input,
11 student input, to make this work. It will not
12 work without that.
13 So that’s what I have to say. Thank you.
14 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
15 Do we have Brian Sanchinell and Amelia Adams
16 also with your group who is also going to read a
17 statement.
18 I want to thank this panel very much and
19 I should have done this earlier, I want to thank
20 the staff of Lehman College who have just been
21 phenomenal, the security, the people in charge of
22 the stage, the maintenance people gave us a
23 beautiful area in the back to sit for minute and
24 use the restrooms, and I really want to thank
25 them very very much for that. I appreciate the
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2 security that they’ve provided today here at the
3 campus and the warm welcome that they gave us
4 even from 9:00 this morning, and, again, I want
5 acknowledge Claudia Chan and Kathleen Winot and
6 Ann Beznowski from my staff and Nicolas Storelli-
7 Castro from Speaker Silver’s staff who have been
8 with us the entire day and, Nicolas, we thank
9 you, we thank Speaker Silver for the support
10 we’ve gotten to have these hearings and we’re in
11 kind of a final wind-up here, but we’re very very
12 grateful for the parents that came out and
13 grateful for my colleagues for staying.
14 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Can I add Linda
15 Ray from my staff who has been here for most of
16 the day with me.
17 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Great, thank you.
18 Would you like to go first.
19 MS. ADAMS: Good evening everyone. I am
20 an education organizer at ACORN and I’ll be
21 reading on behalf of some members. I’m Amelia
22 Adams. This is from Cheryl Wyche.
23 (Amelia Adams reading for Ms. Wyche.)
24 MS. WYCHE: Thank you for staying this
25 evening after being in Albany all week. I will
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2 be brief. I am a parent, a resident of the
3 Bronx, and an ACORN member. I would like to just
4 say that our Bronx schools have been neglected
5 for a long time. They have not provided our
6 schools with adequate resources to help them
7 thrive. It is as if the DOE, the Department of
8 Education, wants our children to fail and phase-
9 in our schools is not going to be the solution.
10 As a parent and an active community member, it is
11 up to us to work together with the DOE to improve
12 the Bronx schools. I think this panel should
13 support the Campaign for Better Schools, thank
14 you.
15 MS. ADAMS: This is Marisol Marte.
16 (Amelia Adams reading for Ms. Marte.)
17 MS. MARTE: Thank you for staying this
18 evening to hear my testimony. I am a parent of a
19 child who went to the New York City public
20 schools and a long time resident of the south
21 Bronx. I am also the president of the Mount
22 Haven ACORN group.
23 I signed on about 15 years ago because of
24 the education issues. I feel that it’s
25 reprehensible that in our neighborhood and the
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2 neighborhood, District 9, four schools are being
3 phased out. This is my community and my
4 neighbors. Some families don’t even know that
5 come September their child will no longer be able
6 to go to that school. This will not happen if we
7 had more checks and balances.
8 I urge the state to change mayoral
9 control.
10 MR. SANCHINELL: I’m Bryan Sanchinell.
11 I’m speaking on behalf of Winnie here and I’m an
12 organizer of ACORN.
13 WINNIE: Thank you for graciously
14 staying to accommodate the schedule of working
15 residents. I have lived in the Bronx all my
16 entire life so speaking as a long-time resident
17 of the Bronx and a future mother, I would like to
18 address the committee. I feel it is necessary
19 for a parent to be involved in the education of
20 their child.
21 The one thing that will deter that is the
22 current mayoral control which doesn’t allow for
23 parent participation. I’m on board with charter
24 schools, however, I feel our government needs to
25 adequately fund all schools. The odd chance that
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2 my child doesn’t get into a charter school, they
3 have to go to a district public school, and I
4 would like to say that the more important reason
5 is to have more checks and balances and options
6 like the proposal under the Campaign for Better
7 Schools.
8 MR. SANCHINELL: Now I’m going to be
9 reading for Maria Polanco.
10 MS. POLANCO: Thank you for staying this
11 evening after being in Albany this week. Thank
12 you for staying this evening after being in
13 Albany all week. I will be brief. I am a
14 parent, a resident of the Bronx, and an ACORN
15 member. I came to this country at a very young
16 age and always encouraged my children to go to
17 school because education is the key to success.
18 It is the only way to get ahead in life.
19 However, I’m seeing this dream falter
20 because many schools are phasing out in the
21 Bronx, not only for my children, but many
22 children across the Bronx. These kids are my
23 kids, and because of that, we are a community and
24 we must protect them all.
25 Thank you.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
3 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: I have a
4 question. I believe you were reading Marisol
5 Marte’s statement. Is she a parent of PS-90 or
6 166?
