1
1
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3 TASK FORCE ON COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
4 GOVERNANCE REFORM
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6
7
8 Task Force on Community School District
9 Governance Reform Developing recommendations
10 regarding the powers and duties of the New York
11 City community school boards
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14
15
16 6 Metrotech Center
17 Brooklyn, New York
18
19 January 16, 2003
20 9:18 A.M.
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EN-DE REPORTING, A Spherion Agency.
2
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2 M E M B E R S:
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4 HONORABLE STEVEN SANDERS, Co-Chair
5 TERRI THOMSON, Co-Chair
6 HONORABLE AUDREY PHEFFER
7 YANGHEE HAHN
8 RENEE C. HILL
9 KATHRYN WYLDE
10 ROBIN BROWN
11 ERNEST CLAYTON
12 HONORABLE PETER RIVERA
13 GERALD LEVIN
14 JANE ARCE-BELLO
15 VIRGINIA KEE
16 JACK FRIEDMAN
17 CASSANDRA MULLEN
18 C. BUNNY REDDINGTON
19 ROSE McKENNA
20 ROBERT DeLEON
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2 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Good morning,
3 everybody. This is the fifth and final
4 public hearing being conducted by the Task
5 Force on Community School District
6 Governance Reform. My name is Steve
7 Sanders. I'm chairman of the Assembly
8 Education Committee and Co-Chair of this
9 task force.
10 To my left, who you will hear from in
11 just a moment, is Terri Thomson, who is the
12 other Co-Chair of this task force. As many
13 of you know, earlier last year in June of
14 2002, the state legislature voted to change
15 the governance structure of the New York
16 City Public School System.
17 There were many changes that were
18 enacted into law at that time. One of the
19 changes that the state legislature provided
20 for was that as of June 30, the end of this
21 school year, the 32 local community school
22 boards would go out of being. Would cease
23 to exist.
24 While the state legislature abolished
25 the local community school boards, it did
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2 not abolish local community school
3 representation. In fact, the legislation
4 passed in June was very clear that it is the
5 intent of the state legislature to replace
6 community representation and parental input
7 with some other system and some other entity
8 that hopefully will be more effective and
9 provide even greater representation than
10 that which existed for the past 30 years.
11 To that end, the legislation created
12 this task force. This is a 20-member task
13 force. 10 members appointed by the Speaker
14 Of The Assembly, 10 members appointed by the
15 Senate Majority Leader.
16 We were required in law to hold five
17 public hearings, one in every borough.
18 Today is the fifth and final of those public
19 hearings. We're also required to conduct
20 such meetings and have such information
21 provided to us that would enable us to make
22 a recommendation and a proposal to the state
23 legislature and the Governor no later than
24 February 15. And that proposal is required
25 to fully outline what this task force
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2 believes we ought to do to provide for the
3 kind of community representation and
4 parental input that the law always
5 anticipated.
6 So that is what we are doing today.
7 That is what we have been doing for the last
8 several months. Listening very carefully to
9 what the people of The City of New York have
10 to say and want.
11 We are going to meet our February 15
12 deadline. We, of course, are mindful of all
13 of the proposals and all of the
14 recommendations, including those that have
15 been made most recently, and obviously, we
16 will incorporate into our thinking all of
17 the views represented by scores and scores
18 of New Yorkers.
19 Today is going to be a very busy day.
20 For all of our hearings, we divided the
21 hearing portion of the day into two
22 segments. The first one beginning in the
23 morning and lasting until about 4:00, 5:00
24 in the evening, and always mindful of the
25 fact that some of the people who most want
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2 to express their views are parents or
3 working men and women who cannot get out
4 until after 5:00 or after 6:00, and we have
5 always had in each of the other boroughs, as
6 we do today, an evening session.
7 Because of what we anticipate to be a
8 very, very, very lengthy day, we moved up
9 the starting time to closer to 9:00 this
10 morning, and for the edification of the
11 members of task force, we have reserved this
12 room for 11:59 and 59 seconds tonight. So
13 we were told that we could stay here until
14 the very end of the day, and we may in fact
15 need to do so.
16 One of the good things that this task
17 force has been able to do, which we may not
18 be able to do today as well, is that we have
19 had a certain amount of engagement with the
20 witnesses. A good amount of give and take.
21 Questions and answers.
22 Because of the length of the
23 schedule, I am just advising the task force
24 members and just for the edification of
25 those who are here in the room, that we will
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2 probably not have time to engage in a lot of
3 questions and answers. What we really want
4 to do is to hear from the 100 plus people
5 who have already signed up and perhaps
6 others, and in order to do that, I think
7 we're going to have to limit our own
8 inquiries of the witnesses as best as we can
9 in order so that we can hear from as many
10 people who wish to inform this task force
11 about their views.
12 The other thing I need to mention,
13 which I will be repeating during the day,
14 that because of the length of the day, I am
15 going to have to very, very strictly limit
16 the witnesses, with the exception of the
17 Chancellor for obvious reasons, I'm going to
18 have to limit the witnesses to what our
19 hearing notice in fact had indicated, a
20 five-minute testimony.
21 I know the five minutes isn't a lot
22 of time, especially when we're dealing with
23 a subject as important and as immense as
24 school governance at the local level, but it
25 will be necessary to do that, and I will be
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2 cuing people when they are close to their
3 five minutes, a 30-second reminder, and then
4 I may have to be very rude, and you'll have
5 to forgive me. I don't like to interrupt
6 people, but after five minutes I will have
7 to do so to keep the schedule moving as well
8 as we possibly can.
9 In a moment, I will ask the members
10 of the task force to briefly introduce
11 themselves and say one or two things about
12 themselves. Whatever they wish to.
13 Now I would just like to turn to the
14 Co-Chair of this task force, former member
15 of the Board of Education and a very good
16 friend, Terri Thomson.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thanks,
18 Assemblyman Sanders. Good morning,
19 everyone. I thought I'd take the
20 opportunity to do a little business with the
21 task force members this morning, and just
22 review some of the materials you've received
23 and just talk about the process going
24 forward.
25 As you know, early on you received --
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2 if you haven't received any of these
3 reports, please let me know and we'll make
4 sure you get copies.
5 Early on we provided you with a
6 report from Debra Land on school boards.
7 Debra Land is an expert on school governance
8 from John Hopkins. You should have a copy
9 of that. We provided you with some terrific
10 briefing material done by Ernest Tolerson at
11 the New York City Partnership.
12 You also received a report, the
13 McGeorge Bundy report, which was the Mayor's
14 Advisor Panel on decentralization of New
15 York City schools when John Lindsey was
16 Mayor, and the report was dated November
17 1967, and oh, how things have not changed.
18 Today I'm providing you with a
19 report, Steve and I met with the Assistant
20 Commissioner of Education of New York State,
21 James Kadamas the other day, and he provided
22 us with a report, New York State School
23 Accountability Plan, it's in front of you,
24 under No Child Left Behind.
25 This was the New York State plan
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2 approved by the US Department of Education
3 this morning. And the last page is
4 particularly relevant to our work. By
5 week's end, you will receive transcripts
6 from the first three hearings that we held
7 in the Bronx, Manhattan and Queens. Within
8 a few days early next week you'll receive
9 the Staten Island transcript, and hopefully,
10 as soon as possible, thanks to our
11 transcriber, you will receive today's
12 transcript, because these are very important
13 as we begin our work.
14 We have formally requested from the
15 Chancellor some information as allowed under
16 the legislation which rules us. We've asked
17 for any evaluation on school leadership
18 teams that have been done in-house at the
19 Department of Education. We've asked for
20 the formal report that was done or is being
21 done by the New York Urban League on school
22 leadership teams, and any relevant
23 information from the Children First public
24 engagement meetings that's relevant to the
25 work ahead of us, and some particular
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2 information on school board representation.
3 And we asked the Chancellor to provide us
4 with that by the end of next week, so that's
5 part of our discussion as we begin the
6 process.
7 The process will then be, for after
8 today's hearing, there will be a series of
9 meetings. As you know, we've asked you all
10 to try to keep your Thursdays and Fridays
11 free for the next three weeks.
12 The meetings may include legal
13 counsel, as well as additional testimony
14 from some experts in the field. Our final
15 report is due to the state legislature on
16 February 15, 2003, and we hope to make that
17 deadline.
18 That's where we are. If you haven't
19 received any of these pieces of material,
20 let me know. We'll make sure you get them,
21 and now maybe we'll begin at the far right
22 and ask each of the task force members to
23 introduce themselves, and I can't see who's
24 at my far right. Is that you, Ernest?
25 MR. CLAYTON: Yes. My name is
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2 Ernest Clayton, president of the United
3 Parents Associations of New York City. I
4 have six sons currently or past in the New
5 York City public school system. I myself am
6 a product of the New York City school system
7 and a CUNY grad. Thank you.
8 MS. WYLDE: Kathy Wylde, I am
9 president of the New York Partnership, a
10 city-wide business organization, and
11 resident of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.
12 MS. BROWN: Robin Brown,
13 Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council, it's
14 the representation of the 40 districts as we
15 know them currently in New York City, and I
16 am the parent of two children currently
17 attending public school right here in
18 community school district 13.
19 MS. PHEFFER: Thank you. Good
20 morning. Assemblywoman Audrey Pheffer. I
21 represent the Rockaway, Howard Beach, Ozone
22 Park area, 23rd assembly district, and sat
23 on the original School Governance Committee.
24 MR. LEVIN: Jerry Levin, retired
25 CEO of AOL Time Warner and representing my
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2 family, which is committed to public
3 education of the City of New York, and we
4 have many teachers in my family.
5 MS. ARCE-BELLO: Good morning. I'm
6 Jane Arce-Bello, community activist from the
7 Bronx.
8 MS. KEE: Good morning. I'm
9 Virginia Kee. I've been a classroom teacher
10 for 34 years, and I am the founding member
11 of the Chinese American Planning Council,
12 the largest service organization in the
13 United States.
14 MR. FRIEDMAN: Good morning. My
15 name is Jack Friedman. I'm a former member
16 of community school board 26 for 11 years
17 and I have two children currently attending
18 high schools in New York City public
19 schools, and I'm a resident of northeast
20 Queens.
21 MS. REDDINGTON: Good morning. My
22 name is Bunny Reddington, currently serving
23 as vice chair on community school board 31
24 in Staten Island.
25 MS. McKENNA: Good morning. My
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2 name is Rose McKenna, and I'm a former
3 member of community school board 10 in the
4 Bronx, and I served 36 years in the New York
5 City public school system as teacher and
6 supervisor.
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Okay. I just
8 want to remind everyone who's scheduled to
9 speak that there is a five-minute limit, and
10 particularly today. In the past we've gone
11 beyond that because we had the luxury of
12 time, but today we have over 100 speakers.
13 So it's very important to stick to the
14 limit.
15 We'll begin with Michael Rebell,
16 executive director of the Campaign For
17 Fiscal Equity.
18 MR. REBELL: Thank you, Ms.
19 Thomson, Mr. Sanders, members of the
20 committee. I very much appreciate this
21 second opportunity to speak to you. Last
22 time when I addressed the committee I gave
23 the history, the background and the results
24 of the Campaign For Fiscal Equity's
25 extensive public engagement process on
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2 school accountability, which is accompanying
3 our lawsuit. As you know, Justice DeGrass,
4 in his order in our case, did call for the
5 State to take a whole knew look at
6 accountability, and our plan is very much
7 based on school-level accountability. I'm
8 not going to get into that now.
9 What I want to talk about is where
10 the situation seems to be, especially in
11 light of the Mayor's statements yesterday.
12 A lot of open questions. We all are waiting
13 to hear the Chancellor fill them in.
14 But I want to emphasize a few
15 important points that I hope this group will
16 keep in mind. I think we all know that the
17 literature has shown and experience has
18 shown that you need three basic elements for
19 successful schools. And those elements are
20 a solid instructional program, resources and
21 serious community involvement. The school
22 has to be a working community.
23 I think the Mayor's proposal so far
24 are dealing in a very dramatic and
25 progressive way on the instruction front.
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2 On the resource front, we all know we have
3 problems. What I can tell is through our
4 lawsuit at least, we're going to be dealing
5 with that element in as strong a way as
6 possible.
7 What I want to concentrate on today
8 is that third part, the community element,
9 because from what we've heard of the Mayor,
10 quite frankly, I don't think there is enough
11 meat, enough substance, enough real
12 consideration for it. And I want to remind
13 you just from my lawyer's point of view, in
14 defining a sound basic education, the
15 critical, legal component in Article 11 of
16 the Constitution, the Court of Appeals has
17 made clear that the basic purpose of public
18 education in this State is to prepare
19 students for civic participation. And I
20 think that's relevant here.
21 We have to have communities. We have
22 to have schools that are working in that
23 direction, and the court had good reason for
24 emphasizing that. You're not going to have
25 a successful school if you haven't motivated
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2 people to feel that they're real
3 participants.
4 How does that relate to the specific
5 issues that are before us based on the
6 Mayor's comments yesterday? The Mayor calls
7 for a new emphasis on parent involvement.
8 He called for parent engagement boards. He
9 called for a parent coordinator in each
10 school. These are great proposals. It
11 looks like we're going to get attention.
12 We're going to get resources on really
13 getting parent commitment and parent
14 involvement.
15 But there's something important here
16 that has to be flushed out, and I hope that
17 the Chancellor is going to do it today, and
18 that means real authority for parents. Not
19 just window dressing. Not just getting them
20 into the buildings. And I want to say,
21 without being overly critical of Children
22 First, it was a phenomenal effort there.
23 They got 50,000 parents to come in
24 and relate to the process, but there's been
25 something missing there. Now maybe it was
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2 necessary because of the time pressures of
3 getting that plan together, but you got
4 input from a lot of parents. You didn't get
5 engagement. You didn't get them seriously
6 involved in decision making. You didn't get
7 them having the feel that they're part of a
8 process where their voices really count.
9 You got to have back and forth.
10 There's a whole theory of public engagement
11 that we've been working to. We've been
12 doing dozens of hearings around the State.
13 We have a lot to say about it, but I only
14 have five minutes.
15 Let me just say this, when you're
16 looking at the law, what kind of structure
17 is going to be called for to replace
18 community school boards? I think you got to
19 look at two levels, and this would be
20 consistent with what the Mayor is saying,
21 but try to flush it out. Both on the school
22 level and at the regional level, and if
23 we're now talking about 10 regional centers
24 or whatever, but what we've got to do is
25 give real authority to these boards in a way
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2 that does not create bureaucratic structures
3 that interfere with efficient central
4 control.
5 You can have bottom up authority in a
6 system that also has serious efficient
7 central control, and the way to do it is,
8 you concentrate on the areas that the law
9 already talks about as involving parent
10 rights and parent involvement, and that's
11 things like the Comprehensive Education
12 Plan, and under No Child Left Behind, the
13 role of the corrective action plan is really
14 critical, and I think what you got to look
15 at is the structure and authority of parents
16 and other members of the community. Whether
17 it's through school leadership teams or some
18 other group that you come up with.
19 And it shouldn't only be parents.
20 You have to mobilize the whole school
21 community for this, and you have to give
22 them a real buy into whatever the corrective
23 action plan is or whatever the Comprehensive
24 Education Plan is.
25 So that can be consistent with a
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2 uniform emphasis on curriculum, if that's
3 what's going to be in math and other
4 subjects. We've got a lot of other
5 subjects. We've got a lot of other things
6 going on in the school that parents should
7 have a real say in. And then, there should
8 be a similar structure on a regional level.
9 There should be serious consideration about
10 the relationship between that local team's
11 authority to come up with that plan.
12 I don't think they should have
13 authority to totally veto it, but for
14 instance, on what resources are necessary,
15 what kind of priorities there should be
16 outside what's mandated centrally. These
17 are critical things. The parent voice
18 should be written out.
19 If there's disagreement -- hopefully
20 you push consensus, but the way you get
21 consensus is to give people real authority.
22 There's got to be some right for people if
23 they don't fully agree, to go to the next
24 level. We don't need a cumbersome appeal,
25 but there's got to be a public process.
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2 It's got to be transparent, which
3 unfortunately, so far, the parent
4 involvement has not been. Anyway, we're
5 working on a specific proposal to give to
6 you along these lines, but I just wanted to
7 highlight a few points and I very much
8 appreciate you letting me kick this off and
9 giving me an extra 20 seconds.
10 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, I may not
11 be so lenient during the course of the day.
12 We very much appreciate the fact that you
13 have shared your testimony with us again.
14 The work that you have done and the CFE suit
15 has certainly been a major contribution to
16 the entire debate.
17 I think we may have a question.
18 Mr. Levin.
19 MR. LEVIN: Just quickly. Could
20 you expand briefly on the concept of civic
21 participation and how it relates to our
22 assignment?
23 MR. REBELL: Well, I think, if
24 that's the basic constitutional legal
25 requirement according to the Court of
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2 Appeals, my basic point is we can't lose
3 site of it, and civic participation means a
4 full involvement of a community, and I'm
5 saying a community at the local level. I
6 don't want to give the impression the Court
7 of Appeals has mandated a particular
8 structure for community school boards by
9 this, but I think they've highlighted a key
10 component of education.
11 And look, the decentralization law
12 has got a long history. There's been a lot
13 of criticism of it. Lots gone wrong over
14 the years, but there was an element of that
15 that was correct, and that was the idea of
16 trying to get community involvement, and
17 that's been reiterated by the Court of
18 Appeals in 1995, and my basic plea to this
19 group is make sure there's a strong element
20 for that left in whatever proposal you come
21 up with.
22 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Michael, it
23 would probably be useful for us for you to
24 highlight a copy of the relevant passage in
25 the Court of Appeals ruling. As well, you
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2 said you're submitting recommendations to
3 us. Sooner, rather than later.
4 MR. REBELL: We will try to get
5 it.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
7 very much, Mr. Rebell.
8 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Fernando
9 Ferrer, director, Drum Major Institute, and
10 the Honorable Former Borough President of
11 the great Borough of the Bronx.
12 MR. FERRER: Good morning, members
13 of the task force, old friends, Terri
14 Thomson, and Assemblyman Steve Sanders, your
15 co-chairs. I appreciate this opportunity to
16 talk with you a little bit about the time
17 after community school boards.
18 In 1969, I was on the ramparts for
19 decentralization and the creation of
20 community school boards. Today, I'm glad to
21 be testifying at a hearing to envision a
22 time beyond them.
23 With all due respect, your most
24 important task today is not to come up with
25 a perfect organizational chart. Such a
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2 process will only ensure that we'll meet
3 again sometime in the future at a hearing
4 very much like this one.
5 Instead, we can re-envision a system
6 that respects the fact that schools are
7 inherently public institutions with parents
8 as their customers. If we've learned
9 anything from the experiences of the 1968
10 legislation that brought us decentralization
11 and the 1996 changes that created school
12 leadership teams, it's that governance
13 reforms alone don't improve public
14 education.
15 In the late '60s, the Ford Foundation
16 asked a question that they didn't
17 unfortunately stay around to answer. What
18 should the relationship be between schools
19 and communities? It's still the right
20 question. Our City, we have all attempted
21 to legislate the answer.
22 That is, in large part, why the
23 history of who governs in New York City
24 schools is one of conflict. The perennial
25 struggle of top down versus local control
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2 versus borough control versus all of the
3 above has distracted us from developing the
4 deep, sustained relationships between
5 schools and communities that could actually
6 improve public education and elicit support
7 for reform.
8 Past governance reforms change
9 structures, but they didn't change
10 relationships. And in the spring of 2002,
11 as the certainty of mayoral control was
12 near, we became concerned that the City was
13 looking at a next round of governance reform
14 as the panacea for the system's ills.
15 For that reason, the Drum Major
16 Institute for Public Policy, a policy
17 institute originally created during the
18 civil rights movement, whose mission then,
19 as today, is to promote social and economic
20 justice in the formulation of social policy,
21 organized a spring forum on the subject of
22 school governance from the relationship up.
23 Three of the members of that panel
24 had started public schools. Each of those
25 schools was a success. Although on paper,
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2 none should have been. And each of the
3 founder attributed the strong relationships
4 built with parents and communities as
5 integral to their success.
6 The data support their experiences.
7 Children with involved parents are more
8 likely to learn -- to earn rather higher
9 grades and test scores. Pass their classes.
10 Attend school regularly. Possess better
11 school skills. Behave better in school.
12 Graduate and go on to college.
13 The presence of parents in
14 communities, improves the climate of the
15 school. Indeed it contributes to a climate
16 of success. Teachers are more effective
17 when parents and communities support their
18 efforts. Reforms are more likely to be
19 sustained when parents and communities are
20 behind them, and schools who can demonstrate
21 community support, are more likely to
22 attract the interest and commitment of
23 outside organizations, such as foundations,
24 local businesses and community institutions.
25 Drum Major Institute collaborated
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2 with the NYU Institute for Education and
3 Social Policy to turn the conversation away
4 from the emphasis on top down governance,
5 toward bottom up accountability. We
6 produced a report, From Governance To
7 Accountability, Building Relationships That
8 Make Schools Work, that concluded the
9 following:
10 We need to change the paradigm from a
11 governance to accountability. Governance
12 reforms alone don't improve schools, despite
13 the preoccupation with them in New York and
14 other cities. Our review of the history of
15 previous governance reforms illustrate that
16 they fail to build the capacity of each
17 individual school to improve.
18 Schools improve through local action,
19 not through top down mandates. The schools
20 that have succeeded against the odds have
21 combined strong leadership and support for
22 effective teaching with parent and community
23 engagement.
24 Until schools have the capacity, the
25 will and the incentive to create these
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2 relationships, they won't, and if they do
3 not, our schools will lack a critical
4 ingredient necessary to transform.
5 Our system continues to suck the
6 oxygen out of the relationships with parents
7 and communities. School staff is given no
8 training or incentive to view parents and
9 communities as partners. Parent
10 Associations and school leadership teams are
11 relied upon as primary vehicles for
12 involvement, but ultimately ineffective,
13 because they depend on the will of
14 administrators, and finally, educators work
15 from the assumption that middle class
16 parents are entitled to access to their
17 children's schools, and that their
18 participation in those schools is
19 legitimate. Low income parents are not
20 viewed similarly.
21 In order to build relationships that
22 overcome layers of suspicion, cynicism and
23 despair accumulated over decades of
24 separation between schools and communities,
25 concrete steps will need to be taken to
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2 increase parent and community access,
3 representation and power in their schools.
4 Each time the system looks at student
5 attendance, test scores, teacher-student
6 ratios, it must look at the indicators of
7 its success in forging meaningful
8 relationships with parents in the community.
9 We're pleased to see that this
10 recommendation offered to Deputy Mayor
11 Walcott and Chancellor Klein in November was
12 incorporated into Mayor Bloomberg's speech.
13 Until you hold teachers, principals,
14 superintendents, and even the Chancellor
15 accountable with new performance standards,
16 the system will not change and it will be
17 the next generations of New York City school
18 children who will suffer the consequences.
19 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Ferrer, a
20 man who has worn many hats and has been a
21 good friend to public education and New York
22 City residents everywhere, we so much
23 appreciate your testimony this morning. You
24 and I had a chance to chat some weeks ago.
25 We may want to ask you to join us in one of
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2 our meetings to perhaps further elaborate on
3 the views and the work that the Drum Major
4 Institute is doing, but we so much
5 appreciate you being here this morning.
6 MR. FERRER: Thank you, Mr.
7 Chairman. I'm pleased to have provided the
8 panel also with copies of our report and
9 expect that that will flesh out my
10 testimony. At least I hope it will.
11 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
13 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We'll be sure
14 that each -- we'll pull it from the web as
15 it says here, drummajorinstitute.org and
16 make sure all of the task force members
17 receive a copy.
18 I too want to thank you for your work
19 on parent involvement going back a number of
20 years to I think three years ago, you did a
21 very detailed study and report on the issue
22 of parent involvement. Thank you.
23 MR. FERRER: Thank you. As a
24 former neighbor of mine in the Bronx once
25 said, it is deja vu all over again.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
3 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
4 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Jan Atwell,
5 program director for United Parents
6 Association.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Once again, for
8 those who have arrived in just the last few
9 minutes, I have to strictly limit testimony
10 to five minutes. When you begin to reach
11 that point, I'm going to cue you with a
12 30-second reminder, but this is not to cut
13 you off. This is to allow as many people to
14 testify as we can today.
15 MS. ATWELL: Good morning, task
16 force members. I'm Jan Atwell, program
17 director of Unite Parents Association of New
18 York City. I'm here today in place of our
19 president and to testify on behalf of UPA's
20 membership. Unit Parents Association is a
21 city-wide parent organization that advocates
22 on behalf of a better education for all New
23 York City's public school children.
24 In the 82 years of UPA's existence,
25 the governance issue has come up many, many
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2 times, and in each time, UPA has advocated
3 for a stronger parent voice at every level
4 of governance.
5 Prior to today's hearing, in
6 preparation, UPA held discussions and
7 surveyed parents at our annual conference,
8 our fall academy and our monthly meetings,
9 and I'm here today to propose to you UPA's
10 plan for a district or mid-level governance
11 structure, but before I do, I'd like to
12 share with you some of the very clear issues
13 that came out of our preliminary discussions
14 and analysis.
15 To begin with, the purpose and
16 structure. The primary purpose of any
17 district level governance structure is
18 viewed as facilitation of parent and
19 community input in decision making. Any
20 such body must be given formal decision
21 making powers, rather than a purely advisory
22 role. It must hold regular public meetings
23 and should be required to send out meeting
24 schedules and minutes to parents and others
25 in the community.
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2 Lines of communication and
3 accountability should flow from bottom up,
4 as well as top down. With the district body
5 linked and responsive to school leadership
6 teams at the school level, as well as the
7 Chancellor and Panel On Education Policy at
8 central.
9 Regarding the composition of a new
10 district governance body, most Respondents
11 believe that it should contain a parent
12 majority, with some representation from the
13 wider community. As under current law
14 effecting community school boards, most did
15 not feel that employees of the school system
16 should sit on these district bodies, because
17 of the enormous power and influence they
18 wield through their respective labor unions.
19 There's also very strong consensus
20 that representatives should be elected,
21 rather than appointed, to sit on district
22 governance bodies.
23 In terms of powers and
24 responsibilities, the most often cited area
25 of authority for a district governance body
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2 is budget development/approval, followed by
3 local policy-making powers. Other
4 frequently mentioned powers that we support
5 include development and approval of a
6 district Comprehensive Education Plan, a
7 role in Superintendent evaluation, as well
8 as in screening/selecting supervisory
9 candidates. One of the most critical is to
10 contend with the myriad of local problems
11 and issues that arise and to help adjudicate
12 grievances brought primarily by parents.
13 Finally, a new district governance in
14 monitoring and oversight of policy and
15 program implementation in schools.
16 There was also strong consensus that
17 members on a district governance body should
18 be mandated to undergo training in order to
19 ensure informed and effective participation
20 in their new position. History has taught
21 us that there must also be dedicated
22 funding, preferably from the state, for
23 professional development to prevent it from
24 becoming merely another unfunded mandate for
25 which local dollars quickly evaporate in
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2 times of fiscal constraint.
3 Critical to the effectiveness of a
4 district governance body is the need for
5 professional staffers, independent of the
6 Superintendent's control, who can gather
7 research, provide necessary information and
8 support, as well as help implement decisions
9 of the district body.
10 Now I'd like to present to you UPA's
11 proposal for district-level governance
12 structure and refer you to the diagram,
13 which I hope you all have.
14 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Jan, you may
15 need to summarize, because you --
16 MS. ATWELL: I know. Time factor.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: -- have about a
18 minute and a half to go.
19 MS. ATWELL: As you can see, we
20 propose a District Council, okay. 12
21 members with a clear majority of the
22 parents, seven parents, as well as three
23 community representatives and two high
24 school students. The Superintendent should
25 be required to work with this District
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2 Council and attend its monthly meetings. We
3 have provided for a professional staff
4 person.
5 Now, for the selection of these
6 District Councilmembers, we start at the
7 school level where the school parents
8 association and the school leadership team
9 jointly nominate parents as representatives.
10 And then a school-wide election would be
11 held in which parents vote on a parent
12 nominee for their school.
13 When it comes to student nominees,
14 their Student Council would nominate
15 representatives and a school-wide election
16 of students would occur. And for community
17 nominees, we suggest that interested
18 community members, representatives from
19 CBOs, business community, etcetera, be
20 nominated by State Assemblymembers, State
21 Senators, City Councilmembers and the
22 Community Planning Board.
23 Now, we didn't want to propose yet
24 another governance structure into streamline
25 bureaucracy, but we do want to promote the
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2 idea of dialogue and interaction between
3 different levels of governance and all
4 stakeholders. So we also propose that there
5 be borough-wide and city-wide conventions
6 held. In case of borough-wide conventions,
7 the borough presidents and the parent
8 representative on the Panel For Education
9 Policy would convene them. Should be held
10 approximately three times a year.
11 City-wide, the Chancellor and the Panel For
12 Education Policy borough reps would convene
13 it. Held twice a year, including parents,
14 educators, students, community, really to
15 have a dialogue and to come up with an
16 agenda for reform, and then again, repeat
17 those conventions to revisit those plans and
18 deal with problems that arise and address
19 some of the unintended consequences that any
20 changes invariably bring.
21 I just want to say in conclusion,
22 that our proposal in no way undermines our
23 support for existing parent organizations
24 and bodies at every level. We strongly
25 support parent associations, President's
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2 Council, the Chancellor's Parent Advisory
3 Council and feel they are integral. We just
4 feel that this structure will enhance parent
5 participation and community participation in
6 school governance in New York City.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
8 much, Ms. Atwell. Let me just mention we've
9 been joined by several more of our members.
10 To my far right, Mr. Robert DeLeon. To my
11 far left, Yanghee Hahn. Bunny Reddington is
12 here from Staten Island.
13 MS. REDDINGTON: I was here.
14 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: She's just been
15 introduced again. Thank you very much, Jan
16 Atwell, not only for your testimony this
17 morning, but for the work that the Education
18 Priorities Panel has done over the years and
19 the work that the United Parents Association
20 has done. You've represented many groups
21 and organizations. Your ongoing
22 communication, information to us continues
23 to be very valuable, and we thank you so
24 much for being here this morning.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Jan, we would
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2 ordinarily like to have a lot of questions
3 and dialogue, but time doesn't allow us to
4 do that. But you will hear more from us,
5 I'm sure.
6 MS. ATWELL: Thank you very much
7 for hearing us today.
8 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
9 The Honorable Marty Markowitz, borough
10 president of the great Borough of Brooklyn
11 where we sit today. Marty, I was born in
12 Brooklyn. Everyone was born in Brooklyn.
13 MR. MARKOWITZ: When I complete my
14 job as borough president, no one will ever
15 leave, that's for sure. Anyway, thank you
16 very, very much to each of the members of
17 the task force. Certainly this Chairman,
18 Steve Sanders, who I've had the pleasure to
19 work with for years, and Audrey Pheffer.
20 Thank you for your devotion and dedication
21 in giving upon of your time, because I know
22 you care as much as we all do about that
23 every child receives the best education we
24 possibly can.
25 As the Mayor and Chancellor move
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2 quickly to re-focus and restructure the
3 school system and to make it perform at a
4 much higher level, I'm delighted that they
5 have given the top priority to increasing
6 the roles and responsibilities of parents.
7 The consumers of public education,
8 the parents, are the ones who speak for
9 their children, need a voice. A real voice.
10 Many voices, because I want to be careful
11 that we not set up a structure where it's
12 one person, meaning, that there is not a
13 person living that has all the answers. And
14 a system must be created that creates and
15 energizes those that have a concern about
16 public education, to have a say in the
17 governance of the school system, and
18 particularly on the education of their
19 children.
20 And I know the Chancellor feels that
21 way, the Mayor, and all of us in public
22 service. The legislature obviously
23 understood this and chose to create this
24 task force in preparation for this proposed
25 elimination of our community school boards.
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2 While learning to do more with less, we are
3 actively seeking to achieve parody among all
4 city schools, so that every parent can send
5 their children to a local school, and have
6 confidence their children will be able to
7 learn in a safe, challenging, nurturing and
8 academic environment.
9 Time and time again, wherever we have
10 seen this environment and where we see that
11 students are succeeding, we see a school
12 that is a cohesive community of parents,
13 teachers and administrators working
14 together, and I might add, that many of our
15 existing school boards in New York City have
16 done an outstanding job in providing quality
17 education to our kids.
18 Given that, I fully support the Mayor
19 in his commitment to place a parent
20 coordinator in each of the schools. A new
21 and nimble structure is needed to replicate
22 full and active parental involvement in all
23 city schools. The structure developed to
24 ensure parent involvement to the school must
25 serve three purposes:
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2 First, it must include a proactive
3 communication and outreach component
4 designed to involve all public school
5 parents. Second, it must create a
6 meaningful pathway for capturing parental
7 expertise and applying it to the schools,
8 and third, the structure must allow parents
9 to hold local school officials accountable.
10 Superintendents and principals and teachers
11 accountable for their school performance and
12 the education of their precious children.
13 While establishing parent service
14 offices is a good start, it will not be
15 sufficient to have only 10 centers
16 throughout New York City. And I have to
17 say, Chairman, as you know, I was very
18 distressed when the Board Of Education left
19 Brooklyn and moved to government row, which
20 is also known as Chambers Street. I know
21 that's done already. I had a proposal that
22 it should be in East New York where it would
23 -- the educational establishment, where ever
24 day one of the lowest educational achieving
25 communities in New York City. Regrettably
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2 that didn't happen, but I did want to be
3 sure that we understand that just
4 establishing 10 locations is not sufficient
5 in a city this large.
6 The new structure must include a
7 direct and accessible avenue for recourse
8 for parents who are facing problems with
9 their children's schools that are not
10 resolvable through their school parental
11 coordinator.
12 The most direct way to accomplish
13 these goals is to establish local parent
14 groups as advisory bodies, which would also
15 work actively to increase parental
16 involvement in schools where it is lacking.
17 Members can be appointed in a similar
18 fashion as community planning board, half by
19 borough presidents and perhaps half by city
20 Councilmembers representing each community.
21 The board should have small administrative
22 staffs comprised of reassigned, existing
23 Board of Education personnel whose jobs
24 would be to effectively communicate with
25 parents.
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2 The parental advisory boards should
3 also have the power to recommend three
4 candidates to fill principal vacancies. The
5 board also needs to play a role in how money
6 is spent in their local schools. The chairs
7 of the parental advisory boards for each
8 borough should meet monthly with the borough
9 president's appointee to the Panel For
10 Educational Policy, thereby bringing
11 together the structure that the state
12 legislature created.
13 The Chancellor or representative
14 would be required to attend these borough
15 board meetings to discuss progress,
16 educational policy, and how resources are
17 being spent and allocated across the
18 borough. These meetings could be held at
19 borough president's offices and a nominal
20 staff should be assigned, again from
21 existing staff, to help ensure that the
22 contents of these meetings is effectively
23 communicated to the parents.
24 In schools with little parental
25 involvement, those without active PTAs where
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2 we don't see enough parent volunteers, one
3 of the major obligations would to be analyze
4 the barriers and increase parental
5 involvement in those particular schools.
6 Since parents are in the best position to
7 effectively recruit other parents as school
8 volunteers and to examine barriers to
9 parental involvement in their local schools,
10 each board would be charged with increasing
11 parental participation in the schools within
12 their purview.
13 The boards would regularly review
14 parental participation in schools and each
15 school, and establish their own plans for
16 increasing involvement, and the boards would
17 also evaluate overall school performance and
18 evaluate their school superintendents each
19 year.
20 The board members would be term
21 limited and they should be limited to those
22 who have children in public schools. The
23 borough presidents would be held accountable
24 to the public for the quality of their
25 advisory board appointments, as with local
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2 city Councilmembers. In addition, the
3 Chancellor would be directed to hold annual
4 education conferences for parents in each
5 borough to inform parents about educational
6 trends and progress in the system. Increase
7 parental involvement and improve citizen
8 access to educational decision makers is
9 necessary component of the education
10 improvements and the heightened public
11 accountability sought by the Mayor.
12 To reiterate, there are three
13 principals, and I'll wrap it up on this, for
14 parental involvement that I believe will
15 best accomplish the goals for making every
16 school perform well for every student. A
17 proactive communication and outreach
18 component designed to involve all public
19 school parents. A meaningful pathway for
20 capturing parental expertise and applying it
21 in the schools. A structure for parents to
22 hold superintendents accountable for school
23 performance.
24 The state legislature made a bold
25 decision last year in entrusting the Mayor
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2 with total control of our school system, and
3 I applaud the Mayor for wanting to take this
4 responsibility on. He has staked his
5 Mayoralty on greatly improving how we
6 educate our more than one million students,
7 and all of us hope that he succeeds, because
8 we all succeed when that happens.
9 But everybody needs help, especially
10 when you're talking about running 1,200
11 schools. New Yorkers have opinions about
12 everything, and when it comes to educating
13 our kids, these opinions need to be heard,
14 considered and acted on. Our educational
15 system needs to flow from the top down, and
16 I'm here to say this morning, from the
17 bottom up in order to fully succeed, and the
18 only way you're going to encourage real
19 parental involvement is by empowering them
20 and giving parents real responsibility. A
21 parent's only agenda is making sure that his
22 or her child gets the best quality
23 education.
24 Whatever you choose to replace
25 community school boards, must encourage
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2 neighbor activism, that has made so many of
3 our schools successful in New York.
4 Harnessing and replicating that activism in
5 schools in Brooklyn and beyond is a crucial
6 component, we know, of all in New York City,
7 especially our school system. There is no
8 reason why this world-class city can't
9 provide a world-class education for every
10 one of our kids, and I think my proposals
11 represent a solid blueprint to help us
12 achieve this goal. I thank you so very
13 much. Thank you for your dedication.
