Revelations concerning SED's secret backdoor deal with DOE on class size

See today's Juan Gonzalez column here, about the backdoor deal made nearly seven months ago between State Education Commissioner Steiner and Joel Klein, to allow the city to nullify its legal and moral commitments to reduce class size, and to let class sizes increase this fall to any levels they like, while continuing to call this a “class size reduction plan”.

I made the letter available to Juan Gonzalez, because it had been kept secret up to now, despite the transparency and public process required before the city can amend any aspect of its Contract for Excellence and/or class size reduction plan.

Even more importantly, this deal makes a mockery of the entire notion of class size reduction. It clearly contradicts the language of the C4E law, passed in 2007, mandating that NYC reduce class size in all grades, in exchange for receiving over $2 billion in state funds. Rather than the full public disclosure promised, and the tracking of every dollar to ensure that it would be spent according to its specified purpose, the Contract for Excellence program has become yet another slush fund for the DOE.

Despite receiving billions from the state, class sizes have risen sharply the last two years, and are expected to rise even more sharply this year. After Class Size Matters, the UFT and others filed a lawsuit last January in the State Supreme Court against the DOE for its failure to reduce class size, the DOE went behind our backs and negotiated this secret deal, which apparently even the Board of Regents have not been aware of until now.

In the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, the state’s highest court concluded that our children’s constitutional right to an adequate education had been violated, in large part because of excessive class sizes. The State Education Department, as a result of its negligence and active collaboration with DOE, has shown itself to be a willing partner to this continuing violation.

SED, by the way, has still not posted the city’s approved class size reduction plan for last year (2009-2010). When I asked the state last spring why the plan was not posted, contrary to the regulations, they put me off, and first claimed it due to technical difficulties with their website. When weeks went by and the city’s plan was still not posted, they admitted to me that someone high up in the State Education Department did not want to make it public. When I was forced to FOIL the plan, they ignored my FOIL and I finally had to threaten to sue.

They finally relented, and on Sept. 14 sent me a long document, originally submitted by DOE in October 2009, full of the usual obfuscation and gobbledygook. To add insult to injury, they followed up with another email three days later, saying that what they had just sent me was just a preliminary draft and not actually the city’s final approved plan for 2009-2010, which they have so far been either unable or unwilling to provide. So much for the accountability, transparency and oversight that is the state’s fiduciary duty under the law.

The secret letter signed by Steiner and Klein in February that Juan writes about today is posted here; the city’s apparently unapproved class size reduction plan for 2009-2010 is here; and here is a summary of all the billions of C4E dollars the state has thrown at the city since 2007, and apparently intends to continue to provide, despite the city’s long string of broken promises and now open defiance of the intent of the law. Finally, here is the DOE’s recently posted C4E presentation that first tipped me off to the existence of this secret deal.

There are CEC hearings on the city's C4E happening this week and next. I will provide a sample resolution soon concerning this moral and legal outrage that you can forward to your CEC or other organization to consider passing. Thanks for your support during these dark days, as always.

Here is an interview I did with WBAI on this today.

Hearings on the city's failure to abide by its moral and legal obligations as regards class size

See NY1 on the City Council's hearings about the failure of the Department of Education to spend the state's Contracts for Excellence (C4E) funds according to law. Instead of reducing class size, as mandated, with hundreds of millions of dollars of state funds, class sizes rose last year by the greatest amount in ten years.

DOE has provided lots of excuses for this malfeasance, but no real explanations. This program was created as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, and was supposed to ensure our children would finally be provided with their constitutional right to an adequate education, including smaller classes and more accountability and transparency in spending, but none of this has been achieved. The DOE's chief auditor admitted at the hearings that the audit required by law for the spending of these funds has still not been completed for the 2007-8 school year, no less last year.

Check out my testimony, along with a letter signed by nearly two hundred parent leaders, elected officials and the UFT, urging the State Commissioner to hold off granting the city any more C4E funds until the Department of Education demonstrates that the state funds have been properly used this year -- and that class sizes have actually been reduced.

The DOE's Chief Operating Officer, Photeine Anagnostopoulos, said that given flat funding they intend to renegotiate their class size reduction targets with the state -- of no more than twenty in K-3, 23 in 4-8 and 25 in core academic subjects in high school by the 2011-2012 school year.

See also the Gotham Schools article here. See also this letter that the Community Education Council from District 2 sent to the DOE and Commissioner Steiner about the problems with the DOE's Contracts for Excellence, and the flawed public process this year.

Sign a letter to Commissioner Steiner now!

The deadline for comments on the city's Contracts for Excellence is October 8; please lend your support by signing onto the below letter to the newState Commissioner of Education, David Steiner, urging him to make NYC comply with the law and start reducing class size now.

We are now at the mid-point of the city's mandated five year class size reduction plan, yet class sizes continue to rise, our schools are growing more overcrowded every day, and the city continues to ignore its moral and legal obligations to our children.

To sign this letter, composed by me and Robert Jackson, the chair of the NYC Council education committee, just email me and let me know your name school, district, office, or other affiliation, and whether you'd like an asterisk (affiliation for identification purpose only.)

If you're interested in more information on this issue, as well as chartsand citations to back up our statements in the letter, you can check out our C4E fact sheet. You can also send comments to DOE by emailing ContractsForExcellence@schools.nyc.gov

To Commissioner Steiner:

We urge you to require the city to start reducing class size now, according to the terms of its Contracts for Excellence (C4E). Smaller classes remain the top priority of NYC parents, according to the Department of Education's own surveys, and the state's highest court said that our children were deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education in large part because of excessive class sizes.

In return for receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in additional state funds, the city promised that class sizes would be lowered each year until the citywide average would be no more than 20 students per class in grades K-3 and 23 in all other grades by the fall of 2011.