7 MS. ADAMS: No, she’s not. Her daughter
8 went to public school. She’s in college now, but
9 as a parent, she’s really concerned about the
10 schools phasing out because it’s not too far from
11 where she lives.
12 ASSEMBLYWOMAN GREENE: Okay, so she
13 lives in that community. Okay. Thank you.
14 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. I think
15 we’re going to go to the group from Highbridge
16 now. We have United Parents of Highbridge. If
17 there are other people here who are the ones that
18 are speaking, sometimes a group gets together,
19 now is your moment. United Parents of
20 Highbridge, Assemblywoman Greene stayed to hear
21 you. Thank you.
22 MR. NIAMBELE: Good evening. My name is
23 Bourema Niambele. Today, before I start speaking
24 here, I want to thank all the assembly members
25 who make this thing possible today.
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2 I would like to ask to speak in French
3 and translate what I’m saying here because what
4 I’m going to say here, my community people – what
5 was my concern when I sit here in the face of our
6 elected members.
7 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Please do.
8 (Mr. Niambele speaking in French.)
9 MR. NIAMBELE: I thank all the assembly
10 members who take the initiative to make this
11 possible. As an immigrant, we all come in this
12 country to try to have a better life. But those
13 societies we come from, we know that education is
14 the key for success.
15 If that’s the truth, that education
16 success cannot be true for the children if the
17 children have no parent involvement in their
18 education. For that reason we ask you to please
19 ask any elected member on this state and on this
20 board to – to a child, it’s not just a classroom,
21 the child will get great education and become a
22 better person when the parent and the classroom
23 and the teacher all coming together to figure out
24 what will be better for them, and that prospect
25 we believe it’s in our duty as a parent, as a
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2 community people if we want our community to
3 become a better community.
4 Like I said, we are the immigrants. We
5 come to this country to find a – we couldn’t find
6 where we was born. Even if that’s true – and
7 sometime have our feet back to our tradition and
8 sometimes try to connect our kid with the
9 community because this is how we grow. This is
10 how we was possible for us to come to this
11 country and try to work and have a successful to
12 become somebody. And for those, the elected
13 members who are here, we thank you very much.
14 And we want you and us to walk, to make better
15 our school, and that would not be possible if you
16 don’t have a balance and check. Do you even know
17 – the better thing is to have a check and
18 balance, and if you don’t, democracy will become
19 a dictatorship regime, and we don’t want that to
20 happen. A lot of those places was democracy,
21 people fight and die for that. We have that
22 here. And sometimes let’s ask use the money to
23 help our kids for better and better.
24 I thank you all and I thank the audience.
25 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
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2 Wonderful. If it’s all right, we would like to
3 go back to the young lady, the student.
4 MS. TEJADA: Good evening. My name is
5 Lilly Tejada and I am a youth leader with
6 Highbridge United. I am currently 16 years old
7 and currently in my final year of high school.
8 I am very concerned about mayoral control
9 of schools. I believe that parents and students
10 should have a stronger voice. I want school
11 leadership teams to be able to have a real voice
12 within the school. I believe the community
13 education council should have a stronger voice
14 and that the mayor should not be allowed to fire
15 representatives that speak out.
16 Finally, I am here because Highbridge has
17 five elementary schools but no middle school or
18 high school. Students have to travel at nine
19 years old and on two to three public buses. The
20 community and all of our elected officials want
21 the school, but unless the mayor says we need the
22 school, we cannot have it.
23 Thank you.
24 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I’m sorry, what’s the
25 school?
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2 MS. TEJADA: The Bronx High School of
3 Medical Science.
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Wonderful. And your
5 future career?
6 MS. TEJADA: I’m undecided between two,
7 so it’s either journalism or a veterinarian.
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Wonderful. Well,
9 don’t rule out politics.
10 MS. FRANCES TEJADA: Good evening.
11 Thank you for staying. My name is Frances
12 Tejada, and I am 45 years old. Out of those 45
13 years, I’ve lived in Highbridge 44 years. We’ve
14 never had a middle school in my time. Actually,
15 carry the scars that they don’t carry, on my
16 face, for going to 145. I didn’t belong in that
17 community, but nevertheless but that was my zoned
18 school back in those days. You know, Ms. Green,
19 and that’s two buses, actually three for me
20 because I come down the hill.
21 I’ve been advocating or fighting for a
22 middle school for as long as I can remember. It
23 looks like we’re going to get a school, but we’re
24 getting the leftovers from last year, which would
25 be 389 seats I believe now. We’ve done research.
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2 We have 2,003 children that graduate from these
3 five elementary schools every year, and that’s
4 all that they’re going to offer us. That’s a
5 smack in the face.
6 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Where do those
7 children go now?