14 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Borough
15 President, we are indebted to you for your
16 decades of public service at the state
17 level, now right here in your great Borough
18 of Brooklyn, and I did hear -- I certainly
19 took note of what you said in your opening
20 remarks about the departure of the education
21 establishment from 110 Livingston Street,
22 although I don't think it was greeted with
23 quite as much dismay as when the Dodgers
24 left Ebbets Field. I know that there was
25 still some consternation about that.
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2 MR. MARKOWITZ: Steve, I wish I
3 was borough president in those days.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you so
5 much.
6 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Our next
8 speaker is Esmeralda Simmons, executive
9 directors of the Center for Law and Social
10 Justice. She'll be the last speaker before
11 Chancellor Klein and Deputy Mayor Walcott.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Once again, for
13 those people who arrived late, with some
14 very few exceptions, we are constrained to
15 limit people strictly to five minutes.
16 Again, this is not to cut you off, but to
17 allow for the 100 plus other witnesses who
18 have already signed up today. Good morning.
19 MS. SIMMONS: Good morning. My
20 name is Esmeralda Simmons, and I'm joined
21 here by Dr. Sam Anderson. We are from the
22 Center for Law and Social Justice that has
23 sponsored the parent advocacy center out of
24 Medgar Evers College for the past 17 years,
25 and for the last decade, we have been active
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2 players from the ground up, I will say, from
3 the parents up on the governance issue.
4 Today we prepared remarks, which I
5 see you have already, so we are going to
6 simply emphasize the issues that are in
7 those remarks.
8 First, since nobody else has said it,
9 let me remind you that changing the
10 community school boards in any way -- I know
11 you must do that -- is a voting rights
12 issue. Why is it a voting rights issue?
13 Because the school board elections have been
14 the base level for political participation
15 in this city.
16 It is the only election in which not
17 citizens can vote and parents can vote that
18 are not otherwise registered, and it has
19 allowed for community groups, particularly
20 Immigrant groups, who have had no other say
21 in city government, to begin to become
22 civically involved, since their children
23 attend the public schools.
24 The Justice Department of the federal
25 government will be reviewing any changes
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2 that you recommend or is passed by the state
3 legislature. And we want to remind you, as
4 I'm sure you know so well, that they have in
5 the past rejected other recommendations that
6 curtailed the voting rights of those persons
7 who had such rights as they do now.
8 One last point, though, this is not
9 very popular with other folks, it's quite
10 popular with the Center for Law and Social
11 Justice and other voting rights
12 institutions, the cumulative voting process
13 in the school board election has also
14 allowed for Immigrant groups and language
15 minorities to be able to elect candidates of
16 their choice. That also will be
17 something -- any changes in that will be
18 viewed by the Justice Department.
19 In our testimony we have suggested an
20 alternative that hopefully would pass the
21 Justice Department's review. That is the
22 creation of representatives -- let me
23 underline that -- representatives district
24 education councils which basically would be
25 voted by the members of the school
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2 leadership team and hopefully even voted by
3 the public.
4 And these district education councils
5 are similar to the other bodies you'll hear
6 other public groups mentioning today and
7 public officials. They would basically be
8 watchdogs over the education system and act
9 not merely as advisors, but as advocates for
10 the issues necessary on a local level, and
11 we did not anticipate 10 districts. We're
12 looking at something closer to 30, 32 or
13 even 51 to make it coterminous with the City
14 Council, the smaller, the better.
15 We have over 1,200 schools.
16 Certainly 10 district -- 10 centers would
17 not service New York City. What are we
18 asking to be done at these district
19 education councils? We're asking them to
20 listen to the parent -- basically parent
21 composed with some members from the
22 community, to look at what is happening on
23 the educational level and report that to the
24 Chancellor, as well as to the community
25 members and the PTA. In other words,
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2 examine it. Have public meetings. Right
3 now, though we tremendously applaud what the
4 Mayor said yesterday and we look forward to
5 hearing what the Chancellor says today on
6 educational initiatives, and we additionally
7 have right in our proposal that there should
8 be centrality of district-wide parent
9 involvement coordinators. So we are on all
10 fours on those issues.
11 We, however, want to see
12 representation. We want to see a real
13 voice, and we want to see crystal clear,
14 transparent, a governance in regard to
15 schools.
16 Finally, none of this would be
17 meaningful if students were not trained to
18 be leaders in their communities, so we are
19 calling for formal creation of student
20 councils requiring them -- I don't think
21 there's a person up here on this panel that
22 wasn't in some way involved in their school
23 as a student leader. We must train them and
24 also have them involved in these district
25 educational councils so they can work with
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2 the adults and with each other and tell us
3 what's really happening in the schools.
4 Thank you very much.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well,
6 Ms. Simmons, we thank you very much, and Dr.
7 Anderson, who is here with you, we are all
8 of us very well aware of the good work, hard
9 work from the Center for Law and Social
10 Justice, and we've had an opportunity to get
11 some information during the course of these
12 previous hearings, we've seen Dr. Anderson
13 on other occasions, and we are always in
14 your debt for your hard work and your very
15 good advice, and you can be sure that we
16 will take very close note of your importunes
17 of this task force this morning. Thank you
18 very much, both of you.
19 MS. SIMMONS: Thank you, and good
20 luck.
21 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
22 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We'd like to
23 invite Chancellor Klein, Chancellor of the
24 New York City Schools and the Honorable
25 Dennis Walcott, Deputy Mayor of The City of
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2 New York to join us.
3 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: I made sure
4 I took my breath mint knowing I'll be
5 sharing a microphone with the Chancellor
6 this morning. Good morning to Chairman
7 Sanders and Chairwoman Thomson and to the
8 members of the state task force for
9 community school district governance reform.
10 It's a pleasure to be here this morning.
11 Thank you for the opportunity to
12 testify today on the Mayor's vision for the
13 replacement of the community school boards.
14 As you may be aware, I am a father of four
15 children who have either attended or
16 currently attend the New York City public
17 schools. In the past, I also served as a
18 member of the New York City Board of
19 Education, as well as a temporary trustee of
20 the school board five when former Chancellor
21 Rudy Crew had suspended that particular
22 board.
23 Today, though, I am proud to testify
24 with Chancellor Joel Klein on the Mayor's
25 vision for the replacement of the community
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2 school boards. Since the Mayor gained
3 control of the school system and appointed
4 Joel Klein as Chancellor, we have made
5 parent participation a priority of our
6 Children First reforms. To build community
7 and parent involvement, the Department of
8 Education has embarked on a comprehensive
9 engagement effort to listen to the ideas of
10 parents, teachers, principals,
11 superintendents, community-based and civic
12 organizations and many other individuals.
13 To date, more than 50,000 parents and
14 community members have been engaged in this
15 effort. This outreach has enabled parents
16 and the community to have a voice and be a
17 crucial part of this ground-breaking school
18 reform effort. The sessions have served as
19 forums on what works and what does not work
20 in public schools, partnership strategies
21 and ways to improve the system.
22 In addition to the meetings that were
23 held under the banner of Children First,
24 Mayor Bloomberg and his staff have held
25 numerous meetings with individual parents
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2 and parent groups. There has been one
3 consistent theme in all of these meetings,
4 the need for high performing and respectful
5 schools.
6 After listening to the many people
7 who have attended these meetings and
8 receiving information from the parents,
9 school board members, academics and others
10 that have testified before this task force,
11 we have established several key principals
12 which guide our thinking on the replacement
13 for community school boards. Most
14 importantly, the replacement body should
15 make the school system more accessible to
16 parents and guarantee that parents' views on
17 their children's education are heard.
18 Thus, our first and most crucial
19 recommendation is that we replace the
20 community school boards as they exist today,
21 composed of members elected by the voters of
22 the community school district with what
23 we're calling new parent engagement boards,
24 consisting entirely of parents and chosen by
25 parents of public school children.
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2 Community school boards were conceived with
3 the intent of giving a voice to the
4 under-represented. However, they have
5 failed to give a voice to those with the
6 most at stake. In the last election of
7 community school board members,
8 approximately three percent of those
9 eligible voted. This paltry turn out
10 demonstrates the lack of connection that
11 most people in the community feel to their
12 local community school board.
13 The members of the parent engagement
14 boards must be true representatives of the
15 schools in the district and must be those
16 with the most at stake, parents of public
17 school children elected by parents. While
18 our focus is on the parents, we recognize
19 there is a critical role for community
20 groups to play in the school system.
21 Community organizations are key partners and
22 can provide our children with a critical
23 range of services and support both during
24 and after the school day. To that end, and
25 as the Mayor stated yesterday, we will soon
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2 announce a comprehensive strategy to partner
3 with community organizations that will focus
4 on youth development, family, health and
5 after-school programs.
6 Every school will be connected to
7 these resources of the larger community.
8 The second principal is honoring not only
9 the requirements of the Voting Rights Act,
10 but it's also its spirit. We're confident
11 that our proposal to enhance parent
12 involvement will meet this goal.
13 The third principal is taking the
14 politics out of the process. Changing these
15 structures to parent only entities is
16 critical. We cannot risk a return to the
17 highly politicized situation that has
18 existed in many districts for the last 30
19 years. In the past, these boards became
20 mired in the politics of decisions ranging
21 from awarding contracts for repairs, to
22 selecting principals, to hiring
23 paraprofessionals and school aides.
24 I envision that these new boards,
25 because of their parent only design, can
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2 stay above the political fray and focus on
3 the challenge of educating our children.
4 The fourth principal concerns the
5 role of parent engagement boards. These
6 boards should have real influence not over
7 the type of issues that lead to the problems
8 of the community school boards. This means
9 serving as a forum to hear the concerns of
10 parents, as a body to hear and give input
11 into the plans and performance of the
12 department, and as a resource to
13 superintendents and to the Chancellor.
14 There needs to be a conceptual
15 re-focus from how those boards have
16 conducted business in the past. We need to
17 engage parents in the work of improving
18 their children's education.
19 The fifth principal is a coherence
20 between the schools and the district level
21 boards. We should create a bottom up parent
22 structure by aligning the activities of the
23 parent engagement board with the current
24 school leadership teams. As part of the
25 department's efforts to increase parent
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2 participation in schools, we will provide
3 effective training for the parent members on
4 the SLTs, and ensure that all aspects of the
5 SLTs are parent friendly.
6 Since the Parent Association, the PA
7 president is an automatic member of the SLT,
8 and the PA elects the other parent members,
9 the parent engagement boards will be
10 compromised of parent leaders in the
11 district school.
12 In sum, these principals will allow
13 parents to have a more meaningful role in
14 their children's education. Chancellor
15 Klein will now speak in greater detail to
16 the various reforms we're instituting to
17 make this possible. Thank you and I look
18 forward to hearing from you. Chancellor.
19 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Thank you.
20 Thank you, Chairman Sanders, thank you
21 Chairwoman Thomson, and thank you members of
22 the committee for the opportunity to be here
23 today and to testify.
24 I think I would like to just put a
25 little context on the discussion, because
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2 obviously what you're doing is so critical,
3 but also a lot of what the Mayor has
4 announced I think is important background
5 context. So first I'd like to reiterate a
6 few points, elaborate, and then discuss with
7 you some of the thoughts on the boards that
8 Dennis proposed.
9 It goes without saying that parents
10 and their children, of course, are the most
11 important stakeholders in our public school
12 system. Even though that goes without
13 saying, sometimes we forget it. So I wanted
14 to reiterate it, and if there's one thing
15 that's come across in the thousands of
16 parents meetings, parents that I meet
17 through the Children First initiative, is
18 that we need to do a much better job
19 providing parents with multiple
20 opportunities to communicate their views to
21 decision makers in our schools at all
22 levels.
23 Therefore, in order to more
24 effectively engage parents and to ensure
25 that we respond to their concerns at the
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2 local level, I will establish, as the Mayor
3 announced yesterday, a parent coordinator
4 position in each school. This person will
5 be chosen by the principal and trained,
6 underscore trained, to play a key role in
7 listening and responding --
8 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Excuse me.
9 Before the Chancellor continues, this is not
10 a rally or a sporting event, so I know you
11 all have strong views, but please keep them
12 to yourself and let every witness say what
13 they need to say. Thank you.
14 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Parent
15 coordinator will be chosen by the principal
16 and trained to play a key role in listening
17 and responding to parent concerns. This
18 significant addition of trained staff in the
19 schools will serve as the first point of
20 entry for parents to become more involved in
21 their children's education.
22 It is also the most significant point
23 of contact for parents. Parents, and again,
24 this has been told to me throughout meeting
25 after meeting, they're interested in what is
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2 going on principally in their children's
3 school. And as I have frequently said, and
4 we all know from our personal experiences,
5 parents send their children to a school, not
6 to a school district or a school system, but
7 there are times when these issues are not or
8 cannot be worked out at the school level.
9 We recognize that, and it's important
10 recognition.
11 So we're also including a parent
12 support office in each of the 10 learning
13 support centers that will be established
14 across the city. Each support office will
15 be staffed by several support officers,
16 full-time staff, also trained, who will
17 supplement the engagement and response
18 functions that our school-based parent
19 coordinators will perform.
20 Let me be clear about this, parents
21 can go to any of these 10 offices, if they
22 have time during lunch, before work,
23 whatever, not just at the one closest to
24 their child's school, and in order to make
25 them as accessible to parents as possible,
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2 these offices will be kept open two evenings
3 a week and on weekends, in addition to the
4 regular business hours.
5 Also, in addition, to bring greater
6 clarity and coherence to the ways in which
7 we engage parents in our schools and to
8 offer parents concrete ways to learn more
9 about what is going on with respect to the
10 education of their children, we will create
11 a parent academy.
12 Through this academy, parent
13 coordinators will provide school-based
14 workshops to parents on everything from
15 understanding curriculum, to forging the
16 school-home connection and strengthening
17 parent leadership and participation,
18 including the key organizations, like the
19 Parent Associations and School Leadership
20 Teams. Akin to the leadership academy for
21 principals that was announced in December of
22 last year, the parent academy will be a
23 full-service resource center with support
24 and training for parent coordinators at the
25 school and parent support offices at the
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2 learning support centers, and these
3 functions will be integrated under Diana
4 Lamb, the Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and
5 Learning, to again, integrate parents into
6 the instructional equation.
7 Now, this reference to our leadership
8 academy provides a good opportunity to
9 transition to another key issue for parents.
10 In the past days and weeks I have made clear
11 that developing school leadership is a
12 centerpiece of our Children First
13 initiative. A great school leader -- and I
14 want to underscore this -- a great school
15 leader understands that parents are key
16 partners in the education of their children,
17 both in terms of parental involvement in
18 their children's education and in terms of
19 the parent's responsibility to their
20 children.
21 Parents must ensure that their
22 children are education focused and education
23 ready. That they get to school on time.
24 That they behave in school and that they do
25 their homework. To that end, we will hold
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2 principals and schools accountable for
3 ensuring parents do indeed feel like they
4 are true partners.
5 Parent engagement standards will be
6 part of each principal's performance review.
7 Criteria will include the effectiveness of
8 each success in successfully engaging
9 parents, keeping them informed, and
10 addressing their concerns.
11 For example, as Mayor Bloomberg
12 emphasized yesterday, principals will be
13 expected to creat and demonstrate a
14 parent-welcoming school culture, something
15 that is all too frequently now missing.
16 This will include a set of clear
17 expectations for all staff on showing
18 consistent courtesy, responsiveness,
19 sensitivity and respect, respect toward
20 parents. And parents will be given a
21 meaningful opportunity to provide input into
22 the evaluation of principal performance.
23 Now it's against this back trap that
24 I'd like to turn to the issues that Dennis
25 and this task force are heavily focused on,
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2 growing out of last June's governance reform
3 legislation. I want to first commend this
4 task force for its fine work and emphasize
5 that we look forward to working with you in
6 devising and effectively implementing your
7 important proposal.
8 In that regard, specifically, the
9 replacement for community school boards that
10 we're outlining today, parent engagement
11 boards, would play an important role in
12 shaping various aspects of the educational
13 debate, including budget, educational policy
14 and zoning. In fact, I believe this
15 proposal will provide more parents with
16 better and more entry points and a stronger
17 voice on behalf of their children's
18 education.
19 These parent engagement boards should
20 be made up of parents selected from the
21 different schools within their districts.
22 And in our view, they should have several
23 functions in common with the current
24 community school boards, as well as some new
25 functions.
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2 Members of the parent engagement
3 board will meet regularly with the regional
4 superintendents who will be responsible for
5 instructional oversight of the school's in
6 their district, to review the school's
7 progress. In addition, these parent
8 engagement boards should have input into the
9 evaluation of regional superintendents and
10 their local instructional supervisors. This
11 is a critical means of building a system
12 that is responsive to parents by having them
13 play an important role in evaluating our key
14 instructional personnel.
15 Furthermore, I'd like these boards to
16 be another avenue for parents with concerns.
17 In effect, the boards would have an
18 ombudsperson function. I know this is an
19 important aspect of the current community
20 school boards, and parent engagement boards
21 should be of even greater assistance to
22 parents, in that they will all be parents
23 themselves. Indeed, they should monitor and
24 advise as to how our parent initiatives at
25 the schools and in the Parent Support
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2 Offices is working. In other words, they
3 can be an independent check on what we're
4 doing to create feedback, because I believe
5 that putting system in place is important,
6 but more critically is to make them work,
7 and we need people to go out and test and
8 determine that.
9 I also envision that the boards will
10 continue to comment on capital and operating
11 budget priorities for the school system in
12 general and for specific schools in the
13 district. The members will review and
14 comment on their comprehensive educational
15 plan, and those comments will be included in
16 the final plan.
17 In addition, parent engagement boards
18 will participate in the approval of zoning
19 lines for elementary schools in the
20 district. This has important implications
21 and will require school managers to work
22 closely with the parent engagement board to
23 implement changes.
24 These are the key principals that I
25 believe should guide our thinking on the
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2 best plan for replacing community school
3 boards. I believe this approach will yield
4 great benefits for the children in our
5 schools, because it acknowledges the
6 critical role that parents play in their
7 children's education.
8 In addition, as Deputy Mayor Walcott
9 emphasized, it eliminates politics and
10 patronage from the process, and allows this
11 new entity to function purely in the
12 interest of educating public school
13 students.
14 Too often in the past, we have
15 allowed these other diversions to let us put
16 others first, instead of children first.
17 Let me conclude by reiterating that I look
18 forward to working with this task force as
19 you finalize your proposal over the next
20 month. As part of our Children First
21 initiative, I have met, as I said, literally
22 with thousands of parents throughout this
23 city, and will continue to meet with them,
24 including at a Town Hall meeting in lower
25 Manhattan this evening.
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2 I should point out to Borough
3 President Markowitz, we've had several in
4 Brooklyn as well. We are a full-service
5 organization here. I have learned a great
6 deal from these meetings and know -- this
7 is difficult to say -- but I know that we at
8 the Department of Education at every level
9 can and must do a better job in listening to
10 parents, responding to their concerns and
11 engaging them in the education of their
12 children.
13 Yesterday, the Mayor said he would
14 hold us accountable on that score. I am
15 eager to accept his challenge. Thank you
16 very much.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
18 much, Chancellor Klein and Deputy Mayor
19 Walcott. Let me just say, before I look for
20 questions, I'm sure there will be, that in a
21 way I'm almost amazed that, Chancellor
22 Klein, that you have been Chancellor for
23 only five months. It seems like it has
24 already been a long, long time, and Deputy
25 Mayor Walcott, though an old friend in many
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2 endeavors for and in New York City, that you
3 have only been Deputy Mayor now for a year
4 also to me sort of boggles the mind. There
5 is so much that has already been done and
6 said and more to do, but I think at the
7 outset we all want to thank you very much
8 for your very hard efforts.
9 We view our role as that working as
10 best we can in partnership with the
11 administration, and I think we all
12 appreciate, Chancellor Klein, your
13 invitation to continue to work with this
14 task force over the course of certainly at
15 least the next four weeks, as we try to, as
16 we will, fashion and ultimately submit our
17 recommendations to the legislature and the
18 Governor.
19 As we all know, there are things that
20 the Chancellor and the Mayor can and should
21 do administratively and unilaterally. Those
22 powers were granted to the Chancellor and
23 the Mayor in The Governance Law. There are
24 other aspects of this mid level governance
25 effort that requires us to work together so
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2 that we can pass the laws that are needed to
3 make this system the kind of system that
4 everybody in this room wants to have, which
5 is the finest public education system, with
6 the maximum amount of parental and community
7 engagement possible.
8 So I just want to say that we
9 appreciate the spirit of your comments and
10 the hard work you have already provided.
11 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: I just
12 wanted to say, that the Mayor also wanted me
13 to say directly to you and to the members of
14 the task force, we appreciate your
15 leadership as well, and we look forward to
16 working with you over the next several
17 months and cooperating with you, the
18 Assembly and the State Senate as we move
19 forward around not just the replacement of
20 the community school boards, but really just
21 dealing with the overall issue of improving
22 education in our City. So we thank you for
23 your leadership as well.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
25 Before I turn to Terri Thomson, who I think
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2 has the first question or comment, I will be
3 looking -- we will get to everybody -- let
4 me just indicate that Assemblyman Peter
5 Rivera has joined us, and we're very
6 grateful for that. Ms. Thomson.
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I think our
8 first question is from Virginia Kee.
9 MS. KEE: Thank you on behalf of
10 your good work for these people of The City
11 of New York, our Deputy Mayor, and also the
12 Chancellor. My question has to do with
13 parent coordinator. Do you visualize a
14 person who is a member of staff, a staff
15 member, for example, a teacher, or do you
16 see this parent coordinator as a parent?
17 Now, I have been a parent liaison for my
18 school as a role as a teacher, but the
19 language facility, depending on where the
20 school is located, is very important. The
21 parent coordinator cannot coordinate, cannot
22 communicate, cannot do anything with a
23 parent, unless this person speaks the
24 parent's language, and that's very
25 important.
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2 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Again, I'll ask
3 the audience to please try to restrain
4 yourself. Thank you very much.
5 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: We're much more
6 amenable to applause. I'll be glad to
7 answer that, Ms. Kee. I totally agree with
8 you, obviously, and we, in staffing these
9 centers, we'll take the issues of language
10 into account. And I think you will see a
11 variety of people within the team, both in
12 terms of language and in terms of skills and
13 background, and a key part of this parental
14 academy will be, once again, to knit those
15 people into a team.
16 I'm a very big believer that in
17 education, as in life, success comes when
18 you can make sure the whole is greater than
19 the sum of its parts.
20 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Brown.
21 MS. BROWN: Again, going back to
22 the selection of the parent coordinator,
23 often times when parents have issues in
24 school, they feel as though it's the
25 leadership of the building that's not being
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2 responsive. And if in fact the role of this
3 parent coordinator is to act as some sort of
4 ombudsperson for the parent group, would it
5 not be a conflict or perceived as a
6 conflict, if the principal is solely
7 selecting this person to engage parents, to
8 make parents or to help create more
9 meaningful experiences in schools for
10 parents, and also the role of this parent
11 coordinator in these schools, is it going to
12 be set up as some sort of network that these
13 parent coordinators are also looking at the
14 broader aspect of the community? Is there
15 going to be some sort of relationship with
16 these parent coordinators and what's being
17 proposed as these 10 regional districts?
18 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: The answers are
19 the following. First let me say, I
20 respectfully disagree that it's a conflict.
21 In fact, I think if you think about the
22 multilayer structures, Ms. Brown, first of
23 all, we shouldn't assume that the function
24 at the school -- the first thing you want
25 to do is build a team that works together.
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2 The principal, as I said, will be held
3 accountable for parental engagement, and if
4 that doesn't work, then we'll deal with
5 that, but I think it's very important within
6 the school to have people on the same page,
7 and this is a multi-part function. If we
8 start out with an assumption that it is a
9 conflict between the parents and the school,
10 I think we've already lost half the
11 discussion.
12 First point ought to be that we're on
13 the same page. Second point ought to be
14 that if it doesn't get worked out at the
15 school, there are 10 of these parent centers
16 which are independent of the school and will
17 report in to the Deputy Chancellor Diana
18 Lamb. So they'll be ample opportunity for
19 review. We're not polyannish about the fact
20 that there aren't real conflicts.
21 Third, there will be forms of
22 communication and working together from the
23 school into the parent offices, and indeed,
24 into the parent academy. So I think if we
25 start in a way that looks not toward an
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2 issue of conflict, but toward an issue of
3 everybody getting on the same page and make
4 sure there are conflict resolution
5 mechanisms outside the school, I think we'll
6 achieve what we need.
7 MS. BROWN: But going back to that
8 point, we've already made an acknowledgment
9 that something is not working by all of the
10 changes that we're reading about, that we're
11 hearing about, and part of the reason why
12 you're here right now. So we have already
13 acknowledged that there's something wrong
14 and there's something that needs to be
15 fixed.
16 Again, we had the C-30 process that
17 engaged -- that brought a community in terms
18 of the selection of principals and assistant
19 principals, and again, that process has been
20 modified. Just thinking about putting it
21 solely into school leadership teams, and
22 again, we're missing the broader
23 representation of parents within that school
24 or within that community. While we're
25 talking about making changes, for once I'd
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2 like to see us move in the right direction.
3 I mean, when you think about parental
4 involvement, again, it should not be done in
5 isolation. It encompasses every aspect of a
6 school and a community.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Shh. Quiet.
8 We're going to move ahead in an orderly
9 fashion. Mr. Levin.
10 MR. LEVIN: Deputy Mayor Walcott
11 and Chancellor Klein, I wonder if based on
12 testimony we already heard this morning, if
13 you can comment on why you haven't proposed
14 the parent and community engagement board
15 that would -- that would respond to the
16 notion that we're partly educating our
17 students for civic participation and would
18 also engage the community, including local
19 businesses that support our school support,
20 and secondly, what about the notion of the
21 requirement that the Justice Department,
22 with which you're quite familiar, will have
23 to engage on the voting aspect of any
24 proposal. Shouldn't we continue to
25 enfranchise all parts of the community?
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2 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: I think
3 there's a two part answer to your question.
4 One, that there should be parental
5 involvement at the local level and that it
6 should be an all parent body to be on that
7 local engagement board, but also, what the
8 Mayor talked about yesterday, and what the
9 Chancellor elaborated on today, is that the
10 community and businesses will have other in
11 roads for involvement as well, and that can
12 be integrated with the parent engagement
13 boards, so there's a multi-step process for
14 both the local community-based
15 organizations, as well as local businesses
16 and other businesses to be engaged in the
17 school, but in addition to those aspects, I
18 think one of the things that we'll be doing
19 through the Chancellor's office is
20 monitoring local business involvement, as
21 well as corporate involvement through a
22 variety of his staffing supports as well.
23 So we see various points of entry for
24 business, both local businesses as well as
25 corporations who have an idea, an engagement
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2 area to be involved in with the local
3 schools and with the Voting Rights Act.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Friedman.
5 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I think the
6 Chancellor wanted to say something.
7 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: That's all
8 right. I should say two quick things.
9 First of all, the fear or the concern is
10 caught in the following. We want to
11 encourage parental involvement. At the same
12 time we want to make sure it's involvement
13 as well as civic involvement that is
14 constructive. We don't want to go back to
15 the kind of political paralysis that often
16 occurred. The C-30 process, which Ms. Brown
17 referred to, you might appreciate. We had
18 100s and 100s of people for several years
19 that we couldn't fill positions because of
20 paralysis of all these discordant voices.
21 We need some accountability, even as we need
22 to have all the requisite input. So I think
23 that was the focus.
24 On the issue of the Voting Rights
25 Act, I am confident that a parent-elected
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2 representational body would not be dilutive
3 under the Voting Rights Act and would pass
4 muster under Section 5.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Friedman.
6 MR. FRIEDMAN: Good morning,
7 Chancellor Klein, Deputy Mayor Walcott.
8 Thank you for testifying this morning. I
9 just need a clarification. I have a short
10 question. The clarification would be on the
11 parent engagement boards. How many would
12 there be? Would they run according to
13 current school districts or according to the
14 new 10 districts? That's first.
15 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: Current 32.
16 MR. FRIEDMAN: The second question
17 goes to the parent academy. I'm not sure
18 whether the name is really accurate. Is my
19 understanding clear that the parent academy
20 is for the parent coordinators and
21 non-parents and the parent coordinators,
22 even these support centers, what's being
23 done for the parents themselves as far as
24 training? As we've gone around the city and
25 we've discussed the issue of school
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2 leadership teams and how effective they've
3 been, we've consistently heard that many
4 teams are not effective because principals
5 are still dictating the agenda and parents
6 are really not getting a true voice on these
7 teams.
8 We've also heard that one of the
9 major problems with school leadership teams
10 is the lack of training of these teams. Are
11 these parent academies parent academies, or
12 for administrators?
13 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: First of all,
14 you're correct about both your points.
15 School leadership teams run the gamut from
16 those that function very, very well to those
17 that don't function period. And we have a
18 lot of work to do. We have been working
19 with the Urban League and several other
20 partners in training programs with that
21 respect. We will as well try to devise
22 training programs through the parent
23 academies in that regard.
24 On the other point, I want to make
25 clear, because I will enforce this, that
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2 principals who are not interested in working
3 with school leadership teams, are principals
4 that are going to be evaluated and we're
5 going to get input from the teams, the
6 parents and so forth as part of our
7 evaluative process, and in fact, if
8 principals don't think this is an important
9 part of what they need to do, they will be
10 sent a clear and very precise message in
11 that regard.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Clayton.
13 MR. CLAYTON: Hello, Chancellor
14 Klein, Dennis Walcott. The United Parents
15 Association would have a problem with --
16 you have here that these parent engagement
17 boards will play an important role in
18 shaping various aspects of the educational
19 debate, including the budget, the policy and
20 zoning. Important role, that's what would
21 have to be more drawn out in our point of
22 view, the important role, because as you
23 know, in '96, when the school governance
24 gave the Chancellor sweeping powers over the
25 districts and superintendents, at the same
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2 time it seemed like the community school
3 boards, their authority started diminishing,
4 to today, they're virtually just sitting
5 ducks up there. So it's the hope that this
6 task force will try to strengthen any new
7 alternative that is put in its place. That
8 it will not just be window dressing. And so
9 there is where they would play an important
10 role still kind of frightens us. That will
11 have to be defined, because to me, that
12 still sounds like window dressing. That
13 they're just advisory.
14 So, I mean, can you elaborate to what
15 you mean by they would play an important
16 role?
17 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: I think our
18 bottom line is that we look forward to
19 working with the task force in defining the
20 role further. We want to really sit down
21 with the members of the task force, and as
22 we've done in the past, have ongoing
23 discussions as far as really becoming more
24 specific with the role of the parent
25 engagement board and other aspects of our
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2 plan, and really incorporate the ideas that
3 have been proposed to you by other people
4 who have been testifying before the task
5 force as well. So that was the language in
6 that context more than anything else.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Pheffer.
8 MS. PHEFFER: Thank you, and good
9 morning. Just some clarification. The
10 parent engagement board you said are going
11 to be 32 boards under the district lines,
12 but the new plan had 12 schools responsible,
13 so I just don't understand. If you can
14 explain to me the parent engagement board is
15 represented by schools within that district,
16 but yet there's a different layer of the 12
17 schools that are different.
18 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Every district
19 will have a regional superintendent, so
20 whatever the district is.
21 MS. PHEFFER: School district as
22 it exists now?
23 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Yes. So they
24 will all have a direct point of linear
25 contact in direct order. It would just be
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2 one person instead of three people perhaps
3 over three districts, it will be one person
4 over three districts, and these boards
5 would, as I said, would interface with the
6 regional superintendent.
7 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: Let me use
8 this point just to clarify something. The
9 district lines as they exist right now will
10 be the district lines in our really
11 definition as well. We are not proposing
12 the changing of any of the district lines.
13 By law, those are the lines where the
14 schools will be located. We're reforming
15 the management structure, as Joel indicated,
16 to have the regional superintendent, and if
17 anything, really breaking down to I think
18 more finite control in dealing with the
19 supervision within a district.
20 So the allocation of staff will be
21 concentrating on 10 to 12 schools within a
22 particular district itself, but what we're
23 proposing for the parent engagement boards
24 is the parent engagement boards would be
25 linked to the existing districts as they
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2 exist right now.
3 MS. PHEFFER: Can I just have
4 another part of that question?
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Quick follow up.
6 MS. PHEFFER: The other thing is
7 we've heard lots of comments like about
8 district 75. Where do they fit in this
9 plan?
10 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: That's an
11 important point. I think as you heard the
12 Mayor yesterday, he's given us 60 days to
13 come up with a plan on that and we will have
14 that. I've been very clear that district 75
15 as a district will remain, and we will have
16 other proposals with respect to the
17 important issue about children with special
18 needs. And it would be in a comprehensive
19 set of issues. What the Mayor said
20 yesterday, Ms. Pheffer, was that there are
21 enormously complicated, labyrinthine legal
22 requirements here which we need to work
23 through, as well as some of the educational
24 issues and that's why it's going to take
25 some additional time.
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2 MS. PHEFFER: Thank you.
3 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Assemblyman
4 Rivera.
5 MR. RIVERA: Good morning. You
6 may have answered the question, but I'd like
7 to restate the question so that I have a
8 clearer understanding. One of the problems
9 that we have with the current system as it
10 stands right now is that there's no clear
11 way of measuring the success or failure of
12 the current system, whether it's a school
13 leadership team or whatever. And at least
14 to me, there's no clear way.
15 If we're going to set up a system,
16 and all we hear by the way is anecdotal
17 evidence that in one school it succeeds and
18 in one school it fails, that the parents in
19 one school think it's the best thing
20 possibly or parents in another district or
21 another school think it's terrible. I guess
22 what you're saying here is that you will
23 create a clear way of measuring the
24 performance, the success, the ability to
25 judge whether parents are being involved and
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2 to what extent they're being involved in one
3 area versus another; am I correct in
4 assuming that?
5 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: That's correct.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Arce-Bello.
7 MS. ARCE-BELLO: Good morning.
8 What, if any, will be the relationship
9 between the proposed parent engagement
10 boards and the Educational Policy Panel?
11 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Once again, I
12 think they will be invited to attend those
13 meetings. There will probably be joint
14 meetings set up so that we have -- attend
15 Panel Policy meetings, as well as have joint
16 meeting between the two. This is something
17 we need obviously to develop and elaborate
18 with the panel based in part on what comes
19 out of the work of this committee. We don't
20 want to get ahead of this committee at this
21 point.
22 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: Also, if I
23 may, one of the comments the Mayor made
24 yesterday in his testimony is we're really
25 starting from a blank slate. I think
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2 there's great opportunities to talk about
3 the blending between the Policy Panel and
4 the parent engagement board, and how we put
5 a new structure together that really
6 maximizes participation and engagement,
7 learning from people. Sharing ideas and
8 information. So we're, again, as the
9 Chancellor indicated, looking forward to
10 hearing the feedback from not just the task
11 force, but the people who are testifying
12 before the task force, because there's
13 opportunity to have input in developing what
14 goes on the slate right now, and I think
15 ideas as far as interaction between the two
16 to me allows for us to have a better system.
17 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: One thing in
18 that regard that might be helpful, just to
19 follow up, we have had now I think it's
20 eight or nine community meetings throughout
21 the city. In each and every one of those
22 we've gotten anywhere from three, four, 500
23 parents, and the most recent one in Queens,
24 1,000 plus parents who come out to these
25 meetings. In every one of those, we have
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2 broken those up into small groups of 15, 20,
3 25 parents, with a facilitator -- all of
4 this done by the way with private money --
5 who is taken lengthy comments, all of which
6 we have about parental concerns, and one of
7 the things that is very important about that
8 is the wide berth and reach of this process.
9 And we would be very happy to share all that
10 information with this task force and it
11 might prove helpful too.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: That would be
13 very helpful. Mr. DeLeon.
14 MR. DeLEON: One of the things that
15 we've heard throughout the city from parents
16 is -- one of the questions that they ask is
17 who has the juice? There is no juice in any
18 of the structures. New York definition of
19 juice is no power to enforce on the parent
20 level whatever it is the issue is. The
21 structures that are being proposed by the
22 City appear to be advisory in nature, giving
23 the ability for the people to speak there
24 mind, but no ability for them to enforce
25 their thoughts or engage in the kind of
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2 debate that you see in legislative bodies
3 where there is real power and real exchange
4 and real trading off of whatever the City
5 will ultimately be. What it appears that we
6 have heard is what is being created is a
7 labyrinth of educational bureaucracy to
8 engage people in that little game of
9 circles. Where's the juice?
10 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: In all
11 honesty, I think there's juice all over the
12 place. I think one of the points of juice
13 is the juice dealing with the voters itself.
14 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Please. Please.
15 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: The Mayor
16 has been very clear from the beginning that
17 you will be holding him accountable as far
18 as the actions of what takes place in the
19 public schools. So the voters have the
20 juice. And the parents are part of that
21 voting mechanism that will hold the Mayor
22 accountable. But more importantly, if
23 anything, I think we're trying to minimize
24 the bureaucracy and address a way, in a very
25 simplified fashion, to have parents have
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2 input more importantly at the local school.
3 If not at the local school, within their
4 district. If not at their district, with
5 the Education Policy Panel. I mean, I've
6 seen parents at the Policy Panel Meetings
7 who have gotten up and have challenged the
8 Chancellor directly around issues that are
9 taking place, not just in their district,
10 but at their local school, and the
11 Chancellor and his staff reacting to that.
12 So that's different points of juice right
13 there.
