1
1
2 TASK FORCE ON COMMUNITY SCHOOL DISTRICT
3 GOVERNANCE REFORM
4
5
6 Task Force on Community School District
7 Governance Reform Developing recommendations
8 regarding the powers and duties of the New York
9 City community school boards
10
11
12
13
14 Evening Session
15
16 6 Metrotech Center
17 Brooklyn, New York
18
19 January 16, 2003
20 6:15 P.M.
21
22
23
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25
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1 1-16-03 School Governance Reform
2 M E M B E R S:
3
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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22
23
24
25
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2 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Good evening,
3 everyone. We're grateful that you're here.
4 We'll need your silence, if not attention,
5 because it does get very noisy up here.
6 Conversations that are even whispered in the
7 back resonate up front, and it's distracting
8 for the members, as well as for the
9 witnesses.
10 This is our fifth and final public
11 hearing of the task force on community
12 school district governance reform. We have
13 had hearings in all of the boroughs of the
14 city. We have organized the hearings into
15 two sections. We have hearings that begin
16 -- today's earlier hearing began at 9:00 in
17 the morning, lasted until about 5:00, and as
18 we have done in all the other boroughs, we
19 have had an evening session that begins at
20 about 6:00 and runs until later in the
21 evening. We do that because we recognize
22 that there are many people, working men and
23 women who cannot attend during the day, and
24 we wanted to make these hearings as
25 accessible as possible for as many people
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2 as possible.
3 My name is Steve Sanders. I'm the
4 Co-Chair of this task force. To my left,
5 who you will hear from in just a moment, is
6 Terri Thomson, who is the other Co-Chair.
7 This task force was created when the state
8 made some dramatic changes last June in the
9 way the New York City school district is
10 governed.
11 As many of you know, there were many
12 powers and authority that were given to the
13 Mayor and the Chancellor in that
14 legislation. And as many of you also know,
15 that legislation also abolishes the local
16 community school boards as of June 30 of
17 this year, the end of this school year.
18 However, the legislation passed in June did
19 not abolish community representation. Quite
20 the contrary.
21 That legislation requires that there
22 be community representation. That
23 legislation established this task force of
24 20 persons from New York City. 10 appointed
25 by the Speaker of the Assembly, 10 appointed
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2 by the Senate Majority Leader, and it has
3 been our task and our mission to hold
4 hearings around the city, and we are
5 required to make a proposal, to make
6 recommendations for however community
7 representation and parental input can be put
8 together and hopefully made better than it
9 has existed for the last 30 years.
10 The law required us, this task force,
11 to issue a report with recommendations to
12 the state legislature and to the Governor on
13 February the 15th outlining those proposals
14 that we think are most appropriate.
15 We are informed, of course, by the
16 people of the City of New York as to what
17 the views are about community representation
18 and parental input, and we will rely heavily
19 on the input that we are receiving from
20 hundreds of persons from the City of New
21 York to guide us as to what it is that we
22 will recommend to the legislature and to the
23 Governor.
24 Now I know that people have a lot to
25 say. This is a big subject. Because the
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2 turn out is extraordinary, we have to limit
3 people, as we indicated in our hearing
4 notice, for those of you who saw the hearing
5 notice, we have to limit testimony to five
6 minutes. We do that not in trying to cut
7 anyone off, but to try to make available
8 these hearings to as many people, so that we
9 can hear from as many and hopefully
10 everybody who has come to testify.
11 We will be hear until 11:59 and 59
12 seconds if there are people who still wish
13 to testify. We have been able to get
14 permission to continue to use this
15 auditorium right up until midnight tonight.
16 So we're going to try very hard to
17 accommodate everybody and listen to
18 everybody.
19 So let me turn to the Co-Chair of
20 this task force for some brief remarks, and
21 then the members of the task force will also
22 briefly introduce themselves to you, and
23 then we shall begin.
24 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Briefly. I'm
25 Terri Thomson, Co-Chair of the task force
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2 and a former member of the Board of
3 Education, and I'm from Queens County. I
4 just wanted to also mention that you all
5 probably have a copy of the agenda and
6 there's an order of speakers. However, this
7 was presented yesterday. There is a
8 possibility that there might be some
9 changes. Please understand, we're using
10 good judgement where we make changes. For
11 example, we're expecting some students
12 tonight. We don't want the students to be
13 here until midnight, so we may take them out
14 of order so that they can get home and do
15 their homework and get to bed early for
16 school.
17 So please understand, if we go a
18 little bit out of order, there's a rhyme and
19 reason why we're doing it. Why don't we
20 begin at the far right and ask each of the
21 task forces members to introduce themselves.
22 MR. CLAYTON: Thank you. My name
23 is Ernest Clayton, president of the United
24 Parents Association of New York City, the
25 United Parents Association is the Federation
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2 of Parent Associations throughout the city.
3 We're 82 years old. We sit on various
4 boards up in Albany, New York City, and we
5 represent parents. Thank you very much.
6 MS. WYLDE: I'm Kathy Wylde. I'm
7 president of the New York City Partnership,
8 which is a city-wide business leadership
9 organization, and I'm also a resident of
10 Brooklyn.
11 MS. BROWN: Robin Brown,
12 Chancellor's Parent Advisory Council. It's
13 the representation of the 40 districts here
14 in New York City, and I'm also a parent of
15 two children which attend school right here
16 in community school district 13.
