CITY BUDGET INFO

                                                                                                            September 27, 2006

Ms. Kathleen Grimm
Deputy Chancellor for Finance & Administration
NYC Department of Education
52 Chambers Street
New York, NY 10007

Dear Deputy Chancellor Grimm:

            This is a follow-up letter to our meeting with you and Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters on July 14th about the recent NYS Comptroller’s audit. Its findings are that additional annual state funding of $88 million in early-grade class size reduction has resulted in the creation of only 20 additional classes above the number of classes created by tax-levy funding in the 1998-99 base year. Compliance with the requirements of this LADDER program fell from 50 percent in 2000-01 to zero percent in 2004-05. We would like to reiterate points that we made at that meeting as well as share with you a recent discovery we made about the funding history of class size reduction in this city.

            Our intent in meeting with you was to secure a commitment by the Department before the school year began to start a two-year phase in to meet the LADDER target of 1,586 new early-grade classes. Obviously, this deadline has passed. Nevertheless, EPP urges you to reach an agreement with the legislature for full compliance with a program that is intended to improve student learning and ensure that every student in the New York City public schools has a better beginning in kindergarten, first, second, and third grades. Bureaucratic wrangling over data, counting methodologies, and enforcement criteria could well delay any resolution to this issue for years. EPP asks that Department of Education officials not continue with tactics that are shortsighted and, instead, make the right choice on behalf of school children. Here are our reasons:

• Well-designed, peer-reviewed research continues to find that young children, especially low-income, minority boys, have significantly improved achievement levels if they enter a smaller class size in kindergarten or first grade and continue through third grade in smaller class sizes. Only peer tutoring shows the same consistent correlation with improved learning outcomes.

• Retaining skilled teachers is a key strategy to improve learning in the New York City public schools. NYS Education Department studies by the Research Consortium found that teachers hired in New York City have a 50 percent higher rate of leaving after five years than teachers hired by other school districts in the state and that the best prepared teachers leave at even higher rates. Class size reduction would help retain better prepared teachers and insure less turnover, especially in schools serving high-poverty neighborhoods.


• The Department of Education educates the majority of the state’s African-American and Latino public school students. The city’s large class sizes continues a tradition of providing these children with sub-standard instruction and thus raises issues of basic fairness and equity. In this state, school districts serving mostly white students have small class sizes in the early grades because they want their children to succeed. They don’t wait until students fail academically to provide them with smaller classes. Once a child is labeled as “failing,” far more intervention is needed than a smaller class size.

• The city’s public school system deserves credit for creating a half-day program for 45,000 four-year olds with a cap of 18 children in a class with two adults. But 65.000 five-year olds continue to enter full-day kindergarten classes that are among the largest in the nation. If these public school kindergarten classes had to comply with the city’s own Health Department codes for private and public day care programs, there would have to be two adults in most kindergarten classes and they would have fewer students. While Mayor Giuliani succeed in exempting the public schools from having to meet these standards, the legal exemption still does not make it acceptable to subject a majority of kindergarten children to large class sizes and inadequate child-to-adult ratios.

• Last, but not least, on the eve of a possible settlement in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, an agreement on compliance with the LADDER program would show the NYC Department of Education’s responsiveness to the issue of accountability. The NYS Comptroller’s random audit of 54 elementary schools confirmed that state class-size reduction funds were being used to fill 55 teaching positions that should have been funded by the city. One of the persistent problems in securing more funding for New York City public schools is that legislators fear that extra state funding will ultimately not reach the schoolchild. In 1997, the Assembly chose to secure more funds for pre-K and smaller class sizes in return for a property-tax relief benefiting mostly homeowners in the rest of the state. Until the 2001-02 school year, the “trade” seemed to be a good one. Since that time, however, $440 million in extra state funds that could have provided tax relief for New York City residents over a five year period went instead to supplanting the city’s tax-levy funding for early-grade class sizes.

