Public Testimony 2004

Manhattan Borough President's Hearing on School Governance Restructuring Testimony

Given by: Martine G. Guerrier, Director of Communications for the Educational Priorities Panel
September 7, 2004 New York, New York

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. My name is Martine G. Guerrier, and I am EPP’s Director of Communications. Our Executive Director would be here today, but she had a previous commitment she was unable to cancel.

This past June, we distributed a short questionnaire to our members at EPP’s annual retreat and expected a wide variety of responses to the question of whether they liked or disliked the new structure of the public school system and whether it will change the quality of schools, student performance and parent participation. 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:

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 supports the capital plan, its objectivity, and its balance of priorities.

Equity in school instructional resources While not all of EPP’s members support a system-wide, uniform curricula, there is consensus that 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 adopted will, hopefully, mean that low-income students will at last be exposed to student expectations and a quality of instruction that are the norm in school districts serving more middle-income communities.

The Negatives
Mid-level bureaucracy The most significant change made by Children First restructuring was the elimination of district superintendents, their staff members, and their community boards. This historically powerful layer of administration was a contributor to the uneven quality of education in the system, resistance to innovation, and, in some districts, a pattern of corruption. At the same time, it provided stability during the endless revolving door of chancellors, avenues for parent and community participation, and, occasionally, opportunities for some district superintendents to develop systemic ways of improving instruction.

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 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.

Insufficient resources at the school level EPP is appreciative of the fact that the Mayor shielded the NYC Department of Education was from the full extent of budgets 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 about larger class sizes from parents and teachers, and our Monitoring Committee school-site visits confirmed that in several schools class-size averages were high, some approaching 36 and 37 students. These first-hand reports are at odds with the class size averages reflected in the Mayor’s Management Report.

We’ve been trying to identify the source of the problem. In July, EPP compared DOE’s funding in the city’s adopted budget for FY 2004 and FY 2005 and found that there was an $80.3 decrease in resources for general education and special education instruction (excluding District 75). 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 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 and 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 increase efficiency at the school level. EPP’s major concern is that the "Variable Corridor" method creates a huge hole in school budgets, even in instances where a school will be receiving more money this year than in the past. 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.

In hindsight, the flaws and 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 and used the savings to retain administrative staff. We support the creation of targeted special education funding to avoid a repetition of this problem, but we predict that a similar pattern will emerge in other areas simply because the funding for school administrative functions is so unrealistic.