17 MR. LEVIN: I'm Jerry Levin,
18 retired CEO of AOL Time Warner, and a member
19 of a family committed to public education in
20 New York City having provided several
21 teachers to the system.
22 MS. ARCE-BELLO: Jane Arce-Bello, a
23 community activist from the Bronx.
24 MS. KEE: I am Virginia Kee. I'm
25 the founding member of the Chinese American
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2 Planning Council. I have been a junior high
3 school teacher for 34 years.
4 MR. FRIEDMAN: Good evening. My
5 name is Jack Friedman, former member of
6 community school board 26 in northeast
7 Queens. And my most important job is a
8 father of two children who attend New York
9 City public high schools.
10 MS. REDDINGTON: Good evening.
11 Bunny Reddington. Currently serving as vice
12 chair of community board 31 in Staten
13 Island.
14 MS. MCKENNA: Rose McKenna, former
15 member of community school board 10 in the
16 Bronx and a teacher and a supervisor for 35
17 years.
18 MS. HAHN: Yanghee Hahn, currently
19 serving as the executive vice president of
20 Korean American Association of Flushing and
21 I have access to various Asian Immigrant
22 communities.
23 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you. I
24 want to acknowledge that Assemblyman Jim
25 Brennan is here. Assemblyman, please stand.
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2 Thank you for joining us tonight. Our first
3 speaker is Jitu Weusi, Chairman, City-wide
4 Coalition for Quality Education. Jitu,
5 please sit at the microphone.
6 MR. WEUSI: Good evening. My name
7 is Jitu Weusi, and I'm an employee of the
8 New York City Board of Education, Department
9 of Education now, and I've been an employee
10 with the Department of Education since 1962
11 when I began my career as a teacher shortly
12 after leaving college.
13 And I took some time off during the
14 middle years from approximately about 1970
15 to 1985, and then again I returned to the
16 Department in 1985, and I've been an
17 employee there since that time.
18 I'm currently employed as an
19 assistant principal, and my statement is in
20 tribute to two people that have shaped my
21 life that are no longer with us. One is my
22 mom, Mardesta Inez Stewart Mealing, who
23 raised her seven children with the concept
24 that if you get a good education, that you
25 can do anything that you want in this world,
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2 and because of her persistence, I was able
3 to navigate the educational waters of the
4 public school system in New York City
5 successfully, graduating after 12 and a half
6 years, you know, with an academic diploma
7 and going on to a four year college.
8 Also, these remarks are in tribute to
9 the contribution of the Reverend Milton A.
10 Glammason, who was a religious and spiritual
11 leader in our community, Bedford Stuyvesant,
12 and who more than any individual person I
13 feel was responsible for making meaningful
14 changes in the public school system of this
15 city and of this nation in the last let's
16 say 40 years or so, okay.
17 To the task force on school
18 governance, I want to say that I participate
19 in this gathering with not much confidence
20 and with a hesitancy toward any positive
21 outcome of this process. I think many of
22 you have advocated by your actions and by
23 the legislation that was mentioned before,
24 which gave control of the system to the
25 Mayor, that you've already made a commitment
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2 to a system that didn't work previously,
3 okay. And therefore, I can't expect that
4 much is going to change from your previous
5 decisions, especially until such time as you
6 know there's a greater outcry from the
7 victims of this educational change.
8 I offer into evidence to you, to your
9 committee, that if you have not as of yet,
10 that you get a copy of and that you read
11 Clarence Taylor's book entitled Knocking At
12 Our Own Door. This is a book that documents
13 what occurred in the public school system in
14 the 1950s and 1960s that caused the struggle
15 for change in New York City, okay. That
16 caused the communities to attack a
17 discriminating and segregated school system,
18 and that brought about the legislation of
19 1969 that brought some level of
20 decentralization to the school system.
21 This book gives you a good insight
22 into the people and the personalities of
23 those times, the organizations, the
24 organizations of parents and how parents --
25 this mobilization of parents began in the
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2 late '40s, post World War II, and how it
3 developed through the '60s, and the role of
4 the civil rights movement as a pivotal
5 movement in bringing about the mobilization
6 of parents within the school system.
7 Also, it spells out some of the
8 strategies and tactics of those movements,
9 including school boycotts and other types of
10 public demonstrations that were a reaction
11 to the lethargy and the complete dismissal
12 of community voices in terms of this system.
13 This system was replete with a very
14 open stream of racism. It was a system in
15 which -- I'm talking about the 1960s now --
16 approximately 40 percent of the students
17 were of African decent. Yet, only one
18 percent of the administrators were of
19 African background.
20 When I was a young teacher in this
21 system of over 1,000 schools, there were
22 only four African Americans that had reached
23 the position of supervisor as either
24 assistant principal or principal in these
25 school systems. Not only was the hiring,
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2 you know, representative of the attitude of
3 the system, but also the curriculum was
4 representative, and as I was reading
5 recently where there is this proposal to
6 centralize the curriculum in the schools
7 once again, all I can envision is returning
8 to the centralized curriculum that, you
9 know, completely omits any mention of the
10 contribution of African Americans to the
11 American system, to the American history, to
12 the American story, as was the case in the
13 1960s.