8 MS. TEJADA: Right now all the kids are
9 going across the concourse to 145, I think to
10 166, that’s going to be closed, 22. I, myself,
11 went to 145 and from there, when I got jumped, I
12 had to go to 167 over on West Farms, and that was
13 too far for me to go, so then my mom then found
14 money from where we didn’t have to put me in
15 Sacred Heart which is the only school in
16 Highbridge which is a K through eight school.
17 I did go to 73 which originally, even
18 older than I was, it used to be a K through 8
19 school, but that got taken away and we never got
20 anything to replace that.
21 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Sorry.
22 MS. TEJADA: So I’m here to advocate for
23 the school, but I’m also here to talk about
24 checks and balances, and to talk about the
25 mayor’s control. Since the mayor has taken over
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2 the schools, the parents have no voice. Those
3 parents that go to the school are ignore, and no
4 one is held accountable for the treatment that
5 they get, it just gets lost within the book.
6 I’m not saying I was an advocate for
7 boards, I never really thought much about it. I
8 was young then, but I never really thought much
9 of them, but I do believe that if the mayor is
10 going to stay in control, he can’t be a dictator,
11 and he wants to run it like this was Cuba or
12 Russia in the old days, and that’s not going to
13 work here.
14 We as parents know the children. The
15 community needs to stay together united. We need
16 to be able to see things and be able to speak
17 them and at least have someone, some type of
18 department for these parents. This parent
19 coordinator position is sounding really good in
20 black and white, but now that I am an organizer
21 also and I go in to advocate for parents who
22 can’t speak English, I find out that our parent
23 coordinators are principal coordinators. You
24 can’t say anything against the principal to the
25 parent coordinator because they’ll get angry,
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2 they’ll ask you to leave.
3 So the parents really don’t have anybody
4 in there. The PTA has to follow their little
5 handbook which ultimately means at the end that
6 whoever is going to be in control, the principal,
7 and who controls them, the mayor.
8 So I’m begging the assembly when you go
9 back, please, I know that you want to vote for
10 us, I know that you agree with what we do, and I
11 just want to let you guys know that you have our
12 backs. That no matter what happens, you have our
13 votes and we want you to please help us.
14 Thank you very much.
15 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
16 MR. CURRY: Good evening. My name is
17 Carlton Curry. I’m also from Highbridge. I
18 would also like to thank you for having this
19 today. I really appreciate you all taking the
20 time out to listen to us.
21 I’ve been in Highbridge since 1971 and I
22 watched my little sister and brother grow up in
23 Highbridge, get on buses and go to school across
24 town. They used to come back and tell me a lot
25 of horrible stories that they went through, all
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2 the guys and girls used to pick on them as they
3 go to school, take their bus pass, maybe their
4 lunch money, whatever that they felt like doing
5 at the time. This is on city buses. And
6 sometimes there were adults on the buses, but
7 sometimes the adults don’t want to step through
8 the youth that’s on the bus.
9 I think that it’s time that Highbridge
10 had a middle school. We got about 1,200 kids a
11 year that graduate and there’s nowhere for them
12 to go in our community. I think kids need to be
13 nurtured by their parents and those who can see
14 them and be able to reach out and touch them if
15 they had to as opposed to going across town to
16 see their kids. If there’s a problem at school,
17 how could the parent get a chance to talk to the
18 kid and the principal and the teacher at the same
19 time, especially if they had more than one kid.
20 I find that that’s a problem. We need at least
21 2,000 seats. Highbridge alone has over 40,000
22 people that live there. That’s less than 0.1
23 percent seats for the kids in our community.
24 I’m most here to talk about – I think
25 that the school should not be run by one person,
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2 it should be run by the community. It’s been run
3 by masses of people with different cultures and
4 different backgrounds. It’s important that kids
5 learn different backgrounds about all people that
6 live in America, that’s why they call it the
7 melting pot of everybody.
8 And all kids should learn about each and
9 every one of us that sitting to your left and the
10 person sitting to your right, where they come
11 from, so it makes it interesting to the kid so
12 the education is not just about pilgrims and so
13 forth.
14 I think that also that it’s time that the
15 parents be a part of the system so that they can
16 feel – that they can bring some kind of pride to
17 the table so the kids can feel the pride for the
18 parents. Because the kids feel what the parents
19 feel when the parents go home and they feel that
20 – they’re no use even being there because they’re
21 not a part of the system. They’re not making
22 things better. You say, hey, kid, we’re going to
23 make it better today. I’m going to help you tie
24 your shoe today, and today we’re going to do a
25 little better. But if the parents are left out
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2 of the system, it’s no good.