14 You have juice through the state
15 legislature with the Assembly under the
16 leadership of Steve Sanders, on the Assembly
17 side in the Education Committee. Frank
18 Padavan, on the State Senate side, as far as
19 making sure that they hold us accountable
20 for the actions of what's taking place
21 within the system.
22 You have juice at City Council level
23 where the Education Committee at the City
24 Council talking about the issues. There are
25 various aspects and points of engagement on
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2 the part of the parents, not just as voters,
3 but also in the realm of the legislative
4 bodies that have created to hold us
5 accountable for our actions, and then the
6 final point of juice I think is the parents
7 directly in calling us. I mean, we hear
8 through the Chancellor's office, through
9 City Hall, parents on the regular basis
10 talking about thier lack of action of what's
11 not taking place in the school, and
12 expecting a response to this new governance
13 system.
14 So I think the system that we're
15 proposing around the parent engagement
16 boards gives another aspect for juice to
17 really be put directly into the system. To
18 have bodies there working both in the
19 district, but also having the parent
20 coordinators in the school be that person to
21 make sure there's accountability, and I
22 think the final point of juice is in the
23 results that will show after the end of this
24 period of time. The making sure we change
25 around our system.
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2 MR. DeLEON: Can I respond?
3 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Quick follow up.
4 MR. DeLEON: That's fine. Every
5 four years, being holding the Mayor
6 accountable -- and I'm repeating what I
7 heard over the last few months that we've
8 been holding these hearings -- holding the
9 structures accountable is fine. What the
10 parents want is to hold the principal
11 responsible, to hold the teachers
12 responsible, for them to be able to get an
13 education for their children. The
14 legislature -- well, I made my point.
15 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Let me respond
16 to your point, because I've really been
17 engaged in the point you make. I think that
18 we have to separate out the following: When
19 you say the parents want to hold the
20 principals responsible, this happens to be
21 my day job, and I get a lot of communication
22 from parents, and I can tell you, school
23 after school, you get the following
24 communication: Mr. X is the greatest
25 principal in the world, and it's signed by
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2 11 parents and then I get Mr. X is the worst
3 principal in the world signed by 15 parents,
4 and then 20 others have no interest in the
5 process.
6 Now what I am so afraid of is a
7 system of gridlock, and that's what we need
8 to avoid. Systems of accountability don't
9 mean that every single decision is put up
10 for plubbaside. That is not I think an
11 effective way to do that.
12 So what am I proposing? The
13 systematic way to evaluate that principal,
14 and then I will say, let's say all 40
15 parents say, when there's a bad principal,
16 then I say well, I happen to disagree, and
17 here's why. It will be there for everyone
18 to see and criticize. And let me tell you,
19 I was in this job for a month. At a Panel
20 Meeting the parents from Medgar Evers Middle
21 School came in, and their principal had been
22 removed the last year before I got there.
23 The superintendent removed him.
24 I made an investigation personally
25 and I reinstated that principal over the
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2 objection of the superintendent. And all
3 those parents came to the next -- because I
4 was convinced it was done -- he was removed
5 for the wrong reasons, and all those parents
6 came to the next meeting.
7 Now I am there and accountable and
8 every media and every political organization
9 is free to criticize and hold us
10 accountable. That to me is the virtue of
11 the current system, and we should build on
12 it. And I assure you, I mean this very
13 sincerely, because I spent a ton of time, I
14 assure you, for every issue in which you
15 think there is parent agreement, when I get
16 involved, there are wide ranges of different
17 views.
18 One of the most entertaining evenings
19 I have had is talking to a group of parents
20 about their school and whether to have
21 school uniforms at their schools, and I tell
22 you, if I left that decision to the parents,
23 they would all have to quit work and they
24 would still be meeting trying to resolve
25 that issue.
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2 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: Mr. Chair
3 and Madam Chair. I feel very strongly about
4 this issue when we talk about juice and
5 accountability, because I think what's been
6 put together right now is a system that goes
7 to the heart of accountability. And as a
8 result of that, you have a Mayor that has
9 had, a Deputy Mayor who has children in the
10 system, who has a neighbor next door at the
11 Tweed Building called the Chancellor and the
12 Department Of Education, and that's what
13 accountability is about, for that
14 mulit-prong approach in making sure we
15 respond not only to individual parent needs,
16 but issues involving the school itself. And
17 what the Chancellor has talked about or
18 others have talked about is that we also do
19 unannounced visits. We go out on a regular
20 basis to schools to monitor what's going on,
21 to do informal feedback with parents as far
22 as what's happening in the schools, and
23 making sure that we really hear what the
24 people in the schools are directly saying,
25 and not what we read in the newspapers.
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2 That way we get a first-hand view of exactly
3 what's happening and being out at a
4 community meeting.
5 So I mean, I respectfully disagree to
6 the point where there isn't a lack of juice
7 or there isn't any juice. Juice is all over
8 the place. It's how you use the juice and
9 how the juice is then followed up on to make
10 sure there's accountability in the system,
11 and that's the role of the Chancellor.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I'm getting
13 thirsty hearing all this talk about juice.
14 Mr. Clayton has a brief, a very brief
15 follow-up question.
16 MR. CLAYTON: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
17 Mr. Klein, you mentioned that district 75
18 will probably stay intact. This is just a
19 question of clarification. What's going to
20 happen with district 85, the schools under
21 registration review, and we also have 73
22 alternative schools that fall up under the
23 alternative high school office. What's
24 happening with those two entities?
25 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: District 85, the
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2 services to those schools will be preserved.
3 In other words, the additional services that
4 they now receive, the additional hours, the
5 additional financial support, that will be
6 maintained. The schools themselves will be
7 repatriated to their community, which I
8 think is a positive development.
9 With respect to the alternative
10 school district, two things. We will --
11 those schools that are -- even though
12 they're in the alternative district that are
13 normal functioning high schools and so
14 forth, will again, be repatriated to the
15 communities.
16 There's a series of programs as well,
17 which will be integrated into what the Mayor
18 announced yesterday, which was to have a
19 whole student support set of programs that
20 will be integrated under one office in that
21 respect.
22 MR. CLAYTON: Thank you.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Brown, very
24 brief follow up.
25 MS. BROWN: Just to be clear, you
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2 mentioned that where these parent engagement
3 boards would follow the same lines as the 32
4 community school districts, and also, in
5 relationship to the relationship between the
6 regional boards. So is it fair to say that
7 any information concerning the achievement
8 of these 32 districts would actually come
9 out of that -- would come from one of those
10 12 regional boards?
11 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: When you say any
12 information?
13 MS. BROWN: Information about
14 student achievement as a whole. Case in
15 point, community school district 13 would be
16 part of one of these regional boards. So
17 any information concerning student
18 achievement, would also come from one of the
19 -- the information would come from --
20 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: It would not
21 be lumped together, if I hear you correctly.
22 It would be reflective of the individual
23 district itself.
24 MS. BROWN: But the purpose that a
25 superintendent currently serves now would
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2 be -- the information that we currently
3 receive from a superintendent now, would
4 actually come out of one of the regional
5 offices?
6 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Correct. But it
7 would come out by district, as well as in
8 these very small clusters of 12 schools. So
9 you would have it actually at three levels.
10 MS. BROWN: So, again, programs
11 that districts run that are successful, case
12 in point, say a marching band program for
13 the children within a particular district, a
14 gymnastic program on a Saturday for children
15 within a particular district, would be able
16 to be maintained under the supervision of
17 the regional superintendent?
18 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: These programs
19 will be maintained, yes. Now, the specifics
20 may depend on the nature of the program
21 whether it would be under the regional
22 superintendent, under parent office, but the
23 programs obviously would be preserved.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Levin,
25 brief follow up.
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2 MR. LEVIN: This is not a question,
3 Chancellor Klein, but just an observation.
4 I would implore you as you look at district
5 75, to understand the special needs of those
6 who have mental health issues. I think
7 there's a massive failure in the system
8 right now.
9 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: I actually --
10 it may not be a question, but I think there
11 is a need to do significantly more, and one
12 of the things that the Mayor announced
13 yesterday is very important, which is we
14 need to create a whole system, not just
15 mental health, and that is important, but
16 health and support and guidance. We've got
17 to realize that a critical aspect of
18 education is really to deal with the full
19 range of these children's needs, and one of
20 the really good things about having an
21 integrated system under the Mayor's office
22 is, Tom Friedman and I, the Commissioner Of
23 Health, along with the Commissioner from
24 Mental Health, we're able to work together
25 in a much more coherent and easy way, and I
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2 think that will bear fruit over time as the
3 Mayor's proposal will show.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I think
5 Assemblywoman Pheffer wanted to ask a brief
6 follow up with respect to your view of the
7 organization of district 75 in terms of
8 Parent Engagement Council for district 75
9 and whether there would be incorporated into
10 district 75 high schools as well.
11 MS. PHEFFER: Or that high schools
12 or district 75, would they have their own
13 parent engagement board?
14 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: What we're
15 going to do is really sit down and work with
16 you around that. Again, as the Mayor
17 charged the Chancellor yesterday, he has to
18 get back with a specific response with
19 respect to 75, and I think high schools, we
20 really want to have further conversation and
21 reflect how we interface with the parents of
22 high schools now.
23 So I mean, we're open for discussion
24 on that.
25 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Thomson.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you. I
3 too am concerned about district 75. We've
4 heard some heart-wrenching testimony across
5 the City from parents of children with
6 special needs who really have not had, in
7 the past, a place to go to, because they
8 have not had a board. So we have a special
9 interest in that.
10 I just wanted to say from everything
11 we know, good education is really about a
12 partnership between home community and the
13 school. I think a lot -- obviously we've
14 been thinking a lot about this for the last
15 few months and delivery of education
16 services to the community is very different
17 from the delivery of any other kind of City
18 service. You know, we have a Department Of
19 Transportation. We have a Department Of
20 Sanitation. All of those things are really
21 about customer service and delivery of
22 services.
23 Education is different because it
24 really is about a partnership. It's not
25 going to work if the parents aren't
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2 partners. So much of the relationship has
3 been confrontational and dysfunctional for
4 so many years, and I think we have to figure
5 out a way to make this a partnership with
6 everybody. The community, the business
7 community, the parents, the administrators,
8 the teachers and the school system working
9 together for student achievement. That's
10 got to be the goal. And often that has not
11 happened.
12 I'm very interested in the parent
13 engagement boards, and I see -- I guess
14 clarify, just confirm for me what I heard is
15 right, that your idea is that these boards
16 would have input into the evaluation of the
17 superintendent or the senior official in the
18 district, they would approve zoning, which
19 has been something we've heard across the
20 City, concern about local community zoning.
21 They would not approve but comment on the
22 CEP operating and capital budgets; am I
23 right?
24 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Yes.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: How would the
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2 parents provide that input into the senior
3 education official's evaluation? Would it
4 be by survey? Would it be by an annual
5 report?
6 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Yes. Again,
7 we're working out these processes right now,
8 but I think it would include probably
9 combination of meetings with the school
10 leadership people, who are parents, meeting
11 with the Parent Association people. Some
12 surveying. But we need to figure -- the
13 details obviously would have to be worked
14 through. We need to figure out a way to get
15 that input.
16 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Well, I
17 applaud you for including that in the
18 responsibility. The other question I have
19 is, who controls the flow of information?
20 On these parent engagement boards, may
21 parents ask the questions, you know, of the
22 superintendent or senior official? Can they
23 say, this school is not performing well.
24 Let's analyze. Give us data. Is
25 information, you know, does it go both ways,
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2 or is it just the senior official
3 controlling the information?
4 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: No.
5 Information goes both ways, and in New York,
6 whether you legislate that or not, it's
7 going to happen.
8 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Sometimes it
9 doesn't happen as quickly as people would
10 like. As long as there's that commitment.
11 The principal of transparency of information
12 I think is what I'm getting at.
13 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: I get each day
14 100 e-mails from parents, and I have staff
15 who are then chasing this information down.
16 One of the metrics that we will include is
17 not just how frequently issues get resolved
18 in the school, but in these centers. How
19 long does it take from the time the parent
20 comes in until we get a resolution of the
21 issue, and we'll have metrics and publish
22 them.
23 One of the things the parent
24 engagement board could sensibly do is they
25 can send somebody in and say here's a
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2 concern, and actually see how the process
3 works, and whether they get any
4 satisfaction. It's going to be I think the
5 kind of thing that we need to be held
6 accountable for, and one of the real
7 problems is, too many times you get a call
8 to the system and you never here again.
9 People feel utterly disrespected, and that
10 is totally unacceptable.
11 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I applaud you
12 for that as well. Are we still committed to
13 school leadership teams as an entity?
14 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Absolutely.
15 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: Without a
16 question.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We've had a
18 lot of feedback across the City, and we've
19 also requested some information from you on
20 the evaluation from the Urban League and
21 internal evaluations of school leadership
22 teams. We've got a lot of feedback from
23 parents on the issue of training. Parents
24 feeling lost sometimes at the table with the
25 educators, because they don't have the
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2 information they need to be able to converse
3 and talk about the CEP.
4 Sometimes principals really haven't
5 bought into it, and parents are just not
6 treated with respect the way they should.
7 Could you maybe talk a little about the
8 training and the accountability regarding
9 school leadership teams?
10 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Well, again, I
11 think that we will have, as I said, through
12 this academy, training also partnering with
13 community groups. In addition, though, we
14 will have this input and accountability,
15 which we will make clear. In other words,
16 we'll have mechanisms. There will be data
17 which these parent boards can have just like
18 we see, and then they'll be decisions. So I
19 think this is an effort to increase
20 transparency.
21 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Great. I have
22 one more question. I don't want to belabor
23 it, but I'm not sure if I heard it right.
24 The parent engagement boards will be within
25 the same geography as current school board
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2 lines. There will be a superintendent
3 responsible for that. One superintendent
4 responsible for that district?
5 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: No. There will
6 be one superintendent responsible for that
7 district, as well as one or two other
8 districts.
9 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: So each of the
10 10 superintendents might be responsible for
11 three or whatever?
12 CHANCELLOR KLEIN: Correct.
13 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
14 much, and we look forward to working with
15 you in the days ahead.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Chancellor,
17 Mr. Deputy Mayor, first of all, let me thank
18 you very much for your time, your candid
19 remarks. Your invitation to continue this
20 conversation around The State of New York,
21 and specifically with this task force as we
22 move towards completion of our
23 recommendations in 30 days.
24 I want to thank you very much for the
25 hard work and the obvious thoughtfulness
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2 that has gone into your proposal thus far,
3 which I understand is still a work in
4 progress that we all have to contribute to.
5 Let me just say that I think that you
6 have already noted from the discussion that
7 we've had this morning that what we have
8 heard as a task force over the last several
9 months as we've conducted these hearings is
10 that arriving at that delicate and difficult
11 balance of professional decision making
12 based on best practices with parent and
13 community engagement, finding that right
14 balance, which we clearly haven't done over
15 the last 30 years, is really the mission
16 that I think we share together.
17 It's been my experience that parents
18 don't want to run schools, but they do want
19 well-run schools, and in that -- please, in
20 that endeavor, the issue of transparency we
21 have heard over and over again, and the
22 ability to know that their voices will be
23 heard, and that there is a genuine influence
24 that parents and the community can exert to
25 ensure that their schools are well run.
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2 That's the balance that I know that we all
3 struggle with together.
4 So it seems to me that we are on the
5 same page, even if we don't know what all
6 the words are yet, but we look forward to
7 working with you and coming to a conclusion
8 that you and we and everyone in the City
9 will feel in reality is a system that really
10 works for the children of The City of New
11 York.
12 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I just wanted
13 to say one more thing. I think all New
14 Yorkers want a really top notch, wonderful
15 public school system, and I'm sure I can
16 speak for most New Yorkers, we are rooting
17 for you. We want you to fix it.
18 DEPUTY MAYOR WALCOTT: Thank you
19 very much, and we look forward to working
20 with you.
21 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
22 much. Thank you. As the Chancellor is
23 leaving, I need to make one or two
24 announcements so that people who want to
25 testify don't get lost in the mix.
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2 I was told that there were some
3 people who had registered to testify who
4 rushed in when they saw the Chancellor here
5 and may not have signed up in the back. In
6 order for us to get to you, many of you who
7 want to testify, you do have to make sure
8 that you have registered in the back, so
9 that we will know that you are here and that
10 you want to testify.
11 In addition, we do have a Spanish
12 interpreter here. Nancy, where are you?
13 Nancy's in the back. She's raising her
14 hand. She's in the back. If there's anyone
15 who is in need of a Spanish interpreter, we
16 have that in the back.
17 Let me just again repeat what I said
18 when many of you had not arrived earlier
19 this morning. We have a very long day ahead
20 of us. We expect to be here well into the
21 evening. Maybe as late as 12 midnight
22 tonight. We have a lot of people who have
23 signed up to testify.
24 I am going to be unfortunately very
25 strict in limiting the testimony to five
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2 minutes. That's not intended to cut you
3 off. It's intended to allow the other 100
4 people during the course of the day to
5 testify.
6 I'm going to remind you that your
7 testimony is five minutes in duration. If
8 you're getting close to that point, I'm
9 going to hold up this sign that says 30
10 seconds to go. So we're going to try to get
11 through all of the testimony. Listen to all
12 of you very carefully, and then we are going
13 to make our report in 30 days based on what
14 we have heard from you and around the
15 boroughs over the last several months. Now
16 we shall continue.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We'd like to
18 invite the Honorable Major Owens,
19 Congressman from the 11th Congressional
20 District in Brooklyn.
21 MR. RIVERA: I will translate what
22 Steve Sanders said, but not as long.
23 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Good morning.
24 MR. OWENS: Good morning.
25 Mr. Chairman and members of the task force,
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2 I appreciate this opportunity to testify.
3 And I certainly as an advocate for citizen
4 participation, am appreciative of the fact
5 that there are so many people here, and that
6 you will be here until midnight, and the
7 input is sought.
8 I certainly will abide by your time
9 regulations as a result of understanding
10 what you're up against. I want to begin
11 also by congratulating Mayor Bloomberg and
12 Chancellor Klein on their beginning. The
13 Mayor's speech yesterday was quite
14 inspiring. I was inspired by his personal
15 commitment and his passion with respect to
16 this task. And I would like to pledge my
17 cooperation and hope the rest of us will
18 pledge cooperation to try to make it work,
19 to fix it as she said before, we hit rock
20 bottom and there is nowhere to go but up,
21 and I think we should all want to go that
22 way.
23 In order to do that, however, there
24 has to be some respect for the fact that
25 this is a very difficult task and there are
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2 a lot of players and a lot of people who
3 have a lot of experience who could have a
4 lot of input here. I want to offer my
5 credentials as one of those people.
6 Everybody, of course, interested in
7 education, has some positive contributions
8 to make, but for 40 years, more than 40
9 years, I've been a citizen observer of our
10 education system. I had three sons that
11 went through the public school system and I
12 have now a grandson in the public school
13 system.
14 The CDA commissioner, under John
15 Lindsey. I was a major advocate for
16 community decentralization and community
17 control and citizen participation, and I'd
18 like to say that for all of those people who
19 are very critical and accuse the present
20 state of our school system, accuse the
21 school boards and the citizen participation
22 process as being responsible for the present
23 state of our school, I disagree. And I
24 would like to offer just one quick
25 observation that I think some of you can
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2 clearly understand.
3 The amount of money spent per child
4 in New York City right now in the elementary
5 schools is greater than the amount of money
6 spent per child in the high schools. This
7 is the only place in the country where that
8 kind of ratio exists. Everywhere else the
9 amount of money spent for high school
10 students is greater, because it cost more.
11 Laboratory equipment, teachers. So you
12 expect to spend more for high school
13 students.
14 I think the advocacy of community
15 school boards and the fight that they
16 conducted at budget cutting time, has kept
17 their budgets up at a level which was more
18 reasonable, and that the fact that the high
19 schools had no advocates, they were totally
20 in the hands of professionals, explains this
21 unfortunate phenomenon.
22 We should not be spending less per
23 child in high school than we are on
24 elementary school. The absence of the
25 participation is a problem there. For the
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2 last 20 years in congress I have been on the
3 Education Committee. Before that I was on
4 the State Senate Education Committee.
5 I would like to point out that
6 whereas we deal with big figures and
7 concepts and ideas in Washington, I come
8 home and get involved in the micro problems
9 of our school system, through the Martin
10 Luther King Commission, which I created 18
11 years ago. It's an advisory committee for
12 my congressional district, as well it's a
13 nonprofit organization now. National
14 organization called SECME, responsible for
15 trying to get greater scholarships for
16 students who want to study science and
17 engineering, has asked me to be the national
18 representative for parent empowerment, and I
19 have taken on that responsibility. I think
20 parent participation is key. It is not, of
21 course, the only important component, but
22 it's very key.
23 I think the state legislature has a
24 vital role here, and I hope that you
25 understand that we're dependent on you to
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2 maintain some checks and balances here.
3 Whereas I applaud the Bloomberg client team,
4 and I applaud the entry of the private
5 sector into this process, some very powerful
6 people are getting involved, I worry about
7 the arrogance of the private sector. I
8 worry about the fact that they don't
9 appreciate enough that this is a very
10 complex endeavor we're undertaking here, and
11 it requires people with a great deal of
12 experience. Experience matters a great
13 deal.
14 The power points of the business
15 boardroom is not enough after Enron and
16 Worldcom, and so forth, we know that private
17 sector doesn't have everything exactly under
18 control either. So they should be a little
19 less arrogant.
20 It is important that you proceed with
21 the Voting Rights Act mandate in mind. That
22 you not diminish the power of minorities in
23 the process of accepting whatever is being
24 proposed here by the Mayor in terms of
25 parent engagement board. There is a need to
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2 not diminish the power. There's a legal
3 problem there, which I won't go into, other
4 people can handle that much better, but
5 there's a common-sense participation
6 dividend that we must maintain.
7 Checks and balances requires that we
8 have recognized participation. That we
9 structure it in a way which is meaningful,
10 which means that there has to be some
11 mandate and some basis in law for what the
12 participating parents do. It cannot be all
13 advisory. It cannot be at the whim of a
14 Chancellor or the principal or
15 superintendent. Law must give them some
16 power.
17 Power sharing has to be legislated to
18 a great degree, and I hope you will try to
19 give as much power as possible to parents in
20 the restructuring. As much power is left
21 for the school boards that you can possibly
22 transfer to whatever inheriting body there
23 is, I'd like to see that power there.
24 I'd like to see us think in terms of
25 the fact that enormous powers have been
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2 given to the Mayor and Chancellor, and to
3 give parents as much as school boards have
4 left in your legislation would not be an
5 offsetting matter at all. It just puts them
6 back in the ballgame.
7 I'd like for you to focus on the
8 parent coordinator, which the Mayor has
9 proposed. Parent engagement board does not
10 attract my attention as much as the parent
11 coordinator, because after all, we're told
12 that the structure is going to flow from the
13 top down to the local school, each
14 individual school. So the parent engagement
15 boards will have some positive purposes I
16 suppose in terms of the coordination of
17 activities within an area, a geographical
18 area known as the school board district, but
19 the action is really going to be at the
20 school level. The parent coordinator
21 becomes very important.
22 I hope that you take the Mayor up on
23 that and go beyond what he has stated and
24 put it into the law that there must be a
25 parent coordinator for each school,
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2 prescribe the qualifications and require
3 that they make twice yearly evaluations of
4 that parent coordinator, and whereas the
5 Chancellor said the principal would select
6 the parent coordinator, I think that would
7 be folly. I think the parent coordinators
8 are so important, they should be selected by
9 the Chancellor in consultation with the
10 principal and the parents. And if there's a
11 gridlock there, then the Chancellor makes
12 the final decision there and moves on, but I
13 think all the stakeholders must be
14 respected.
15 And finally, there should be a report
16 card on the overall performance of the
17 system. What I call an opportunity to learn
18 report card. The greatest problem with the
19 school system in New York City, and I've
20 seen during the 40 some years that I've been
21 in the City, several different
22 rearrangements of governance and changes in
23 the sytem that were positive and looked
24 good, but then I saw devastating budget cuts
25 come along right after that and wipe out the
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2 best features of the reform plans, and the
3 problem has been the elected officials in
4 this state and across this nation have not
5 owned up to their responsibilities for
6 providing more resources, and the
7 opportunity to learn is shoved aside.
8 It is our responsibility as elected
9 officials to make certain that the
10 opportunity to learn is there. We test the
11 children on their response to the
12 curriculum, whether they're learning or not.
13 We ought to be testing whether we're
14 providing the money necessary to educate
15 each child. Whether we provide the money
16 for school facilities. Whether we are
17 avoiding the fact, a situation where
18 children have to eat lunch at 10:45 in the
19 morning, because the school is so crowded,
20 that they have to have two or three cycles
21 in lunch.
22 You feed a kindergarten kid at 10:45
23 in the morning. He just had breakfast. He
24 begins to hate school because what is being
25 done to him. So all of these problems ought
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2 to be put in the report card, and you ought
3 to mandate that twice a year there be some
4 kind of way to judge whether we are spending
5 the required amount of money per pupil per
6 school, not just system wide. $8,000,
7 $9,000 is the figure given for expenditure
8 system wide for New York City, but there are
9 some schools who are spending $4,000 per
10 pupil, because the greatest cost is
11 personnel, and the large number of
12 substitute teachers they have and other
13 factors relating to personnel, it drives the
14 cost down. At the same time, it drives the
15 quality of education down, and the same
16 schools that have the low quality staff,
17 also have the lowest reading scores. It
18 doesn't happen by magic.
19 As elected officials, we should own
20 up to our responsibilities and be willing to
21 be judged by a process which holds us
22 accountable.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
24 much, Congressman Owens. We are greatly
25 indebted to you for your dedication and
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2 contribution in Washington, Albany and New
3 York City. I know always New York City.
4 Wherever else your professional endeavors
5 have taken you to represent the City, state
6 and country, I know your heart is always in
7 New York City and Brooklyn.
8 We appreciate your advice to us, and
9 believe me, we take it to heart.
10 MR. OWENS: I've spoken from
11 notes, but I ensure you, this is important
12 enough. I will submit my testimony in
13 writing to you later.
14 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: That would be
15 greatly appreciated. Thank you,
16 congressman.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you so
18 much. Our next speaker is Councilmember Eva
19 Moskowitz, Chair of the New York City
20 Council Education Committee, and
21 Councilmember Bill DeBlasio, also a member
22 of the New York City Council Education
23 Committee.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I just want to
25 note for the audience and for the task force
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2 that Councilmember Eva Moskowitz, who is
3 also a Councilmember of my district and also
4 Chair of the Education Committee, has
5 postponed the birth of her child. The due
6 date was actually yesterday. We have a
7 paramedic somewhere in the vicinity, because
8 no one on this task force has any experience
9 in delivering children. We want to thank
10 you both for being here, and especially to
11 Eva, for rather heroic effort to testify
12 this morning.
13 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Are you
14 feeling okay today?
15 MS. MOSKOWITZ: I am. I am.
16 Although I'd like this baby to come. Thank
17 you very, very much, Chair Sanders and Chair
18 Thomson, and the rest of this task force. I
19 very much appreciate the opportunity to be
20 here. Both Councilmember DeBlasio and I
21 have submitted The Education Committee's
22 formal proposal for the replacement of
23 school boards, and I will talk very, very
24 briefly about it, but I just wanted to
25 extemporaneously give you some very, very
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2 brief comments.
3 I and The Education Committee
4 supported mayoral control, because we
5 believe that we had a dysfunctional system
6 and there was a lot of debate about exactly
7 what form mayoral control should take, but
8 we made a very bold decision early on that
9 we thought that was the right way to go.
10 However, we always envisioned a
11 counterweight to vesting tremendous
12 authority in the mayoralty, and the
13 committee has come up with a fairly specific
14 proposal for how to ensure community and
15 parental input.
16 I would also just like to say that we
17 now have experience. We have five months of
18 experience with mayoral control, and we have
19 already run into certain problems. And I
20 want to echo what Terri Thomson said and
21 Assemblyman Sanders said, in the sense that
22 I am delighted that Mayor Bloomberg has
23 staked his political reputation on
24 education.
25 I think that is such an important
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2 contribution to the life of this City. I
3 can't imagine a more difficult job than
4 being Chancellor of the City of New York. I
5 rank it up there with the Presidency and the
6 Mayor. It is an extremely challenging job,
7 and I think his sincerity and commitment has
8 already been demonstrated, but that doesn't
9 mean we haven't encountered problems.
10 As you know, you've probably been
11 reading about it in the paper, despite
12 Chancellor Klein's commitment to
13 transparency, The Education Committee has
14 not experienced that transparency yet.
15 There have been substantial problems with
16 getting information as elected officials.
17 Imagine the difficulty of a parent getting
18 information.
19 We can easily go to the media and we
20 can use the power of subpoena. We have
21 weapons at our disposal to compel
22 transparency, but I think as you think about
23 these entities, you have to take the issue
24 of transparency very, very seriously.
25 And I don't think it's bad
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2 intentions. I think it's the nature of
3 different centers of power. The executive
4 has a certain drive to keep control within
5 its purview. And I think that necessarily
6 means that you're going to have conflict.
7 Chancellor Klein said this morning
8 that if we have conflict, we're sort of done
9 for at the get go. It's New York, A, and B,
10 I think there's inherent conflict between
11 managers and workers, between parents'
12 desires and managerial desires, and I think
13 that can be productive if it is channeled in
14 the appropriate way.
15 I would agree with the Chancellor, we
16 don't want gridlock. We've experienced
17 that, but we need real mechanisms of
18 accountability. Our proposal, while it's
19 modeled to some extent on community boards
20 which have functioned, in my view,
21 reasonably well. Not that there aren't
22 criticisms one can make. Those are
23 appointed positions. We've experienced
24 elections. I think that while there are
25 positives, there were also negatives in turn
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2 of turn out and so forth.
3 These parenting community school
4 councils would be composed of nine members
5 appointed by borough presidents and
6 Councilmembers in proportion to their
7 representation. They would be term limited.
8 There was a lot of discussion on our
9 committee about whether that was a good idea
10 or not, and perhaps because the City Council
11 itself has experienced term limits, there
12 was a little more willingness to think that
13 four years was an appropriate time frame,
14 and that you might avoid the kind of
15 lifetime paralysis when people are there
16 saying the same thing perhaps.
17 So there is a term limit provision.
18 We wanted it long enough so that a person
19 would really gain expertise. There was also
20 a real strong feeling among committee
21 members that these boards have to evaluate
22 superintendents, and we wrote this knowing
23 that there might be a major overhaul of the
24 district plans, but I think our proposal can
25 be melded and adapted. We really feel that
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2 parents and community members need to
3 evaluate superintendents.
4 That doesn't mean hire. That doesn't
5 mean fire, but it does mean a public
6 evaluation so that there is clear
7 accountability. We also want them to
8 evaluate budgets. Chancellor Klein said
9 this morning that where the parent wants to
10 have input is at the school level, and of
11 course, that is true, as the mother of a
12 four year old that's about to go to
13 kindergarten in the public school system,
14 I'm deeply concerned about the school. But
15 I'm also concerned, even though he's only
16 four, where he's going to go to middle
17 school. And so I want to know that there's
18 a K through 12 solution for my child.
19 Actually, I would prefer a pre-K through 12
20 solution for my child.
21 So I don't think it's accurate to say
22 that the concern is limited to the school.
23 It's really limited to the whole trajectory.
24 So I am deeply concerned about the middle
25 schools, even though I have a very young
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2 child.
3 We also want these boards to be able
4 to advise on city-wide policy. That doesn't
5 necessarily mean decide, but it means
6 publish reports where city-wide policies are
7 evaluated.
8 Also, the committee felt very, very
9 strongly that while parents have the most at
10 stake, so too do community members, and the
11 Mayor has said repeatedly that it's going to
12 take the entire City of New York to fix the
13 school system. He can't do it alone.
14 Parents can't do it alone. The business
15 sector can't do it alone, and for us, that
16 means giving a formal role to community
17 members.
18 The way our proposal works, a
19 majority of the members are parents. Let me
20 stop there, because I see the sign, and
21 simply say that we've had -- since I've
22 been on The Education Committee, I've gone
23 through three Chancellors, and each of them
24 I think has been deeply committed to
25 education and very talented.
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2 There's a danger in believing in the
3 great man theory of history, where you are
4 somehow going to single handedly come up
5 with the right organizational chart and fix
6 this. I don't think that's the way
7 education works. And I think your role is
8 absolutely critical in guaranteeing a level
9 of community and parental input. Thank you
10 very much.
11 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
13 Councilman DeBlasio.
14 MR. DEBLASIO: I want to thank both
15 chairs for the opportunity to testify, and I
16 want to particularly thank Robin and Ernest
17 for their long years of fighting for
18 parents.
19 Let me just say at the outset, I've
20 had many occasions to praise Mayor Bloomberg
21 and Chancellor Klein. I thought Chancellor
22 Klein was a great choice for the role, and
23 I've had a long, positive history with
24 Deputy Mayor Walcott, but I don't agree with
25 what they're trying to do in terms of parent
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2 involvement. And I hope, because this a
3 democracy, that we can all understand the
4 difference between supporting people and
5 believing they have good intentions, but
6 also have honest disagreements on how to
7 actually get things done.
8 I do worry, and I think Eva's point
9 about the great man theory is very pertinent
10 here, I do worry sometimes that the
11 leadership mistakes, what they think of as
12 conflict equals paralysis. What conflict
13 can also mean is democracy and
14 accountability, if it's the right kind of
15 process, and I think sometimes a mistake is
16 made in how they analyze that.
17 Just very briefly, I want to give my
18 own personal views, since Eva's represented
19 the views of the committee very well. Look,
20 the speech yesterday, there was a lot to
21 like. There were a lot of very, very
22 helpful initiatives. Particularly in terms
23 of lowering middle class size. As Eva said,
24 that middle schools is one of the greatest
25 concerns of parents throughout the City, and
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2 reducing the wrong kind of bureaucracy.
3 There are a lot of great initiatives in
4 terms of that.
5 But I want to speak as a parent of
6 two public school children in elementary
7 school and as a former community school
8 board member, and say that I think we are
9 still very much lacking in the Mayor and the
10 Chancellor's proposal. In terms of genuine
11 parent power and genuine parent role in
12 determining their children's education, I
13 would say the two crucial areas I want to
14 focus on are accountability and
15 responsiveness.
16 I think the Mayor and the
17 Chancellor's proposals are lacking in terms
18 of both. We have to remember that education
19 is an area of government service essentially
20 unlike any other in terms of the daily and
21 intense impact that public servants have
22 with citizens, and the immediate impact of
23 that service on citizens, students and
24 parents alike.
25 We generally don't come in contact
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2 every day with the police or fire or
3 whatever other service you can think of, but
4 with education, it's unlike anything else,
5 and it therefore demands a level of
6 accountability and responsiveness that is
7 much greater than in other fields. We can't
8 simply have parents having input or an
9 advisory role, because we all know that you
10 start with that concept and tragically
11 enough, you usually decline from that point.
12 It usually ends up being less and less
13 input, and less and less meaningful.
14 With all due respect to the problems
15 that may have existed with community school
16 boards, there were some very, very good
17 examples of effective community school
18 boards. The one I happened to serve on,
19 community school board 15 in Brooklyn, I
20 think was one of them, where parents had a
21 genuine ability to have checks and balances.
22 Because there was some real power in
23 the old days, a much greater level of power,
24 but even recently, power over policy making
25 locally and over superintendent selection.
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2 Parents had something to work with to ensure
3 accountability.
4 In our proposal from The Education
5 Committee, because we do involve parents in
6 a formal evaluation role of superintendents
7 and give them a public role in oversight, it
8 really creates a check and balance. And I
9 worry in any democratic system about a lot
10 of checks and balances.
11 Look, I also think I can see in terms
12 of parent coordinators in schools, I could
13 see a principal choosing a great parent
14 coordinator, but by definition, the parent
15 coordinator should not be chosen by a
16 principal. That coordinator must have the
17 parents' interest first and not have a
18 conflict of interest, in a sense, of who has
19 appointed them.
20 Likewise, I believe fundamentally in
21 elections to any body, we had problems with
22 community school boards because the way the
23 elections were structured and the time of
24 year they were held. That was an ongoing
25 problem that I wish we had rectified and
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2 maybe we would not have this conversation
3 here today, but the specific reason -- I
4 think the appointed idea is strong is
5 because the members would be appointed to
6 these regional panels by elected officials,
7 it creates a check and balance. Elected
8 officials who happen to be responsible for
9 the budgets of the school system are in a
10 position to create some real checks and
11 balances. The parent and community
12 representatives at local level can be backed
13 by that power, and that would also give them
14 a real accountability role.
15 And finally, I want to say that, you
16 know, I am troubled by any system that is
17 too top down, and I'm troubled by any system
18 in a city of eight million people that
19 relies upon 10 regional centers, and assumes
20 we can provide real, direct customer
21 service. It's just too big.
22 We have to realize how valuable
23 superintendencies and district offices have
24 been as a mediating agent, as a place for
25 parents to go for real answers and real
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2 results. And we need to keep that kind of
3 immediacy in the process.
4 Parents have to be able to go deal
5 with all the complex issues, special
6 education, variances, the path from
7 elementary school to middle school,
8 etcetera. They cannot simply do it at the
9 single school level. There has to be local,
10 sensitive, community-friendly mediating
11 agents. Many superintendencies have played
12 that role.
13 We have to create the local level in
14 this new plan and in that same vision, and
15 have strong local parent bodies with real
16 defined responsibilities to create
17 accountability.
18 One last comment. I do respect that
19 the Chancellor went through some trouble to
20 organize public sessions where parents could
21 have input. We had one at Brooklyn Tech,
22 and that's a good thing, but let's not
23 mistake a single session with hundreds of
24 people, where they have a few minutes to
25 speak and break up in groups, or maybe a few
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2 minutes at the microphone, for something
3 that is real accountability and real
4 responsiveness. That can only be achieved
5 at the local level day in and day out.