14 So I'm very, very concerned about
15 what is going to take place here. And when
16 I say "here," I mean in the newly created
17 Department of Education. The period of so
18 called decentralization was a period in
19 which I feel was basically a white wash,
20 okay, under the destructive conditions
21 created by the New York City media, and I
22 feel that the communities never got a
23 meaningful chance to participate in the
24 development of real control over the school
25 system.
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2 And yet still, they still received
3 the blame for the institutional failure that
4 went down within the school system. And so
5 here it is now 2003, and we return to
6 centralization. And the communities that I
7 represent are, again, on the outside looking
8 in, okay. They're on the outside of the
9 educational bureaucracy looking in.
10 So in conclusion, I feel that by the
11 action of the state legislature around the
12 issue of governance, it really leaves our
13 communities with no, you know, with no other
14 choice than to galvanize a grass roots
15 political movement around the issue of
16 control of the schools in our community once
17 again.
18 So I guess you can say we have
19 endured a 33 year hiatus, but as of 2003,
20 September 2003 for sure, we are back in
21 business once again. Thank you very much.
22 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you for
24 your testimony, sir. We appreciate it.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Vilda Simone,
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2 United Parents Association. Not here?
3 Okay. Norm Fruchter, director of NYU
4 Institute for Education and Social Policy.
5 Good evening, Norm.
6 MR. FRUCHTER: Thank you. I'm
7 Norm Fruchter, the director of the Institute
8 for Education and Social Policy at New York
9 University, and for 10 years as a school
10 board member in this district, district 15
11 in Brooklyn, and I could talk to you a lot
12 about support for the nature of the
13 arguments that Jitu was making about the
14 ways that school boards, in my view, were
15 set up to fail, but that's not why I'm here
16 tonight.
17 Fernando Ferrer from the Drum Major
18 Institute talked about this paper earlier.
19 We're tandem, and I suspect since I read his
20 testimony, that he talks about the paper the
21 way he talked about it in the process of
22 developing it, which is from the
23 relationship end, and I want to talk to you
24 very briefly about accountability rather
25 than the stress that he puts on
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2 relationships.
3 The view that we take in the paper is
4 that a variety of governance experiments
5 have essentially failed the New York City
6 school system and that whatever you do to
7 replace the community school boards, or to
8 continue them, what you ought to think about
9 is accountability rather than governance.
10 We think that the basic kinds of
11 accountability relationships which ought to
12 exist in this system. Example, the basic
13 relationship at the classroom level needs to
14 be a relationship between parents and
15 teachers about the nature of each child's
16 achievement in the classroom. That needs to
17 be an extended discussion about how the
18 teacher sees the child, what this child's
19 strengths are, what the child's weaknesses
20 are, particularly around an academic
21 curriculum. And the teacher also needs to
22 hear how the parent sees the child and both
23 of them need to talk about what they need to
24 do in order to improve that child's
25 performance.
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2 You cannot do that in a five minute
3 parent/teacher conference. You cannot do
4 that in a 10 or 15 minute parent/teacher
5 conference, but that is arguably the most
6 important discussion that parents and
7 teachers need to have. It is a critical
8 accountability discussion, and it is a
9 critical improvement discussion from the
10 point of view of the child.
11 We need to restructure the nature of
12 the relationship between parents and
13 teachers at the school level, in order that
14 those discussions take place, because they
15 will make more contribution to the
16 improvement of the child's achievement in
17 school and out of school than most other
18 relationships you can imagine.
19 Secondly, the same kinds of
20 accountability relationships need to go on
21 at the school level. Principals, from our
22 point of view, need to make a state of the
23 school report twice a year to parents and to
24 the other constituencies in the community.
25 Community organizations, constituency
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2 organizations, faith organizations,
3 community development corporations and other
4 groups in each neighborhood who are
5 critically involved in the success of the
6 school, because of not only that it
7 contributes to the life and the growth of
8 individual children, but also what it
9 contributes to the neighborhood prosperity
10 and economic development, and poor schools
11 don't contribute to either of those.
12 So there need to be accountability
13 dialogues. Principals need to give a state
14 of the school report. We think that school
15 leadership teams should become responsible
16 for evaluating the performance of the
17 principal, and that evaluation should be
18 discussed in the same kind of open public
19 forum at the end of the school year, before
20 it gets reported to the next levels upward
21 of governance.
22 We think that the same kinds of
23 accountability dialogue should take place at
24 the district level. That is,
25 superintendents should actually give state
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2 of the district reports. There should be
3 some kind of public discussion of the
4 superintendent's evaluation, and that
5 discussion should be in a public forum in
6 which not only parents, but also
7 representatives of the key community
8 organizations should be in attendance.
9 Now according to the Chancellor's new
10 plan, there may not be districts. There
11 will be, if his plan goes into effect,
12 networks of schools, some 10 to 15 schools,
13 under the direction of an instructional
14 supervisor. The same kinds of
15 accountability forums should be held at that
16 level. If there are indeed regional
17 superintendents, if the Chancellor's plan
18 goes through, you need to have
19 accountability dialogue at that level as
20 well. And the teeth that they have, should
21 be involved in evaluation of those
22 positions.