Class size reduction is now a state mandate, and yet last year class sizes increased last year bythe largest amount in ten years; and there are widespread reports of further increases this year.

In addition, the C4E process for public participation has been deeply flawed, as the city failed to hold any public hearings this past June, as recommended by the state, and has refused to hold any borough hearings, as required by law. Instead, a power point is being presented to CommunityEducation Councils which omits any mention of the city's five year class size reduction plan, as well as the DOE's failure to meet its class size targets for two years in a row.

In its official C4E submission, the city pledged to the state that the "the Department continues to be committed to reducing class size in early gradesvia the Early Grade Class Size Reduction program." Yet when an audit was released in September, revealing the misuse of millions of dollars of thesefunds, the DOE claimed that the program "no longer exists." Please see attached fact sheet for more information on these findings.

Clearly, the city has reneged on its promise to reduce class size. It is time that the state utilizes its full oversight authority, and requires the city comply with the law.

We recommend that a corrective action plan be imposed with the following provisions:

1-The city's plan should be revised to include specific class size reduction goals by school, district, and citywide -- sufficient to achieve its annual and five year goals.

2-The city should be obligated to assign whatever teachers remain on absent teacher reserve (ATR) to regular classrooms in their respective districts, so that class sizes can be reduced from current levels.

3-The city should be forbidden from further pursuing any policies thatconflict with its class size goals, including placing new schools in buildings before smaller classes have been achieved in the existing schools. DOE continues to insert new schools into buildings where the existing school is "underutilized" according to a formula which assumes near maximum classsizes.

4. The state should require that the city revise its capital plan so that it can provide enough space necessary for its class size goals to be achieved,as the C4E regulations require.

5. The state should hold back all C4E funds before the city has reported to the state in detail what reductions have been achieved by school, district and citywide, reporting that is now mandated by the state to occur by November 17.

This year will be the mid-point in the city's five year class size reduction plan, instituted by the Legislature so that our children could eventually be assured of an adequate education. There is no time to waste.

If the State Education Department does not require these basic steps to demand accountability and credibility on the part of the city, it will have failed in its responsibilities to our children, to the Legislature, and to New York taxpayers.

Yours,

Leonie Haimson, Class Size Matters
Council Member Robert Jackson, chair, City Council Education Committee and Campaign for Fiscal Equity plaintiff

(See here for more signers.)

Class size audit: another broken promise to our children

City Comptroller Thompson released a class size audit on Wednesday, showing that in 2007-8, the city misused $47 million meant to reduce class size in K-3rd grades. Instead, schools used these funds on other budget items. Press release is here; the full audit is here.

The city is a serial offender when it comes to class size. Since 2006, there have been at least five audits and reports showing how the city has misused nearly a billion dollars in state funds meant for be used to hire new teachers to reduce class size. Yet there are now nearly 2,000 fewer classes in grades K-8 and 1600 fewer classroom teachers. Meanwhile, the number of high paid administrators and out of classroom positions has mushroomed.

The case studies in the latest audit are particularly interesting. One school, PS 36 in the Bronx, received $455,000 to create four extra classes in K-3, but instead subtracted two classes. As a result, they had 23.5 kids in Kindergarten classes, rather than 19; 29 students in 1st grade classes instead of 22; and 30 kids in 2nd grade classes instead of 18.

Another example: PS 327 in Brooklyn, which was allocated $335,000 and should have added four extra classes to reduce class size, but only added one. Both schools had the classroom space, according to the “Blue Book,” but didn’t follow through. Other schools that had no space to reduce class size were allocated these funds, while schools that had space were not provided with any class size funds.

The administration’s response to their failure to properly monitor the use of these funds? That the program has “ceased to exist.”

However the Early Grade class size reduction budget allocation memo is still listed on the DOE website for FY 2010 as an "externally restricted" program. The full budget memo is here, with specific rules that are supposed to be followed -- rules that according to this audit, were flagrantly violated.

Moreover, the city promised to the state to continue the program, even after it was formally folded into the Contracts for Excellence (C4E). The DOE stated as part of its C4E plan that "the Department continues to be committed to reducing class size in early grades via the Early Grade Class Size Reduction program."

Here’s another, equally creative response to the audit, from Joel Klein, on WNYC radio:

“KLEIN: We've put all the state money, we got lots of state money for that and it's all been put into lower class size. People say, well last year it went up a few tenths of a point or something like that, but last year we had budget cuts.”

What? They have never spent the state funds appropriately and in fact, the city is a serial offender when it comes to class size. See this summary; and these charts, showing the large increases by district throughout the city last year, particularly in grades K-3.

Check out how your district did. Click on the chart below, for visual evidence that there was no relationship between the schools that received C4E funds to reduce class size, and those that actually did.

Yet more broken promises to our children.

Smaller classes remain the top priority of parents, according to the DOE’s own surveys. The state’s highest court said that NYC children have been deprived of their constitutional right to an adequate education because of excessive class sizes. Class size reduction is now a state mandate, and yet the DOE continues to violate the law, with little or no compunction. In fact, last school year, class sizes increased by the largest amount in ten years.

We will be asking the state to withhold any more C4E funds from NYC until the city actually follows through on its moral and legal commitments to our children and reduces class size.

Some news articles about the audit are here: Space crunch keeps kids at home, bussed elsewhere, as packed classes begin in city -- Daily News; DOE misspends millions: Class size sky-rockets -- Examiner.com; Thompson says DOE spent class size reduction money elsewhere -- GothamSchools; Comptroller Says DOE Didn't Use All Funds for Smaller Class Sizes --WNYC; Thompson Claims Mayor, DOE Misused Funds -- NY1.