6 Thank you very much.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
8 much.
9 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
10 much.
11 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
12 much, Councilmembers. We may have one or
13 two very brief questions.
14 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Jack Friedman.
15 MR. FRIEDMAN: Good morning. Very
16 brief question. Why do you feel as if an
17 appointed board would get Justice Department
18 approval in replacement of an elected board?
19 MS. MOSKOWITZ: I should, in the
20 interest of full disclosure, I'm not a
21 lawyer, and I'm not an expert of the
22 Justice Department rulings, but Klein seems
23 very confident that a non-elective body will
24 get Justice approval, and I would think that
25 an appointed board by elected officials is
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2 more in keeping with the goals of
3 representation than his proposal. So that's
4 just a sort of speculative guess. I'm not
5 knowledgeable about the Justice Department
6 and how they rule on these matters.
7 MR. DEBLASIO: Just a quick follow
8 up. Justice Department, for better or
9 worse, did approve the end of community
10 school boards as we knew them previously,
11 which obviously were local and elected and
12 representative. And it seems to me -- I
13 know for a fact that the Justice Department
14 approved the various lines by which elected
15 officials at the city and state levels are
16 elected, and we see appropriate diversity in
17 all those bodies. So I think it stands to
18 reason that the appointed process flowing
19 from those other elected districts, would be
20 consistent.
21 Beyond that, I think we have to look
22 at the fact that in the Chancellor's
23 proposal, the so called elections I think
24 are very, very nebulous, they could occur
25 with a very small number of parents, and
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2 bluntly, as much as many PTAs and other
3 parent groupings and SLTs are functioning in
4 a balance fashion, it's not talking out of
5 school, so to speak, to say there are still
6 many SLTs and PTAs that are dominated by
7 their principal and are not representative.
8 If those entities are sending the
9 representative to the regional body, that
10 does not suggest a necessarily
11 representative entity of the regional body.
12 I would think the Justice Department would
13 see this more of a guarantee of
14 representation than the Chancellor's
15 proposal.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Thomson.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I haven't had
18 a chance to read your testimony, your
19 official City Council recommendation, but
20 does your proposal make any recommendation
21 for how we could ensure that there's
22 geographic racial and ethnic diversity
23 within these boards, since they're appointed
24 by individual legislators?
25 MS. MOSKOWITZ: It does not make
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2 reference to guarantees. I would simply
3 echo Councilmember DeBlasio's point about
4 the City Council and its diversity and the
5 changing face of elected officials in New
6 York City. I think there's a deep
7 commitment to the diversity among elected
8 officials, but we did not prescribe that in
9 any way.
10 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
11 MR. DEBLASIO: One quick comment.
12 The balance between City Councilmembers and
13 borough presidents I think does help to
14 achieve geographical diversity, because I
15 think any borough president in their right
16 mind is going to make sure that the
17 different elements of their borough are
18 represented, and I think bluntly, any City
19 Councilmember in their right mind is going
20 to make sure that their neighborhoods, their
21 various neighborhoods and demographic groups
22 are represented as well. And you know from
23 your experience with the borough president,
24 how sensitive everyone is to make sure we do
25 strike a balance.
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2 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Clayton.
3 MR. CLAYTON: Yes. First of all, I
4 want to thank you all for coming here today,
5 and I don't have a question. I just want to
6 say on behalf of the United Parents
7 Association, that we appreciate the work
8 that both of you do in the City Council. I
9 mean, you're very active, along with Robert
10 Jackson, but Bill DeBlasio has been very
11 strong and outspoken proponent on our
12 children in the system. So I just wanted to
13 thank you, and keep up the good work.
14 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Councilmembers
15 Moskowitz and DeBlasio, I think
16 Mr. Clayton's remarks reflects the views
17 that are held by all the members of this
18 task force. Certainly mine. Your
19 contributions as individuals and as a body
20 have been a very, very important part of the
21 overall debate of the future of the public
22 education, and frankly, this can't be
23 accomplished without your very strong input.
24 So we thank you very much for what you've
25 already done, and Eva, get home now.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Above and
3 beyond the call. Definitely.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
5 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
6 much. Our next speaker is James Williams
7 from the Chancellor's Parent Advisory
8 Council.
9 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I should make
10 mention we were joined a little while ago by
11 Renee Hill, I don't think we mentioned that,
12 and Cassandra Mullen has just arrived, and
13 we are appreciative of that as well. Again,
14 I will just repeat for the edification of
15 all those who are arriving late or recently,
16 that because of the enormous
17 pre-registration for these hearings, we have
18 to really pretty strictly keep to the five
19 minute time limit for witnesses. This is so
20 we can hear from as many as we can right up
21 through midnight tonight, and I will remind
22 people with a gentle note that indicates
23 when their time is about to expire. So try
24 to choose your words carefully.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Can I just
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2 add, this is one speaker, one five-minute
3 segment, okay?
4 MR. WILLIAMS: Good morning. On
5 behalf of CPAC, I'd like to thank you for
6 the opportunity to testify before this
7 committee.
8 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Could you move
9 the microphone a little closer.
10 MR. WILLIAMS: My name is James
11 Williams, I'm a parent of a child attending
12 school in district 28 in Queens. I'm a past
13 PA president. I served on CPAC as second
14 chair. I've served on leadership teams in
15 both the district and on the school level.
16 Albany has handed control of the
17 schools to Mayor Bloomberg with the intent
18 of eliminating the 32 school districts. Any
19 objective observer can see that the
20 ineffectual boards have lost their way, but
21 how do we replace them?
22 The Mayor and the legislators
23 recognizes that parents must have a
24 meaningful role in the new system of school
25 governance. Anything less would be a wasted
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2 opportunity to recover from recent years of
3 parental disconnect in many districts.
4 Parents want the bodies that replace
5 the existing community school boards to have
6 as their mission the insurance of
7 transparency, accountability, equity and
8 access. We look forward to the existing
9 systems in place to provide the basis for an
10 ongoing parental involvement.
11 We want CPAC to be recognized as a
12 legal entity in the school governance law.
13 CPAC is comprised of presidents of
14 Presidents Councils and elected
15 representatives, representing the parents of
16 all students in the New York City school
17 system.
18 CPAC is an important means by which
19 parent leaders obtain important information
20 to share with their districts. CPAC has
21 become the lobbying arm for the PAs and
22 PTAs. Last year we took over 1,500 people
23 to Albany on Lobby Day and did in house
24 lobbying of all local politicians in New
25 York City. Our efforts included rallies at
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2 City Hall and speaking at meetings of
3 concerned parents to help educate parents
4 about the important financial problems
5 facing our schools.
6 District Presidents' Councils are
7 important means by which parent leaders
8 organize for change in their district
9 schools. Presidents' Councils are important
10 because they're tied to the community. They
11 are often the means by which information and
12 experience circulate throughout the
13 district.
14 PAs and PTAs are the core group from
15 which parent leaders come. They provide
16 much needed fund-raising and parent
17 leadership in a given school. We believe
18 that all schools should have a board modeled
19 after the School Leadership Teams. Parents
20 are already trained for School Leadership
21 Teams.
22 CPAC members believe that there
23 should be representative bodies modeled
24 after the school leadership teams to replace
25 the school boards for the following reasons:
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2 There has been a lot of time and
3 money invested in training parents to
4 participate in school leadership teams. If
5 we had to start a new system, it would
6 further delay parental involvement in the
7 new system.
8 Parents of students in the public
9 school system need a public and open forum
10 to express their concerns and
11 recommendations about the education of their
12 children.
13 Parents need a mechanism for handling
14 their grievances over their treatment by the
15 school and district administration. In
16 other words, we need an ombudsman.
17 The members of CPAC believe that
18 representative bodies replacing the school
19 boards should not have merely an advisory
20 role, but instead have the following powers:
21 Periodic and regular access to all
22 schools districts' budgetary and curriculum
23 related information.
24 The right to review, evaluate, sign
25 off on, and if necessary, veto school
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2 district's budget for the school.
3 The right to review and sign off on
4 the district's Comprehensive Education Plan.
5 The right to review and evaluate the
6 district superintendent's performance on an
7 annual basis.
8 The right to demand that the district
9 superintendent to meet with this body and
10 present a status plan on a monthly basis.
11 The body to replace the school boards
12 should consist of: Parents and students
13 attending schools within the district,
14 representatives of the community
15 organizations in the district, pedagogical
16 staff members who reside in the district.
17 The members of the representative
18 bodies should be elected by the schools in
19 their given district. The representative
20 bodies should consist of a majority of
21 parents.
22 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Williams,
24 you certainly helped us out with our time.
25 We appreciate the not only a very clear
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2 recitation of the position of CPAC, but
3 having a member of the CPAC legislative
4 committee, and certainly a parent of a child
5 attending a public school in Queens, your
6 point of view from both of those
7 perspectives is very important to us, and we
8 very much appreciate the fact that you
9 shared your thoughts with us this morning.
10 Thank you, sir.
11 MR. OWENS: Thanks.
12 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thanks so
13 much. Our next speaker is Joan Millman,
14 Assemblywoman from District 52 in Brooklyn.
15 Good morning.
16 MS. MILLMAN: Good morning, and it
17 is good morning, because I've gotten in
18 before the noon deadline. So thank you so
19 much.
20 I'd like to thank the committee for
21 holding their last and final meeting in
22 Brooklyn, home to 12 community school
23 boards, hundreds of schools, and more than
24 300,000 school children.
25 After four other public hearings, you
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2 have heard hundreds of comments about school
3 boards. How they function or how they don't
4 function. At yesterday's press conference,
5 the Mayor explained his educational reform
6 package, which includes a major role for
7 parents. A necessity for the success of any
8 new proposal to improve our educational
9 system.
10 Now I haven't had a chance yet to
11 look at the remarks that were made earlier
12 to you, but listening and reading at the
13 press conference yesterday, I had lots of
14 questions. Maybe they were answered
15 earlier, so I'll just pose some right now.
16 The parent coordinator at each
17 school, how will that person be selected?
18 What are the qualifications? Will that
19 person need to be bilingual? Are we asking
20 that person to work five days a week? Two
21 nights a week? All day Saturdays?
22 If that person is going to be a
23 pedagogue, will they belong to the UFT? If
24 not, will they belong to DC 37? I have lots
25 of questions that, as I said, may have
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2 already been answered. Those are questions
3 that I will be asking my colleagues up in
4 Albany when we review these proposals more
5 closely.
6 My name is Assemblywoman Joan
7 Millman, and I represent the following
8 communities in Brooklyn. Vinegar Hill,
9 DUMBO, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Boerum
10 Hill, Caroll Gardens and northern Park
11 Slope. And up until this year, I also
12 represented a portion of Bay Ridge.
13 I have had and do currently represent
14 some of the finest community school boards
15 in the City of New York. They are truly
16 outstanding boards and they represent and
17 work with truly outstanding schools.
18 Most of the boards are compromised of
19 parents of school-aged children. Boards who
20 have hired outstanding principals, men and
21 women of vision, commitment and superior
22 skills. Boards which have created
23 innovative schools. Boards which have
24 initiated learning academies for its
25 teachers and the list goes on.
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2 The children I represent are
3 fortunate to be in schools that are both
4 teaching and learning environments. That is
5 not true for the majority of youngsters who
6 attend New York City public schools. For
7 far too long, most school boards paid little
8 attention to the quality of instruction,
9 skills of their administrators, as they were
10 far too busy with their very own
11 bureaucratic issues.
12 Our educational system must work for
13 each and every child in each and every
14 neighborhood. It is for that reason that I
15 voted last year to postpone school board
16 elections as we sought to figure out a more
17 workable system.
18 As a former elementary school
19 teacher, I left the classroom more than 20
20 years ago to work in a program whose goal
21 was to improve failing schools. I was
22 taught then that there were five
23 characteristics that make for successful
24 schools: Strong leadership, a safe and
25 orderly environment, accountability, a
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2 unified curriculum, and parental
3 involvement.
4 These concepts weren't new then and
5 they are still found in every one of our
6 successful schools. It is the
7 responsibility of all adults involved in the
8 education of children, to ensure that each
9 and every child receives a quality
10 education.
11 I believe that each and every adult
12 in New York City must at least minimally
13 contribute to this conversation. It is in
14 this way that all New Yorkers begin to
15 assume ownership of the New York City school
16 system. For whether you are a parent, a
17 grandparent, a neighbor or a friend of a
18 youngster, there is much at stake for all of
19 us. There is much to be gained here, but
20 there is even more to be lost.
21 I thank you very much for allowing me
22 this opportunity to contribute to the
23 conversation.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, we thank
25 you very, very much, Assemblywoman Millman.
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2 I know that I speak especially for Audrey
3 Pheffer and Peter Rivera, but I also know I
4 speak for all the members of the task force
5 in expressing to you our belief that
6 Brooklyn, in particular your communities,
7 have been very, very fortunate to have you
8 representing them, and as you stated in your
9 testimony, many of the issues that are being
10 discussed today, are going to be discussed
11 again by the Assemblymembers and Senators,
12 and your continued participation in that
13 discussion, as in the past, is a very
14 valuable thing to all of us. Thank you.
15 MS. MILLMAN: Thank you, Chairman.
16 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
17 Next I'd like to invite Councilmember David
18 Weprin, the Chair of the New York Council
19 Finance Committee, and then he will be
20 followed by Randi Weingarten, president of
21 UFT. Good afternoon.
22 MR. WEPRIN: I think I made it under
23 the wire also, so I'll say good morning.
24 Distinguished Co-chairs, distinguished
25 members of this panel. I thank you for the
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2 opportunity of coming before you today to
3 address the issue of parent and community
4 involvement in the New York City school
5 system.
6 We are currently living in a time of
7 great expectations regarding the educational
8 system of our City. The Mayor has gained
9 control of the schools and in doing so, has
10 raised the hopes of parents and citizens
11 alike that New York City schools will do
12 better and our children will excel.
13 Yet, while we look forward to such
14 excellence in education, we are confronted
15 with the reality that the legislation that
16 brought the New York City school system
17 under the Mayor's control has also mandated
18 the disbanding of the community school
19 boards.
20 The benefits of involvement by
21 parents and community school members in
22 supporting local schools as having an input
23 into shaping educational policy is not only
24 part of our civic fabric, but has been
25 well-documented in countless educational
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2 studies. It is a mechanism that works.
3 Therefore, the challenge we face in
4 addressing the absence of such a governance
5 mechanism is not only how do we replace it,
6 but what format and responsibilities will be
7 delegated to these new boards?
8 In reinstating an approach for parent
9 and community involvement, the New York City
10 Council Education Committee, as you
11 previously heard, has recommended several
12 vital factors that should be addressed.
13 These parent and community councils must be
14 locally based. Members must be parents and
15 local community leaders appointed on a
16 fixed-term basis.
17 They must be transparent in operation
18 and delegated meaningful responsibilities
19 related to the policies, staffing and
20 operations of our City's schools.
21 In reestablishing a parent and
22 community school council, three overall
23 considerations should be viewed and
24 operationalized. They're composition,
25 responsibility and support.
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2 It is essential that a format be
3 adopted for each of the parent and community
4 school councils and that a membership of
5 approximately nine people be established.
6 Councilmembers under the Council Plan would
7 appoint five members, with the remaining
8 four appointed by the borough president.
9 It is crucial that a majority of
10 these councilmembers be parents of children
11 currently enrolled in the district's
12 schools.
13 All such appointees would be limited
14 to a four-year term of service. It is the
15 City Council's hope that the primary
16 function of these Parent and School
17 Council's will be to establish a functioning
18 and realistic system of accountability,
19 based upon the performance of the district,
20 as well as individual schools within the
21 district.
22 To achieve this most vital function,
23 these councils should be empowered to set
24 broad district policy, conduct formal
25 evaluations of the superintendent on an
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2 annual basis, advise on superintendent
3 selection and/or termination. In addition,
4 they are to review school performance,
5 district budgets on a periodic basis.
6 It must be singled out that a major
7 responsibility of these councils should be
8 to raise parent concerns to the district
9 superintendent and hold them accountable for
10 prompt and effective responses.
11 All of the above will be reduced to
12 wishful thinking, unless these councils are
13 given support in order that they can operate
14 effectually. Yet, a word of caution. In
15 establishing a support system,
16 cost-effectiveness is a key operating
17 factor. While we are aiming towards
18 effectiveness, we must avoid duplicating a
19 district bureaucracy that will only serve to
20 victimize the districts.
21 Parent and Community School Councils
22 must be given adequate budgets that will
23 allow them to operate in an effective manner
24 that will not duplicate those services
25 already in operation and/or available to the
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2 councils. Similarly, it is advisable that a
3 relationship be developed between these
4 councils and the borough presidents in order
5 that administrative costs become
6 cost-effective operations. Such functions
7 as mailing and duplication can be done in
8 cooperation with the local schools.
9 Ladies and gentlemen, great movements
10 are usually given a second chance to rebuild
11 themselves. The chance we have been given
12 to rebuild our school system is of
13 monumental import. It is one that if
14 supported, will give to our children an
15 opportunity to achieve and grow. I urge
16 your strong support for these measures, and
17 I'd be happy to answer any questions.
18 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
19 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Councilman
20 Weprin, first of all, we're indebted to you
21 for testifying this morning. You're a
22 distinguished member, an important member of
23 the City Council, and your views are
24 exceedingly important to us. I also would
25 be remiss if I didn't at least make mention
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2 that you are part of a very proud tradition.
3 Your family has provided such wonderful
4 public service to the City. Your brother in
5 the State Legislature and your father, who I
6 had the great pleasure and opportunity to
7 serve with, who was Speaker Of The Assembly,
8 Saul Weprin, so we expected much from you,
9 and as always, you have delivered, and we
10 thank you so much for your comments today.
11 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: And I want to
12 add, your mother, who has served on so many
13 non-for-profit boards and added to the civic
14 life of Queens.
15 MR. WEPRIN: Thank you.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
17 very much.
18 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
19 Randi Weingarten, president, United
20 Federation of Teachers.
21 MS. WEINGARTEN: In one of my staff
22 members rush to get here, she left her
23 pocketbook in the cab, so I have a minor
24 crisis going on. So sorry.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Hopefully she
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2 got a receipt and she can identify the cab.
3 MS. WEINGARTEN: If Carol comes
4 back, you'll see. I said to Carol, I can do
5 this testimony alone. Go help out.
6 First off, thank you for this
7 opportunity. I know you are on a strict
8 time table, and what I will do is, I really
9 have one major point to make, which I'll say
10 first, and then I'll say in my testimony
11 again, which is that whatever happens,
12 whatever happens, there must be parent voice
13 and parent avenues and access to schools.
14 I think there is a lot of people who
15 are worried, given the Mayor's very, very
16 profound restructuring changes that he
17 unveiled yesterday, that parents will not be
18 a real part of the equation, and I think
19 that in the way in which the Education Panel
20 has been established and has worked, that
21 has given people a sense that parents are
22 really not a part of the equation, so that
23 whatever happens, and the only thing that I
24 wanted to do in terms of testifying today,
25 was put the UFT squarely on the side of
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2 ensuring that this is a system that serves
3 kids. And the only way that this system is
4 going to serve kids effectively, is if we
5 have parents who are willing to take
6 responsibility for their children's
7 education. But the quid pro quo for that is
8 to ensure that parents really have a real
9 access and a real voice and that schools are
10 really parent friendly.
11 And more than that I will say, but
12 that is the UFT's position, regardless of
13 what the structure is, and that is what we
14 will measure the structure with in terms of
15 that analysis when it comes to whatever you
16 do in terms of your mandate.
17 Now your mandate is hard, and God
18 only knows -- sorry. I know I'm not
19 supposed to invoke God -- but God only
20 knows why all of you took on this mandate,
21 because you have a very, very hard function
22 and I want to thank both Co-Chairs for
23 taking this on, because this is really very
24 difficult.
25 There were some of the community
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2 school boards that were wonderful, but few
3 will mourn in the passing of them, because
4 of what so many of them did. While some
5 boards functioned as places where parents
6 had a reasonable chance, not just to air
7 their views, but to see their problems got
8 resolved, there were so many examples of
9 patronage and other types of things, that
10 people basically no longer look at them as a
11 viable solution.
12 But the consolidation of power which
13 Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein has
14 proposed, I think has tremendous
15 possibilities, and as you know, we are
16 generally in support of the plan, but, we
17 also know, as Assemblyman Sanders said
18 yesterday, the devil is always in the
19 details, and the implementation of this is
20 going to be very hard and very bumpy and
21 very tough in lots of ways.
22 These are the questions that we ask
23 in assessing the reorganizational plan.
24 Number one, what does this reorganizational
25 plan do to advance teaching and learning in
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2 the classrooms? Number two, how are we
3 going to help more kids learn to read, to
4 write and to do math? Number three, how
5 does this plan promote children's social
6 development and ensure that schools are safe
7 and secure?
8 Number four, how does it take into
9 account parents' input and act on their
10 concerns? Number five, how will all the
11 stakeholders work together in support of our
12 children's interest? And number six, how do
13 we stem the torrent of polarization and buck
14 passing that exists in far too many places
15 right now?
16 Every time we see a plan, those are
17 the questions that we ask these days, and
18 how does a restructuring support those
19 things? And as I said before, and this may
20 be somewhat controversial, as promising as
21 was the hope for parental involvement
22 envisioned by the state legislature when it
23 changed the school governance law last year,
24 I don't believe that the Education Policy
25 Panel has fulfilled that promise.
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2 A few parent voices, the borough
3 president's appointees were included in the
4 EPP's final incarnation, and that was good.
5 Yet, its proceedings are closed and
6 confidential, and its members, because the
7 old Board of Education was often a source of
8 rumor and intrigue, are even required to
9 keep its proceedings confidential.
10 At the very least, the panel needs
11 more contact with parents, more contact with
12 the public and its proceedings have to be
13 more open and more inviting.
14 I know it's a Hobson's choice to
15 trade back the headaches of the last few
16 years, and Terri Thomson probably knows this
17 better than anybody else on that panel, for
18 the alienation and powerlessness that
19 parents felt under the old pre-1969 school
20 governance structure, which decentralization
21 was then supposed to address. And that's
22 why what you're trying to do and the balance
23 you're trying to do, this task force, is so
24 important.
25 So while the exact final structure
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2 that you may recommend is going to be for
3 you to decide, and I am not going to try and
4 suggest one more structure, let me just give
5 you two or three more principals, and then I
6 will conclude.
7 While final education decisions need
8 to be made by educators, there are two
9 guiding principals. Number one, parents who
10 know their children's needs best, need a
11 connection to school and a voice in how
12 children learn. And second, educators need
13 to hear from parents, and parents need to
14 hear from educators. Whatever structure is
15 put into place, it needs to be a two-way
16 street, and there needs to be both joint
17 responsibility and joint respect.
18 Everybody who knows schools that
19 work, know that they work because they
20 ensure parental access and they cement a
21 very positive relationship between parents
22 and teachers, and that positive, cemented
23 relationship is what is essential in
24 children's learning.
25 The Mayor and the Chancellor proposed
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2 a model of 10 regional districts that would
3 each supervise networks of 10 to 12 local
4 and structural districts. It calls for
5 parent coordinators. We support the parent
6 coordinators. We have a system of them in
7 some schools right now. They work very
8 well, but they should be in all schools.
9 I did not hear the Chancellor and
10 Deputy Mayor talk about the parent
11 engagement boards today, so I won't comment
12 on them. I don't know what the specific
13 proposal is.
14 The other possible models though
15 should be considered. There was one that's
16 offered by the city's numerous Community
17 Planning Boards, which while advisory and
18 frequently under-funded, have mandated tasks
19 stipulated by the City Charter. They hold
20 regular public meetings, and they play an
21 institutionalized ombudsman's role with
22 numerous city agencies.
23 And I also think that the City
24 Council's proposal should not be dismissed
25 either. They have a proposal to create
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2 parent and community school councils in
3 place of the current community school
4 boards, and they vest with them some
5 palpable responsibility.
6 As I said before, the bottom line is
7 this, we have to attract parents into
8 schools. We have to harness their
9 creativity. We have to ensure that they are
10 real partners in the process of educating
11 children, and we have to make sure this is
12 not simply access. That there has to be
13 responsibility as well.
14 My members are yearning for it. They
15 need parental involvement. They always talk
16 to me in every school visit I go to about
17 needing parents to help them with that task.
18 Kids are our joint responsibility and
19 we need to ensure that they are a joint
20 responsibility. The union will do its part.
21 We have already. We have Dial-A-Teacher.
22 We do with parents who are sitting on the
23 stage right now, a parent conference that I
24 think last year attractive 3,500 parents.
25 We publish a parent newsletter. We hold
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2 parent workshops, but the structure and the
3 system has to be more systemic. These are
4 still all ad hoc.
5 And let me say one last thing in
6 closing. We've come a long way towards
7 ensuring a school system that insists on
8 high standards for every child, but to get
9 to those standards, we need a strategy. We
10 desperately need a strategy that engages the
11 public in general. That has the public
12 support, the public education system and
13 engages the parents in particularly.
14 We need a strategy that avoids blame
15 mongering or finger pointing, because there
16 really is a true common enemy, and that is
17 illiteracy and innumeracy, and winning the
18 fight against illiteracy and innumeracy,
19 particularly in this period of fiscal crisis
20 where we know that kids are not going to get
21 the supports and services that they need,
22 that is our common enemy. We need parents,
23 every single teacher knows that, and we are
24 encouraged by the fact that the legislature
25 put together this committee to try to figure
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2 out what should happen to replace the
3 community school boards. Thank you very
4 much.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
6 very much, Randi Weingarten. I think we may
7 have one or two brief questions. Ms. Kee.
8 MS. KEE: Randi, thank you for your
9 testimony and the work on behalf of the
10 80,000 teachers in this city. I think that
11 many of us here are the products of parents
12 who cared and teachers who cared too. So we
13 thank you. Now so many of the task force
14 members had questions about the parent
15 coordinator. Did you think it should be
16 someone appointed by the principal, someone
17 who is a teacher, what is your view on this?
18 MS. WEINGARTEN: Right now, there
19 are parent coordinators in about -- I don't
20 know. I just met with about 50 of them
21 about four months ago, five months ago. For
22 reasons that frankly I don't even know,
23 they're pedagogues and we happen to
24 represent them. They have a very different
25 kind of schedule than other pedagogues, and
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2 in the schools that they're in, they were,
3 my understanding is that they have been
4 appointed, in consultation with the school
5 leadership teams, by principals.
6 That's my understanding, but more
7 important than that, let me just tell you
8 about the nature of the meetings I've had
9 with them. They see their role as really
10 cementing the relationship between parents
11 and schools, and they see themselves as
12 ombudsmen or ombudspeople I guess I should
13 say, and they see that, you know, this role
14 of both conflict resolver, mediator, access
15 provider, information provider, and you
16 know, kind of responsibility charger is what
17 they see as their role, and the ones who are
18 their right now, are terrific individuals.
19 And I think the schools that have them, have
20 found them to be very, very useful.
21 So that's why based upon that
22 experience, we would support having a parent
23 coordinator in each school. Now obviously,
24 there's an issue about financing and there's
25 an issue about you can't take from one
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2 source and give to another. What will
3 happen if it means increasing class size.
4 Parents and my members would be opposed to
5 that, but if there is in this kind of
6 process of redeployment, a way of doing some
7 things, it would be a very useful -- at
8 least at the schools that have them right
9 now -- have experienced that it's very,
10 very useful.
11 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. DeLeon.
12 MR. DELEON: Thank you for
13 appearing. Ms. Weingarten, presently a
14 member of the UFT sits on the local
15 leadership team. Under the proposed
16 structures, do you see a UFT member sitting
17 on those structures, and if so, what would
18 be their function?
19 MS. WEINGARTEN: Well, look, I'm
20 glad you raised the question. I was
21 thinking about raising it in the testimony
22 and I decided not to, but let me tell you
23 what I find important about the core group
24 of people sitting on the school leadership
25 teams. The union and our members have lots
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2 of different ways and access to policy
3 makers. That's not what's important about
4 it.
5 What's really important about it and
6 what we've seen with the school leadership
7 teams is that it allows people to walk in
8 each other's shoes. When you have the
9 chapter leader, the school PA president or
10 the school liaison and you have parents and
11 then you also have the principal, but you
12 have the core members of the team there,
13 what it does, if they're working well
14 together, is that they walk in each other's
15 shoes, and they understand each other's
16 issues and each other's challenges and each
17 other's problems.
18 If you do not do that, all you do is
19 create a structure that creates more blame,
20 more finger pointing. And what we've seen
21 with the school leadership teams that work
22 and what we saw all of last year is that we
23 have been working together more than ever
24 before with parents, because the school
25 leadership teams in schools that work, let
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2 people walk in each other's shoes. And
3 that's why I think it's very important to
4 have -- that both -- to have the
5 stakeholders in decision-making venues
6 altogether, because it forces them to work
7 together.
8 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Brief follow up.
9 MR. DELEON: So if I understand
10 you, you feel that labor should play their
11 own role in the education of children?
12 MS. WEINGARTEN: Let me put it
13 this way, my union, and as long as I'm here,
14 and probably well after I'm here, is going
15 to play a role in the education of children,
16 period. The end. But what I'm saying is
17 that on the school level and on the district
18 level, if we don't want to go back to having
19 different sides that keep fighting with each
20 other instead of being aligned in interest
21 working together in support of children's
22 needs, then you create separate places where
23 they play and where they work.
24 If you want them to work together,
25 then you have to create a structure where
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2 they act and play well with each other, and
3 that's what the school leadership teams did,
4 and it has helped. Not in every school.
5 There's places where, you know, there's
6 still that tremendous friction, but there's
7 lots and lots of places where there used to
8 be a lot of friction, where people really
9 tried to figure out not only each other's
10 needs, but each other's challenges, but how
11 to work together and how to respect each
12 other.
13 That's what I liked about the school
14 leadership teams, and that's in places
15 that -- and I think I see a lot of other
16 people shaking their head -- in places that
17 they worked that worked well. That's why
18 you have the different stakeholders
19 together. Does it make it unruly sometimes?
20 Yes. Does it create sometimes an inability
21 to move as quickly as you might want to?
22 Yes. But democracy is a pretty unruly and
23 inefficient process.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Clayton.
25 MR. CLAYTON: Thank you, Randi,
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2 for being here today. I have two questions.
3 First I'd like to say, your observation of
4 school leadership teams was welcome and well
5 put, because we haven't heard your scenario
6 of walking in each other's shoes, and I
7 think that was a good spin.
8 Now yesterday in the Mayor's speech,
9 he said that he's going to have a
10 standardized curriculum throughout the
11 system. Now for parents, you know, we
12 welcome that, because that way if parents
13 have a child, and they're moving to another
14 borough now, they won't miss a beat in their
15 lesson plan. They'll just be right on the
16 mark. Will this be any problem for the
17 teachers union? Would you all have any
18 problem standardizing the math and reading
19 curriculum?
20 MS. WEINGARTEN: There is -- I did
21 not set him up to ask this question. Those
22 of you who know me and who were at our
23 spring conference three years ago, know that
24 we devoted from three years ago onward over
25 $2,000,000 to create a standards-based
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2 unified, aligned curriculum in literacy and
3 now we're almost completing it in math.
4 There are lots and lots of my members
5 who say we know how to teach. Let us just
6 do our own thing. And in many instances,
7 they do a fabulous job, and it's terrific to
8 let them do their own thing.
9 45 percent of the teachers in the
10 City of New York these days have five or
11 fewer years of service, and most of them
12 have said in one way or the other, it is
13 fundamentally unfair to both them and their
14 students to put them into a classroom, to
15 say teach to the higher standards and to not
16 give them a road map to do that.
17 There will be bumps in the road in
18 terms of trying to figure out what a unified
19 curriculum looks like. When people
20 immediately call it cookie cutter, you know
21 they're opposed to it.
22 A unified curriculum is not a script
23 that says today you say hello, children and
24 this is what you teach, and the next moment
25 you teach this, and the next moment you
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2 teach this. A unified curriculum says that
3 you generally have the same kind of scopes
4 and sequences. You generally know that in
5 one district you're going to basically teach
6 in third grade something similar to what you
7 teach in another district.
8 It is fundamentally unfair to both
9 kids and to teachers, kids in particular, to
10 say if you happen to move from Bed Stuy to
11 another area in the city, you're going to be
12 learning something totally different. This
13 is one unified school system, and it should
14 have one basic unified curriculum.
15 That doesn't mean standardization,
16 but it does mean that kids in reading and
17 mathematics should basically be taught the
18 same thing in Bay Ridge and Bed Stuy. It's
19 not fair to them to do that.
20 I liked what the Mayor and Chancellor
21 did by saying that the schools that are high
22 performing can do their own thing. That is
23 a good caret, but at the same time, we
24 really have to create some fairness both to
25 support teachers in terms of curriculum that
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2 they're teaching, and to also say to parents
3 and to kids that particularly in elementary
4 schools, in third grade, if you're told that
5 you're going to learn math and certain kinds
6 of math concepts, it's not going to be
7 different in one district from another.
8 MR. CLAYTON: I just have one more
9 brief question going to the reason why we're
10 here, the alternative to the community
11 school boards. Do you feel that these
12 alternatives to the community school board,
13 which, you know, we're hearing a lot from
14 parents that they should make the majority
15 of parents, do you feel that their role
16 should be advisory or should they have a
17 real articulated, decision-making
18 responsibility?
19 MS. WEINGARTEN: The more one
20 weighs into this particular issue -- I
21 remember in the conversation on what the
22 Education Panel should look like. Would it
23 be real or would it be advisory, and
24 ultimately, no one ended up using those
25 words at all.
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2 Ultimately, a panel of people who
3 have a genuine role in a school are going to
4 have real influence in the school,
5 regardless of what is prescribed in the law.
6 The function I think is to try to create a
7 real vehicle and a genuine vehicle for both
8 voice and access and a way of having that
9 kind of two-way street, because as I said
10 before, the teachers are desperate to have
11 parents engaged.
12 Teachers often say to me I call
13 somebody at home and I can't get anybody.
14 And so, we need to create that kind of
15 two-way structure and vehicle. I think the
16 moment that people engage in the discussion
17 about is this advisory or is this real, as
18 opposed to just creating a voice, then we
19 get right back into should it be a square
20 table or round table.
21 Access, voice, responsibility,
22 ensuring a school is parent friendly, and
23 ensuring that parents have a real role in
24 kid's education is I think the charge. The
25 issue about whether parents have a role in
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2 the selection of principals. Whether they
3 have a role in the selection of
4 superintendents. Those are the kinds of
5 things that people have made choices about
6 over years.
7 We've had C-30. We've had C-37.
8 We've had other incarnations of it. The
9 bottom line is this, if there's respect,
10 then there's a real voice and a real access
11 and a real role. If there's not respect for
12 this function, then it doesn't matter what
13 you prescribe in law, it ain't going to
14 happen.
15 MR. CLAYTON: Thank you.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Thomson,
17 then Ms. Brown, and then I think we will be
18 moving on.
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Randi, I agree
20 with you on the relationship between the
21 teacher and the parent. While, you know,
22 I've heard from many teachers and have so
23 many friends who are teachers who tell me
24 just give me a parent involved with the
25 child and we can turn it around.
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2 We also have heard from parents
3 across the city who say they want to hear
4 from the teacher how they can help their
5 child at home. They want information. They
6 want to hear when their child does something
7 good. They want that communication to be
8 really solid, and if we do that, we can move
9 mountains I think. I want to talk a little
10 bit about the school leadership teams. You
11 talked about a model we all dream of. A
12 high-functioning school leadership team.
13 Unfortunately, what we've heard across the
14 city is that's not -- at least that's not
15 the typical model that we've heard of.
16 What we do here is that parents don't
17 really feel that they're at the table. That
18 they're overwhelmed by the educators,
19 because they maybe don't have the knowledge
20 and the lingo and feel not competent, and
21 often the educators don't help. You know,
22 it's sort of the powerful are the educators
23 and the parents are not.
24 What can we do to change that so that
25 we get to the model you talked about of the
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2 school leadership team with a real
3 collaboration and team work and people
4 working together, any ideas?
5 MS. WEINGARTEN: You know, this is
6 what we did when we created the parent
7 conference, and in some ways, on a macro
8 level, the union did it with the
9 Chancellor's Parent Advisory Committee.
10 Initially -- and we did it with Robin and
11 with Ernie and with others -- initially,
12 there's always distrust. There's always a
13 sense of, you know, you're in it for
14 yourself, we're in it for ourselves.
15 Nobody's thinking about my needs. Well,
16 you're only thinking about your needs. You
17 know, that kind of thing happens in every
18 first meeting I walk into everywhere.
19 And when I said the term walk in each
20 other's shoes, often, what happened with us
21 was that we just -- we developed a
22 relationship with the Chancellor's Parent
23 Advisory Committee and we said -- and I
24 know Elizabeth was here too. And there's
25 lots of other people here too -- I came to
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2 some meetings. I met with the steering
3 committee. I listened to people's concerns.
4 I tried to react on some of them. And
5 parents listened to our concerns.
6 Tried to react on some of them, and
7 there was no structure here. We didn't have
8 a rule. We didn't have a resolution that
9 said this is something that we have to do.
10 Everyone just realized that it was in our,
11 most importantly the children's, best
12 interest for us to do this.
13 So the model that came out was real
14 respect and real accountability. That went
15 in a two-way street. Where I felt that I
16 should be accountable to parents and where
17 parents saw that I was respecting -- I as
18 the union president was respecting their
19 needs enough, that they felt much more open
20 to the union. And then what ultimately
21 happened was there was no place that parents
22 had a conference each year. UPA did some of
23 it, but there was no other real city-wide
24 parent conference.