23 If we have instructional supervisors,
24 they should be evaluated and those
25 evaluations should be discussed publicly.
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2 The same with the regional superintendents,
3 if that comes to pass. We also think that
4 the requirement for changing the nature of
5 accountability relationships should be built
6 into the evaluation of each level. Teachers
7 should be evaluated on the nature of their
8 relationships built with parents by the
9 principal.
10 Principals should be evaluated, as
11 the Chancellor has indicated in the -- or
12 the Mayor -- as the Chancellor presumably
13 and the Mayor have agreed should become
14 policy, and was related in the Mayor's
15 speech yesterday, the recommendation was
16 that principals be evaluated on the basis of
17 their relationships with parents and on the
18 success of what they manage to do in terms
19 of parent involvement.
20 We think that teachers should also be
21 involved that way. If there are going to be
22 instructional supervisors, that should be
23 part of their evaluation, and it should be
24 part of the evaluation of the regional
25 superintendents.
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2 What we've argued in this paper is
3 that the kinds of accountability
4 relationships which good suburban districts
5 take for granted between parents,
6 communities and their schools, do not exist
7 in most schools in New York City, do not
8 exist in most districts in New York City.
9 That's in part because we have focused on
10 governance rather than on accountability.
11 It is possible to restore those
12 accountability relationships, in spite of
13 the fact that in most communities in New
14 York City there is not much trust between
15 communities and schools and parents and
16 schools. That trust is critical to good
17 schools, and it can only be built up by the
18 nature of trying to develop the kinds of
19 accountability that we recommend here.
20 Thank you very much and I wish you good
21 luck.
22 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I just want to
24 mention, which I meant to mention when
25 Mr. Weusi testified, and this is equally
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2 true of you, Mr. Fruchter, that we all
3 appreciate and understand and acknowledge
4 the contributions and the thinking that you
5 have provided to New York City for public
6 education, and I meant to say that for you,
7 sir, before you left, and it equally is true
8 of you, Mr. Fruchter. Thank you both very
9 much.
10 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
11 Cheri Rotondi, president of President's
12 Council, district 21.
13 MS. ROTONDI: Good evening. My
14 name is Cheri Rotondi, and I am the
15 president of President's Council, community
16 school district 21. I come here tonight to
17 represent the parents of our school
18 district. We implore this panel on
19 community school district governance reform
20 to stop Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein
21 from eliminating parents as partners in
22 their children's education.
23 We strongly believe that we need a
24 representative body elected within our
25 community compromised of parents and
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2 community residents. Community governance
3 works well in district 21. We are now the
4 number one school district in the Borough of
5 Brooklyn in reading and in math.
6 In the early 1980s, the district
7 ranked number 13 in the city. Through the
8 efforts of the entire school community,
9 including the community school board
10 parents, the community superintendent,
11 teachers, students and the support team, the
12 district made great strides in reaching
13 educational excellence.
14 Instead of eliminating the current
15 system, why not look at us as a model for
16 New York City? Chancellor Klein, in his
17 rush to reform the system, hasn't done his
18 homework. We in district 21 have been
19 furious when we hear the Chancellor say that
20 parents send their children to schools, not
21 to school districts. If he had taken the
22 time to check, he would have found out that
23 more than 2,600 parents from outside the
24 district have made applications to any, and
25 I repeat, any middle school in district 21.
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2 We must be doing something right. In
3 the past 30 years, the central board has
4 controlled only one part of the school
5 system, the high schools. Look at what a
6 job they've done there. One of the most
7 important reasons for our success has been
8 the access parents have had to the community
9 superintendent and the community school
10 board in district 21. I have been trying to
11 speak to Chancellor Klein for over a month
12 with no success. I must correct that. I
13 did have success in speaking to one of his
14 members that have called me back finally and
15 I received no answer that was satisfactory.
16 Like any other bureaucracy, the low
17 man on the totem pole is cut out, and
18 unfortunately, it seems to this
19 administration, that parents are the low man
20 on the totem pole. We demand a voice in our
21 public education system. We do not want our
22 participation limited only to the narrow
23 issued decided within school buildings by
24 the school leadership teams.
25 Do not rob the citizens of New York
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2 City to their right to effective
3 representation. It is our right and we
4 expect you, the task force on community
5 school district governance reform, to help
6 protect that right, and may I also add, that
7 the comment that was made by Mayor Bloomberg
8 last night as the district office has
9 dinosaurs in there, it's a shame that he's
10 hiring all corporate people that do not know
11 a thing about public education.
12 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
13 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
14 very much for that testimony.
15 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Anne
16 MacKinnon, a member and parent of community
17 school board 22.
18 MS. MACKINNON: Good evening.
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Good evening.
20 MS. MACKINNON: I'm a parent of a
21 New York City high school student attending
22 school at Edward R. Murrow, an elected
23 school board for the last 10 years in
24 district 22, and actually a former member of
25 a school leadership team also.
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2 I'm here tonight to make only one
3 point, the legislature's decision in 1996 to
4 establish school leadership teams in New
5 York City and around the state was a wise
6 one, but one that has not yet reached its
7 potential. The legislature has an
8 opportunity now as it considers whether and
9 how to replace community school boards, to
10 establish a system that would strengthen
11 school leadership teams in many ways
12 throughout the city.