3 Thank you very much.
4 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
5 MR. CALDERON: Good evening. My name is
6 Simon Calderon. Our 31st president, a great man,
7 President John F. Kennedy, once at a famous
8 speech said, and just to rephrase – the speech
9 was, ask not what you can do for your mayor, ask
10 what your mayor can do for you. Undo the heavy
11 burden and let the oppressed go free. Now in
12 June 2009 will end. Now we don’t want full
13 mayoral control, we’re willing to compromise and
14 working with the man, but as a member of
15 Highbridge, and my sister, I feel that mayoral
16 control won’t work because the mayor has all the
17 control. And parents, or anybody else has no
18 control. We don’t want a dictatorship. We need
19 a democracy. We want checks and balances. So if
20 he doesn’t change his ways on 2009, I’m pretty
21 sure someone else will.
22 In addition, I also think that parents
23 and students should share part of a leadership
24 program, and the mayor should pick
25 representatives who speak their own mind and have
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2 good choices, and not the board who fears losing
3 their job if they don’t say, yes, sir or no, sir.
4 We should take a stand and it’s time for
5 a change. The neighborhood of Highbridge never
6 had a middle school when I was there. That’s why
7 I had to go to Sacred Heart. We need a school
8 with sufficient seats, not insufficient. We
9 can’t get it unless the mayor says yes and with
10 mayoral control, I don’t think that’s ever going
11 to happen.
12 So I just want to thank you for listening
13 to my statement.
14 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you.
15 MR. GONZALES: Good evening. My name is
16 Jose Gonzalez, I’m from DR. I’m the parent of
17 two children in elementary school in PS-73 in
18 Highbridge.
19 I think that the mayor should be more
20 open to the parents, to the parent leaders and
21 communities. I was member of CEC-9 and I was
22 listening with a lot of frustration of the
23 parents and leader of the community related to
24 the power of the mayor, that the mayor had taken
25 on our school system.
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2 We can have mayor control on the school,
3 but he really needs to know that school belongs,
4 not belongs to just one person. He should know
5 that our school belongs to our parents and our
6 community. One of these in our community of
7 Highbridge is our middle school. We have been
8 having the support of mayor – all of the leaders,
9 elected official leaders in our community, every
10 in our community is supporting us. If we would
11 have more community involvement, parent
12 involvement in our school system, I think we
13 wouldn’t have like a hesitate having a middle
14 school in our community.
15 When you see a lot of parents, single
16 mothers that live in our community that have like
17 two or three children, sometimes they have to get
18 up early in the morning, put one children on the
19 bus, and nine year old, ten year old, and then
20 get the other one to elementary school, and then
21 she has to go back in the middle of the day to
22 the middle school at the other side of Highbridge
23 is pretty sad. You listening to all the parents
24 and mothers having this struggle in this
25 community.
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2 When you listen, these kids just
3 traveling all alone on the crowded buses, taking
4 trains, it’s pretty said because they need to
5 have – I mean, the city – we give to our children
6 a safety place in our household. I think the
7 city should give us that element to our children,
8 a safety place.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. We thank
10 this panel very very much. Thank you.
11 We have some final groups of witnesses,
12 Kathy Mateo, Julia Rodriguez, Frank Davis,
13 Sebastian Ulanga, Michael Robles, Whitney Frey,
14 Dr. Dena Robins, Andrew Robinson. Are any of
15 those people from that final panel here?
16 We have some additional add-ons, we’re
17 going to try to accommodate them.
18 Is there anyone else from the Highbridge
19 or new settlement group that we have not
20 recognized but intended to speak?
21 Now we have some add-ons. These are
22 people who came in, in other words, were not pre-
23 registered but we try to accommodate everyone and
24 we ask that you understand that we are really in
25 our final hour. Please come down, we’ll put five
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2 people here and everyone else over here. I
3 believe that will be our final group. If there’s
4 someone that we inadvertently left out, please
5 see our wonderful team. We’re going to try to
6 accommodate everyone.
7 Is there anyone else who wants to speak
8 whose name has not been called? This should be
9 our final grouping. If we move quickly, I will
10 read every other name in case there’s someone
11 listening that wants to be acknowledged.
12 Would you like to start?
13 MS. MYERS: Good evening, everyone. My
14 name is Debra Myers. I’m a resident of the
15 Bronx. I live in the Honorable Assemblywoman
16 Aurelia Greene’s district.
17 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I have to interject
18 here, because I don’t know if her own
19 constituents know how the work that Assemblywoman
20 Greene does in Albany running our sessions day in
21 and day out, and for myself, I want to again
22 publically acknowledge, I had my hip replaced
23 last session and she ran the committee as well
24 just as a favor to me and to the speaker, and her
25 long service in the legislature, everybody here
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2 should recognize that. We want to thank her very
3 much.