25 And so the UFT went and asked the
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2 school system for some money. Some years we
3 got it. Some years we didn't. Even the
4 years we didn't get it, the union, my
5 members dues money, subsidized the parents
6 conference.
7 At this point, the conference, which
8 is a very kind of school-based conference,
9 gets more people than we can handle. The
10 conference seminars are all parent driven.
11 Lots of teachers go now. Lots of parents go
12 now. But again, it's about what are the
13 needs? What are the challenges? What is
14 the focus? Is the focus on power? Is the
15 focus on children?
16 The focus is always on children, and
17 then we build from that. And that's how
18 we've modeled it in terms of the
19 relationship these days between kind of some
20 of the central parent groups of the city and
21 the UFT. And that's the way it's worked for
22 us. That's why we know that if you create a
23 structure and some support, it will work
24 more, than creating a prescribed group of
25 duties and responsibilities, but thankfully,
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2 that is your function and not mine.
3 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Robin Brown.
4 MS. BROWN: I just like to say
5 thanks. I think one of the -- with us
6 developing this relationship, although we've
7 not agreed on all of the issues --
8 MS. WEINGARTEN: Correct.
9 MS. BROWN: And we did come to
10 some sort of conclusion that we will agree
11 to disagree, and it's that mutual respect.
12 Just in terms of talking to your members,
13 and I should have asked this same question
14 of the Chancellor while he was here, what do
15 they perceive to be a good school, a
16 successful school, aside from the numbers
17 and how children do on standardized tests?
18 MS. WEINGARTEN: Well, I totally
19 agree with Robin's comments in the paper,
20 that there is too much focus on testing
21 testing testing in the school system. And I
22 know that -- I know that when people hear me
23 support a unified common curriculum, their
24 fear is that it's a totally testing
25 curriculum and test-based curriculum, and
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2 that's not what we're talking about at all.
3 And I would invite people to look at what
4 the Teacher Center put together in terms of
5 the literacy curriculum resource guides.
6 It's very, very hard to do a common, unified
7 curriculum that is aligned with standards,
8 but that also creates enough discretion for
9 teachers to be able to teach in a way that's
10 configured and tailored to the individual
11 needs of students.
12 It's very hard. It took us two years
13 to figure out how to do the literacy one.
14 If I knew how hard it was, I may not have
15 suggested it and invested that many
16 resources, but once we started, we were
17 going to continue.
18 Having said that, it's -- you know,
19 there's a lot of pressure -- and I hope I'm
20 answering Robin's question -- there's a lot
21 of pressures on schools right now, and in
22 some ways, the No Child Left Behind Law did
23 something very -- well, let me just say
24 what it did.
25 It basically shifted all of the
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2 responsibility for what happens in this
3 economy and what happens socially and what
4 happens to children, it shifted all that
5 responsibility onto kids and onto the
6 schools by saying that the schools are
7 totally and completely responsible through
8 the measure of simply test scores. And that
9 is fundamentally unfair. It's an unfair
10 burden on the schools. It's unfair to the
11 kids. It's unfair to the current school
12 teachers and to the current principals. And
13 part of what we need to do is we need to
14 try -- and I think that's why the Mayor said
15 it's all of our responsibility yesterday --
16 we need to try to figure out a better`
17 balance, because what will immediately
18 happen and what we've seen happen in our
19 schools now, is that in certain places where
20 people are confident enough that what they
21 teach will be aligned enough to standards so
22 they don't do endless test preparation, but
23 in so many other places, what people do is
24 that they're not that competent or that
25 they're scared of all the ramifications, and
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2 so you see constant test preparation instead
3 of other things.
4 I see it in the elementary schools in
5 particular. I started talking about how we
6 have to get the crayons back into early
7 childhood. You know, my members clap when I
8 use that line too, but my point is, what
9 happens in early childhood. In early
10 childhood, when kids use crayons, when they
11 draw, when they imagine, when they use clay,
12 when they share scissors or clay or
13 whatever, you're creating tremendous social
14 development skills for kids.
15 When you don't have that and when
16 there's such a focus -- and I believe in
17 high standards and I believe in the state's
18 standards, and I've been one of the people,
19 even though my members have gone through
20 torture, I believe in this, but we have to
21 create enough of a balance, because what's
22 starting to happen in some elementary
23 schools is there's such a relentless fear
24 about the tests, that four and five year
25 olds are spending all their time focused on
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2 writing and on reading, rather than on
3 social development and on these other
4 things.
5 And so I think that balance and
6 trying to get that balance back becomes very
7 important. If the public believes that the
8 public school system can credibly help teach
9 all kids to high standards, then we will
10 have the space to get that back. If the
11 public doesn't believe that, then we will
12 not. That's one of the reasons why I am so
13 supportive of Michael Bloomberg putting
14 himself out there to say, I'm taking
15 responsibility. Because the only way the
16 public will perceive and will have -- and
17 the public school system will have the
18 credibility to be believed in, is if people
19 like the Mayor take that kind of
20 responsibility.
21 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Last question is
22 Assemblyman Rivera.
23 MR. RIVERA: Good afternoon, Randi.
24 Students who have parents with limited
25 English skills can pose a tremendous problem
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2 to getting the parents engaged in the
3 education of that child. I don't know if
4 the UFT has ever looked at that issue and I
5 don't know if you can answer the question in
6 light of our mandate, and our mandate is how
7 do we create a system that fosters a
8 parental involvement and parental
9 participation, do you have an approach to
10 this problem?
11 MS. WEINGARTEN: We have weighed
12 in to some extent on the issue of how you
13 successfully do bilingual education in the
14 city, but the question that you're asking
15 now, let me try to downsize the question
16 instead of weighting into that debate right
17 now, because I want to think a little bit
18 more what our position should be on that.
19 So let me just say I spent a lot of
20 time with the Hispanic Federation and with
21 others in terms of, how can we, when
22 language is a barrier, how can we breakdown
23 those obstacles? And in some ways, parent
24 coordinators may be very effective here,
25 because we're not going to breakdown those
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2 barriers if people can't communicate with
3 each other, and if you have strictly English
4 speaking teachers or administrators or a
5 secretary in a school, and you have a parent
6 who is not predominantly English speaking,
7 then it's going to be very hard for the
8 parent to feel like the school is friendly
9 or has some access.
10 And so this issue about how we deal
11 with language and how we try to breakdown
12 language barriers and how the school takes
13 some responsibility for that, I think is
14 important.
15 As I said, a parent coordinator,
16 particularly a bilingual parent coordinator,
17 may help serve that purpose, but there are
18 other things to do. It's a problem that
19 can't be shunted away. It's a problem that
20 has to be dealt with.
21 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, Randi
22 Weingarten, at the risk of stating the
23 obvious, you are one of those people who are
24 very, very important to the City of New York
25 and to the public school system. When all
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2 is said and done, all of this dialogue, all
3 of this discussion boils down really to one
4 simple truth, is there teaching and learning
5 going on in the classroom, and your members,
6 your dedicated teachers, many of whom work
7 with students under very unfavorable
8 conditions, are trying mightily to make this
9 system work. So we can't thank you enough
10 on behalf of ourselves, and I hope you will
11 communicate this to each and every one of
12 your teachers personally, but whatever way
13 you do communicate, please let them know how
14 much we value what they do and how
15 appreciative we are for your spending the
16 time with us today.
17 MS. WEINGARTEN: Thank you. They
18 need that cheerleading. So I thank you
19 very, very much.
20 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Next we have
21 David Sealey, College of Staten Island.
22 MR. SEALEY: Good morning or
23 afternoon I guess it's gotten to be. My
24 name is David Sealey, I'm a professor of
25 education at the College of Staten Island
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2 and the City University Graduate Center.
3 Before that I was director of the Public
4 Education Association. Director of Mayor
5 Lindsey's Office of Education liaison, and
6 Assistant US Commissioner of Education under
7 the Johnson Administration.
8 The focus of this task force is two
9 things, what should replace the community
10 school boards and how can parent involvement
11 be enhanced. It just happens that I've had
12 40 years of experience writing and research
13 in those very fields --
14 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Excuse me,
15 Mr. Sealey, would you pardon the
16 interruption for just a moment. Let me just
17 implore people who are leaving or moving
18 around to please do it as quietly as you
19 can. The sound really resinates up here,
20 and it's very difficult for us and I'm sure
21 you, to hear the important testimony of the
22 witnesses. So if you need to move around,
23 please do it quietly. If you have any
24 conversations, please take it to the back of
25 the room. We thank you.
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2 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Excuse me, Mr.
3 Sanders, quick question. A lot of people
4 are just wondering, was he added in or is he
5 a part of the protocol that you're following
6 on this list?
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: There was a
8 mistake.
9 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Let me be clear
10 for everyone. There is a list of people who
11 are testifying. There are some people who
12 were inadvertently left off the list who had
13 pre-registered, and there are times that we
14 also have to jump around a little bit within
15 the list to try to make the day work as best
16 as we can. We certainly ask your indulgence
17 for inconvenience. We try to keep to the
18 list as best as we can, but at times we have
19 to move around on that list. And we'll try
20 to accommodate people as best as we can
21 today.
22 MR. SEALEY: In any case, what my
23 main advice to you, I'm not going to be able
24 to read my whole testimony, I had to revise
25 it after hearing the Mayor's speech
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2 yesterday, reading it and studying it, and I
3 was very excited by it. I agreed with most
4 of it. Questions for some of it, but my
5 main advice from all this is that the two
6 questions you're facing must not be you
7 looked at in isolation.
8 And I'm sure from all the discussion,
9 you understand that. They should be -- but
10 my more specific suggestion is really try
11 very hard to resolve them as best you can
12 within the revisions that the Chancellor and
13 the Mayor are trying to make, because what I
14 heard him say yesterday was a very exciting
15 business. I don't agree with all of it, but
16 he made clear that what we need is a whole
17 new system.
18 He laid out yesterday what he called
19 some new steps or few steps, crucial steps
20 on the road toward creating that system.
21 Nothing like this has ever been tried in New
22 York City before. I've been here almost 40
23 years. It isn't the first time that I've
24 seen a Chancellor and Mayor get together in
25 this way and undertake not just to run the
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2 school system, but to massively re-design
3 it. That is what some of you know, for many
4 years, I have been arguing for and I think
5 they're intending to do it.
6 It will, however, be a colossal
7 challenge. I don't know if he knows how
8 difficult it's going to be. I know he knows
9 it's difficult, but from all our studies
10 from around the country, that anything
11 approaching this, it's extremely difficult.
12 The question is, how can we all support it?
13 And one of the ways that I think's
14 particularly important particularly after
15 hearing a lot of discussion this morning is
16 this, we have to find a way to solve our
17 problems, not just by trying to figure out
18 how to fix them within the existing system,
19 but how a new system can be designed so that
20 it can resolve them. That's a very
21 different process.
22 I heard a lot of people say this
23 won't work, that won't work to the Mayor's
24 suggestions, because look, it hasn't worked
25 before. Nothing like what the Mayor is
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2 proposing has never been tried before.
3 There has never been a whole system
4 re-designed in the past. I think if people
5 concentrate on redesigning a system, we'll
6 find a lot of their problems will look very
7 different.
8 I'll just skip over and say one of
9 the important priorities of any new
10 structure is therefore to change this
11 culture that has been apart. That's mainly
12 what has been holding us up from the changes
13 of school leadership teams. It's not that
14 they have haven't been mandated, but as
15 Randi Weingarten said, I don't always agree
16 with the UFT, but I think she was on target
17 with many things she said this morning, and
18 one of them is whatever you guys put in the
19 legislation, won't matter a hill of beans if
20 we can't develop the spirit and respect and
21 mutual respect, and I think that requires a
22 different culture, not just a different
23 structure, but a whole different culture,
24 and the structures that has to be set up is
25 to create that.
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2 The individual school, as the
3 Chancellor has clearly defined and the Mayor
4 has defined, they have identified, it's the
5 individual school that's going to make the
6 difference. The Chancellor has a little
7 phrase that most people pass off as
8 rhetoric. I hear him say many times, "What
9 we need to do is create not a great school
10 system, but a system of great schools," and
11 that was a phrase used by Theodore Seizer
12 about 15 years ago. I knew what he meant.
13 He knew what I meant by what I was writing.
14 It calls for a radical approach to these
15 systems, and particularly the big ones,
16 because it means that all of the structures
17 and people above the school level have to be
18 concentrated on how to make that school and
19 support that school, not on how to run it
20 from some higher level.
21 Many people are worried that because
22 of the tight chain of command that he laid
23 out, the Mayor laid out yesterday, that
24 means everything's going to be
25 re-centralized.
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2 I can't tell you what is in the
3 Mayor's heart or mind. I had a long talk
4 with the Chancellor here a week or so ago.
5 I am convinced that he knows very well,
6 there is no way the system can be managed
7 from the Tweed Courthouse or even from that
8 matter, from a regional superintendent's
9 office or from a district superintendent's
10 office.
11 I think what he's aiming at or at
12 least I'll say what I think is in the model
13 that he seems to be referring to, that's
14 been developed in the last 20 or so years
15 for restructuring our public education
16 system, is making schools as much as
17 possible self-managing. As much as possible
18 self-managing.
19 Yes, within standards and within
20 policies that are set from above. Not only
21 from the Mayor, but even from the state, and
22 the State Department of Education and the
23 Board of Regents, and when all those are
24 said, and they should be as minimal as
25 possible, you need some -- it has to be
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2 worked out politically, what are the things
3 that have to be set and required of schools,
4 but then you need much more autonomous
5 schools that are self-managing.
6 That's why the Chancellor is putting
7 such emphasis on getting a whole new breed
8 of leadership at the school level. We have
9 some principals who by instinct and luck
10 we've gotten who understand this and try to
11 function that way. They are almost
12 invariably blocked and hindered by the
13 existing structure above them.
14 The whole idea that I understand the
15 Chancellor's talking about is changing that
16 radically, so that instead of hindering
17 strong principals and schools and school
18 leadership teams, you are getting out of the
19 way of that and supporting that.
20 That's basically what I have to say.
21 So I'm getting a sign to shut up, and I'd be
22 glad to answer any questions, if you have
23 any. I'd say this is something I've been
24 watching and participating in since I came
25 to the city in 1967.
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2 It has been pretty discouraging
3 because an awful lot of brains and an awful
4 lot of good will and effort has gone into
5 making changes, and I've seen virtually all
6 of it fail. Not in individual cases. There
7 have been some wonderful things done, but
8 the idea of getting this system really
9 working basically has not happened. It was
10 not done by that hasty job that you guys or
11 your predecessors did in 1967. I call that
12 a bastardized system. Soon after it came up
13 I called it a bastardized system full of
14 confusion without accountability and so
15 forth.
16 It was never put together properly
17 and it never has been able to work, and I
18 think now we have the opportunity for taking
19 all that experience, rebuilding not just a
20 system of schools, but an educational system
21 which recognizes, as so many people have
22 said it doesn't. It can't be done by just
23 the schools. We have to find a way of
24 getting the families, the communities, other
25 city agencies, other non-city agencies, all
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2 working in an entirely new way. Not
3 absolutely entirely -- it's sometimes done
4 here and there by really creative
5 principals, but by in large the system
6 wasn't set up to work as a partnership and a
7 collaboration. That's what we have to shift
8 over to.
9 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I just want to
10 say, we look forward to reading your
11 testimony and also, if you have any other
12 writings that you think would be
13 particularly useful to us.
14 MR. SEALEY: Yes, I have,
15 unfortunately, many more than you'll ever
16 have the chance to read.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We have a
18 short amount of time.
19 MR. SEALEY: I'll try to pick out
20 the ones that are most useful to you. I'll
21 tell you one of the most useful things I'm
22 doing right now. The only other
23 jurisdiction in the country that has
24 undertaken anything like this in terms of a
25 mandated from the top re-design of the whole
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2 system is the State of Kentucky. People in
3 New York, when I talk about this say, "What
4 can you learn from those hicks?" I want to
5 tell you, I've been out there -- I've gone
6 out there -- I've made two trips. I've
7 studied it greatly. But they've not by any
8 means solved their problem, but that was a
9 case in which the Governor, the major
10 legislator and the Supreme Court of the
11 State of Kentucky declared the entire public
12 school system unconstitutional, mandated a
13 new system. That's what they called it, and
14 a new system was designed. It's still not
15 implemented to some extent.
16 Well, I mean, it's very tough to
17 bring in a whole new system, but at least
18 the politicians were able to get their act
19 together and say that's what we need.
20 That's never happened in New York City and
21 New York State. That is what I hope you all
22 can bring about, is a unity of purpose
23 between the Mayor and the legislature and
24 the leaders.
25 I hope from what I hear from Randi
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2 Weingarten, I fought with UFT very
3 strenuously a lot of the time I was with the
4 Public Education Association. I think this
5 union, at least its top leaders and its
6 members -- I work with the teachers all the
7 time. They're my main constituents. They
8 know the system isn't working. They are
9 very discouraged. They are very
10 demoralized. When they get the idea that
11 there could be a new system, they get very
12 enthusiastic. They are looking for
13 leadership from the politicians, frankly, to
14 finally wise up to that, and I think that's
15 what's happening, so I'm pretty encouraged.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Sealey, we
17 so much appreciate your being with us today.
18 Your experience and knowledge reaching back
19 to both the Lindsey and the Johnson
20 administrations gives us that kind of breath
21 of time and understanding, and we will
22 certainly be careful to read the information
23 that you submitted. We thank you for being
24 here today.
25 MR. SEALEY: Thank you.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Catherine
3 Albisa, Right to Education Project
4 Coordinator, the Center for Economic and
5 Social Rights. I want to let you know that
6 after that, we'll call Blanca Colon and Juan
7 Martinez as a group, because we understand
8 they have a group of parents with them that
9 have to get back to their children, and then
10 we will take a short break for lunch. As
11 Assemblyman Sanders said earlier today, we
12 began at 9:00 this morning, and we're
13 committed to staying, if need be, until
14 midnight tonight, but we do need two short
15 breaks.
16 MR. ABU: Excuse me, I am right
17 after this lady here, why do I have to wait
18 until after lunch?
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: As Assemblyman
20 Sanders said a few minutes ago, we had to
21 make a few changes in the schedule that was
22 printed yesterday.
23 MR. ABU: You're jumping around.
24 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Absolutely
25 not. There are two bus loads of parents who
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2 need to get back for their children, so
3 that's a concern. Ms. Albisa, please go
4 ahead.
5 MR. ABU: It is not fair --
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Excuse me.
7 Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. We are
8 going to do our very best to keep on
9 schedule, and we also have to be mindful
10 that sometimes we are off schedule because
11 some witnesses take longer than we expect,
12 there are parents who have to pick up their
13 kids at school. So we will make whatever
14 change we have to make, and we beg your
15 indulgence, and we appreciate that. Let's
16 continue to move on.
17 MS. ALBISA: Good morning. My
18 name is Catherine Albisa and I'm the
19 Director of US Programs at the Center For
20 Economic and Social Rights, and we have a
21 right to education monitoring project
22 focused on New York City.
23 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Can you speak
24 into the microphone a little louder.
25 MS. ALBISA: Does that work? My
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2 comments will echo many of the themes that
3 were raised here today. Although I think
4 they're worth reinforcing, but from our
5 particular perspective, we are a human
6 rights organization and we begin from the
7 premise that education is an internationally
8 recognized human right. In fact, quite a
9 fundamental one.
10 To fully respect and ensure that
11 right in the New York City public schools, I
12 think there is wide-spread agreement that
13 the city and state must create a culture of
14 government accountability. This is not a
15 controversial premise. The controversial
16 premise is how, right? Or question is how.
17 From our perspective, the human
18 rights frame work accountability at a
19 minimum includes three facets. One is
20 participation, which has been heavily
21 discussed here, by rights holders. That's a
22 central part of this debate. The other is
23 monitoring, and yesterday and today we've
24 heard about the possibility of an
25 ombudsperson playing that role. Others have
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2 talked about parents coordinators playing
3 some of that role. And the third, which
4 there's been less discussion of, is the
5 right to a remedy. When there's a
6 violation, there's a remedy.
7 There was some implicit reference to
8 that earlier, I believe framed in terms of
9 juice, but -- and the remedy in the sense is
10 the juice. But it isn't a huge part of this
11 conversation, so I'm going to comment on
12 that a little more extensively than
13 participation and monitoring.
14 First, though, in order for
15 participation and monitoring, systems of
16 participation and monitoring to function,
17 they need to be independent and transparent.
18 Everybody agrees with those concepts, but
19 making them come to fruition is more
20 challenging than agreeing to them in
21 principal.
22 Obviously there's a lot of concern
23 about whether there can be transparency and
24 independence around the participation. If
25 the principal is the one that chooses the
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2 parent coordinator, I would caution that we
3 should collectively speak to that, all of us
4 who are interested in transparency and
5 independence as a potential problem and
6 think about how the structure you're
7 creating could potentially mitigate that as
8 well, if that problem is going to be
9 inherent in the system.
10 The ombudsperson would also need to
11 be independent and have transparent
12 processes for it to function, but I'm going
13 to skip straight to remedy, because there's
14 very little time and a lot of people want to
15 speak, and you've heard a lot of this
16 before.
17 Let's assume for the purposes of this
18 discussion that what an adequate and
19 appropriate education is has been defined by
20 the city and state through its standards and
21 through the range of policies it's committed
22 to. Schools have their CEPs, their policies
23 that are supposed to be implemented. We in
24 our project through a series of interviews
25 and others here know that policies are
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2 routinely not implemented. That things on
3 paper don't come into practice, and there's
4 no accountability for that, and there's no
5 remedy for that.
6 The ones that exist are highly
7 inadequate. They're either informal or
8 they're completely discretionary. Some of
9 the more formal ones, like transferring to
10 another school, whether through the federal
11 mechanism or another mechanism, obviously
12 cannot be available to every child who needs
13 it. There's simply not enough slots.
14 That's a structural inadequate remedy.
15 So I just want to take very short
16 time to urge consideration of what a
17 concrete and fruitful remedy may be for
18 students and their parents when they are not
19 receiving an adequate education or when
20 their right to participation, which is also
21 part of the fundamental human right to
22 education, is thwarted.
23 What happens when an ombudsman or
24 ombudswoman consistently documents violation
25 of the right to education, educational
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2 neglect or obstacles to participation? I'm
3 not sure. I'm not sure what -- at least
4 what students and parents can make happen in
5 a case like that, because we haven't really
6 worked out collectively here in New York
7 what a remedy would be.
8 If you stub your toe against a badly
9 made sidewalk, you have a remedy, but if
10 your child is functionally illiterate for
11 the rests of his or her life, you don't.
12 And we really have to think about whether
13 that makes sense.
14 I'm not suggesting that the remedy
15 should parallel the remedy for stubbing your
16 toe. Maybe judicial remedies aren't the
17 appropriate ones. This is a collective
18 systematic violation, education neglect in
19 our system, and we need to tailor the
20 remedies in light of that reality. And I
21 understand your mandate is limited in terms
22 of what you can do, but I wanted to bring
23 that issue to the surface and re-frame the
24 question of juice in terms of the right to a
25 remedy.
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2 If we're going to recognize education
3 as a fundamental human right, which I think
4 we should do, we need to think about
5 remedies for violations.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, we thank
7 you very much for being here. We are very
8 well aware, I know I am and most of the
9 other members are very well aware, of the
10 work of the Center For Economic and Social
11 Rights, and having your point of view and
12 your participation from both an educational
13 and legal standpoint is something we grapple
14 with. So we very much appreciate it.
15 MS. ALBISA: We'll be issuing a
16 position paper by the end of the month which
17 develops this further and we'll make it
18 available to everyone.
19 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
20 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
21 Blanca Colon and Juan Martinez. Mr. Abu Abu
22 will be next. Then we'll break for lunch.
23 MS. COLON: Good afternoon. I'm a
24 little nervous. Hi. My name is Blanca
25 Colon. I live in the Williamsburg section
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2 of Brooklyn. District 14. I invested in my
3 community by buying a home and plan to live
4 there many years. I have two children ages
5 eight and three. My eight year old, who
6 attends a district 14 school.
7 I am the PTA president where my
8 daughter goes to school. As a PTA
9 president, I am voicing the serious concerns
10 of my parents regarding the closing of the
11 community school board. We know our school
12 board members. They know us. They listen
13 to us. Mr. Juan Martinez, Anthony Bamonte,
14 Mary Rivera are some of the board members
15 who are there to help us on a daily basis.
16 They attend our community affairs.
17 Listen to our problems. Identify with our
18 goals and aspirations. I have the jitters
19 being in front of all of you.
20 We are a community, as you can see,
21 they're backing me up here, sharing and we
22 shape each other's lives. Our school board
23 members recognize our children's ambitions.
24 They care. They care about our future, and
25 know all the obstacles we face. I'm sorry.
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2 Okay.
3 They care about our future and our
4 obstacles we all face. We are a unique
5 community, and we chose a school board that
6 reflects all of us. They are our network
7 to translate our school policies into a
8 language we can understand. I mean, we're
9 parents. We don't understand everything
10 that happens.
11 We don't want our school board to
12 disappear. We don't want to lose our
13 personal touch. We cannot afford to lose
14 our voice. Our identity. Our real
15 representation. Listen to us. Please show
16 us you really care on what happens to our
17 children who are our future, our community
18 and our nation. And I apologize for
19 anything, but thank you for listening.
20 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I just want to
21 take note that you got the loudest applause
22 today.
23 MR. MARTINEZ: I'm entitled to
24 jitters too? Good afternoon, Chairman
25 Thomson, Chairman Sanders. This is a
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2 privilege to be before you today. And I had
3 some prepared remarks, which it's hard to
4 follow when you hear her testimony, so I may
5 not go into that, but my name is Juan
6 Martinez, and I am the president, the proud
7 president of community school board 14. I
8 am a product of the very district that today
9 I'm privileged to be its president.
10 I was a student in district 14 and
11 public school 23 and intermediate school
12 318, a school which I came back to teach in,
13 and so I'm a former staff member, teacher
14 for -- I taught for five years at IS 318,
15 something I'm also very proud of.
16 I'm speaking today on behalf of the
17 18,000 children and parents of district 14.
18 Our schools are located in the Williamsburg,
19 Greenpoint, Bedford Stuyvesant and Bushwick
20 sections of Brooklyn.
21 Before yesterday, I was coming here
22 to speak to you about what would replace
23 school boards, but I was a little confused
24 and taken aback when I heard, as everyone
25 else did, the Mayoral announcement. And it
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2 didn't -- it sort of came out with what was
3 to be. Like it was done. Like it was over.
4 That concerned me. And I hope it concerns
5 each and every one of you.
6 I know individual members of the task
7 force, and you're respectable, honorable
8 people, and you take your responsibilities
9 very seriously, so I would think that
10 hearing that may have shocked some of you.
11 I hope they at least gave you a preview of
12 what was to come. If they didn't, that
13 would concern me even more.
14 However, even hearing the Mayor's
15 announcement, it made me change what I have
16 to say, because it's kind of in response to
17 what he announced yesterday, and makes me
18 comment on this restructuring plan.
19 I believe that school boards have
20 been a mixed bag. They've been very good,
21 and they've been very bad, but I think in
22 replacing it, you have to consider that.
23 One of the aspects that I think best serves
24 the community and the children in each of
25 the districts, is that they have a local
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2 entity they can go to. They have true
3 advocates. They have someone, as Blanca
4 said, they can speak to that is a neighbor.
5 It's not only that it's a person that
6 hopefully understands and has the same
7 feelings, but has the same feelings about
8 community, about things happening day in and
9 day out in the lives of the children and
10 parents they represent. And I think that's
11 important. I think that parents need to
12 have a greater role.
13 I looked at the plan proposed by UPA,
14 I think that's a model that the task force
15 should really look at, because it includes
16 that very important parent element, but
17 doesn't leave out community. The answer to
18 this major problem of education won't be two
19 men fixing the problem. It can't be a Mayor
20 and Chancellor that know all and do all and
21 are going to turn around 1,100 schools.
22 It's not going to happen.
23 You folks are New Yorkers and you
24 know that's not going to happen. So we need
25 you to look at it, to see to it that in your
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2 plan of replacing school boards, you keep
3 that community entity part of it alive. You
4 keep the parent part to be an intricate part
5 of any decision-making power, but it has to
6 be with power. It has to be with teeth.
7 It can't be advisory. I've been on a
8 bunch of advisory boards. I'm the chairman
9 of a hospital advisory board, and we
10 recommend, and HHC's cut every single
11 hospital service there's ever been.
12 I've been on housing advisory boards
13 and the Housing Authority does what it wants
14 to do. So just the word in there, advisory,
15 would be a mistake. You have to have it
16 have teeth. You have to have it have power.
17 If you're going to replace school boards,
18 replace it with something that's going to
19 bring about respect to our parents and to
20 our children. And that way -- and that way
21 we're going to bring about the turning
22 around that is the one thing we agree with
23 the Mayor and agree with the Chancellor.
24 We want improved schools. We want
25 better scores. We want our children to
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2 succeed. We want that to happen, but the
3 only way to make that happen is not going
4 about a corporate model that's shown
5 corporate failure and corporate disgrace,
6 particularly lately, so that means that that
7 model is not all perfect either. We can't
8 make our school system corporate America.
9 We need to make it work for children. Thank
10 you very much.
11 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: First of all,
12 there are couple of questions. Second of
13 all, Mr. Abu knows now why I wasn't going to
14 turn their request down to speak before they
15 all had to leave. We appreciate your
16 indulgence, Mr. Abu. We have a couple of
17 questions. Ms. Brown. And let's try to
18 keep the questions brief. We've got still
19 79 people ahead of us today.
20 MS. BROWN: I just like to say
21 thank you for your testimony, and I know you
22 outside of this room and being very active
23 within your community. If you can think of
24 just two things, just two things that has
25 made your involvement an involvement with
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2 parents in the New York City school district
3 successful, so that we have something to
4 work on moving forward. Just two things.
5 MR. MARTINEZ: I think the most
6 important thing is respect and
7 communication. We respect our parents and
8 we communicate with them, and what we do is
9 we try to educate them. When things come
10 out from the central board, we have
11 workshops and meetings on Saturday and go
12 over it. And they're very tough. They ask
13 tough questions. They want to understand
14 what the changes are. They want to
15 understand things that impact on the
16 children. They make demands for us for
17 these after-school programs. They want
18 programs in the morning.
19 So by having that respectful
20 communication and educating them on the
21 issues that are important to them, which is
22 everything that's happening within their
23 schools about their children, we get them to
24 participate, because they feel there's a
25 place to go where they're not going to be
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2 ignored. Where they're not going to be
3 disrespected, and I think that's the basis
4 for the numbers you see here and the
5 participation we have in our district.
6 MS. BROWN: So your workshops, you
7 do these things on Saturdays, and is it on a
8 regular basis? Is it continual?
9 MR. MARTINEZ: It's continual.
10 It's on Saturdays. It's on evenings. We
11 make ourselves -- and we have a tremendous
12 district staff that makes themselves
13 available so the professional staff are an
14 intricate part of our success. They make
15 themselves available. We have a
16 superintendent that has an open door policy.
17 So you have people --
18 You know, I heard in New York 1
19 yesterday someone had a panel and the person
20 said people in district offices do nothing.
21 That was outrageous to hear something like
22 that when you know these people, they come
23 on weekends to make a change and improve
24 lives of children. You have to respect that
25 and I respect that, and that's why I think
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2 we're successful, because we have a mix of
3 professionals and community people that try
4 to make it better.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Clayton.
6 MR. CLAYTON: Thank you very much
7 for your testimony. First, I'd like to say
8 I love the fact that you like the United
9 Parents Association's model, because we
10 tried to take into account everything our
11 members have been telling us and everything
12 we've been hearing, and we sit on several
13 task forces and committees throughout the
14 state, the Professional Standards and
15 Practices Board for Teaching, the Closing
16 The Gap, the No Child Left Behind Committee
17 of Practitioners, and every place UPA is
18 seated, we are fighting for parents rights
19 and fighting that they have teeth in
20 whatever they are serving, and so therefore,
21 Blanca, what you expressed was fine as far
22 as the community school board was set up
23 there, and historically we know why it was
24 set up. The battle we went through in
25 Oceanhill, Brownsville, in Harlem, and as
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2 long as UPA's seated on any board, like now
3 we're on this task force, we will continue
4 to make sure that parents have teeth and say
5 so in their child's education throughout the
6 city.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Rivera has a
8 question.
9 MR. RIVERA: John, it's nice
10 seeing you again. Quick question. You said
11 advisory is not where we should be going.
12 If not advisory, what? What do you think
13 would be an area that we should be looking
14 at?
15 MR. MARTINEZ: It should be
16 elected panels, educational panels at the
17 district level, and I think Councilman
18 DeBlasio spoke about the fact that, you
19 know, these elections for school boards,
20 when they took place, that that was very
21 much a reason for the low turn outs. I
22 think we need to look at models where folks
23 are elected and these are parent panels that
24 really replace school boards with a way that
25 they still have at minimal the power to
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2 evaluate superintendents and have a say on
3 whether the person is doing the job or not
4 doing the job.
5 So it doesn't have to be to talk
6 about the patronage and go back to putting
7 principals and assistant principals and
8 school aides and all that. Fine. You can
9 make that administrative responsibilities,
10 but you have to at least provide part of the
11 answer being parents and that elected board
12 at a district level, to be able to supervise
13 and evaluate the work of superintendents
14 that are professionally selected because of
15 their accomplishments. Because of their
16 achievements. Because of their credentials.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. DeLeon.
18 MR. DELEON: Thank you for being
19 here. We've heard a lot about parent
20 training. From your experience, what should
21 be the emphasis on parent leadership
22 training?
23 MR. MARTINEZ: Parent leadership
24 training has to revolve on several things.
25 You have to have training on effective
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2 communication. You have to have training on
3 whatever the leadership model want them to
4 understand.
5 If you have a new structure, you have
6 to have training on that structure, because
7 it's going to be new to them and new to
8 everybody else. You have to teach protocol
9 and process so that you don't have parents
10 not knowing what steps to be taken in terms
11 of advocating for themselves or advocating
12 for the schools.
13 So there has to be a number of
14 workshops. I don't know that -- I think
15 one of the criteria I read in the plan is 30
16 hours of training per session. I think that
17 that works. It can't be some of the
18 training sessions that are nice in name. It
19 really has to be interactive sessions where
20 parents not only get an education, but
21 participate in an answer-and-question
22 process so that they really get to find out
23 how to function within the new system.
24 So if you do a new system, that's
25 part of it. Just like when we had these
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2 failed report cards, we had sessions in
3 every school explaining the madness of going
4 from an A to a one, and we'll be back to the
5 As and Bs soon enough, but we had the
6 workshops on that. So we need to have
7 workshops on whatever the new system is, so
8 there will be clear understanding and
9 participation.
10 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Colon and
11 Mr. Martinez, first of all, we very much
12 appreciate your testimony, both of you.
13 Ms. Colon, you did very well. It was from
14 the heart. It was passionate. Mr.
15 Martinez, you're obviously no stranger to a
16 microphone. Thank you very much. And we
17 also appreciate the fact that you brought so
18 many parents and neighbors from your
19 community with you. And we'll do our very
20 best. Thank you very much.
21 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I just want to
22 add, just for the record, that you were
23 concerned about it being a foregone
24 conclusion yesterday. This body has the
25 task rooted in legislation in determining
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2 what will replace community school boards.
3 MR. MARTINEZ: Thank you so much.
4 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Mr. Abu Abu,
5 vice president, school board district 18.
6 Then we will break for lunch.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Again, let me
8 just indicate, if people are getting up to
9 leave, please leave quietly and keep the
10 conversations low, please.
11 MR. ABU: I thank you,
12 Ms. Thomson, I thank you Mr. Sanders. My
13 name is Abu A.Q. Abu. I'm an honorably
14 discharged veteran. Since 9-11 I feel
15 compelled to say that over and over again.
16 Now we -- the gentleman here
17 mentioned superintendent. We have a
18 superintendent in district 18 since she's
19 been there, all the qualified principals
20 have abandoned the district. The math
21 scores have gone down and we have all gone
22 down. Unless she goes, I doubt very, very
23 seriously whether any improvement in that
24 district will occur.
25 Now I am against getting rid of
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2 school boards. I'm against it, and I think
3 the reason behind it, and I'll depart from
4 my departed speech, is race is involved.
5 Now we have Mayor -- and power. Mayor
6 Bloomberg, he wants more power. Now we have
7 had two Mayors in two mid western cities who
8 took over the school boards. What happened
9 to them? It went down and down, as is the
10 financial health of New York City. And He
11 appointed a prosecutor as a Chancellor. Now
12 Mr. Klein's job is prosecution. It
13 certainly is not education.
14 How do we expect the youngsters to
15 improve when Mr. Klein is prosecution. I'm
16 jumping around, jumping around, so if this
17 speech sounds disjointed, I apologize.
18 99 percent of the kids in Rikers
19 Island are kids that look like me and the
20 lady here and all those on the end there.
21 99 percent. Now there must be reason for
22 it. Poor education in schools is Harlem,
23 Bed Stuy, East Flatbush and the South Bronx.
24 Now what do these neighborhoods have
25 in common? You know what they have in
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2 common, and no disrespect to you ladies and
3 gentlemen here, but the schools in my
4 district are 99 percent black, and there is
5 no reason at all why this task force here
6 should represent the kids in my district,
7 East Flatbush. I'm not saying that you,
8 ladies and gentlemen, are prejudice. I'm
9 saying it does not look right, and something
10 should be done about this.