13 School leadership teams work well
14 overall in my district. In our schools,
15 parents, teachers, principals and other
16 school staff cooperate to design the annual
17 Comprehensive Education Plan, write the
18 budget and solve problems throughout the
19 year. When problems arise or cuts need to
20 be made, the team members work together to
21 analyze the situation and take action. They
22 study test scores and other data and figure
23 out how to respond.
24 Make no mistake, the principal is
25 still the leader of the school. But rather
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2 than making decisions alone, without input
3 from parents and teachers, and rather than
4 trying to implement those decisions alone,
5 without cooperation or buy in from staff and
6 parents, the principal, in general, has the
7 support of the people whose participation
8 makes all the difference in whether or not
9 the plan actually succeeds.
10 When a principal leaves, which they
11 tend to do, the team is there to promote
12 coherence, and see the school through the
13 transition to new leadership. It's not easy
14 to be on a school leadership team, whether
15 you are a parent, a teacher or a principal.
16 It takes time. It takes patience.
17 Maturity. Training. Balance. A
18 willingness to put your own issues aside and
19 do listen to other people.
20 People who are able to do those
21 things are few and far between. They're not
22 enough of them in the city, and that's
23 partly because there are a lot of people who
24 could be good school leadership team members
25 who do not have enough opportunities to
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2 watch good teams at work. Who do not have
3 role models to look to as they think through
4 whether or not they'd like to be team
5 members, or if they are team members, on
6 people whose behavior would be a model for
7 them on how to represent their constituency
8 and engage in a responsible way.
9 Many schools in districts don't even
10 have functioning school leadership teams in
11 lots of places, and where they do exist,
12 they don't observe open meeting laws.
13 District leadership teams are not in place
14 in every district, and they don't meet in
15 public. Community school boards do meet in
16 public, but as you know, they no longer or
17 only rarely discuss the hard day-to-day
18 issues of running schools or districts.
19 The elements of good practice are
20 just not out there for people to see and
21 learn from. I believe the legislature
22 should take this opportunity to establish
23 advisory boards at whatever level real
24 decisions are going to be made under the
25 plan that the Chancellor and the Mayor are
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2 now putting together. That's the level from
3 which schools and principals are supervised
4 in the re-design system.
5 These boards should include
6 representatives from the same constituencies
7 that make up school leadership teams and
8 should be selected by those constituencies.
9 I also think one of the areas where a lot of
10 school leadership teams ar weak, and this is
11 in my written statement, is involvement in
12 community organizations and community
13 members, and that could be part of a
14 district level or a district equivalent
15 level team.
16 Those teams should meet regularly and
17 in public to provide a forum for public
18 discussion of important matters and ensure
19 that people can see their representatives in
20 action. So once you -- if you're a
21 parent's association, if you're a teacher's
22 UFT chapter and you want to see your
23 representatives in action, you should be
24 able to do that, and you should in fact be
25 able to model your behavior on your own
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2 school team, on what you see them do at the
3 district level.
4 The administrators in charge of those
5 units should be evaluated in part on their
6 ability to work well with those teams and
7 lead those teams effectively. They should
8 be required for holding principals
9 responsible, for making their school
10 leadership teams work well, and in other
11 words, real collaboration to make sure the
12 reforms being proposed by the Mayor and the
13 Chancellor should -- and making them succeed
14 in every school, should be a big part of
15 everyone's job and new teams should be
16 established to help make that a reality.
17 I therefore urge the task force to
18 recommend that the state legislature take
19 three steps, affirm its support for a
20 continuing role and stronger role for school
21 leadership teams, study the Department of
22 Education's re-design plan to determine at
23 what level or levels advisory boards should
24 be created to support coherent reform,
25 collaborative participatory reform across
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2 the city, and replace community school
3 boards with advisory boards that are closely
4 aligned with school leadership teams and
5 whose operation are visible and accessible
6 to the school constituencies and the general
7 public. Thank you very much.
8 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you,
9 Ms. Mackinnon. We are indebted to you. I
10 know you've done a lot of work in the past
11 year in trying to come up with models for
12 school representation, community
13 representation. We appreciate your
14 testimony. Thank you.
15 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We have a
16 panel from President's Council of district
17 21. Stacey Fasone, Deb Leone, Kris Pelaez,
18 Fern Rossi, Cesaria Soccia. I may have
19 butchered your names. And if I did, I'm so
20 sorry. You can correct it when you come up.
21 Good evening.
22 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: If you would
23 just pause for a moment so we can distribute
24 your testimony.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Okay.
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2 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Okay, you can go
3 in whatever order you all decide. Just
4 identify who is speaking so the stenographer
5 and we will know who we are speaking with.
6 MS. FASONE: Good evening. My name
7 is Stacey Fasone. As a parent of two
8 children attending public school in district
9 21, I am extremely upset about what seems to
10 be the future of parent and community
11 involvement in the city school system.
12 The new governance plan calls for the
13 elimination of community school boards as of
14 June 30. However, legislation was passed
15 with little consultation with parents and
16 with absolutely no forethought of what is
17 going to replace our community
18 representatives. I find it highly insulting
19 that every other school district outside the
20 school city limits has an elected school
21 board. What we in New York City are being
22 told is that we do not have the same rights
23 as every other voter in the state. This is
24 a violation of our civil rights.