4 MS. MYERS: I want to thank her too.
5 She’s a very wonderful person and she has served
6 our district very well, and all of my love to you
7 and all the best on your hip replacement.
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I’m doing fine.
9 MS. MYERS: That’s wonderful. I’m here
10 today to testify. I did not preregister, but
11 after coming in and hearing all the for mayoral
12 control, I just could not allow myself to not
13 represent my community and speak out on behalf of
14 so many people here in the Bronx.
15 I, Debra Myers, am against the mayor’s
16 control of the Department of Education for the
17 City of New York. The reason why I say this is
18 because of the second word that we continue to
19 say, control, and that is a problem for me.
20 I am going to tell you, we don’t need to
21 be controlled, we need creativity in our schools,
22 our children need to learn how to be creative,
23 innovative thinkers, speakers, and to be able to
24 handle the work that they should be doing in our
25 public schools.
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2 Our teachers do not need control. They
3 need staff development. They need more lessons
4 in early childhood development and adolescent
5 development on how teenagers operate, not failing
6 grades, that’s why I am not in favor of mayoral
7 control. And I will ask each and every one of
8 the assembly to vote no. The reason why I say
9 this again is because I’m sitting here with some
10 documents, and I would like to read them off for
11 the record before I go into some of them.
12 First of all, I’m sitting here with a
13 book from the US Department of Education which is
14 part of the No Child Left Behind. This is our
15 Title 1 monies for our schools for
16 underprivileged children who are under the
17 poverty level who get – the city receives
18 additional monies for them. This says engaging
19 parents in education. It’s lessons from five
20 parental information and resource centers that
21 tell us how and why parents need to be involved.
22 At this point in time, parents are not
23 involved. One of the first parts of this book
24 will tell you something. It says that parents,
25 when you want to engage parents, you need to
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2 understand your audience and know the parents. I
3 feel right now that the Department of Education
4 do not know the parents nor do they want to know
5 us in order to understand us. So that’s one of
6 my reasons that I don’t want it.
7 I’m sitting here again with another
8 document and this paper here is the minutes from
9 the Bronx High School President’s Council Meeting
10 dated on Wednesday, November 19th of 2008 and it
11 was held at Fordham Plaza, One Fordham Plaza, and
12 a lot of people do not know that our schools are
13 rated based on the quality review report that is
14 done each year on the schools, the high schools.
15 I was just going over this and I’m going
16 to make sure that the assembly gets copies. I
17 just want to read one point of this. It says how
18 one of the superintendents also spoke about the
19 school quality review and the changes that will
20 occur this year such as phasing out the Cambridge
21 Organization out of London for conducting the
22 interviews and replacing them with the Bronx
23 superintendents in order to save money and
24 simplify the process.
25 What a lot of people don’t know is that
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2 we had a group from London, England evaluating
3 our schools and that’s how they were getting such
4 good marks for all the As and Bs that I see on
5 the school report cards.
6 I have in my hand right here, and I can
7 go further into this, but for the sake of time -
8 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you, and we
9 would be happy to receive some of those
10 documents.
11 MS. MYERS: I would like you to receive
12 this because the mayor has contracted our school
13 to an outside company from London in order to do
14 our quality review. Of course they’re going to
15 give our school good marks for our children.
16 Here’s a list of all the Bronx high
17 schools, almost 84 of them, and they all received
18 a lot of A and B reports. But when I attend
19 these meetings, because I go out to a lot of
20 meetings, there’s only about five, ten or 15
21 parent leaders attending these meetings. This is
22 84 high schools in the Bronx. I’m talking about,
23 this is the Bronx High School President’s Council
24 meeting. At that meeting there were a total of
25 21 members present. So I can say, who is running
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2 this school? Does the mayor really have control?
3 Do the parents really know what’s going on?
4 They don’t know.
5 It’s one leader for the Bronx who is
6 Nelli Deleon who runs everything and signs off on
7 everything for the parents, most of them who are
8 here, and she doesn’t even speak when I go out to
9 the CPAC meetings down at the Tweed building. So
10 who is representing us as parents? I’m not
11 saying it’s all the mayor’s fault, but I’m
12 telling you it’s also the parent’s fault and they
13 know it, but I am against the mayor having
14 control because what parents don’t look at is the
15 data that I’m looking at right now. I’m looking
16 at a lot.