11 No offense to none of you. I'm quite
12 sure that you're well meaning, but unless
13 you have representation up here that look
14 like Ms. Brown and Mr. Clayton, Mr. DeLeon
15 and Ms. Hill, you cannot get the job done.
16 I was stationed in Birmingham many,
17 many years ago. I walked where Rosa Parks
18 walked, and we fought for what we fighting
19 for then is what we fighting for now.
20 There's no reason in the year 2003
21 this should be happening here. I'm against
22 it 100 percent. I said that 99 percent of
23 the kids in Rikers, and they're all in jail,
24 and they're getting gang raped and infected
25 with AIDS, and yours are on Wall Street.
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2 And it's a long way from Rikers to Rector
3 Street, baby. I know, I've been to both of
4 them.
5 Now Adele and Sedio claimed -- say
6 there's too much cronyism and too much
7 nepotism in the school boards. But Sedio,
8 his daughter, works in the district,
9 district 18, and his wife was a candidate
10 for the superintendent job in district 18.
11 Is this hypocrisy or what?
12 I'm going to cut it short, because I
13 believe in economy and language is still a
14 virtue. I just want to ask a question, if
15 this board is not motivated by racism, then
16 why are only minority boards in minority
17 neighborhoods being targeted? Why don't
18 they get rid of the boards from upstate New
19 York, which are all predominantly Caucasian
20 boards?
21 I'll wind up. I take less than five
22 minutes. You have to go to lunch and I
23 appreciate it. To all the apathetic blacks
24 who placed the house Negros in the Assembly
25 and elsewhere, who have sold out the
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2 communities for their own personal gain, I
3 say to them you made your bed, now lay on
4 it. Lay on it. And I thank you very much,
5 Mr. Sanders and thank you, Ms. Thomson.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Abu, we may
7 not look alike, but you may be surprised to
8 know that there are a lot of things that you
9 think that are in common with people who may
10 not look exactly like you. I can only tell
11 you this, can only tell you this, the men
12 and women of this task force, we can't speak
13 for anybody else today or in past years, but
14 the men and women of this task force from
15 all parts of the city are absolutely
16 dedicated to the proposition and the notion
17 that every child in the city ought to
18 receive a world-class education to prepare
19 them for life in the 21st Century. And I
20 also know that words are cheap and results
21 are measured by what we ultimately do. So
22 hopefully four weeks from now when this task
23 force makes its recommendations, you will
24 feel that you and your communities that you
25 represent, were well represented by the
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2 decisions made by this task force. We thank
3 you for being here.
4 MR. ABU: Thank you for having me,
5 sir.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: The time now is
7 1:15. We will be returning at 2:00. We'll
8 see you then.
9 (A recess was taken.)
10 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Our first
11 speaker this afternoon is Betty Feibusch, a
12 former member of community school board 15
13 in Brooklyn, and we will make sure that the
14 other task force members get a copy of your
15 testimony. We'll xerox it for you.
16 MS. FEIBUSCH: Honorable members
17 of the task force and members of the
18 community. You have spent many hours
19 listening to experts and members of the
20 communities throughout the city as you
21 attempt to formulate the next plan for
22 school governance.
23 I am speaking as a parent who sent
24 her children to public school, a former
25 community school board member and a graduate
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2 student of public policy. I will briefly
3 present some of the functions which
4 effective community school boards served,
5 present criteria against which various
6 proposals can be evaluated, review some of
7 the major elements of solutions that have
8 been suggested, suggest that there can be
9 multiple solutions, urge you to understand
10 that the process you created, a series of
11 hearings and public discourse, mirrors the
12 civic involvement that is part of the
13 process of governance, and finally, I will
14 advocate for a mechanism for governance,
15 which includes broad parent and community
16 involvement, strong measures of independence
17 and accountability, oversight to be assured
18 under state law, and adequate funding for
19 the processes to be effectively implemented.
20 In thinking about what governance
21 structure should replace, the community
22 school boards, I concluded that the first
23 question should be what did effective
24 community school boards actually do? Only
25 by listing these functions can we start to
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2 build a structure to replace the boards. At
3 its best, the community school boards were
4 able to legitimately verbalize the concerns
5 of district parents and the broader
6 community in the public discourse.
7 At its best, the community school
8 board provided an effective springboard for
9 discussion that lead to school change. It
10 provide a mechanism for parents and
11 community members to be effective irritants
12 to the system.
13 In its very broad strokes, what did
14 community school board members do and where
15 can these functions now be placed?
16 Development of education policy. This seems
17 clearly to be placed within the advisory
18 board to the Department Of Education.
19 Appointment of district
20 superintendents, principals and assistant
21 principals. While the Department has
22 indicated that it needs to control these
23 functions, there is a need for
24 accountability to parents and the community
25 in these appointments.
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2 Development of new initiatives, such
3 as middle school restructuring, and the
4 initiation of new schools. These measures
5 were taken by community school boards as a
6 direct result of parent input and
7 dissatisfaction with the status quo.
8 Mediation between school
9 administration and parents. In selected
10 instances, the board took a role in
11 mediating disputes when the district
12 administration was silent.
13 Information and dissemination of news
14 about new programs, school achievements,
15 meetings, current and new initiatives,
16 special grants. Board members took
17 responsibility for informing the broad
18 community about what was happening in the
19 district.
20 Advocacy on a district wide and
21 city-wide level for increased funding,
22 changes in specific policies, advocating for
23 changes in failing schools, looking for
24 solutions and bringing in resources.
25 Pushing the district to work more
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2 closely with community-based organizations.
3 Pushing the district to put greater
4 resources into grant writing and
5 fund-raising.
6 Advocating for the building of new
7 buildings, prefabs, leased space,
8 renovations.
9 Asking the hard questions that
10 district administrators did not want to
11 hear.
12 And, individually, as members of the
13 board, whether we were shopping at Pathmark
14 or waiting for our children after swimming
15 class, we were the direct link to the
16 district for the many parents that knew us
17 in our neighbors.
18 I ask, where will these roles now be
19 situated? Who will make sure that these
20 voices are not lost? The new proposes and
21 ombudsperson, a public advocate for
22 education, the expansion of the local
23 community planning boards to include
24 education, an independent education office,
25 an appointed, not elected, local school
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2 board with advisory power, all need to be
3 evaluated against the criteria of
4 independence, ability to provide effective
5 oversight, checks and balances, and the
6 extent of parent and community
7 representation.
8 The solutions that have been
9 suggested are not mutually exclusive. For
10 example, community planning districts can
11 and should include education within their
12 functions, since there are strong linkages
13 between youth service, schools, social
14 services and health and so on.
15 Furthermore, the community planning
16 boards already have staff and processes that
17 could incorporate some additional functions.
18 School leadership teams have unmet
19 potential. They can be strengthened and
20 report to an independent office so that they
21 are not undermined by unwilling school
22 administrators.
23 Parent councils at district or
24 clusters level have been proposed, but in a
25 solely advisory capacity. They need to be
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2 strengthened in order to be effective.
3 Therefore, I urge you to craft a
4 mechanism with broad parent and community
5 involvement, independence and a system of
6 oversight with strong accountability. I
7 therefore want to leave you with the thought
8 that while we may disagree with the
9 definition of what a good school is, we
10 would be hard pressed to find examples of
11 good schools which do not have authentic
12 parent involvement and strong links to the
13 community.
14 I want to remind you that most school
15 change does not come from within the walls
16 of the classroom, it comes from the outside,
17 as parents, the public, the universities,
18 the business community become forceful
19 irritants to the entrenched system.
20 In conclusion, I want to share with
21 you one of the national education goals for
22 the year 2000. Quote, parents and families
23 will help assure that schools are adequately
24 supported and will hold schools and teachers
25 to high standards of accountability. End of
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2 the quote. The new system that you create
3 must include the elements of oversight and
4 accountability to assure that this happens.
5 Thank you.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
7 very much. I can tell you're well on your
8 way to your master's. I hope that we do as
9 well on our task as you are evidently doing
10 in your task. We thank you so much for your
11 insight, and obviously your testimony
12 represents a lot of thinking that you have
13 done both within Baruch and outside of
14 Baruch, and we appreciate you sharing that
15 with us.
16 MS. FEIBUSCH: Thank you.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
18 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Stephanie
19 Roberts, district 16. Stephanie Roberts.
20 MS. ROBERTS: Hello. Thank you,
21 and good afternoon by now, for allowing me
22 to be here, honorable task force. People
23 that are still here in the audience. And my
24 name is Stephanie Roberts. I'm a parent of
25 district 16. Parent of a child at public
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2 school 262, Malique L. Shabbas.
3 My question this morning is mostly as
4 a parent. The question is I am solely in
5 approval of disbandment of the school
6 boards, since my district, the school board
7 have not done anything that is, you know,
8 helpful to the parents that was there, but I
9 am in approval of the ideal of the school
10 board.
11 I am in approval of the parents being
12 a part of the school board, and I also would
13 like to see the collaboration of the UFT,
14 school safety, special ed, since they never
15 at any time hardly ever put along with any
16 of the meetings that are done, and also with
17 other educational processes, such as English
18 language, people speaking other languages,
19 since most schools are getting more and more
20 people that don't speak English, that are
21 trying to learn the language. As long as
22 they get the information, process of the
23 information getting to them.
24 I also would like to see or the
25 parents of public school 262 would like to
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2 get the information disseminated better,
3 because I'm not clear on the district
4 liaison position. They want a parent
5 coordinator, but my question is, how will
6 that corollate with the PTAs, the PAC, the
7 President's Council and the liaison that's
8 already at the district?
9 We already have problems with the
10 liaisons at the district of disseminating
11 information so that we know when a meeting
12 is going on first of all. This is coming
13 down from PTA, PAC. I'm not only talking
14 about the small ones, but I'm also talking
15 about city wide. We need to get the
16 information when there are elections, when
17 there are meetings going on.
18 Yes, some of us may have to get a
19 computer. Some of us may have to get
20 e-mail, but why can't you notify the
21 districts or the schools that they're in
22 that a meeting is going on? Disseminate the
23 information. You want parent involvement?
24 Let the parents know.
25 The next thing I would like to get
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2 information on is the power. If we have no
3 respect, if there is no power, then it's
4 just a facade. What is the parent
5 coordinator role in the school? We have
6 PTA, as I said before. We have PAC and
7 representatives that are in the school
8 already that don't even bring back
9 information, important information. So it's
10 just a facade if I can't get that
11 information.
12 I have to kneel down and sneak around
13 to get information on this meeting. You
14 understand? So if I have to kneel down and
15 sneak to get information on this meeting,
16 there's a problem with what you already
17 have. I'm going to make this quick and
18 short, because I know other people would
19 like to speak.
20 And also, this is just my main idea,
21 is the checks and balances. I just hope
22 that it works out for the kids of the
23 community. I would like to see an area in
24 which you have a collaboration of community
25 board, planning board. Community where you
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2 have block associations that can in turn
3 give information to the block from the
4 school. Why not get everyone involved, not
5 just only parents. I would love to see a
6 board with just parents, but there's a lot
7 of things parents don't know.
8 That's where the academy comes in.
9 Where are the facilitators from that academy
10 coming from? Are they teaching what the
11 task force want them to know or what they
12 need to know about policies and legislations
13 so we can also combat and fight the
14 grievances that we were trying to deal with
15 the school board?
16 So in conclusion, I'd just like to
17 say thank you for allowing me to talk. I've
18 been to several of the meetings but I would
19 just like to say respect, reinforcement and
20 enforcement of rules, and just a
21 collaboration so we can all work together so
22 that our students can succeed socially and
23 academically.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, Stephanie
25 Roberts, I think you have said to us very
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2 succinctly and very clearly what times it
3 took other people 30 or 40 minutes to say,
4 you did it in four or five minutes. We hear
5 you. We get the message and you said it
6 very well. We thank you very much.
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
8 Patricia Joseph.
9 MS. JOSEPH: Good afternoon, task
10 force and everyone present. My name is
11 Patricia Joseph and I am PTA Recording
12 Secretary of PS 181 in district 17.
13 And I believe that parents have been
14 left out of the decision making of what's
15 best for our children for too long.
16 Although most us are not licensed teachers,
17 we do know what we want for our children.
18 We want people who will really care and
19 represent the students of New York City. We
20 want people who will strive for excellence
21 and standards in New York City public school
22 system, not people who will sit back while
23 they watch our children fail and fail badly.
24 Not because they're not capable of passing
25 exams and excelling, but simply because the
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2 system has been failing our children
3 miserably. And some people in key areas
4 just don't care.
5 I believe the new body that replaces
6 the community school boards should comprise
7 of a variety of people. They should consist
8 of education experts, example, education
9 professors from teacher colleges, child
10 psychologists, parents, community members,
11 students and clergy.
12 Former powers and responsibilities.
13 One, supervise the schools in New York City.
14 Two, supervise and monitor all principals,
15 teachers and staff. Three, supervise the
16 students in the public schools, and make
17 recommendations. Four, devise a standard
18 curriculum for all schools to follow. Five,
19 sit with all school leadership teams in
20 order to keep the lines of communication
21 open and everyone would be well informed on
22 all details, decisions, plans, etcetera of
23 the body for all schools in order that
24 everyone be on the same page.
25 Six, the new body should also decide
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2 who will require additional training and
3 which areas in order to maximize learning in
4 the schools. Seven, monitor the financial
5 deploy in each school. Eight, make
6 recommendations for each school based on
7 their needs. Nine, ensure the schools do
8 what they are supposed to do academically,
9 professionally and otherwise. 10, ensure
10 all problems are addressed and go through
11 the proper channels. 11, formulate a
12 troubleshooter department for parents and
13 students.
14 12, develop a confidential mediation
15 department in each middle and high school
16 where they can solve problems, simple
17 problems. 13, formulate a crisis prevention
18 department in each school to alleviate
19 problems. If the Department of Education
20 don't do some drastic changes in their
21 approach to educating our challenge, I would
22 not like to see what our society will be
23 like in the next 10 to 15 years when these
24 under-educated youths are unleashed out into
25 society.
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2 Somebody better start caring and
3 caring quickly, because millions of angry
4 youths hungry for care and affection will be
5 roaming out there and it will be us they'll
6 be coming after.
7 And be sure that morals and values be
8 taught to all students, because that has
9 been lacking in the schools recently. This
10 is a repeat, because I had lost part of my
11 -- the previous quotation, so I'm repeating.
12 If the Department Of Education does not make
13 some drastic changes, like I said before, in
14 the approach to educating our children.
15 Parents will have a great deal to
16 contribute to the body, because we see
17 firsthand what our children are learning or
18 not learning and whether the schools are
19 meeting the standards. Parents are aware of
20 the shortcomings and needs of the schools.
21 Children relate to their parents
22 what's happening in the schools on a daily
23 basis, so we are well informed. I cannot
24 say the school boards are doing a wonderful
25 job at this time, because they have limited
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2 power to control the inadequacies in the
3 schools.
4 I am not sure how functional the
5 boards are, because very few principals and
6 teachers attend the meetings so they can
7 hear each other's concerns. The school
8 boards or whatever body is chosen to replace
9 the school boards should be able to go into
10 the schools and monitor the principals,
11 teachers at work, at any time they wish, so
12 they can rate each teacher's performance in
13 the classroom.
14 People versed in and have a working
15 knowledge of child psychology and the
16 principals of education should be an
17 integral part of this reform body. These
18 people are necessary to ensure all have a
19 working knowledge of what is expected of
20 students at varying ages academically,
21 psychologically and emotionally.
22 Skilled professionals with this know
23 how is necessary to assist and contact
24 problems of behaviors of students.
25 Teachers, college professors should be
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2 included in the new body, because they have
3 a clear understanding of how students learn
4 effectively and will be able to impart their
5 knowledge on what is best for our children.
6 They can and will impart the dos and don'ts
7 of education, since it is quite clear that
8 some educators are not aware of things that
9 should and should not be said to students.
10 Certain words motivate and some cause
11 students to lose interest or self-esteem. I
12 hope this new reform body will make the
13 betterment of our students and our society
14 at large. Thank you.
15 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Joseph, we
16 thank you very much, and I think that PS 181
17 is very fortunate to have you as there
18 recording secretary. I was struck by the
19 orderliness of your presentation point by
20 point, and obviously you've taken your
21 skills as a very good recording secretary
22 and you were able to communicate very
23 effectively with this body what the needs
24 are. We thank you.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
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2 Beverly Wall. Ms. Wall is a PTA president.
3 MS. WALL: Good afternoon. First
4 of all, I would like to thank the task force
5 for allowing me the opportunity to speak.
6 You have some papers, but I'm not going to
7 go with it, because it's kind of hard to
8 write something down when it's a heart
9 thing.
10 I was trying at 4:00 this morning.
11 I'm not a typist. I am a parent and a
12 grandparent, and I'm also a PTA president
13 from George Gershwin IS 166. I do the best
14 I can to go to all the meetings because I am
15 trying to learn. I know something is wrong
16 and that our children are not learning, but
17 it's time we stopped talking about what
18 happened in the past, what was not done and
19 let's say today what we're going to start
20 doing so we can fix it out.
21 I was so protrude this morning
22 because like I said, when I came here, I
23 came here with the understanding we would
24 come with ideals on parents that have been
25 involved and had seen how easy and how hard
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2 it is for parents to be involved in their
3 children's education, and then when I heard
4 the Chancellor and Mr. Walcott from the
5 Mayor's office speaking, I got so protrude.
6 Because unfortunately, I'm in a school where
7 parents are not welcome there.
8 So when I hear them say that they're
9 going to let a principal pick the PTA, it
10 hurt my heart, because see, I have been
11 doing -- I have an executive board, and we
12 just have minus one, and we do care about
13 not just our children, but those 1,600
14 that's over there in that school. And I go
15 to the meetings. I buy books on how to
16 learn so we can professionally put the
17 meetings out there, but we can't make the
18 parents come, but you can be ready if they
19 do show up, because to me if two show up,
20 they're important.
21 But I'm just saying though, whatever
22 you do do, mean what you say in your hearts
23 that you do mean our children are first.
24 I'm not looking for a job. All I want is
25 that our children in the neighborhoods that
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2 we live in will be educated, because just
3 like the other lady said, those children are
4 going to have to get money from some place.
5 I can't afford to take care of my son
6 for the rest of my life, nor my
7 grandchildren. I do care, and there's a
8 whole lot of parents that do care. Parents
9 need training. They do. They're afraid.
10 Everybody does not have the same
11 personality. Everyone don't come out
12 running from the gun, but if you teach them,
13 we all can learn and be up there with you
14 one day. We could, if that's what we choose
15 to do.
16 But let's give our children an
17 opportunity and let's make the parents feel
18 that we want you in the school. We want you
19 to be involved in your children's education,
20 not when something negative comes, but to be
21 involved to say we're going to work with the
22 teachers and the principal.
23 The school leadership team. That's
24 another problem. I sit on that also. Do
25 you know that we're having a C-30 process?
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2 Our UFT rep has not showed up to a meeting
3 since the beginning of September. When they
4 heard that the new governance had changed
5 under the C-30, I got it from someone I
6 won't even mention that came to me and heard
7 them discussing that he told one of the
8 people that's going to be applying for the
9 position, "Oh, well, I guess I'll start
10 coming now."
11 All I'm saying is accountability. We
12 had a blue book. You have rules in place.
13 But you can tell me anything to do, but if
14 no one ever checked to see what I'm doing,
15 where is the accountability? And that's the
16 only thing I want you all to please, please
17 don't just say we're going to do it and just
18 put it out there and expect that everybody's
19 going to follow.
20 Make the parents accountable. If I
21 say I want to be a PTA president and you're
22 training me how to do it, make sure I'm
23 doing my job. But teach me first. Show me
24 how to do it, but don't just put it over
25 there and say that we're doing it, and let's
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2 go back to the old way of no one having
3 checks and balances and asking why it's not
4 done, because that's the problem.
5 Parents, we love our children. We
6 really do. And on that I thank you for
7 putting up with me, listening to me and
8 believe me, please, our children should be
9 first, and I thank you again for hearing me.
10 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Beverly Wall, we
11 thank you for speaking from the heart. We
12 need to not only hear what people have
13 thought about for weeks and written down,
14 but you spoke to us from your heart, and we
15 heard you and it was powerful.
16 MS. WALL: Thank you.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Beverly, I
18 just want to clarify something the
19 Chancellor said today. He said that he was
20 recommending that the principals appoint the
21 parent liaisons. No one, no one other than
22 parents has the right to elect a PTA
23 president. That would never happen that the
24 Chancellor would do that. It wouldn't be
25 allowed under the national PTA rules and
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2 regulations.
3 MS. WALL: So can I ask you a
4 question. The parent liaison that we now
5 have in place that's at the district office,
6 so what he's speaking of, is that going to
7 circumvent that person that's there?
8 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: What he's
9 saying is every school would have a parent
10 liaison.
11 MS. WALL: I still don't like that
12 anyway. I just do believe that the PTA
13 president should be held accountable for
14 what they're doing, because you know, you
15 and I think and we have the same thing, our
16 children there. So this is how I look at
17 it, with the parents, that we should be held
18 accountable.
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Robin Brown.
20 MS. BROWN: What the Deputy Mayor
21 Dennis Walcott and the Chancellor testified
22 to this morning is that they would have a
23 parent liaison in every school, but the
24 principal would hire and select the parent
25 liaison. Just to give a point of
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2 clarification. In his testimony today, he
3 said every school would have a parent
4 liaison and the principal would hire and
5 select this particular person.
6 MS. WALL: Now, since you are --
7 now would you clarify to me when he's saying
8 the parent liaison, that's to be the go
9 between between the parents and the
10 principal, because if he's too busy -- if
11 that's what it's supposed to be?
12 MS. BROWN: In the testimony, it
13 did not define their role, except that they
14 would be involved in parents. Did not
15 define their duties or what they would be
16 responsible for.
17 MS. WALL: Okay. Like I said, I
18 still have my -- I've been a PTA president
19 and very active, and like I said, even my
20 executive board is very active. And when
21 you -- if you're telling me you don't want
22 us there anyway and you're going to tell
23 that person's going to be able to pick a
24 parent liaison, and they're being paid,
25 where a man's treasures, there so is his
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2 heart. So who are they going to be
3 concerned about?
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I think that's a
5 good message to leave us with. Thank you
6 very much.
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
8 Barbara Faison, school board member,
9 district 19. I hope I didn't mispronounce
10 your name.
11 MS. FAISON: Good afternoon,
12 Assemblyman Steven Sanders, Ms. Terri
13 Thomson and the members of the task force.
14 I appreciate the opportunity to speak before
15 you today about my ideas and comment on
16 reform for the governance of community
17 school district in the City of New York.
18 I believe that school districts would
19 be better served if they are represented by
20 local elected school board members, made up
21 of parents and community residents of the
22 district.
23 Members of the community understand
24 each other. We talk. We work together. We
25 interact with each other. Our children play
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2 together. We go to dances and parties and
3 churches together. So I feel that -- and
4 in our community, we know what our children
5 need and we as a group are able to express
6 what we think will be best for our children,
7 and as a school board member in my district,
8 I live right where the people that go to
9 school -- the children that go to school
10 are. So they're able to come to me and we
11 can sit down and we can express or they can
12 tell me what they want done in their
13 schools.
14 Now I feel that local school board
15 are a good thing for the community, and I
16 believe the Chancellor also feels that way,
17 because I know that he said today that he's
18 going to have a board, he's going to elect a
19 board to help with the matters in the
20 school. So if he feels that he's creating a
21 board, and he's going to have an academy and
22 training for that board, why can't he keep
23 the same board members that he has, educate
24 them, and make parents happy?
25 Because you have to remember now,
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2 that voting -- we're elected in by our
3 community. And I think people should have
4 the right to vote for who they think will do
5 a better job of representing them. So if
6 the Chancellor feels that a board is very
7 important, then I think that he should
8 consider keeping the board, because we work,
9 eat, sleep together, and we have children
10 that makes us tied together, and we're able
11 to express ourselves better.
12 I was thinking that school boards
13 should be elected and funded adequately to
14 establish policy to improve student reading
15 and math scores, provide training
16 opportunities for parents, help parents to
17 become more efficient in the school district
18 by improving their leadership skills,
19 provide more after-school programs,
20 including tutorial, recreational, ESL and
21 GED.
22 I think they should establish a
23 resource center for parents and community
24 residents. Establish standards to measure
25 accountability for programs against the
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2 performance of the superintendent
3 administration and teachers.
4 I therefore appeal to the task force
5 to include in your recommendation to the
6 Governor and legislators that local elected
7 school boards be mandatory in the community
8 school district in which they live. Thank
9 you.
10 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
11 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, we thank
12 you very much, Ms. Faison, and we certainly
13 appreciate the service that you have given
14 to community school board 19, and we very
15 much appreciate the comments and your
16 recommendations, and we'll be continuing to
17 look at them, your recommendations, very,
18 very seriously. We thank you.
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Stuart
20 Balberg, member of community school board
21 17. We'll go on to the next person, and
22 call him next. Dr. Williamson, LEC
23 chairman, CEC and PIE, and I'm sure we're
24 going to find out what those acronyms mean.
25 MR. WILLIAMSON: Praise the Lord.
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2 Good evening, everyone. I'm chairman of the
3 Creator's Educational Crusade and Partner's
4 In Education. To put it shortly, we are
5 investigators that work under the interfaith
6 organizations globally.
7 My main function as chairman is also
8 one of the top investigators. I've been in
9 positions for over 32 years in the
10 investigation of the Board of Education, and
11 as my job as an investigator, I must also
12 play a part as being a servant of the Board
13 of Education and her children.
14 Our main thesis is children first in
15 health and education. It always has been.
16 We know where the community school board
17 came from. The history of it. The
18 foundation of it. How it got started.
19 I have a list that I presented to
20 you, but I will not read exactly from that
21 list. I know it by heart. But, the main
22 function is that the community school board
23 is necessary. The community school board is
24 a Civil Rights Act.
25 The community school board was
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2 brought together by people like Reverend
3 Wilcox, Reverend Galamason, Brother
4 Ferguson, Dr. Gtu Iusi, Brother Sonny Carson
5 and Brother Sam Wright. These were the ones
6 that started the community school board in
7 Brownsville and Bed Stuy, and it spreaded
8 all through the United States. It was put
9 together as a Civil Rights Act to guarantee
10 every nationality their part in civil rights
11 in America.
12 The community school board is a true
13 symbol of America. See, as far as our
14 corporation is concerned, America is one
15 nation under God, but it wasn't represented
16 as that until we started putting our
17 children first. And when the civil rights
18 movement came along through Martin Luther
19 King and Dr. Malcolm X, they implemented
20 this. They showed that America need to take
21 a look at herself and show that civil rights
22 is needed for everyone, every color, every
23 nationality. And the community school
24 board's main thesis was that.
25 But now, I want to get down to the
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2 nitty gritty. Why is it being moved? Why
3 do you as a panel is necessary right now?
4 What brought on this act? Praise the Lord
5 that you did come together. We thankful to
6 you being the panel for this board. And I
7 heard someone say it's this color and that
8 color. Hey, I'm a man of God. Color has
9 nothing to do with it. God loves us, and
10 the issue is not black or white, it's good
11 or evil.
12 So let me get straight to the point.
13 Number one, we as an organization worked
14 from 1970 to now with the community school
15 boards, injecting programs into the
16 community school boards out of district 13,
17 which we was sent to do by higher order to
18 see if we will be accepted as people in the
19 high ishlim government, and so the CEC and
20 Partners In Education, we wanted to make the
21 community school board independent, not
22 needing no money from the government. And
23 the only way we could do that was build a
24 curriculum of income, a budget, which this
25 mayorship has not done. It has not built a
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2 budget for you and for our children to
3 guarantee them their promise of tomorrow and
4 their part and their piece of the pie.
5 Now we formed an organization called
6 the Global Contractors Guild which came
7 through junior high school 258 to make money
8 economically for the community school board
9 in our district. We went through Africa and
10 the country of Angola where we had got
11 together with 13 countries to do a mass
12 production of building the largest
13 irrigation system on earth to raise
14 trillions of dollars for the educational
15 system, and it was blocked by the Nixon
16 administration after Mayor Dinkins, and the
17 same administration after Mayor Dinkins, we
18 was investigating before the Dinkins
19 administration. When we went to get rid of
20 Frank Macarola for dealing in contracts
21 under the table, where Commissioners were
22 dealing in contracts under the table, and
23 where other organizations were being
24 controlled by organized crime in the
25 community of the organized crime family, and
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2 we found out that there were two many
3 commissioners taking money under the table.
4 At this time I came, I was working as
5 an undercover investigator for Dr. Levy
6 Brown, Commissioner Levy Brown, and working
7 with Dinkins, but before that I was working
8 undercover for Koch, Mayor Koch, and it was
9 my organization that informed them that
10 there was too much robbing of educational
11 money in the Board of Ed.
12 And this is very important and I have
13 a video on this, showing how great we were
14 doing, and these organizations came.
15 There's too much corruption in the mayoral
16 administration for him to have anything to
17 do with our Board of Education, let alone
18 instruct us what to do. There's too much
19 corruption and we have no business having a
20 lawyer as a doggone Chancellor in the school
21 system. That was totally wrong. It messed
22 up the whole agenda.
23 This is a video, a cassette, a CD
24 showing district 13 at work. I have a court
25 case, 691/85 where we donated seven billion
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2 dollars to the Board of Education and never
3 received it, because their political
4 corruption arena hid it. I duly demand of
5 this board to investigate that settlement of
6 691/85 out of Civil Court which was a
7 Supreme Court file of where money was being
8 robbed from the Board of Education that was
9 stolen from the school boards. And has been
10 hidden.
11 Corruption. This Mayor is involved
12 in that corruption also, and we are bringing
13 charges against Bloomberg for trying to
14 come and remove a school board --
15 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON:
16 Mr. Williamson.
17 MR. WILLIAMSON: -- that he's
18 supposed to come to and say, as far as the
19 City Charter's concerned, the --
20 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON:
21 Mr. Williamson.
22 MR. WILLIAMSON: He did not come
23 through the City Charter. He went to
24 Albany. Where do he get the authority to
25 violate the City Charter and go over the
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2 community school board head? We are elected
3 and we had no such thing as no select. We
4 are not going under a select system that --
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Dr. Williamson,
6 we appreciate that.
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We're going
8 to have to ask you to conclude.
9 MR. WILLIAMSON: I would like to
10 close with saying one thing, please, please
11 review this video showing district 13 doing
12 their job. Please investigate this case.
13 There is corruption behind this and that's
14 all it is. We have the answers and you'll
15 have the answers. You're beautiful people
16 and I know you know what's going on.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Dr. Williamson,
18 we appreciate your testimony. Some of it
19 may be a little bit beyond our scope, but if
20 you would leave the videos, we'll make sure
21 that the members view it and we take to
22 heart your testimony very much.
23 MR. WILLIAMSON: Pleasure.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you for
25 being here, sir.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
3 Our next speaker is Stuart Balberg, member
4 of school board 17.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Just again for
6 the edification for people who may not have
7 been here this morning, we have to try to
8 keep the testimony to five minutes. We
9 still have over 70 people who wish to
10 testify. So I will ask you to keep your
11 testimony to five minutes, and if you're
12 running close to that, I will give you a
13 little gentle reminder to please begin to
14 conclude. We don't do this to preempt
15 anyone, but just so that we can hear from
16 everyone. Good afternoon, sir.
17 MR. BALBERG: Good afternoon. My
18 name is Stuart A. Balberg. I'm a member of
19 school board 17 in Crown heights. I'm a
20 member of the Lubavitch Synagogue. I'm a
21 former conservative district leader in the
22 43rd A.D. I'm speaking pro-school boards.
23 35 years ago, growing up on
24 Mrs. Thomson's block, I was so inspired by
25 the local school board as to embark on the
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2 career of political and education activism.
3 Why? That board's borders stretched out to
4 include Senator Padavan's neighborhood, and
5 a slate led by an Orthodox Rabbi and a
6 Catholic Priest got elected. They proceeded
7 to expunge the school libraries of books
8 with no redeeming educational value.
9 Dumbed-down and pornographic books were
10 supplanted by higher-standard materials.
11 Later in life I moved to Crown
12 Heights, the citadel of African, Caribbean
13 and Jewish culture, and learned rabbinics at
14 the feet of Grand Rabbi Schneerson, the
15 Lubavitcher Rabbi, and went about to
16 implement spiritual, Godly objectives in the
17 field of public education -- not that the
18 orthodox are consumers of the system --
19 we're clearly not -- but rather, because we
20 have a fiduciary stake as taxpayers, and a
21 common moral stake, as brethren to those
22 condemned to public mis-education, and
23 subsequently, failure and social malaise.
24 Let's ask ourselves: What is the
25 scope of the educational morass? Is it a
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2 New York-bred illness? Does it require the
3 mere tightening and loosening of a few
4 bolts? No, and no. It's a national
5 disgrace in front of the rest of civilized
6 society. It took our present and a bunch of
7 dead terrorists to wake up this country. As
8 King Solomon said, "Train a child according
9 to his way, and when he ages, he shall not
10 stray."
11 The Assembly's efforts
12 notwithstanding, we Republican-Conservatives
13 have no intention of dragging New York's
14 schools down to the level of those in
15 Arkansas. We thank God that Judd Gregg
16 chairs the US Senate Education Committee.
17 To paraphrase my mentor, Mike Long, "Judd
18 Gregg's gonna put the fear of God back in
19 the schools and in their administrators."
20 Let the truth be told. Private and
21 parochial schools are successful at turning
22 out scholars, and public schools are not.
23 Not by a mile. That's why the position of
24 Chancellor is a dead-end job. Let Mr. Klein
25 deny his own projections, which he deeps
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2 secret, but I've seen. In two years, only a
3 handful of public schools will be passable.
4 I know, because my district is one of that
5 handful. We're destined to rank four or
6 five out of 32. All the rest are going to
7 plunge into the proverbial netherworld,
8 thanks to the shameful Warren Supreme
9 Court's so-called decision to deprive
10 Americans of their God given, inalienable
11 rights of Freedom of Religion, and to
12 deprive us of government of, by and for the
13 people. Not of, by and for the NEA.
14 When I first came into office,
15 district 17 had a 20-year history of ranking
16 lowest in Brooklyn. Subsequently, we
17 prodded and encouraged our superintendent to
18 provide the basics: Discipline, respect for
19 each other's religion, decorum, attendance,
20 and the teaching of our native traditions
21 and religions, of which we have over 100
22 cultures. We know how to grow Africans, but
23 many of those in the Educrat Party don't.
24 So, when they move into your neighborhood,
25 you're going to fail to educate them. For
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2 shame. And we succeeded.
3 The paradigm of depriving an
4 African-American of his religious and
5 cultural values, just as denying an Asian or
6 Caucasian his, is akin to feeding a child on
7 white bread devoid of vitamins. That's why
8 we, on our own, voted to implement a Moment
9 of Silence Meditation, why we are the first
10 district to mandate uniforms, why we don't
11 teach our kids to hate Boy Scouts or to read
12 how Daddy wears a dress or Heather has two
13 mommies. No fuzzy math and no
14 test-standards lowering here.
15 Instead of going to war against the
16 current functioning spirit of local
17 governance, which structure costs next to
18 nothing, we wish our State Senate's
19 Republican friends in New York's delegation
20 would celebrate our diverse religious and
21 cultural values and enhance them by giving
22 boards backup, that means, to respect our
23 parochialism.
24 If some boards dissent and have it
25 their way, then, more power to them. Their
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2 failures will be recompensed and they'll cry
3 out to God, "Why didn't we follow the course
4 of the Crown Heights Board?"
5 So I call on Senator Golden to
6 rethink his current stance join the
7 Republican-inspired pro-school board
8 bandwagon. I call on Senator Padavan, in
9 recognition that he got his governance
10 vis-a-vis superintendents, to let the rest
11 of the system intact. It's a matter of the
12 survival of the values of pocket
13 neighborhoods. It's why 1,250 Jews and 90
14 God-fearing Africans, including James E.
15 Davis and Myrtle Whitmore, one rainy day,
16 chose to vote for me. Thank you.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
18 very much for your testimony, Mr. Balberg,
19 for being here and sharing your thoughts
20 with us this afternoon.
21 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Charles
22 Parrocki, manager, Early Childhood Strategic
23 Group.
24 MR. PARROCKI: Good afternoon. Thank
25 you for the opportunity to testify today. I
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2 want to address the link between early
3 education and school governance reform. The
4 Early Childhood Strategic Group is a
5 partnership of 20 organizations committed to
6 creating a strong early education system in
7 New York City. The base of this system is
8 the universal pre-kindergarten program.
9 Either as it is provided in public schools
10 or in community-based organizations, where
11 it is often linked to other programs like
12 Head Start, child care or special education,
13 to provide full-day services to children.
14 These early education programs are
15 the foundation tier of public education.
16 The contribution they make to the school
17 system is that they ensure that children
18 receive the basket of learning skills, the
19 cognitive, sensory, motor and social
20 emotional skills needed by children to
21 succeed in school and life.
22 These skills are best learned as the
23 brain is developing. 75 percent of the
24 brain is developed by age five. In New York
25 City, the delivery of early education
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2 programs depends upon a diverse delivery
3 system, including the Department of Health,
4 the Agency for Child Development, Head
5 Start, the State Education Department,
6 parochial schools, over 600 community-based
7 organizations, and this team provides
8 universal pre-K to 44,000 children, four
9 year olds.
10 Universal pre-K in New York City is
11 one the greatest education success stories
12 in the country. Yet while it is
13 administered by the Department of Education,
14 it depends for its implementation upon the
15 collaboration of all these other
16 stakeholders.