25 All educational research indicates
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2 that parent involvement is a key to
3 successful schools. What will be the role
4 of parents and community leaders in this new
5 system? Already, we see that the Mayor and
6 the Chancellor are making decisions, such as
7 the firing and moving of principals
8 unilaterally. This undermines the C30
9 process, where we parents devote hours of
10 our time to choose a principal who we feel
11 best will serve the needs of our particular
12 school.
13 Every school is unique and we need to
14 choose and keep the principal we have
15 selected. There are many rumors about what
16 will replace community school boards. One
17 rumor is that school leadership teams will
18 be the replacement. This is not a
19 satisfactory solution because of time
20 factors. Only a very small group of parents
21 are able to serve on these teams. These
22 teams do not include community-based
23 organizations that currently have input with
24 the community school boards. Parents
25 deserve to have the same rights as every
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2 other citizen in New York State.
3 We must have an elected
4 representative body. We must have a system
5 of checks and balances against the one man
6 rule of our children's education. Please do
7 not disenfranchise the parents of New York
8 City. Thank you for your time and effort.
9 MS. ROSSI: Good evening. My name
10 is Fern Rossi, and I am a parent of two
11 children who attend district 21 schools. I
12 am also an active parent volunteer, a member
13 of my daughter's school leadership team and
14 an executive officer of the parent's
15 association at both my children's schools.
16 I have come here tonight because I,
17 like many other parents in this room
18 tonight, as well as those at home, am quite
19 concerned about the many numerous and
20 concurrent changes we have been reading
21 about, mainly the disbandment of our
22 district office and community school board.
23 District 21 has been successful,
24 because parents and schools have always
25 shared cohesiveness due to the commitment of
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2 the members of our district office and
3 community school board. This alliance that
4 district 21 has always shared, has provided
5 us with a community based communication
6 center, easily accessible to parents and
7 community members alike. This alliance has
8 enabled our children to be the recipients of
9 an optimal educational environment and
10 attain educational achievements. This
11 alliance has also served to instill upon our
12 children the importance of community ties
13 and involvement within which their
14 characters may be built upon so that they
15 too may become active committed members of
16 our society as they blossom into adulthood.
17 We, the parents, of district 21 have
18 always relied upon our district office and
19 community school board to be our eyes and
20 ears where our children and community was
21 concerned, as well as a local community base
22 where we could be heard whenever it was
23 necessary for the betterment of our
24 children.
25 We, the parents, of district 21 feel
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2 it is of utmost importance that our
3 community school board and district office
4 continue, as they are a vital part of the
5 success our children have attained. They
6 hear our voices and enable us to be heard.
7 Thank you.
8 MS. SOCCIA: Hi. I'm Cesaria
9 Soccia. I'm a parent of three children, two
10 who already graduated from New York City
11 public school and one presently attending in
12 district 21.
13 I am a parent activist in community
14 school district 21. Not only do I
15 participate in my child's school, but I'm
16 also active on a district level. I attend
17 local community school board meetings
18 because they're both informative and
19 important for my children's education.
20 I still cannot believe that state
21 legislators who come from cities across New
22 York State, voted to eliminate elected
23 school boards in their own home towns. Are
24 their parents smarter or more caring than we
25 are? In a city the size of New York City,
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2 it is imperative that parents have acces to
3 educational leaders, who can supply them
4 with information, advocate for their
5 children, and represent the community's best
6 interests. Can you imagine the chaos at the
7 Tweed Courthouse on the opening days of
8 school in September when the parents of
9 approximately 8,000 youngsters seek
10 variances for their children to attend a
11 different school?
12 Every district is inundated with
13 hundreds of parents seeking the best
14 possible education for their children. Is
15 it realistic to believe that parents can be
16 better served by a big central bureaucracy
17 than a local community school district?
18 We need to maintain a local board or
19 panel at a community level where parents can
20 have input in educational policies that
21 effect their children. In addition, we want
22 our superintendent in our school district,
23 not at the Tweed Courthouse in Manhattan.
24 We need local governance. Thank you.
25 MS. PELAEZ: My name is Kris
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2 Pelaez, and I'm one member of the Presidium
3 of the Parents' Association at one of the
4 most prestigious public schools in our city,
5 Mark Twain, intermediate school 239.
6 When my oldest child, now 13, entered
7 the public school system 10 years ago, I was
8 an older parent. I knew no one, either
9 working in the schools or for that matter
10 attending public school. I had been a
11 business owner and had no idea how education
12 really worked. What I did know was that I
13 wanted the best for my child.
14 I immediately became involved to
15 volunteering to help at PTA events and
16 fund-raisers. And, of course, being an
17 educational partner by reading to and
18 conversing with my daughter at home. We
19 enjoyed, and still do, the arts, nature,
20 reading and traveling. Very slowly I
21 learned about the lack of funds provided to
22 our schools and about shortages of books and
23 paper throughout the system in our city.
24 Very quickly I learned that it would
25 be difficult for a child to really learn
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2 without parents or caregivers help. It has
3 always been my philosophy that to help my
4 own child, it would be necessary to help all
5 children, since the children in her school
6 and community would be people she dealt with
7 on a daily basis.