17 Here’s another thing, our one percent
18 Title 1 for District 9, all right, the one
19 percent is the federal government’s money that
20 they give to each and every school to provide
21 parents with workshops to help us with the math
22 and reading, especially for our immigrant
23 parents, our ELL students who are not reading at
24 or above grade level, and children who are
25 behind. They give the school one percent of that
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2 money, all right, and I can tell you, I can read
3 off like CES PS-70, they receive $14,529 in Title
4 1 monies to help parents. If you go back to that
5 school alone, ask them how many workshops have
6 they given to parents to help us to work with our
7 children, and this is the problem that I’m having
8 because, not only is the money – the money is in
9 the budget, but we, as parents, cannot even get
10 into the schools to utilize the money – not that
11 the city is giving us, but that the federal
12 government is sending down to the mayor to help
13 us to help our children, and if you look out at
14 the audience, half of the parents don’t know that
15 they’re supposed to have workshops and whatever
16 needs they have in the schools. So this is
17 another document that I’m going to make sure that
18 you have a part of that information.
19 Thank you.
20 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
21 MS. MYERS: Just one more thing I want
22 to say, all right, in the parent involvement, the
23 comprehensive education plan that each school
24 writes up, it calls for parent involvement, it
25 calls for each school to involve parents in
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2 writing a school parent involvement policy, and
3 also at the district level. Ask how many parents
4 if they have received a copy of the school parent
5 involvement policy or if they know it. It says,
6 a written document developed jointly with and
7 agreed upon by the parents and children
8 participating in the Title 1 program and the
9 principal or his or her designee. The policy
10 must be included as an appendix to each schools
11 comprehensive education plan and distributed to
12 parents of all children participating in the
13 Title 1 program. This is not happening in any of
14 the schools that I know of in District 9, and
15 they are in violation of the Title 1 laws, and
16 this is why I’m telling you the mayor cannot
17 continue to control the Department of Education,
18 because he doesn’t even know what he’s supposed
19 to be doing.
20 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I want to thank you
21 very much. We just said we’re sorry you hadn’t
22 signed up sooner, we would have put you on when
23 those cameras were here earlier in the day, and
24 we will make sure that others in government hear,
25 and Nicolas would like to accept those documents.
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2 Go ahead.
3 MR. ABREU: I would like to thank you
4 guys, members of the assembly for being here. As
5 I’ve been told, you’ve been here for the entire
6 day, from the morning session till -
7 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: That’s our job. No
8 need to do that. Just give your name and keep
9 going.
10 MR. ABREU: My name is Adolfo Abreu. I
11 am 16 and I attend Bronx Center for Science and
12 Mathematics. I’m a youth leader at Sisters and
13 Brothers United, and the Urban Youth
14 Collaborative, and I’m also with Campaign for
15 Better Schools in an effort to make the education
16 system better.
17 So when was the last time that your
18 people were asked for their input in decisions
19 that would affect their schools, and my answer to
20 that question is never which leads me to believe
21 in the idea of public participation.
22 So public participation is all about the
23 students and parents being involved in decision-
24 making like that of opening and closing of
25 schools.
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2 The schools that are closed are mostly
3 high schools, and when the students and parents
4 are informed of the closings, they’re informed
5 after the decision has been made to close the
6 schools which shows there is not participation
7 for the students and the parents to voice their
8 opinion on what’s supposed to happen.
9 So me, as a student, I feel that we young
10 people need the opportunity to voice our opinion
11 rather than not being heard and feeling
12 powerless. As young people, we are told what to
13 do every single day of our lives with our
14 opinions not being heard most of the times.
15 I believe that when it comes to my
16 education I should have a right to voice my
17 opinion and have the right to speak about the
18 decisions that would dictate the course of my
19 life. That’s what the school does. They dictate
20 the future, how you’re going to be.
21 So, as a young person, should have the
22 right to be able to influence decisions that will
23 affect my school, decisions which will affect my
24 school which in turn will affect my life, so that
25 is why public participation is important because
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2 it gives us, the youth, a chance of our voices
3 being heard in the public education system.
4 Thank you.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. Well
6 done. Very good.
7 MR. RODRIGUEZ: My name is Miguel
8 Rodriguez. I’m also a part of Sisters and
9 Brothers United, and a part of the Urban Youth
10 Collaborative, and I’m 17. I go to New Start
11 High School which is a small school on the South
12 Bronx campus.
13 When important education policies like
14 the new Regents diploma requirement for incoming
15 freshman are decided, we believe youth should
16 have a voice because they are affected the most.
17 We definitely believe in high expectations for
18 all students, but right now schools are not
19 receiving enough funding or resources to prepare
20 our students to get the Regents diploma.
21 Also, one of the main problems is that
22 the curriculum is really repetitive. Because of
23 that, we’re being taught to only pass the
24 Regents. Youth should be at the table when
25 education – when decisions on education are being
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2 made because we are affected the most.
3 Thank you.
4 ASSEMBLYMAN BENEDETTO: I just want to
5 say that I know you came in here maybe with your
6 complaints about the education system here in the
7 city, but you are certainly a tribute to that
8 educational system. Keep on expressing your
9 views like this.