17 In the reform of school governance,
18 we therefore request that the task force
19 look closely at the process that has
20 developed with universal pre-K to create a
21 strong, early education foundation for our
22 children.
23 We interviewed over 7,500 parents as
24 to what they thought about the universal
25 pre-K program. 98 percent of the parents
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2 interviewed that had children in universal
3 pre-K said that they strongly supported the
4 program. That they felt welcomed in the
5 programs. That they would recommend this
6 program to other parents.
7 These early education programs
8 provide the classrooms in which children,
9 parents, schools and community members come
10 together each day to ensure the educational
11 success of our children. The reason that
12 universal pre-K has been such a success is
13 because these partnerships have been built,
14 and they've been built at local school
15 district level. For community-based
16 organizations, it is here that the early
17 education strategies are made by these
18 partners. Contracts are signed. Budgets
19 are determined. Professional development
20 strategies shared. Transition strategies
21 for the children moving from community-based
22 settings to the big schools. The decisions
23 are made here.
24 It is also at this level in these
25 programs that parental involvement is the
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2 greatest. In considering parent involvement
3 in school governance, here is the place to
4 begin, the working relationship with
5 parents. It is also very important that the
6 local voices of city agencies, universal
7 pre-K advisory board and other relevant
8 CBOs, especially those that provide
9 universal pre-K services, continue to have a
10 partnership relationship with the new
11 governance structure at the local level.
12 We therefore request that the task
13 force ensure that the new structure be aware
14 of and encourage representation from these
15 early education partners. Members of the
16 Early Childhood Strategic Group believe that
17 this is a vital issue that must be seriously
18 considered and a vital link that must be
19 made in considering a new local governance
20 structure.
21 We no longer live in a K through 12
22 reality. We live in a UPK through 12
23 reality. And herein lies the opportunity to
24 ensure that there is meaningful parental and
25 community participation in the community
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2 school district governance structure. Thank
3 you.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, thank you
5 very much, Mr. Parrocki. You and I have had
6 some interaction over the past number of
7 years, and certainly I can tell you that
8 this task force, the members of this task
9 force fully appreciate the value of early
10 childhood education, especially universal
11 pre-K, and to the extent that that falls
12 with our jurisdiction as we make
13 recommendations, you can be sure that that
14 appreciation for early childhood education
15 is felt very strongly here. So we thank you
16 for your testimony.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Robin Brown
18 has one question.
19 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Excuse me.
20 MS. BROWN: Just one comment. I
21 also would like to say thank you. Since we
22 worked on a number of different little
23 committees together, and the role that you
24 do and the work that you do, especially in
25 terms of finding monies to support universal
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2 pre-K, but one thing that sticks out and
3 comes to mind thinking about Super Start and
4 pre-K, can you just talk about how you go
5 about engaging parents in terms of
6 supporting the programs, in terms of
7 supporting the children and actually feeling
8 good, because when you do talk to the
9 parents, the first thing they will tell you,
10 in spite of everything else, even if it's a
11 school-based pre-K program, that they love
12 their pre-K program. Can you just expand on
13 how you get parents to participate and how
14 you get parents to interact with teachers
15 there?
16 MR. PARROCKI: Well, on an
17 advocacy level, we've tried to bring parents
18 together through parent organizations. This
19 hadn't been very successful because it's
20 only one year of school and parents are
21 concerned about the entire -- so what we
22 did is we actually joined forces with the
23 Alliance For Quality Education, in which
24 many parents and parent organizations are
25 involved to promote, you know, a reformed
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2 school system, an improved school system.
3 At the local level, programs, early
4 education programs are required to have
5 parent involvement in them. The parents
6 want to be involved. They don't want to let
7 their children just go into this big world
8 alone. So it's the place where the parents
9 and the schools, and you know, the advocates
10 meet, and in those sorts of situations,
11 we've held special events for parents.
12 We'll create art gallery shows of the
13 children's work and invite parents in and
14 then talk about some of the issues involved
15 in early education.
16 Also, the Department of Early
17 Childhood Development at the Board of Ed has
18 created a parent advisory universal pre-K
19 committee, so we also work with them.
20 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
21 very much for your hard work and your
22 effective work.
23 MR. PARROCKI: Thank you.
24 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
25 David Zweibel, executive vice president for
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2 Government and Public Affairs, Aqudath
3 Israel of America.
4 MR. ZWEIBEL: Thank you very much.
5 Good afternoon. Mr. Co-chairman, Madam
6 Co-Chairlady, and members of this
7 distinguished panel and task force. I'm
8 David Zweibel, I'm executive vice president
9 for Government and Public Affairs at Aqudath
10 Israel of America. We're a national
11 orthodox Jewish organization. And here in
12 the city, among our other tasks, we
13 represent the interests of the large network
14 of Jewish schools in -- actually around the
15 United States. Here in New York City alone
16 there are approximately 240 such schools
17 across the city educating over 75,000
18 children, and together with private and
19 non-public schools that are operated by
20 members of other faith groups and
21 non-sectarian and non-public schools, there
22 are altogether approximately 275,000
23 children of New York City who are educated
24 in these institutions. That represents more
25 than 20 percent of the entire school-aged
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2 population in this great city who are
3 educated in non-public schools, and if the
4 early childhood community seeks to have some
5 sort of input into the governance process in
6 education, and if they're a forgotten
7 community in this entire process, I wonder
8 about the non-public school community.
9 Non-public schools by definition are
10 not public schools, but nonetheless, there's
11 a great deal of interaction between the
12 non-public schools and public authorities.
13 That occurs at the level of the central
14 Department of Education, which administers
15 many of the federal, state and local
16 programs in which non-public schools
17 participate, and it also occurs at the
18 levels of the local school districts, which
19 administer other programs, special ed
20 programs, Immigrant education, pre-K
21 programs, which we just heard about those,
22 learning technology grants. These require
23 an ongoing interface between the non-public
24 school community and education officials at
25 the city and district levels.
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2 And because many of these issues
3 raise sensitive church, state concerns, that
4 interface is often quite complex and
5 delicate. From our perspective in the
6 non-public school community, the previous
7 school board structure, while it had many
8 problems, also had certain advantages. At
9 least school board members were ultimately
10 accountable to their local communities
11 through the democratic electoral process,
12 and that often proved helpful in ensuring
13 that there would be sensitivity to the
14 concerns of the non-public schools within
15 those districts as well.
16 With the elected school boards now on
17 their way out, though, nobody who has any
18 responsibility for the formulation of or
19 implementation of education policy, other
20 than the Mayor himself, will be directly
21 accountable to the broad public. And for
22 us, that represents a serious area of
23 concern. And the concern is compounded when
24 you look at the composition of the new 13
25 member city-wide Board of Education. I'm
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2 not sure what it's new title is. Under the
3 statute it was still called the Board of
4 Education.
5 The composition of that now includes
6 five representatives who are appointed by
7 the borough presidents around the city, and
8 each those representatives has to be a
9 parent. A parent in a public school by
10 virtue of the statute. There is no
11 representation whatsoever reserved for
12 anybody from the non-public school community
13 on this board. And so that tends to stack
14 this board with interests that may not be
15 sensitive to the concerns of the non-public
16 school community.
17 So I think there are two concrete
18 steps that you might want to consider in how
19 best to ensure that a quarter of a million
20 children in this city will have their
21 interests represented somehow and
22 articulated in the new governance process
23 that is being created.
24 First at the local school district
25 level. Mayor Bloomberg spoke yesterday
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2 about the importance of creating parent
3 advisory councils, and any such plan ought
4 to include that non-public school parents
5 will also be included on these councils.
6 It ought not be reserved exclusively
7 for parents of children in public schools.
8 To ensure adequate representation, we would
9 suggest that a set number of seats on these
10 councils be reserved for non-public school
11 parents to reflect the percentage of
12 non-public school children in each district.
13 We think that non-public school seats
14 should be apportioned to ensure that each of
15 the major groups that have non-public
16 schools, whether they be of religious faith
17 groups or of non-secretarian groups, be
18 adequately represented.
19 The same concept ought to apply at
20 the central Board of Ed level. We think the
21 legislature ought to go back to the drawing
22 board and in creating a central Board of
23 Education, recommend that the law be amended
24 to require appropriate non-public school
25 representation on the central board. We
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2 ought not be frozen out of this process.
3 One final note, the Mayor's new plan
4 would consolidate the school districts. It
5 would be consolidation and centralization,
6 and inevitably that is likely to have a
7 major impact on non-public schools across
8 the city.
9 It might further dilute the voices of
10 parents who choose non-public schools for
11 their children. We'll be speaking to the
12 Mayor and to the Chancellor about their plan
13 in the days and weeks ahead. For now we're
14 not prepared to comment on it one way or the
15 other, but one way or the other, we need to
16 be involved in some way in ensuring that the
17 voices of these parents are heard.
18 I thank you for considering our
19 views. A quarter of a million children
20 deserve a place at the educational table.
21 They deserve to be heard, and we surely
22 count on this task force to be our ally in
23 ensuring that those children's voices will
24 not be forgotten.
25 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Short question,
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2 Ms. Brown.
3 MS. BROWN: I just need to be
4 clear. How does this disenfranchise the
5 voice of non-public school parents and what
6 exactly or what services do you seek or do
7 you obtain through the Board of Ed? I just
8 need to be clear on that.
9 MR. ZWEIBEL: Let me respond to the
10 second question first. Through the central
11 Board of Ed, there are a number of programs
12 which are -- whether they be federal
13 programs or state programs, that are
14 administered, and children in non-public
15 schools are entitled to those services. For
16 example, the Title One program which is the
17 remedial education program funded by the
18 federal government. A number of programs
19 that the state legislature through the good
20 work of your co-chairman, which ensure that
21 there is equitable participation by children
22 in non-public schools, whether they be the
23 textbook program or the software program or
24 the library program or whether we speak
25 about transportation services, which are
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2 available to children in non-public schools
3 on an equitable basis.
4 All of those are administered at the
5 central board level. At the local school
6 district level, you have a number of other
7 programs. Children who require special ed
8 services and are enrolled in non-public
9 schools are entitled to certain services
10 that are administered ultimately at the
11 local school district level.
12 There's the pre-K program, the
13 universal pre-K program that we spoke about
14 earlier, Immigrant services. So both at the
15 local level and at the central level, there
16 are many, many programs that are designed by
17 law to ensure equitable participation by
18 children who are enrolled in non-public
19 school.
20 In fact, I would say that there are,
21 you know, in the quarter of million children
22 that I spoke of earlier who are enrolled in
23 the city's non-public schools, many of them
24 do benefit one way or another through
25 services that are coordinated and
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2 administered by both the central and local
3 school districts. So there's a lot of
4 interface in that regard.
5 And number two, as far as your first
6 question is concerned, you know, the issue
7 of how would we be disenfranchised by this,
8 and when you use the word "this," I assume
9 you're referring to the cutting out of the
10 local school boards. Again, my point simply
11 there was, as long as we have electoral
12 accountability to the community, every
13 member of the community has an opportunity
14 to vote for a school board member. That
15 gave us an opportunity to speak to
16 candidates for the school boards and say,
17 here are the issues that affect the
18 non-public schools in your district, and we
19 want you to take account of them, otherwise
20 we won't give our vote and --
21 MS. BROWN: But again, just
22 thinking about this, people choose to send
23 their children to non-public schools, and
24 then what would necessarily stop parents who
25 send their children to non-public schools
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2 from perhaps lobbying the State Assembly or
3 lobbying the State Senate or the City
4 Council for that matter for services for
5 children in non-public schools?
6 MR. ZWEIBEL: Indeed, we will. We
7 have. We will. And that's not on the table
8 now, the question of whether we can lobby
9 our legislative officials, but here we're
10 speaking about educational policy, which is
11 determined and implemented at the school
12 district level, at the central board level,
13 and that's not the legislative level, and
14 it's very important, as we have discovered
15 over the years, to have input into that
16 process, because from the place of
17 legislation to the point of implementation,
18 and even developing policy for that
19 implementation, is often a very distant
20 road, and we need to have that type of
21 ongoing input and interface with our school
22 board, school districts and Department of
23 Education at the city level.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
25 very much, Mr. Zweibel, Aqudath Israel of
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2 America and other organizations that speak
3 for the children who attend non-public
4 schools are very important. Your
5 characterization of the fact that there are
6 quarter of a million or more children who
7 attend non-public settings is a very
8 important point, and we certainly appreciate
9 your being here and representing the needs
10 of so many children who we all care about as
11 well. So thank you very much.
12 MR. ZWEIBEL: Thank you so much.
13 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Next is Gary
14 Popkin, a member of community school board
15 15, and he will be followed by public
16 advocate, the Honorable Betsy Gotbaum.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Before Mr.
18 Popkin testifies, if there is anyone in the
19 room who slipped through our very
20 sophisticated security and didn't sign up,
21 if you wish to testify, we just want to make
22 sure that we do hear from you, but in order
23 to hear from you, you need to make sure that
24 you signed a card at the front of the door.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Good
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2 afternoon.
3 MR. POPKIN: Hello. And thank you
4 very much for giving me this opportunity to
5 testify. I want to make it clear that I am
6 speaking as an individual. I'm a member of
7 community school board 15, but the school
8 board did not discuss the testimony that
9 we're going to present here. There is no
10 consensus on the district 15 board.
11 What I'm going to suggest is a
12 radical governance plan. My idea is why
13 institute a brand new, untested governance
14 plan that's right out of the head of the
15 Mayor and the Chancellor, which might take
16 many, many years to iron out, get all the
17 kinks out. Why not use a governance plan
18 that has shown that it works fabulously
19 well, for many hundreds of years, maybe
20 thousands of years, that it works very well
21 for almost all children.
22 The Department of Education now
23 collects around 12 billion dollars a year
24 from the taxpayer to service about one
25 million New York City school children to the
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2 tune of $12,000 per child. And what if the
3 taxpayer said, "Why do we need all this
4 aggravation regarding public education? Why
5 don't we just give each child $12,000 and
6 say go to private school?"
7 Now this situation is not unique to
8 New York City. The United States now spends
9 so much money on public education, that
10 every child in the country could, for that
11 price, attend any, but the most expensive,
12 private school. What would the world look
13 like if we just gave to each child the money
14 that the taxpayer already spends on them?
15 Well, suddenly, many hundreds of former
16 public school buildings would be empty.
17 Hundreds of new private schools would have
18 to spring up to meet the new demand. They
19 could rent the newly emptied buildings from
20 the city for $1 for year.
21 There would be thousands of new job
22 openings for principals, assistant
23 principals and other administrators, and 10s
24 of thousands of new job openings for
25 teachers. The best teachers would command
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2 premium salaries, as schools competed for
3 them. And the worst teachers might be out,
4 and the average quality of the New York City
5 teacher core would be improved.
6 Parents would be hugely better off,
7 as they could now just select the school
8 that best suited them and their children. A
9 school that emphasized academics or music or
10 art or creative writing or sports or a
11 nurturing school instead of a competitive
12 one, and no longer had to endure endless
13 arguments with other parents at PTA
14 meetings. Ultimately fruitless arguments
15 ignored by unresponsive and frustrated
16 school administrators, unable to satisfy all
17 parents at once.
18 The only people worse off would be
19 the thousands of former paper pushers at the
20 central Board of Education who would now
21 have to find productive jobs and contribute
22 to the economy of New York City, instead of
23 being a drag on it. To paraphrase Thomas
24 Jefferson, "That governance is best that is
25 no governance at all."
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2 So to sum up, I suggest that we use
3 largely the same faculty and staff we have
4 now, in the same buildings we have now,
5 funded by the public. So this is true
6 public education, but that we adopt the
7 private school governance model in it
8 entirety. A model that is now serving a
9 quarter of a million New York City school
10 children fabulously well.
11 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well,
12 Mr. Popkin, you've given us a different
13 slant on things here. And I guess your
14 proposal can be summed up as capitalism.
15 What a revolutionary thought. But the only
16 problem that I have, in all candor and
17 seriousness, is that the mission and the
18 mandate of this task force only extends to
19 recreating school boards, not recreating the
20 funding structure and recreating basically
21 the premise of the delivery of the education
22 service.
23 So I don't wish to argue the merits
24 one way or the other of your proposal. I
25 think it is breath-taking in its simplicity.
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2 Unfortunately, it's something that this body
3 does not have the latitude or the mandate to
4 consider. Our mandate is to restructure and
5 recreate the community representation of the
6 school boards. So I think your proposal
7 will probably have to wait for another
8 hearing on a slightly different subject, but
9 notwithstanding that, we certainly
10 appreciate your strong views here.
11 MR. POPKIN: And I certainly hope
12 that the esteemed members of the state
13 legislature will take -- put this idea in
14 the backs of their heads, outside of the
15 task force. Outside of the mandate of the
16 task force.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I think if
18 Mr. Zweibel hasn't left yet, the two of you
19 might want to talk before the day's over.
20 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you for
21 your service on community school board 15.
22 MR. POPKIN: Thank you. The
23 Honorable Betty Gotbaum.
24 MS. GOTBAUM: Good afternoon. How
25 are you all? Nice to see you. Many of my
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2 friends up there. And you have done a noble
3 job, and I want to thank you all for
4 allowing me to speak. Assemblyman Sanders,
5 first of all, for your kind offer to allow
6 me to make a presentation, and I'd like to
7 say very quickly that sometimes it seems
8 that everyone has a voice in our schools
9 perhaps except the parents. And I think
10 that it's probably been said 100 times that
11 who knows better if the schools are serving
12 children well but parents. And I think it's
13 true and I think it's probably the most
14 difficult thing to try to figure out how to
15 get parent involvement, and from every
16 expert I ever talked to, it's probably the
17 most difficult thing.
18 But today I wanted to talk a little
19 bit about how we could replace the community
20 school boards. As you well know, the Mayor
21 has asked to do away the community school
22 boards, because he felt they were not
23 serving the schools, parents or children,
24 and I think there's a lot to be said for
25 this view.
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2 I applaud the work of Mayor Bloomberg
3 and Chancellor Klein and what they have done
4 so far at the Department of Education, and I
5 certainly support the initiatives that were
6 outlined yesterday with a caveat in my own
7 head that this is going to be a very
8 difficult thing to implement, but I believe
9 all of us are here to try to help that and
10 to make it happen.
11 I think parental involvement -- going
12 back to my original statement -- is probably
13 the most difficult thing to accomplish, and
14 it is a very important aspect of any
15 replacement for the community school boards,
16 because they must be responsive to parental
17 concerns.
18 We also want this new system to be
19 extremely transparent so that parents really
20 understand decisions that are being made
21 about how their children learn. I've been a
22 teacher. I'm a parent. And I'm convinced
23 that the best advocate a child can have is
24 the parent.
25 Children with parents involved in
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2 schools are more likely to get good grades,
3 attend school regularly, behave well in
4 school, earn a diploma and go to college.
5 This means parental involvement
6 should be our number one priority. I know
7 that my friend Freddy Ferrer, the former
8 borough president of the Bronx, testified
9 before your task force that until now, many
10 schools lacked a support structure to
11 encourage parental involvement.
12 And yesterday the Mayor proposed a
13 parent coordinator and a parent engagement
14 board in each school. I found that plan
15 somewhat interesting. The City Council
16 proposal also made an intriguing suggestion
17 with local advisory panels made up mostly of
18 parents who were selected by Councilmembers
19 and borough presidents.
20 But I believe the legislature needs
21 to explore even more options. We must make
22 sure that district officials, principals and
23 teachers are trained in how to form
24 meaningful working relationships with
25 parents, and that they be held accountable
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2 for efforts to reach out to parents.
3 Along with classroom size, test
4 scores and attendance, success at parental
5 involvement should be an indicator taken
6 into account when judging how well a school
7 is doing.
8 The city needs structure outside the
9 sphere of the Department of Education to
10 watch over and to act as a watchdog over
11 schools on behalf of the parents. Both my
12 office, the public advocate's office and the
13 independent budget office, provide examples
14 of how such a watchdog organization could
15 work.
16 The Mayor's proposal so far keeps the
17 parental role under the control of the
18 Department of Education, but we need a
19 system of checks and balances, a parent
20 advocate independent of the Board of
21 Education. And in the same way that the
22 public advocate is independent of the Mayor
23 and members of the state legislature are
24 independent of the Governor.
25 Parents must have a place to go when
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2 the red tape of the system fails them.
3 Every day my office hears about problems
4 parents face as a result of the bureaucracy
5 of the school system. We often here that
6 the Department of Education or individual
7 schools do not try hard to explain their
8 decisions to many parents.
9 Recently a mother from Manhattan
10 called us. Her six year old son was sent
11 home from school a few weeks before the end
12 of the semester with a note saying he was in
13 the wrong school and should immediately
14 start attending a different school than the
15 one he was zoned for. No one explained to
16 her how this decision was made and why he
17 couldn't wait until the end of the term.
18 The problem solver of the
19 ombudswoman, actually, it was a woman in my
20 office, called the district. Persuaded the
21 superintendent that the child should stay in
22 school until the end of the semester, and
23 also that the mother deserved an explanation
24 of why the child had to change schools.
25 Parents like the mother of that six
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2 year old often feel helpless in the
3 bureaucracy of the system. For the last
4 several months, my office has been
5 collecting surveys, asking parents of their
6 children concerns.
7 From the availability of meals in
8 schools to the safety of kids in schools.
9 I've raised private money, private funds
10 through the Fund For Public Advocacy so that
11 we could public a guide for parents based on
12 the problems that we are hearing about.
13 Many of you probably know that the
14 Children's Advocacy Project has done a
15 fabulous guide on the web, but many parents
16 are not -- do not have access to the web.
17 So what we're doing is we're using all the
18 information that is already on the Web and
19 plus new information that we're gathering
20 from parents, and we're producing a guide,
21 not about what the Department of Education
22 thinks parents should know, but solutions to
23 problems that the parents are actually
24 struggling with. Solutions that they have
25 asked us about and solutions that we will be
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2 helping them to find out.
3 An independent parental advocate
4 organization should do more than just look
5 at individual complaints. Sometimes
6 parental complaints lead to uncovering large
7 problems in the whole system. Recently I
8 heard from some parents that their children
9 were being forced into GED programs, instead
10 of being allowed to earn high school
11 degrees.
12 We conducted an investigation that
13 shows that schools are pushing out many
14 struggling students to improve overall test
15 scores. Rather than be judged as failing,
16 sometimes schools get rid of students who
17 score poorly on tests. We have talked to
18 the Department of Education, and we want
19 them to improve schools. We want to make
20 sure that these struggling students don't
21 slip through the cracks.
22 Last week when the Department of
23 Education announced it was closing the High
24 School for Redirection in Brooklyn, we said
25 that's your prerogative, but we need to make
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2 sure that those kids in that school are
3 taken care of.
4 Someone has to look out for the
5 parents rights in the system. Many offices
6 of elected officials help parents with such
7 issues, but at the moment, there is no
8 single clearing house with the authority to
9 keep watch over issues of importance to
10 parents. Some parent groups have proposed a
11 parent advocate organization with a board of
12 trustees and public/private funding.
13 Perhaps the individual parent
14 representatives in schools could report to
15 the city-wide parents organization.
16 Now is our opportunity to make sure
17 that the new structure brings parental
18 involvement in schools to a higher level
19 than ever before.
20 I am grateful to the task force for
21 giving me the opportunity to express my
22 concerns and ideas. And I would welcome the
23 opportunity to help in this endeavor with
24 parental involvement.
25 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, we thank
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2 you so much, Madam Public Advocate Betsy
3 Gotbaum, for being here. I think there may
4 be a question or two before we say good-bye.
5 Assemblyman Rivera.
6 MR. RIVERA: Good afternoon,
7 Ms. Gotbaum. How are you?
8 MS. GOTBAUM: Assemblyman Rivera,
9 how are you?
10 MR. RIVERA: Good. You intimated
11 in your testimony that you favor an
12 ombudsman, a kind of ombudsman. Do you
13 think that this ombudsman would be
14 well-served working out of your office?
15 Would that be a recommendation that you
16 would make?
17 MS. GOTBAUM: Yes. I was trying
18 to be subtle about it, but Peter, you're too
19 smart. I failed entirely. Yes, I do. I
20 think that the structure of the offices
21 there, whoever's the public advocate, is
22 elected city-wide. I think the office is as
23 independent as it can be. I think it can be
24 -- this could even help it be a little more
25 independent, and I think that's exactly what
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2 you really need, is independent an office as
3 possible.
4 MR. RIVERA: What prevents you
5 from doing that right now?
6 MS. GOTBAUM: Well, we are doing
7 it right now.
8 MR. RIVERA: You issued a report
9 not to long ago, if I'm not mistaken.
10 MS. GOTBAUM: Yes. Several
11 reports. Yes, we are doing it right now.
12 As I said, I've raised quite a bit of
13 private money to do this guide for parents,
14 so the model is there. The not for profit
15 is there, and I would welcome the
16 opportunity to be able to -- to help you
17 all in some way with this effort.
18 MR. RIVERA: Do you think you need
19 legislation to be able to do this?
20 MS. GOTBAUM: I think so.
21 MR. RIVERA: In what sense? Would
22 that be City Council legislation, not state
23 legislation, right?
24 MS. GOTBAUM: I think -- isn't
25 the state going to decide how the community
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2 school boards will be replaced and wouldn't
3 this be a part of that?
4 MR. RIVERA: Do we have the
5 authority to direct the public advocate in
6 legislation?
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Sure.
8 MS. GOTBAUM: That would be very
9 helpful.
10 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: There are
11 actually some cities that have a formal
12 ombudsman for education, and we could
13 probably do a little research on some of
14 those models.
15 MS. GOTBAUM: Terri, one of the
16 things we had looked into was that this
17 would require some more work on exactly --
18 when you say look at other systems, find
19 other ways, I would commit to raising
20 private money to do that. To try to put
21 that altogether. Using advocates and people
22 who know a lot about those other systems.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Kee.
24 MS. KEE: It sounds very
25 interesting. Do you see that you have
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2 enough staff as it is or does it require
3 more funding if you were to take this on as
4 your office?
5 MS. GOTBAUM: I think that has to
6 be studied in this sort of period of looking
7 at what is absolutely the best way to do it.
8 No, we don't have enough staff, although we
9 are trying very hard to bring in more staff
10 with my Fund For Public Advocacy, and this
11 is not a guise to get more staff. I think
12 the structure exists there, and whatever
13 would be the best way to conduct this would
14 be something that we -- I would welcome to
15 look into, to help you look into.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Brown.
17 MS. BROWN: Just thinking in terms
18 of an ombudsperson for parents and just
19 going back to the scenario that you
20 mentioned with the parent with the six year
21 old and the school telling the parent that
22 she would need to find another placement for
23 this child, what type of authority do you
24 feel this person would need in terms of
25 making decisions, or making decisions that
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2 are binding? Case in point, if the parent
3 wanted her child to finish the year at this
4 particular school, how would that work in
5 terms of the final decision or having a
6 binding decision or having the authority to
7 override the decision that was made at that
8 school level?
9 MS. GOTBAUM: Well, it's an
10 interesting question, because, you know,
11 when you act as an ombudsperson, woman, man
12 in any system, you know, you wonder what
13 clout do you have to get it done. I found
14 in the year that I've been doing it, that
15 sometimes it's just a question of letting
16 someone know that a mistake has been made
17 and it's corrected very, very quickly.
18 In fact, I've had tremendous success
19 in a lot of these individual problems just
20 getting things done, just because people
21 didn't know. I mean, the woman didn't know
22 she had rights, and the school -- actually,
23 in fact, the superintendent didn't
24 understand what had been going on.
25 The actual clout of the office, that
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2 would probably have to come from what the
3 legislature decides it wants to give the
4 ombuds function.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, Betsy, if
6 you don't mind, I'll call you Betsy, we all
7 feel very close to you on this task force.
8 I think you know almost all of us on a some
9 kind of an individual basis. I know that
10 every member of this task force joins me in
11 congratulating you on the work you've done
12 in just one year as being public advocate.
13 The guide you published, incidentally, I
14 think was an enormous resource, particularly
15 for parents and other community members. It
16 was really a first of its kind, and I think
17 that is precisely the kind of information
18 that we have been hearing from literally
19 hundreds of people that they feel at a
20 minimum is needed. Information to help the
21 ordinary person navigate their way through a
22 very complex educational system. So we
23 thank you for that.
24 We thank you for all of the hard work
25 that you do for the City of New York. I
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2 think we all know that when you recommend
3 that the Office of Public Advocate can take
4 on this responsibility, you're talking in a
5 structural sense, that this would be
6 appropriate for the Office of the Public
7 Advocate, and I think it is certainly
8 something for this task force to consider as
9 we try to grapple with what functions are
10 best placed under what parts of the system
11 in the City of New York.
12 But certainly, we all want to thank
13 you so much for being here. Sharing your
14 time and your thoughts with us, and the very
15 effective work you've done as a public
16 advocate for all of the public.
17 MS. GOTBAUM: Thank you.
18 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Can I just
19 add, a special thank you for the work you've
20 done in the last year on behalf of the
21 children, specifically on school
22 construction and the high school push out,
23 whatever it was called, that study, which is
24 so interesting and thought provoking.
25 MS. GOTBAUM: Thank you very much.
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2 I appreciate your comments.
3 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
4 Margaret Kelly, president of community
5 school board 15 in Brooklyn. Is Margaret
6 Kelly here? Perhaps she took a break. Her
7 testimony's here. She filled out a card.
8 We'll try her again in a few minutes, in
9 case she stepped out. Our next speaker is
10 Barbara Smith-Boyd, member of community
11 board 13 in Brooklyn.
12 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Excuse me, I just
13 have a quick question. For those of us who
14 can't be here the entire day and evening,
15 will the testimony of the various
16 participants be published?
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Absolutely.
18 AUDIENCE MEMBER: How might do we
19 access that?
20 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Good question.
21 Steve, do you know the answer to that?
22 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Very good
23 question. The testimony is being
24 transcribed, so there are literally going to
25 be several thousands of pages of testimony
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2 from the five hearings. It is being put
3 together now. At some point in the next two
4 or three weeks, that will be available, but
5 obviously, because of the fact that it will
6 be literally thousands of pages, we will not
7 be able to mail it out to people. We will
8 certainly, if anyone wishes to perhaps,
9 because my office is the easiest one to
10 find, if you remember my name Assemblyman
11 Steve Sanders, and you call our office in a
12 couple of weeks, we will certainly let you
13 know how you can see that testimony.
14 As I say, because it will literally
15 be thousands and thousands of pages, we'll
16 not be able to reproduce it in any mass way,
17 but we will certainly make arrangements for
18 people to be able to review it or see it
19 perhaps in my office as best we can.
20 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: And Steve,
21 perhaps we should explore whether we can put
22 it up on the Web and link it to both the
23 Senate and the Assembly. That would
24 probably be the most efficient way to get it
25 out. So we'll check on that.
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2 AUDIENCE MEMBER: And if it could
3 be indexed.
4 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Indexed. Good
5 suggestion. Especially there are five
6 hearings and they're not listed.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We will do our
8 best to make it as user friendly as we
9 possibly can, given the voluminous nature of
10 it all.
11 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Good
12 afternoon.
13 MS. SMITH-BOYD: Good afternoon. My
14 name is Barbara Smith-Boyd. I'm a Brooklyn
15 resident and currently a member of community
16 school board 13. I'm also a former New York
17 City public school teacher who taught in
18 schools located in the Bedford Stuyvesant
19 community, and I am presently the owner of a
20 small business located in Ft. Green
21 neighborhood of Brooklyn.
22 I appreciate having this opportunity
23 to share with you some of my recommendations
24 which I believe would positively affect the
25 delivery of educational services to children
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2 in my community. The students who attend
3 schools in large urban communities like
4 school district 13 are some of the city's
5 most creative and resilient learners. In
6 spite of the myriad of problems plaguing
7 urban schools, there are students who learn
8 well enough to move from K to 12, attend a
9 four-year college and enter the world of
10 work.
11 This was the path and the outcome for
12 my son who received all of his primary and
13 secondary education in school district 13 in
14 the 1980s and early 1990s. There were many
15 challenges as there were 30 years before
16 when I attended Bedford Stuyvesant public
17 schools. What made the difference for my
18 son and for myself is that we both had
19 parents who believed in community
20 involvement in the governance of our public
21 educational facilities.
22 My recommendations for improving the
23 delivery of educational services to our
24 children in New York City public schools are
25 based on the belief that a community that is
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2 actively and equally involved in the
3 delivery of these services to its schools,
4 will benefit from maintaining high and
5 achievable standards for all children.
6 This requires the following: One,
7 restructuring PAs, PTAs, PTCAs, giving them
8 an equal role in the operational structure
9 of the community school. Two, redesigning
10 community schools so that the schools are
11 available to the community, if necessary, 24
12 hours a day, seven days a week. Three,
13 establishing community education councils.
14 Using the boundaries of the Councilmatic
15 districts with authority to ensure the
16 delivery of quality educational services to
17 their neighborhood schools.
18 I listened to the Mayor speak about
19 his new initiatives for our schools, and I
20 was pleased to learn that he had heard what
21 had been said by education activists for
22 more than 35 years. The bureaucracy of 110
23 Livingston Street needed to be eliminated.
24 Nonetheless, there are many gaps in
25 the new organization that he is proposing
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2 for the Tweed Building, and this operation
3 needs to be monitored by the community.
4 And I just want to preface this, I
5 did not steal this from Betsy Gotbaum.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: And we didn't
7 schedule you next to each other with this in
8 mind. People will understand when you read
9 your next paragraph.
10 MS. SMITH-BOYD: My final
11 recommendation is the establishment of an
12 elected office known as the public advocate
13 for education, with authority to monitor the
14 money trail from Albany to the local
15 community schools. Wasteful spending in a
16 unified educational system can be just as
17 destructive for public schools as it was
18 under a centralized bureaucracy or
19 decentralized system.
20 An elected public advocate for
21 education can ensure that money coming in
22 from various sources, is directly invested
23 in our children so that truly there will be
24 no child left behind.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
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2 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
3 much. I can't help but you have just
4 tempted me too much. I have to ask you the
5 question, based on your thinking, would the
6 public advocate for education be appropriate
7 to be included in the office of public
8 advocate?
9 MS. SMITH-BOYD: Well, the way in
10 which Ms. Gotbaum has said that she's been
11 operating, it seems feasible, but I would
12 really like to see it independent of her
13 office. I would like to see it as a
14 separate office. I have the experience of
15 trying to put parents in contact with
16 someone who can really navigate for them.
17 Someone who can really speak on their
18 behalf, and it's usually someone who knows a
19 lot about education that's really helpful.
20 I'm not sure that that office does, but I
21 think someone that we would elect, should
22 have those skills.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Okay.
24 Ms. Brown.
25 MS. BROWN: I just have to say
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2 thank you to Ms. Smith-Boyd who has served
3 on community school district 13 school board
4 for four years, and my children actually
5 attend school in community school district
6 13, and between Ms. Boyd's shop -- I'm
7 being a commercial here -- on Dekalb
8 Avenue, she has definitely reached a lot
9 parents who may not necessary attend school
10 board meetings or PA meetings. Parents
11 actually stopped in to her shop to find out
12 what's going on and what's the latest trend
13 in education. So I would just like to say
14 thank you.
15 MS. SMITH-BOYD: Thank you,
16 Ms. Brown.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We all thank you
18 very much.
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Le Roi Gill,
20 executive director of Central Brooklyn
21 Churches. Good afternoon.
22 MR. GILL: Good afternoon, Madam
23 Chair and Mr. Chairman Sanders, and to the
24 members of the state task force. My name is
25 Le Roi Gill, and I'm the executive director
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2 of Central Brooklyn Churches. It is a
3 community organization of 25 churches in the
4 communities of Crown Heights, Bedford
5 Stuyvesant and Ft. Green.
6 And over the past three years,
7 Central Brooklyn Churches has been working
8 to build partnerships with schools in
9 district 13 and 16, to improve the quality
10 of public education. And from the
11 perspective of Central Brooklyn Churches,
12 significant change has been difficult to
13 achieve, we think on large part because of
14 the lack of local autonomy in the
15 decision-making process.
16 Since this task force has a duty of
17 recommending a governance structure to
18 replace community school boards, I wish to
19 make the following suggestions: State
20 legislature could take a very courageous
21 step and change the boundary lines of the
22 community districts to expand the number
23 from the current 32, to as many as 59, and
24 to make those boundary lines coterminous
25 with those of the planning boards.
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2 As the geography of planning boards
3 better reflects the public's sense of
4 community, and making the boundary lines
5 coterminous, we believe would increase both
6 access to school information, and create
7 better local efficiency in the delivery of
8 services.
9 Indeed, this view was undergirded in
10 the rationale behind the expansion of the
11 size of City Council from 35 members to 51.
12 We also believe that given the experience in
13 that process, a pre-clearance from the
14 Justice Department would conceivable be
15 easily obtained, because it would perhaps
16 increase the voting strength of minority
17 communities in the City of New York.
18 We wish to also recommend that the
19 school boards be replaced by what we call
20 community school councils. It's an entity
21 that would consist and be compromised of a
22 parent from each of the local district
23 school leadership teams. In addition, that
24 council would be represented by four members
25 of the local community.
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2 We think that when we've looked at
3 the June 2002 law, it invited this
4 commission to study the school structures in
5 Chicago and in Detroit, and this concept has
6 been in practice in those cities, and it has
7 been proven to at least to create some level
8 of greater accountability, particularly if
9 such an entity would have the authority to
10 hire and fire principals.
11 We think that we truly agree with the
12 comments that have been submitted earlier
13 this morning, that talked around a theme of
14 real power for parents to create a system of
15 accountability, and I think that if parents
16 and such an entity or council -- I heard
17 Jan Atwell talk about sort of a mid level
18 district level concept, that we would agree
19 with, but if it had the authority to hire
20 and fire principals, that would truly be in
21 the spirit of the greater accountability on
22 the local level and empowered parents in the
23 process.