8 I joined as many volunteer groups and
9 committees as I could. As time passed, I
10 have been involved voluntarily in two school
11 leadership teams, as well as the district
12 school leadership team steering committee,
13 in district parents workshop committees and
14 every group trying to get and keep parents
15 involved.
16 Today, in a time and place where
17 people need to have two parents working,
18 where many grandparents and other caregivers
19 take control of children's educational and
20 social lives, it is more important than ever
21 for these guardians to have a say in the
22 governance of their charges' schools.
23 I am fortunate to have had my two
24 children educated in a high-performing
25 district in the city. We are not without
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2 problems. We have a diverse population as
3 well. It is increasingly difficult to reach
4 the parents of all of the students, but we
5 cannot stop trying. We have been able
6 within our own busy schedules to attend
7 meetings to find out what is happening in
8 our community, as well as in our schools.
9 These community school board meetings have
10 been helpful to us all. The elimination of
11 the school boards, while an effort to
12 eliminate more bureaucracy and trim fat in a
13 system that certainly needs to perform
14 better, is a blow to children and parents
15 alike who see our districts as a microcosm
16 of society at large.
17 We have community support groups that
18 provide services to our students after
19 school. These services would be eliminated
20 as well. We have the feel now of being a
21 small community in a city where people don't
22 even know their next door neighbor's names.
23 We, the greatest city in the world, the city
24 others aspire to be, are being doubly
25 penalized in this move. We already are
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2 penalized in a funding system that gives
3 more money per student to our upstate
4 neighbors. We now will be treated unfairly
5 by doing away with the school boards which
6 communities upstate are allowed to keep.
7 While I certainly feel -- while I
8 certainly feel instruction is the most
9 important issue and the Mayor's new plan in
10 some ways will be beneficial, it would not
11 be in the best interest of our children to
12 form these larger regions and leave the
13 parents' voices out in the cold. We need to
14 have a place to go. We need an advisory
15 committee nearby, within easy reach, for
16 parents' issues to be addressed. Instead of
17 bureaucracy dwindling, it can only grow.
18 We realize full well that as a
19 corporate leader, the bottom line is what
20 counts. We sorely need financial remedies,
21 but our superintendents and supervisors, in
22 many cases quite talented, are being
23 penalized by scores that reflect other
24 circumstances not readily seen in your
25 statistics. For instance, a poor school
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2 report card may not show that that school
3 has a higher special education population.
4 The administrator appears to be doing a poor
5 job, when in reality, a system of assessing
6 the special education students, with tests
7 geared for the population at large, is
8 flawed.
9 Multiple learning styles are not
10 addressed. Assessment remains standardized
11 testing. Our fear is that in enlarging the
12 districts or regions, these problems too
13 will grow. We really need to address the
14 way children learn and have more free reign
15 in instructional style, if not content.
16 For instance, science shows that
17 smaller class size is a recipe for success.
18 Empty seats in a school are being counted
19 with a view toward shipping children from
20 too far away into them. Laws require a
21 school with a universal pre-K program to
22 have a parent room. This room is being
23 looked at for seats.
24 The clean sweep that the Mayor is
25 attempting to make will have repercussions
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2 in other areas. All aspects must be looked
3 at before brandishing a wide sword. The
4 dinosaurs and bureaucrats in our district
5 offices are the people who have helped us
6 and our children all along. We need to keep
7 this place to go. And it needs to be
8 nearby.
9 Where will the parochial schools and
10 parents at parochial schools be involved in
11 this new system? Parent involvement has
12 always been the most important part that the
13 new regulations are talking about, yet
14 parents were not really addressed in making
15 this decision. With these vast regions --
16 this is not in the text -- in these vast
17 regions, I understand that our
18 high-performing district would be joined
19 with district I think it's 31 in Staten
20 Island. Would these meetings for parents be
21 then taking place at a distance over a
22 bridge? Parents are working. They need to
23 get to a place within 10 minutes and sit and
24 talk to the people that matter.
25 MS. LEONE: Good evening. My name
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2 is Deb Leone. I'm the parent of a child in
3 district 21. And I guess I'm also a
4 bureaucratic dinosaur, because I do work at
5 the district office. District 21 has
6 experienced great success in the past
7 several years. The reason being, there has
8 been a collaboration among superintendent,
9 community school board, administration,
10 pedagogues and patients. Issues of all
11 kinds are brought forth, discussed,
12 resolved, because at district 21, we always
13 work together.
14 Our parents have a forum for
15 expressing concerns, as well as for awarding
16 accolades. We elected school board members
17 who we knew would listen to our parents and
18 represent us with strength and integrity.
19 We need these elected members to represent
20 us. We do not want these members appointed
21 by a regional leader. We must remain as a
22 district, a place readily accessible to all
23 constituents. We must remain as a
24 manageable area where parents can rely on
25 representation by members who share a common
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2 interest, our children. Thank you.
3 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
4 much for your testimony. I just wanted to
5 say, I want to let you know that this
6 morning Chancellor Klein testified, and what
7 he said to us is, you know, yesterday the
8 Mayor announced the parent engagement forums
9 in every district, and we asked him to
10 define district, and the definition of
11 district is district as we know it today.