10 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Yes, this gentleman,
11 go ahead.
12 MR. MOLINA: Good evening. My name is
13 Elpidio Molina. I’m an assembly board member of
14 Local 32BA, also member of New York City
15 Participation Project, and also a member of the
16 Coalition for Education Justice.
17 I’m going to be brief. I think one of
18 the things that we heard the most here is
19 transparency. I want to repeat myself, and we’ve
20 been saying pretty much the same, and I think a
21 few years ago when legislators make the decision
22 to give Mayor Bloomberg the majority control of
23 the school education, probably makes sense,
24 because at the time we have the school district
25 which it wasn’t working, but I think, you know,
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2 we have been struggling, and this is basically
3 parents, and community groups, trying to make
4 sure that they’re not – that there’s not a lot of
5 cuts in our school system, and pretty much we
6 didn’t have a lot of chances on making the
7 difference, because the mayor has the control on
8 everything, and I think this is time where we
9 need a panel where – the people connected with
10 the City Council, the majority, and also the
11 mayor was in the minority, so we can have more
12 transparency. We have a decision, the parents in
13 the community had it right to make a decision on
14 how the school system works.
15 Thank you.
16 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you. Final
17 speaker of the evening I believe.
18 MR. RIVERA: Good evening. My name is
19 George Rivera. Thank you for being here. I know
20 you’ve had a long day. It’s been long for me and
21 I’ve only been here half as long as you have.
22 I’m a member of the Alliance – New York
23 State Alliance for Quality Education and a member
24 of the New York City Coalition for Education
25 Justice. I’m also the second vice-president of
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2 District 9, Community District Education Council,
3 and a member of the United Parents of Highbridge.
4 I would just like to make some comments
5 loosely knitted here. Everything has pretty much
6 been said today. I’m just going to be brief. My
7 feeling is that mayoral control of schools has
8 left many schools out of control. It’s very
9 difficult for one person over such a large
10 bureaucracy to rule it effectively, and there’s a
11 lot of room for people who lack integrity, for
12 people who are less than honest, to do whatever
13 they want to do.
14 The fact is that principals are being
15 punished, teachers are being punished, students
16 are being punished, and the purpose of this
17 system is to educate children. They’re being
18 punished and this is the type of punishment that
19 lasts forever, for as long as they live. They
20 won’t be fully contributing members of society,
21 and so in that respect I’m opposed to mayoral
22 control in its present form.
23 Schools – I’ve heard the comment many
24 times that he superintendent – the CEC meetings,
25 the superintendent of District 9, Dolores
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2 Esposito has said that the principals have full
3 autonomy of the schools and they are therefore
4 left to fail. When they fail it’s on the
5 principal. She said that that’s just the way
6 that it is.
7 The principals have the choices, the
8 support organizations, and if they choose the
9 wrong one, and they fail, they made the bad
10 choice. But they’re making choices that are
11 handed down by the DOE. The DOE selected the
12 support organizations. So if one of them is
13 failing or lacking to support the schools, then
14 it really should be on the shoulders of the
15 Department of Education, not the individual
16 principals.
17 There’s a lot of talk – there had been
18 school closures in District 9 and I recently
19 learned yesterday of school closing in District
20 10, and I know these schools, and these are
21 schools that the people go to work every day,
22 they work hard. They work hard. They have
23 failed. If they have failed they have failed
24 because the standards are everchanging.
25 Whatever is imposed on them in the
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2 beginning of the year changes a couple of months
3 later. It’s very difficult to run an operation
4 as large as a school, I would say an average
5 school, I could be in error, but I figure a good
6 number for an average school is around 700 kids,
7 that’s somewhere in the middle. It’s very
8 difficult to control the education process with
9 so many children and involved parents when you
10 don’t get the proper supports from the
11 Department. You’re looking for leadership and it
12 isn’t forthcoming.
13 It’s the failures of a lot of schools to
14 meet the standards and the children to meet the
15 standards on the great number of changes.
16 Uniformity is non-existent. There should be
17 great uniformity between schools, but every
18 school is doing a different thing at any given
19 time. Unqualified principals have been allowed
20 to destroy school communities by in part
21 excluding parents, and oppressing teachers, and
22 punishing teachers who try to do the right thing.
23 I happen to know of one school where the
24 principal has instructed the teachers not to
25 refer students to special services or special
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2 education, or PT, for occupational therapy.
3 They’re under this mandate, and if the teachers
4 speak out, they’re punished and an unsatisfactory
5 grade to a teacher is a punishment. I agree that
6 if the teacher deserves it, you give it to them,
7 that’s their failure to make the standard. But a
8 U as a punishment for speaking out on behalf of
9 children, that’s unacceptable. It’s morally
10 wrong. And this is what’s going on.
