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September 12, 2004

Dear Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein:

The Educational Priorities Panel is a coalition of 25 civic, parent, and religious organizations that work together to improve the quality of public education for New York City’s children in order to close the performance gap between city schools and those in the rest of the state.

At EPP’s annual retreat this past June, we surveyed our members to learn whether they liked or disliked the new structure of the public school system. We wanted to know if they thought the new structure will improve the quality of schools, student performance and parent participation. We expected a wide variety of responses. To our surprise, there was little variation: 84 percent of the respondents agreed with the statement that the new structure was a "mixed bag," and that they liked some initiatives and didn’t like others. Only 11 percent were uniformly negative and 5 percent uniformly positive.

At the start of the second school year of Children First restructuring, we want to share with you some of EPP’s perceptions of the "mixed" bag of initiatives as well as outline recommendations we urge you to consider.

The Positives:
The Capital Plan
Funded at $13.1 billion over five years, this is the most ambitious school repair and building program since 1989. EPP was impressed that 40% of the funding is targeted towards ending student overcrowding, a problem that has not been solved in New York City for 20 years. At long last, an administration has adopted leasing and public-private partnership strategies to quickly create more classroom space. EPP wants to thank you for the scope of your capital plan, its objectivity, and its balance of priorities.

EPP recommendation: There is one additional strategy that could reduce overcrowding at an even quicker pace and lower cost than leasing. This past school year, EPP members visited two large high schools with "mobile instructional units" spread over a portion of their grounds. This sprawl of MIU’s could be replaced by a three-story school for 600 students. The advantages of this "campus" strategy are 1) no need to purchase land, 2) minimal land clearance costs, and 3) the ability to share some of the facilities of the larger buildings, such as kitchens and playing fields. This will maximize state Building Aid reimbursement levels. A survey should be conducted in overcrowded districts to evaluate how many "campuses" could be created. The Los Angeles school district, in creating a new high school on the grounds of an elementary school, now sees this strategy as a "more intelligent, efficient use of land we already own."

Equity in school instructional resources
While not all of EPP’s members support system-wide, uniform curricula, there is consensus that your efforts to place new textbooks and English Language Arts coaches in all schools reversed a longstanding pattern of neglecting schools in high-poverty, high-immigrant neighborhoods. As EPP observed in our studies of low-performing schools, the churning of different instructional approaches in these schools often made matters worse. The scope of the instructional strategies you’ve adopted will, hopefully, mean that low-income students will at last be exposed to the quality of instruction that is the norm in school districts serving more middle-income communities.

EPP recommendation: Children First has begun the process of raising instructional standards in the system’s lowest-performing schools, but there is still a huge school performance gap that must be closed. The thrust of EPP’s objections to the creation of yet another grade retention policy in New York City is that the bulk of the students who will affected come from low-performing schools in high-poverty neighborhoods. DOE’s own analysis showed that 51% of the third grade students who tested at Level 1 came from just ten community school districts. Our assumption is that the bulk of fifth grade students testing at Level 1 will also come from the same districts. We urge you to consider additional instructional strategies for these schools, including reduced class sizes, so that low-income students have a better chance of succeeding. While some remediation efforts for "at-risk" students are helpful, the strategic focus should be on reducing the numbers of "at-risk" students who have to be helped.

The Negatives:
Mid-level bureaucracy
It is too early to tell whether the new mid-level structure of Regional Operating Centers, Regional Superintendents, Local Instructional Supervisors, Learning Support Centers and their Committees on Special Education will result in improved general and special education instruction. But the efficiency and responsiveness of this new bureaucracy needs improvement, especially the ROC’s. EPP understands that the problem of unanswered phone calls and e-mails has lessened somewhat, but we continue to hear anecdotal reports of inconsistent answers and a lack of timely responses to principals’ requests.

EPP recommendation: We urge you to analyze the persistent management problems that have emerged. Are the service areas too large? Have they been given too little decision making or too much? Have poorly performing administrators been vetted? EPP members were thankful that Deputy Chancellor Fariña stepped in to reverse the backlog of special education referrals and evaluations and the reduction of special education services at the school level, but these serious problems needed to be addressed at an earlier stage. At this point, we do not know whether mid-level staff members are reluctant to report problems or are creating them. An independent management study might help identify the barriers to better performance by the mid-level bureaucracy, especially the ROC’s.

Insufficient resources at the school level
EPP is appreciative of the fact that the NYC Department of Education was shielded from the full extent of budget cuts directed to other city agencies. On the other hand, we have not seen a significant increase in the city’s funding for education. During the last school year, our office received a higher volume of complaints than in the past about larger class sizes from parents and teachers. Our Monitoring Committee’s school-site visits confirmed that in several schools class-size averages were high, some approaching 36 and 37 students. These first-hand reports were at odds with the class size averages reflected in the city’s Management Report.

EPP has been trying to identify the source of the problem. In July, we compared DOE’s funding in the city’s adopted budget for FY 2004 and FY 2005 and found that there was an $80.3 million decrease in resources for general education and special education instruction (excluding District 75). We’ve been told that there will be additional funding for instruction, but we do not understand why there is no longer a DOE policy of preventing cuts to instruction.

There is an additional DOE budget policy we find questionable. This August, we began to look at the "Variable Corridor" method of constructing school budgets on the basis of school size. We have come to the conclusion that this year there is insufficient funding for out-of-classroom positions, such as school secretaries, AP’s, counselors, aides, and librarians. Elementary schools of 1,200 students will receive only $16,800 more in administrative funding than elementary schools of 600 students, not enough to fund a second school secretary, much less an assistant principal. At the high school level, the spread between a 600-student school and a 1200-student school is $107,400, leaving the principal with a difficult decision of retaining a school secretary or retaining an assistant principal.

While there are economies of scale, the "Variable Corridor Method" is extreme in its supposition that large schools do not have a need for more secretaries, assistant principals, librarians, aides, and counselors as their student registers increase. EPP has no idea why the DOE created such an unworkable method of funding out-of-classroom positions. Possibly, the budgets for school administration reflect an ideological bias against large schools or an attempt to reduce school-level administrators. EPP’s major concern is that the "Variable Corridor" method creates a huge hole in school budgets, even in instances where a school may be receiving more money this year than last year. Inevitably, in order to retain assistant principals or school secretaries, principals will reduce their teacher staffing or replace tax-levy funded positions with categorical funded positions. Early reports are that this is occurring. This can only hurt school children.

EPP recommendation: We urge you to re think the funding level that is necessary for out-of-classroom positions. Ironically, last year we recommended that a "bursar" position be added to each school’s administrative staff. This year we are reduced to asking that school secretaries be retained. In hindsight, the insufficient funding in the "Corridor" method of constructing school budgets may be one of the reasons why so many principals began reducing special education services last year. We support the removal of targeted special education funding, but we predict that problems will emerge in other areas simply because the funds for school administrative functions are so unrealistic.

In closing, we want to share with you our disappointment that the Governor and the Legislature did not comply with the CFE court order to provide more resources to New York City schools. Since the major remedy plans were modest and fashioned to appeal to school districts in the rest of the state, we had hoped that one of them would be adopted. Please continue to speak out assertively for the needs of New York City school children.

Sincerely,