            Based on EPP’s calculations, there are few impediments to the Department’s compliance with LADDER requirements:

• At the meeting, we provided you with the enclosed community school district summary of “targeted capacity” that comes from the Department’s most recent Enrollment-Capacity-Utilization report. “Targeted capacity” measures seats available if all class sizes from kindergarten to third grade were reduced to an average of 20 students. The chart shows that there exists so much systemwide excess building capacity that 2,485 additional early-grade classes could be formed (899 classes above the level that the Comptroller cites as a compliance level for the current state LADDER program). Systemwide, there would still be 49,000 excess seats in public elementary schools if these class sizes were reduced. In only 9 community school districts would class size reduction present a problem if all four grades were reduced: 6, 10, 11, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, and 30. In many of these districts, the creation of K-to-8 schools in underutilized middle schools could substantially allow for the reduction of class sizes in the early grades.

• Currently, besides $88 million in annual state class size reduction funding there is $88 million in federal class size reduction funding. EPP described two different cost scenarios at the meeting for the first year of a phase in to hire 1,400 additional teachers for newly created classes and the requisite 280 cluster teachers: At a starting teacher’s salary of $65,000 (including fringe benefits), an additional $109.2 million would be needed to hire 1,680 classroom and cluster teachers. At an average teacher’s salary of $85,000 (including fringes), $142.8 million would be needed to hire 1,680 teachers. The cost of full compliance (1,586 classroom and 317.2 cluster teachers), using the Department of Education’s own estimate for the FY 07 average teacher salary of $88,176 (including fringes), would total $167.8 million.

            In short, EPP estimates that there is enough school building capacity and categorical funding to create at least 1,400 more early grade classes in the first year and 186 more classes in the second year. EPP recommends that class sizes be reduced in kindergarten and first grade and then the reductions be expanded to the higher grades. Well-designed research of Tennessee’s STAR program and Wisconsin’s SAGE program found that children who continued in small classes from the earliest grades showed the strongest gains, and those who entered a small class at third grade or only for one year showed almost no gains. EPP also urges the Department to make an effort to comply with NYC Department of Health codes in those instances where school overcrowding would not allow for the reduction in class size in kindergarten. Hiring the requisite number of paraprofessionals for these overcrowded classes would require only a $7 million increase in the city’s tax-levy expenditures for elementary schools.

            In closing, EPP wants to share with you a recent discovery we made about the city’s earlier effort to reduce class sizes in the early grades from an average of 32 students to an average of 25 students. We had always assumed that this initiative was funded primarily with city funds. 1986-87 Board of Education budget documents show that the funding for this reduction also came from additional resources from the state. Former Assemblymember Steve Sanders remembers that this was an initiative of Assembly Education Committee Chair Jose Serrano and that these additional funds came with few compliance requirements. Nevertheless, the BOR #1 memo for the 1986-87 school year states that the program had been phased in to first reduce class sizes in kindergarten and first grade and that this was the year that all early grade classes had to comply with the new average. Just as importantly, the tax-levy formula for calculating base teachers required for each school had been changed over the three-year phase-in period to account for the class size reduction. The memo also alerted principals that the Auditor General was to conduct an audit about the extent of compliance with the program and that principals were to ensure that their early-grade class sizes from kindergarten to third grade achieved an average of 25 students. Overcrowded schools were provided with extra funding for paraprofessionals in kindergarten to meet city standards and for the higher grades if the limit of 28 students per class could not be achieved.

            There is some irony to this discovery of past history. There was compliance by the NYC Board of Education with a state program to reduce class sizes when compliance requirements were minimal. Now state compliance requirements are much stronger, but there seems to be a reluctance to meet them. EPP asks that the Department of Education undertake a voluntary program to fully implement the LADDER program whose fundamental objective is to improve learning in the early grades.

                                                                                                            Sincerely,

Marilyn Braveman                                                                              Noreen Connell

Chairperson                                                                                         Executive Director

CC: Mayor Michael Bloomberg; Chancellor Joel Klein; NYS Comptroller Alan Hevesi; NYC Council Speaker Christine Quinn; NYS Education Commissioner Richard Mills; UFT President Randi Weingarten; CSA President Jill Levy; NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum; NYS Assembly Education Committee Chairperson Catherine Nolan; NYS Senate Education Committee Chairperson Stephen Saland; NYC Council Education Committee Chairperson Robert Jackson

Click here for attachment: Elementary School Capacity

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