11 I’ve tried to reach out to political
12 people and we have not had a good response. Only
13 recently.
14 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Well, today is that
15 opportunity.
16 MR. RIVERA: Well, we would certainly
17 appreciate it.
18 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: I think we’re going
19 to end up with one other person who came in late,
20 but –
21 MR. RIVERA: I’m almost done. I’m not
22 an attorney, I’m a parent and a community member,
23 but I work with attorneys, Nelson Mar and Orm
24 Ampe of the Legal Service of New York and they
25 are advocates for all these things. They’re
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1 NYSA – Committee on Education – 3-13-09 471
2 advocates for children. So they’re here. Nelson
3 was actually on the list earlier, but he had to
4 leave and come back.
5 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: People are welcomed
6 to send us additional testimony, but we do have
7 to wrap up now.
8 MR. RIVERA: I support supervision, I
9 support strict supervision of the education
10 system, but mayoral control in its present form
11 is destructive to the process.
12 I was at a meeting with John White a
13 couple of months ago and he stated that – and
14 there were parents in the audience who were
15 annoyed that their schools were being closed.
16 And they were annoyed that they weren’t included,
17 and they had no forewarning.
18 His response was that those decision are
19 unilateral. We make the decision based on scores
20 and evaluations and it’s really it’s my
21 responsibility, the responsibility of my office
22 to decide which schools stay open and which
23 schools are closed.
24 And that’s on the record and that’s the
25 end of my comments.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you very much.
3 We heard from Mr. White at the hearing in Queens
4 and he basically said the same thing. It was
5 illuminating.
6 I want to thank all of you very very
7 much. Will the young lady who came in late,
8 please feel free to come up. Is that your son
9 with you?
10 MS. CACERES: No.
11 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: We’re very happy to
12 see these young people here. Just plunge right
13 in.
14 MS. CACERES: I’m going to try to make
15 this as brief and as short as possible.
16 Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It
17 is my pleasure to be addressing you this evening.
18 My name is Rosa Caceres. I am a proud parent of
19 a child that is attending PS-70 in the Bronx, I
20 am also a school leadership team member, and also
21 a proud United States Navy veteran who served in
22 the Afghanistan war when 9-11 hit, and tonight
23 I’m actually representing for my daughter’s
24 rights in the school.
25 The question before us today is should
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2 Mayor Bloomberg maintain control of New York City
3 public schools. The law that gave the mayor
4 control over our school ends this June. As a
5 parent, I can safely say that changes in the
6 system structure over the past years have been
7 chaotic at times and very difficult for parents.
8 During this time, parents haven’t been able to
9 have a voice in the public school. I also speak
10 out for those who don’t speak English.
11 Chancellor Klein has given principals
12 complete control of our schools, and they are
13 running our schools like their own businesses.
14 Mayor Bloomberg, Chancellor Klein and the
15 principals have forgotten that our schools belong
16 to the public. They are there to serve the
17 students and the families, not to act like a
18 dictator or supreme ruler.
19 Our goal as parents and leaders is to
20 provide our children with promising futures,
21 domestic tranquility and promote good morals.
22 The sense of security that their parents built is
23 to protect their children from harm, pre-
24 oppression and negative surroundings. When
25 parents leave their children in school, parents
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2 expect nothing but the best education and safety.
3 Now, when the seal is broken or
4 disrupted, one has only to inquire why and what
5 can be done to ensure the return of positive
6 grounds.
7 Thank you very much for this time and God
8 bless.
9 CHAIRWOMAN NOLAN: Thank you so much.
10 See, it was worth taking that one extra person,
11 especially a veteran, we appreciate that. We
12 want to thank everyone. We’ve been asked by the
13 wonderful staff at Lehman College to everyone
14 remaining, please take your signs with you, it
15 will make the clean-up easier for the people who
16 have to stay late because we were here late, and
17 I want to thank Assemblyman Mike Benedetto, and
18 Assemblywoman Aurelia Greene, our stenographer,
19 our staff, and, again, a thanks to each and every
20 one of you for contributing to this important
21 dialogue for our children’s schools.
22 Good night.
23 (Whereupon, the Hearing of the State
24 Education Committee adjourned at 7:30 p.m.)
25
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475
C E R T I F I C A T E
I, FRANK GRAY, a Shorthand Reporter and
Notary Public in and for the State of New York, do hereby stated:
THAT I attended at the time and place above mentioned and took stenographic record of the proceedings in the above-entitled matter;
THAT the foregoing transcript is a true and accurate transcript of the same and the whole thereof, according to the best of my ability and belief.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this ______day of ______, 2009.
______
FRANK GRAY
EN-DE REPORTING SERVICES 212-962-2961