24 So these recommendations we believe
25 would breath new life back into what was
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2 behind the 1969 decentralization law to make
3 local communities have real influence and
4 power of the school process. Thank you very
5 much.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
7 much, Mr. Gill. Well, we thank you very
8 much for that testimony. You should know,
9 sir, that one of the issues that has come up
10 in some of our meetings of the task force is
11 the question, at least perhaps the
12 possibility, of moving towards community
13 school districts that do reflect the
14 planning board lines. As you indicated,
15 they're smaller. They seem to reflect the
16 sense of what communities are today.
17 So I think that your idea is
18 certainly something that you can be certain
19 we will be talking about over the next few
20 weeks, and we appreciate you giving us your
21 thoughts and your elaboration on it. Thank
22 you, sir.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
24 Brenda Cyrus, an organizer for Central
25 Brooklyn Churches. Good afternoon.
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2 MS. CYRUS: Good afternoon, task
3 force. Good afternoon audience. My name is
4 Brenda Cyrus. I have four sons. I am a
5 member of the executive board of the PTA at
6 my son's junior high school in East New
7 York, Brooklyn. I am also a member of the
8 school leadership team.
9 I am here today in my role as a
10 member of the Bed Stuy parent union of
11 Central Brooklyn Churches, which is a member
12 of the parent organization consumption. My
13 remarks will focus on the needs to reform
14 school leadership teams.
15 As a participating parent on the
16 school leadership team, I observe that the
17 principals exert tremendous influence and
18 control over the teams. On many occasions,
19 parents involvement is weak because they
20 don't know the right questions to ask or
21 they haven't received any training.
22 From my discussions with parents in
23 Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, many have complained
24 that the meetings for the school leadership
25 teams don't begin until late as of November.
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2 At that point, a significant portion of the
3 school year has already been wasted.
4 To address problems, the Bed Stuy
5 parent union recommends the following: All
6 members of the school leadership team must
7 be required to attend two full day training
8 sessions. Such training must be performed
9 by an outside standing institution that will
10 teach parents the skills on conducting
11 effective meetings and methods of holding
12 public officials accountable. Two, to
13 ensure that there is meaningful parent
14 involvement that carries with it real power.
15 The school leadership team must be given the
16 authority to hire and fire principals.
17 Principals in local schools should be
18 accountable to local communities, rather
19 than a distant and removed Mayor.
20 This reform measure is being done in
21 Detroit and in Chicago and it has been
22 proven to be very effective.
23 Three, finally, school leadership
24 teams should complete their selection of
25 members by June and schedule and complete
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2 training by August of each year. This step
3 is important so that when the school doors
4 open in September, the school leadership
5 team will be really ready to begin to meet,
6 rather than scramble to find members to join
7 the teams, as is the practice to many
8 schools today.
9 Given the Mayor's recent actions to
10 centralize most of the power within the
11 school system, it is critically important to
12 expand the power of school leadership teams,
13 so that we have a real democracy and check
14 and balance on the Mayor. Thank you.
15 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, thank you
17 very much, Ms. Cyrus. Let me just see if we
18 have a question. Yes. Mr. Ernest Clayton.
19 MS. CLAYTON: Ms. Cyrus, how you
20 doing? Thank you for your testimony. I
21 just wanted to assure you that the United
22 Parents Association, along with the Urban
23 League, you know, we're very interested in
24 the school leadership team, because we know
25 the significance of professional development
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2 for parents, because parents do want to get
3 involved, but if you don't have the tools or
4 the equipment, you cannot do the job.
5 So I want to assure you, because you
6 haven't been the first one to come up here
7 and mention that there needs to be training
8 and there needs to be more input and clout
9 by the school leadership teams, that this
10 task force is committed to, along with our
11 call, to come up with an alternative
12 recommendation for the community school
13 boards, we're also going to be looking at
14 ways to strengthen school leadership teams.
15 There's no doubt about that, and to try to
16 see if we can come up with a way that even
17 resources can be earmarked for parents to
18 get professional development.
19 MS. CYRUS: Thank you.
20 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We want to thank
21 you very much, Ms. Cyrus, for being here and
22 for the work that you have done and continue
23 to do on behalf of the Central Brooklyn
24 Churches, and so many, many thousands of
25 persons who rely on your organization for
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2 spiritual and civic guidance. We thank you
3 very much.
4 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Has Margaret
5 Kelly returned? If not, we have her
6 testimony, and we'll incorporate it into the
7 file.
8 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Let me just ask
9 at this moment, is there anyone in the room
10 who has filled out a card to testify this
11 afternoon who we have not called? Let me
12 say this, because of the size of our
13 pre-registration, we had indicated that if
14 there were more people who wanted to testify
15 today than who had signed up, we will be
16 unable to do that, and if we had time later
17 this evening, because we have over 100
18 people to hear from. You had signed a card,
19 ma'am?
20 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. One of my
21 board members signed up. Unfortunately he
22 was unable to make it, but I signed up.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Who was that you
24 were going --
25 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Lloyd Roberts.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: That's the
3 evening session. And how about you, sir,
4 behind over by the wall there, did you sign
5 up for testimony as well?
6 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, I did.
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: You filled out
8 a card?
9 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, I did.
10 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We're just going
11 to pause for a moment. Just relax for a
12 moment. Let me just explain how we will
13 proceed. We do have a little bit of time.
14 There are individuals who had signed up
15 several weeks ago who are either not
16 choosing to attend or have not arrived yet.
17 So we do have a little bit of time right
18 now, and we will call several additional
19 people who indicated that they wanted to
20 testify.
21 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: First, Sharon
22 Shapiro Lacks. Deputy director, Center for
23 Independence of the Disabled in New York.
24 MS. SHAPIRO LACKS: We will be
25 submitting formal and more extensive
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2 testimony. That's why we didn't sign up to
3 speak today, but I do feel compelled to kind
4 of bookmark other concerns so that when you
5 do get the testimony, you'll have a face to
6 refer back to.
7 The new continuum has yet to be
8 implemented in New York City. The new
9 continuum says that each and every child is
10 entitled to the support services that they
11 need to make their education worth while and
12 their transition into the community
13 effective.
14 In the Mayor's proposal, we see no
15 inclusion of parents of students with
16 disabilities, whether they be a parent like
17 mine or not a parent like children with
18 learning disabilities. At each level there
19 should be a parent representative of someone
20 who has to work with these special services
21 so that our needs are known by all parents
22 and in all the governance.
23 So we hope that this panel, please,
24 take this into consideration, and we will be
25 developing testimony around this point.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
3 much. I don't know if you were here earlier
4 when the Chancellor testified, but a number
5 of us here on the task force did express
6 concern to him about district 75 and the
7 role of parents in governance, parents of
8 children with special needs.
9 MS. SHAPIRO LACKS: Not only
10 district 75, but the superintendency, where
11 they have transition coordinators. We are
12 very concerned about those positions and
13 that service. Thank you.
14 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
15 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, we thank
16 you very much. We have to acknowledge that
17 your testimony is especially difficult. You
18 have made an even extra effort to be here
19 with us today. We appreciate it very much.
20 MS. SHAPIRO LACKS: I know I'm
21 only traveling to Manhattan, so this was
22 easy.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, it may
24 have been easy for you. It would have been
25 tough for me. Thank you very much.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Carmen Colon,
3 parent.
4 MS. COLON: Good afternoon. I must
5 say I had no intention of speaking today.
6 I'm very new at this and I felt extremely
7 compelled, simply because of everything that
8 I have heard that I thought that maybe if
9 parents heard my situation and felt that
10 they felt the same way, at least they would
11 feel somewhat represented.
12 I'll be very quick. Now who I am and
13 what my nationality is should be of no
14 consequence. I'm merely a parent of three
15 young boys living in New York City. Now my
16 sons are what I consider my greatest
17 accomplishments. Their ages run the gamut
18 and I have had a taste what it is like
19 nowadays to have a child in elementary
20 school, middle school and high school.
21 Being a product of the school system
22 myself, I can safely say things have
23 changed. There is no need to list the
24 changes, as there is enough testimony and
25 proof to show that children are no longer
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2 being taught and provided for in the same
3 manner that we were 30 years ago.
4 There are more children now,
5 different cultures to consider, and
6 different methods of teaching. There's been
7 one thing that I have found to be
8 consistent, there's a lack of respect for
9 difference. In every level of governance
10 from the PTA at the local school level and
11 all the way up to the Chancellor's Advisory
12 Council, I have seen a lack of respect for
13 people.
14 I feel that no matter what changes
15 are made to pacify the masses and the powers
16 that be, they will not make a dent in the
17 underlying problem. People are simply not
18 being taught to respect one another.
19 Without respect, there is no trust and
20 without no trust, there is no fellowship.
21 No sense of community or no belonging.
22 Because any system can be put in
23 place and expected to work, there must be a
24 set of players willing to commit to the
25 roles that they have been appointed, elected
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2 or hired into. They must be taught to
3 respect and work with one another and
4 training is always been a key towards
5 acquiring a successful team.
6 Ask me about community school boards
7 and I will tell you that my experiences have
8 not been positive. Upon being elected to
9 the position of PTA president, it was
10 several of the community school boards
11 members who now currently serve as executive
12 board members in my district, who chose to
13 do whatever they could to have the election
14 overturned, all very simply without knowing
15 me or having met me or worked with me.
16 They knew my opponent, and that
17 appeared to have been enough for them.
18 Forget that the large election was the
19 largest in many years that the school has
20 had. Forget that my name is so common, that
21 there were two other parents in my school
22 with the same name. Forget the fact that I
23 had the majority of the votes.
24 I really was amazed when a community
25 school board member, who is also a parent in
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2 my school, chose to publicly endorse my
3 opponent in e-mails to all of the parents,
4 as well as in the New York Times, days prior
5 to our election.
6 And did I mention that the previous
7 PTA president whom I ran against, enjoyed
8 flaunting her personal relationship with the
9 superintendent and the community school
10 board to those that questioned her
11 authority.
12 You see, where I come from, having a
13 degree and good friends in high places are a
14 prerequisite for serving on a PTA. Goodness
15 forbid if you have an accent and receive
16 Section 8.
17 Ask me about President's Council in
18 my district, and as my district's
19 co-president, I can tell you we haven't any
20 power. We are in a district where the
21 superintendent finds parents to be a
22 hinderance. We've had but one meeting all
23 year so far, a meeting that the
24 superintendent ran. We made attempts to
25 hold the meeting away from the District
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2 Office, to train our parents, and two days
3 prior to that meeting we were bumped.
4 Yet, you see when the superintendent
5 staff meet me, because she continues to find
6 a reason not to, I'm told to beware, because
7 she's the Chancellor's darling, a favorite
8 among the new chiefs. To ask for
9 accountability on the part of the
10 superintendent would be signing a death
11 warrant for my new career as a parent
12 representative.
13 I want to just pull away from it,
14 because what I understood when I ran for PTA
15 president, what I understood when I ran for
16 co-president of President's Council, is that
17 I was going to be a representative of the
18 parents, not their leader, a representative.
19 So I took those posts seriously, and
20 I figured, using some common sense, is to
21 take everything that they told me, sat down
22 and have conversations, and get an idea of
23 what would be needed that would try and help
24 the majority.
25 I can't even do that. I haven't been
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2 able to go past phase one. So I have been
3 an ineffective representative in my
4 district, and I feel that. I feel that
5 burden. I do not want you to think that
6 it's nothing but horror stories. You see, I
7 feel it is not a personal attack on me, but
8 what I represent. Unfortunately, what I
9 have experienced is more than norm here, and
10 I've had many positive connections with
11 people, as well as negative.
12 I have met people willing to give
13 everything they've got to get the job done.
14 There have been parents, teachers,
15 principals, district DOE staff members that
16 have made it their life's calling. What has
17 made this bearable is the respect that we've
18 shown one another, and the lingering hope
19 that one day, someone in a real position to
20 make a difference, will take the first step
21 to making things right.
22 I truly wish -- well, who I am and
23 what I am should be of no consequence, but
24 it is. I'm treated in different ways
25 because of it. What schools I've attended
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2 and what degrees I've received should be of
3 no consequence, but they are. How much I
4 make and where I live should be of no
5 consequence, but it seems to matter to
6 others.
7 These obstacles must be removed if
8 people are expected to work together, and
9 these are times where I'm tempted to list my
10 professional successes or the organizations
11 that I've worked alongside. The respect
12 that I've received by people in power, but
13 the only thing that holds my tongue is it's
14 not about me and it's not about them, it's
15 about the children.
16 People must stop worrying about their
17 places within these systems, old and new,
18 and they must focus on the needs of the
19 children. We must teach relationships first
20 before we can expect our children and
21 ourselves to interact with one another, and
22 they must become all of our greatest
23 accomplishments. Thank you.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Colon, we
25 thank you very much. We're very happy that
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2 you did decide to testify, and we're very
3 happy that the schedule worked out so that
4 we were able to hear you. We would have had
5 your testimony in any event, but the power
6 of your personal testimony was I think very
7 impressive for all of us.
8 MS. COLON: I appreciate the
9 opportunity.
10 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I was just
11 going to hope Robin would comment.
12 MS. BROWN: Carmen, I share your
13 pain. I've experienced that, but you know,
14 just hold the faith and just keep on pushing
15 it.
16 MS. COLON: If I may make one
17 comment, I am still very proud that I don't
18 know any of you. I mean, in a sense -- let
19 me say it another way. Let me explain what
20 I mean. The only person I happen to have
21 had any affiliation with --
22 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: You were doing
23 so well up to that point.
24 MS. COLON: And I will do so much
25 better. I want to explain something. None
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2 of you pay my rent. I don't owe any of you
3 any favors. We've never worked together.
4 So in that respect, I am proud to say that
5 my dedication is simply toward those parents
6 that look to me to represent them.
7 I mean, working with you guys in the
8 future, who knows. I may not even be here,
9 because once this is heard, they might not
10 vote me back in June, but the point is, it
11 should not matter who our friends are. What
12 communities or committees we've worked on.
13 So that's the only point I'm trying to bring
14 out.
15 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Before Robin
16 speaks, can I just say something? The
17 Chancellor this morning told us when we were
18 talking about parents feeling isolated, that
19 he gets e-mails every day and that he has
20 personnel intervening in some cases with
21 PTAs, and you know, overruled
22 superintendents. Could I suggest you send
23 him an e-mail?
24 MS. COLON: I have, and he's
25 responded, and I also respect the fact that
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2 he understands that it's not -- if it's a
3 personality issue, then we need training or
4 we need to sit down and work together. That
5 it's not a personal he said, she said sort
6 of thing. We need to learn how to work
7 together.
8 And it's the mind set. Sometimes the
9 mind set, you have to take them back for
10 training, that's all. If the individual,
11 the superintendent has a fabulous academic
12 record, and they chose those people, but
13 they have very poor people skills, then that
14 person needs to be retrained. And right
15 now, there's so many -- there's so much
16 power in their hands and there's so much
17 that is expected of them, that after a
18 while, it gets skewed.
19 In terms of parents and parent
20 organizations, I'm very new to this. But I
21 would really like to get rid of the
22 arrogance that comes across when I speak to
23 some other parents, because they feel that
24 they're privileged because of the degree
25 they hold or what neighborhood they live in.
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2 And there's a couple of things I'd like to
3 say, but that's not the point. It's not
4 about them. It's not about that. Thank
5 you.
6 MS. BROWN: Well, I'd like to
7 share your sentiments about respect. Not to
8 make this personal, but even within my own
9 daughter's school, even though they know
10 that Robin chairs the Chancellor's Parent
11 Advisory Council, that Robin is sitting as
12 part of this task force, I am still greeted
13 with that same level of disrespect.
14 I entered my daughter's school this
15 morning at 7:30 this morning. She was
16 involved in some sort of incident the prior
17 afternoon, and the first thing the principal
18 said to me -- and I purposely went there at
19 that hour because I knew there would be no
20 children in the building and no teachers in
21 the building -- and she politely said to me,
22 while she's having her coffee, "Make an
23 appointment and come back."
24 So just think about the level of
25 disrespect for parents, and that is as a
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2 parent quote/unquote leader, so you know
3 what parents are feeling that are not
4 involved in these type of organizations, you
5 know what they're feeling.
6 MS. COLON: I look forward to
7 sitting here until 11:59.
8 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
9 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
10 much.
11 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Rose Seabrook,
12 a member of community school board 5.
13 MS. SEABROOK: Good evening. I'd
14 just like to add that in addition to being a
15 member of community school board five in
16 Central Harlem, I'm also a parent and I'm
17 also very much involved with two groups that
18 were formed to work on specifically in terms
19 of this cause and what the task force is
20 doing.
21 This actually is an addendum to
22 testimony that I gave on December 10 in
23 Manhattan, and again, my recommendation was
24 that in the absence of community school
25 boards, that we create something in the
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2 order of the civilian complaint review board
3 or the office of professional medical
4 conduct.
5 I make these comments simply because
6 I do have a child who has already gone
7 through the public school system. My
8 daughter is currently a sophomore in high
9 school, and this whole process has been
10 almost like a second job for me. It is very
11 grueling, tiresome, cumbersome and
12 frustrating. And while we do have a new
13 day, I'm sorry, but I just cannot trust the
14 Mayor as he's asking us to do, and it would
15 be I think so much better if we had an
16 independent board in place that could
17 produce some form of adjudication for
18 parents. When we have complaints against
19 teachers, we go to the principals.
20 For me, it has just not been
21 effective. We go to superintendents when we
22 have a problem with the principals. It just
23 has not been effective, and I'll be brief
24 and give an example. By the time my son was
25 in sixth grade, he had been in five
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2 different public schools, and it's just
3 really horrible.
4 I could have gone through the same
5 thing with my daughter, but I knew that it
6 was just not going to be effective, so I
7 just sort of bore through it, but in any
8 event, I just simply want to say that it's
9 very, very important that we have a system
10 in place that is effective. That has teeth.
11 That can perform disciplinary measures and
12 be they maybe getting teachers the training
13 that they need. Maybe suspending their
14 licenses, revoking it, whatever. We really
15 do need to having have something in place,
16 other than the Mayor saying that in four
17 years we can vote him out.
18 On the last page I gave a comparison
19 analysis of the two bodies I just mentioned,
20 the civilian complaint review board, and
21 their purpose is very clear. Their
22 authority is clear. These are civilians
23 with the civilian complaint review board.
24 As of 1993, it's an all civilian board. It
25 is independent. The office of professional
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2 medical conduct on the other hand consists
3 of 200 people, both mixed, lay and
4 professional people. So I really think that
5 we do need something like this, and again,
6 the educators are professionals. They are
7 licensed, and they should be subject to the
8 same as any other licensed professionals.
9 And again, I'll just end with that.
10 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, we thank
11 you very much for joining us again today. I
12 remember you from our -- in fact, it was
13 our first hearing, and I think -- do we have
14 a question, Mr. Clayton?
15 MR. CLAYTON: Yes. How you doing,
16 Ms. Seabrook?
17 MS. SEABROOK: I'm well, thank
18 you.
19 MR. CLAYTON: I'm in district five,
20 so I have a real passion for district five,
21 and the Chancellor gave his speech there
22 yesterday -- not the Chancellor, the Mayor.
23 I'm sorry.
24 MS. SEABROOK: Can I just add that
25 it was not well publicized. I didn't know
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2 about it until it was actually happening,
3 and this is the kind of thing that we do
4 need to avoid.
5 MR. CLAYTON: Right. He pointed
6 out some data that we all know too well,
7 that over 80 percent of the district is
8 failing, and I just wanted to know, what can
9 we do in district five, because district
10 five has been a sore spot in our system for
11 quite a long time, and right now, as you
12 know, is undergoing a massive development, a
13 Renaissance if you will, a second
14 Renaissance, and a community is not worth
15 much if the school system in that community
16 is in shambles. It won't be long before
17 that community will fall.
18 So I mean, what can we do to get to
19 the parents, because United Parents
20 Association, we're in district five a lot,
21 because I'm from that district, and I try to
22 extend the organization to work closely with
23 the parents there. But you know, there
24 seems to be disconnect with the parents,
25 unless there's a crisis, you know, they
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2 won't come out. And you being on the school
3 board there, how can we engage them a little
4 better to get them to come out, because that
5 is a concern of ours?
6 MS. SEABROOK: Okay. I did say
7 that for me being an active parent, it's
8 been like a second job. I think that it
9 calls upon a lot in terms of parents, and I
10 think that's a question for the community.
11 I cannot answer that for the community, but
12 I answer for myself.
13 I know that it has really taken a lot
14 for me to make certain that my children get
15 educated, and I feel that I shouldn't have
16 to work that hard as a parent, and we have
17 professionals in place. There's enormous
18 professional development that continues to
19 go on, and I quite frankly don't understand
20 why I as a parent have to work as hard as I
21 do to make sure my child gets educated.
22 MR. CLAYTON: I understand, but I
23 got to tell you, being a parent is hard
24 work. I have six sons and if I didn't work
25 as hard as I did, I know exactly where
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2 they'd be.
3 MS. SEABROOK: Well, I'm not
4 talking about working hard as a parent, I'm
5 talking about in terms of getting our
6 children educated. There are people that
7 are getting paid salaries to do that, and
8 it's not happening. I mean, I've had my son
9 in Saturday academies, after-school
10 programs, and if I didn't do that, he would
11 have never have gone to Bronx High School of
12 Science. He would have never gotten full
13 scholarship to college, and I take
14 responsibility as a parent, but again, I
15 feel that it was an incredible job, and here
16 I am doing the same thing all over again.
17 And I only have two children. I can't
18 imagine doing that for six.
19 MR. CLAYTON: Thank you.
20 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, again, we
21 thank you very, very much for joining us
22 again, and your testimony, your personal
23 experiences, your recommendations are very
24 important to us. We thank you.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Ellen Raider.
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2 After Ms. Raider, we'll begin to call people
3 who had not signed up previously, but who
4 did fill out cards today. We have a number
5 of you here.
6 MS. RAIDER: Hi. How are you?
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you for
8 coming this afternoon.
9 MS. RADAR: You're welcome. My
10 name is Ellen Raider, and before I retired
11 -- you can see these gray hairs -- I was the
12 training director and co-founder of the
13 International Center for Cooperation &
14 Conflict Resolution at Teachers College,
15 Columbia University. Over the past 15 years
16 in that professional capacity, I was called
17 upon to intervene as trainer or mediator in
18 many adult disputes in the New York City
19 public school system. It is my professional
20 observation that the level of cooperation
21 within the New York system, as in other top
22 down bureaucracies, is currently
23 underdeveloped.
24 Trust is low. The new
25 administration's ability to succeed will
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2 depend in large part on their skills in
3 fostering cooperation and reestablishing
4 trust, a worthwhile but not an easy task.
5 And I commend the Freddy Ferrer report on
6 Drum Major, about how important
7 relationships need to be built with the
8 community one school at a time. Governance
9 alone will not do that.
10 So this a paradox. Research has
11 shown that seemingly intractable
12 conflicts -- and I call the school system
13 and its relationship with parents a
14 seemingly intractable conflict -- it doesn't
15 get solved, no matter what happens on top,
16 can be solved collaboratively, if all
17 stakeholders involved can sit at the table
18 as equal partners. A power analysis of our
19 educational systems shows clearly that
20 parents are not on a level playing field.
21 This lack of real power affects all parents,
22 but is most acutely felt in poor and working
23 class neighborhoods of color.
24 This proposal is about giving
25 parents, through their elected
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2 representatives, a real seat at the table by
3 writing into law a parent oversight and
4 advocate function with full staff resources
5 and teeth, so that they can then work
6 collaboratively with the other three
7 players, and what I mean by the other three
8 players is the Albany triad, and you know
9 who I mean, the Mayor and his appointed
10 Chancellor and the unions.
11 Those are the players. All of these
12 players have large operating budgets,
13 extensive paid staff, office space and
14 access to political power on a daily basis.
15 On the other hand, the parents are
16 overworked, the parent leadership is
17 composed of overworked volunteers, as our
18 last speaker clearly states.
19 The argument that parents have power
20 as the electorate every four years is
21 cynical at best and belies the reality faced
22 by parents as they try to get their voices
23 heard.
24 Understanding, respect and
25 cooperation cannot easily occur, if the
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2 parents do not have a meaningful role in the
3 review and oversight of policy, budgets and
4 the monitoring of results at all levels of
5 the system. New York City parents should
6 have the same oversight as parents do in
7 other communities in New York State.
8 Under our current system, we have one
9 way for parents to have a meaningful role.
10 It might be that we create an
11 independently -- if we create parent leaders
12 who are independently organized, trained,
13 supported and advocated for by a paid
14 experience staff, much like the staff that
15 supports and advocates for the local
16 community planning boards.
17 I would like to refer you to my Ross
18 Perot chart. I wish I had a little flip
19 chart to refer you to. My husband and I
20 have figured out a system. It's not the
21 only way that we can do this, but it is one
22 way of doing it.
23 And I will speak about it in a
24 second. The educational establishment, with
25 some exceptions, has not done a good enough
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2 job in making parents want to be part of the
3 system. This theme is repeated over and
4 over again, whenever parents are asked to
5 testify. I must say when I came here, I
6 heard it in the bathroom before I even came
7 to the testimony room.
8 The current parent engagement and
9 outreach staff member at each district
10 reports to the superintendent. This job
11 function has built in conflicts of interest.
12 The person who holds that job has to say, do
13 I work for the parents, or do I work for the
14 system? While I applaud the Mayor's
15 proposal to put such a job function within
16 each school, and evaluate principals on
17 their success with parent involvement, this
18 idea needs to go one step further. The
19 parents voice can be compromised if it's
20 dependent on the same system it needs to
21 challenge.
22 What we need is an independent body
23 created by state law -- that's you guys --
24 whose sole task is to enhance the civic
25 engagement of the parent and students in
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2 their efforts to build a more responsive and
3 accountable public school system.
4 An independent parent oversight and
5 advocacy office established by law, could
6 serve this function. As you see on the
7 little chart, I spoke to an Assemblyman, and
8 he suggested you could create an entity with
9 a board of directors, who would then create
10 a public advocate, and the public advocate
11 can then select now it would be 100 deputies
12 that would work with each cluster, the new
13 clusters.
14 I see this deputy that gets selected
15 coming from the neighborhoods from that
16 cluster. That person needs to be a parent
17 with a track record, knowing their community
18 and having a track record of educational
19 advocacy.
20 So this whole system here, would then
21 relate to the existing structures we have in
22 the board, the parent structures. On this
23 one line -- and for people in the audience,
24 if you want a copy, I have one -- on this
25 one line are the current PTA structures that
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2 meet and President's Councils that meet at
3 city-wide levels.
4 If you'll notice on the next line are
5 the leadership teams that can meet in
6 district-wide leadership teams that can be
7 in city-wide structures. I've enhanced the
8 parents councils at the district and the
9 city-wide level, by allowing at large
10 community members. And what I mean by that
11 would be independent, recognized, advocacy
12 and civic organizations that care about
13 education, that can support the parents in
14 their efforts to get things done and
15 understand the system.
16 So the main function of this whole
17 structure, at the district level it would be
18 independent support and training. At the
19 city-wide level, the advocate would hear all
20 the data coming up from the system, and then
21 be able to talk with the Mayor or Chancellor
22 Klein about the patterns that they see that
23 are not working.
24 So the district-wide level would work
25 with the leadership structure of the PTAs
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2 and the school leadership teams to
3 independently train them, support them,
4 mediate and help them in their organizing
5 efforts. So it's a self-help civic
6 engagement with a paid staff.
7 You might say, how is this going to
8 be funded?
9 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: And we're going
10 to need for you to tell us that in 30
11 seconds now. I know that it's a brief time.
12 MS. RAIDER: Okay. The
13 Chancellor's proposal of putting a staff
14 member in every school, I figured would
15 probably cost about $60,000,000. That's
16 what the cost is of a person in 1,200
17 schools. $12,000,000 would be what it takes
18 to fund this kind of function. And it
19 either could be existing as a separate
20 organization that you create, or it can be
21 subsumed under Betsy Gotbaum's office, the
22 Public Advocate.
23 So if the Chancellor can come up with
24 $60,000,000 to do this, he can come up with
25 $12,000,000 more to make this happen. And
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2 it should be a pass through from the board.
3 It shouldn't be dependent on the board, and
4 their good graces. It should be a pass
5 through that you legislate by law that goes
6 to this independent body.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, we thank
8 you very much, Ms. Raider. That is a --
9 the diagram, much better than anything I saw
10 Ross Perot present. It's very clear. I
11 think it certainly demonstrates some very
12 coherent thinking on your part, and I can
13 tell you we're going to think very seriously
14 about it.
15 MS. RAIDER: Good. Thank you.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: And we thank you
17 very much.
18 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: The Honorable
19 Josephina Johnson, community school board
20 18, among other organizations.
21 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Just for the
22 edification of the people in the audience
23 and the panel members, in about 15 minutes
24 we will be taking our break for dinner, at
25 which point we will be returning at 6:00 or
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2 thereabouts. People who have signed on who
3 have not pre-registered, I regret to say we
4 will try to get to you, but it won't be
5 until much later in the evening.
6 We will be here very late, but then
7 we will have to go to our regular schedule
8 at 6:00. So we will do our best to hear as
9 many people as we can.
10 MS. JOHNSON: Good evening. Thank
11 you to the task force. My name is Ms.
12 Josephina Johnson, the honorable, but the
13 children call me J.J. I would like to say
14 when I came on board -- why I'm sitting here
15 now is because there's a generation gap they
16 tell me. There's no generation gap, it's
17 just a matter of listening to the children,
18 and then you'll understand.
19 I represent children. I've always
20 represented children. When I first came and
21 migrated here to this country, I was
22 second, third grade, and at the time, we
23 didn't have teachers trained about bilingual
24 situations, and there was two of us in the
25 class, a young man student and myself that
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2 were just coming speaking Spanish. They
3 told us Spanish was bad.
4 He had it so bad, unfortunately he
5 hung himself at lunch time with his belt.
6 Ever since then I promised myself that I
7 will be there, because that was such a loss.
8 In the meantime, I want to tell you
9 how I got to the school board and why I'm
10 speaking today. I had no plans to speak. I
11 was going to listen, because I spoke at City
12 Hall. What happened is the children came to
13 me, and they did my election, organized and
14 formulated from the little ones all the way
15 up to the college group.
16 I must say, it's been a pleasure
17 being a school board member. Unfortunately,
18 we had a lot of training at the Board of Ed.
19 We couldn't implement too many things
20 because the time was being limited for my
21 one term. The extension of one year was
22 excellent.
23 In the meantime, I suggest that
24 that's what we need to do with parents,
25 teaching them the parliamentary procedure of
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2 Robert's Rules, etcetera, as well as what's
3 to be done, but what I'm concerned about is
4 children, because I go to a lot of
5 children's funerals from asthma and all
6 kinds of conditions, such as getting hit by
7 a car, coming out of school, playing.
8 I am up 24/7 through the week,
9 whenever they need me. They tell my why
10 they joined gangs, because they can't speak
11 to the teachers, they can't speak to the
12 parents, they come to me. I try to keep
13 them out. Two summers ago I had, what,
14 1,500 or so children in my backyard for the
15 whole summer I've been counseling. Because
16 I was a union rep before with DC 37.
17 Before that I did paralegal work
18 representing the welfare ABC children. It's
19 always been children. I've worked with the
20 parents, yes, and I get all kinds of calls
21 from all over. What I have done while they
22 were educating us down at Board of Ed, I
23 stayed to every class so I could network
24 with the other districts, so when anyone
25 called me from anywhere, I would have
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2 someone in the district that I could reach
3 out to to help that child or that parent.
4 I think it's very important that when
5 you're implementing anything, you consider
6 the generation gap. They don't have to be.
7 All you have to do is listen to children,
8 and someone should be around -- I hope you
9 implement it -- for 24/7, so these children
10 would have someplace or someone, some haven
11 to go to to keep from dying, because joining
12 gangs is just creating another family.
13 That's what they told me.
14 And my husband died last year. The
15 children came to my house, strange enough,
16 and they wanted to know was I going to move,
17 since my husband died, because they were
18 concerned, because they said no one cares,
19 and they needed me to stay here. I had no
20 plans on moving, but just to tell you a
21 little sentiments of how children think from
22 all levels.
23 I had another young person during the
24 time they stayed at my yard for seven weeks,
25 he came, he said his parents was having
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2 problems at home. They were separated.
3 They were tearing him apart. He didn't know
4 what to do. His grades were going down. So
5 I listened to him and I told him, think
6 about it. Your parents had you through
7 love. They're separated, that's not your
8 problem. Your problem is to enhance your
9 education, so you can upright and stand up
10 and be able to be self-supporting to
11 yourself.
12 So I'm letting you know that with all
13 that was said today, what made me speak was,
14 I'm speaking on behalf of children. The
15 parents, I understand what their needs are
16 to some degree, because I deal with a lot of
17 them. But my key issue is the children.
18 Last year they explained to me that I
19 could not give a humanitarian award at the
20 graduation. Some of you, all same
21 educators, principals told me no, for
22 whatever personal reason or political
23 reason, I don't know. I don't care about
24 that, and titles, and who's the president
25 and whatever. The fact is, I was able to
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2 get it done, because humanitarian award,
3 with all the scholastic, is inclusive of all
4 children on all levels. Letting them know
5 humanitarian. To be kind. To be decent and
6 help someone else, your peers, is what you
7 need.
8 So please, when you make your
9 decision, consider the children. Thank you.
10 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
11 much.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: J.J., you said
13 we could call you J.J., thank you very much.
14 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We'll be able
15 to do a few more speakers, but we've said to
16 anyone who called in late or who signed up
17 today, we're limiting the add-ons to
18 three-minute testimony. Irene Varon. I
19 don't think she's here anymore. Betty
20 Minter. Yvonne Dades. Linda Sanders.
21 Mario Aguila. Valerie Hill. Mr. Britton.
22 MR. BRITTON: Good afternoon. I'm
23 here as a parent, and then I'm here as one
24 of the best qualified parents in the City of
25 New York, a father of six. All graduated
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2 under 18. Headed to Warton. From Warton to
3 West Point. What I'm asking you here is to
4 make sure that the Mayor and every elected
5 official and parent of this city, push
6 education and quality education for all
7 public school kids.
8 If not, go for the vouchers. Give
9 the parents the money. Let them send their
10 kids to the school of their choice. I
11 personally -- I do not think I see 10,000
12 African-American professionals in America in
13 the area of pilots, doctors, dentists,
14 investment bankers. So I'm asking you to
15 make sure that you pick and select the right
16 parent. Not talkers, doers. I can tell you
17 I am a doer.
18 I am a father that went to the
19 school, not the mother, and parents, the
20 teachers, they call me. I give them
21 respect. I respect them, our parents too
22 must give our teachers respect.
23 We must teach discipline. We must be
24 able to take the African-American preachers
25 and tell them come on down and let us take
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2 this street back for quality education. If
3 not, the African-American kids will not be a
4 competitive student. We will not be able to
5 send our kids to the quality universities in
6 this country, nor across this world.
7 So I came to listen, but I'm being
8 forced to speak. I'm forced to speak as a
9 parent of six kids. And a lot of talkers
10 across this city pertaining to education.
11 Let us stop that. Let us place the right
12 people in the right position. If the Mayor
13 of the City of New York wants to bring about
14 change, he must go out and reach out to the
15 African-American clergy who just sit, work
16 one day. I have all respect for them. But
17 you must come back in the street. Come out
18 there and stop African-American kids going
19 to the jail. And that's all I'm asking you.
20 I'm a father who will come -- if
21 your my kid's teacher, I come to your house
22 and talk to you. If you fail to speak to me
23 in the classroom, I come to your house. I
24 wait outside. I give you that respect. How
25 is my kid doing? Let us work together in a
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2 collective manner that we will make this
3 country a strong nation, and let our kids be
4 a great competitor in every area.
5 I thank you. Keep up the good work.
6 I no longer going to what you call to the
7 teachers now. My kids, they're 18 plus.
8 Not older than 27. I am grateful to God for
9 what I have done for them. And I will
10 continue to do my best for all kids, and
11 before I close I want to say the Liberals in
12 district 17 community school board, they did
13 everything to kick me off. By the time I
14 turn around, there's an order of kick off
15 notice. And I strategized that school board
16 election, and that is why today, they are
17 four Hasidic Jews who sits on community
18 school board 17, because of the incompetence
19 to pick stupidity of many. And I must
20 commend the Crown Heights Jewish Council for
21 reaching out and competitiveness and that is
22 why they sit there, and because of you who
23 are talkers and not doers. All the best.
24 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
25 very much, Mr. Britton. Thank you for being
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2 here.
3 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Vivian Natale.
4 Honorable Dawn Jones. Dr. DeLois Blakely.
5 Denise Gordon. That's it.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Okay. The time
7 now is a quarter of 5:00. We will resume at
8 6:00.
9 (TIME NOTED: 4:45 P.M.)
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2 CERTIFICATION
3
4
5 I, Edward Leto, a Notary Public in and for
6 the State of New York, do hereby certify:
7 THAT the witness(es) whose testimony is
8 herein before set forth, was duly sworn by me;
9 and
10 THAT the within transcript is a true and
11 accurate record of the testimony given by said
12 witness(es).
13 I further certify that I am not related
14 either by blood or marriage, to any of the
15 parties to this action; and
16 THAT I am in no way interested in the
17 outcome of this matter.
18 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my
19 hand this 25th day of January, 2003.
20
21
22 ---------------------------
23 EDWARD LETO
24
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