12 So what the Chancellor and Mayor are
13 suggesting is that there be parent
14 engagement councils at every district, for
15 example, there would be one at district 21,
16 100 percent parents is what they're
17 suggesting. I would ask that the parents of
18 district 21 get together in the next couple
19 of days. Just think this through and
20 perhaps give us some written feedback.
21 Thank you for your testimony.
22 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Before you
23 leave, the only other thing I wanted to add
24 was this, first of all, your testimony was
25 very compelling, and we were listening very
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2 carefully, especially given the fact that
3 district 21 has been a very high-performing
4 district by almost any standard of
5 measurement. The only thing I wanted to
6 mention to you, just for the sake of
7 accuracy, because I know it resinated with a
8 lot of people, and I just felt that for
9 factual accuracy, it just needs to be
10 stated.
11 There are five school districts in
12 the state, New York City is one of them,
13 that are called dependent school districts.
14 A dependent school district is a district
15 that relies on its funding from the city
16 government or the government that is part of
17 that district. Those five districts are the
18 large city school districts, New York City,
19 Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo and Yonkers.
20 So what distinguishes those
21 districts -- these are all cities with over
22 125,000 people -- is that the residents
23 don't vote on their school budgets directly.
24 As I say, the money comes from the
25 government budget in terms of how much money
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2 will be spent on education, health, fire,
3 all of the other services. Given that fact
4 that they are dependent school districts,
5 most of those districts I mentioned that are
6 in that category do not vote on their school
7 board members, Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester
8 and Yonkers.
9 For the most part, those school board
10 members are all selected or appointed
11 through some mechanism, which doesn't
12 diminish the point you made. I'm not trying
13 to do that. I just wanted to make the point
14 that it is not actually a fact that every
15 other school district elects their school
16 board members. 45 percent of the students
17 around the state are actually in these five
18 school districts.
19 Doesn't mean to say that we won't
20 agree with you that we ought to continue to
21 have elections, but the dependent school
22 districts have always been different in that
23 regard. We want to thank you very much for
24 your testimony.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: One more
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2 thing. The Chancellor this morning also
3 said that the parent members on this parent
4 engagement council would be chosen by
5 parents in the district, okay. We have
6 three panels of young people. We'll begin
7 with Sheryl Robertson is listed as director.
8 Kenny Igelu and Tia Ijelu, Joaquil Harden
9 and Nelson Williamson from the South
10 Brooklyn Youth Consortium.
11 MS. ROBERTSON: Good evening. My
12 name is Sheryl D. Robertson, and I am the
13 director of the South Brooklyn Youth
14 Consortium, as well as the South Brooklyn
15 Community Development Corporation. It took
16 the Coney Island community 26 years to elect
17 representation to community school board 21.
18 With the election of Mr. Ronald Stewart, we
19 gained a voice. But it was not enough for
20 us to gain a voice. We wanted a working
21 voice. We wanted a partnership with
22 community school board district 21, and I am
23 proud to say that after five years, we have
24 achieved that partnership. Working together
25 at the local level with children, we have
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2 co-hosted recruitment drives to improve
3 minority hiring, co-sponsored education
4 forums, parent education workshops, parent
5 organizing workshops, sponsored five NCCC
6 Americorp teams comprised of over 90 members
7 that provided day-to-day on site assistance
8 in two local schools, PS 288 and PS 329.
9 Collaboratively, our young people have
10 supported their local schools by involving
11 themselves in peer tutorial efforts and
12 collaboratively with the district, we have
13 co-hosted test prep seminars at our offices
14 and on Saturdays and weekends when most
15 schools are closed, for students grades
16 three, four and five. And Mr. Stewart, our
17 school board member, who is African American
18 and from our community, has personally
19 assisted over 1,000 students and parents in
20 personally navigating the bureaucracy and
21 educational system.
22 Working together, we were able to
23 elevate education as a priority in our
24 community, stabilize our school
25 environments, secure access and information,
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2 and most of all, improve student outcomes.
3 In fact, in 1997, PS 288 had the most
4 improved reading scores in the City of New
5 York.
6 We have always supported school
7 reform, such as school leadership teams.
8 But only if those reforms were logical,
9 coherent and included all stakeholders. We
10 affirmatively believe that the eradication
11 of community school boards is a violation of
12 the Voting Rights Act. Abolishment will
13 disenfranchise parents who are primarily
14 black and Latino, and it will further
15 disenfranchise Immigrant parents. It is
16 unconscionable that a two tiered system of
17 education is evolving, and how can we, in
18 good conscious, tolerate a system, whether
19 it is by selection or election, where people
20 who live upstate New York can enjoy the
21 right to vote? The right to community
22 control? The right to get more economic
23 resources per child per capita?
24 We respect accountability and
25 responsibility, because as you know,
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2 district 21 is a model district. They know
3 how to get it done. So our goal should be
4 not to create larger bureaucracies, as was
5 recommended today. Our goal should be to
6 empower public district governance bodies
7 with real responsibilities for budget,
8 educational policy, superintendent
9 evaluation, and which are mandated to have
10 ongoing consultations with parents and the
11 public.
12 We know that the task force is faced
13 with an awesome responsibility, but we also
14 think that you have a duty to step up. How
15 does the mass plan conflict with the mandate
16 of the task force? And why are we allowing
17 a system to be created where parents and the
18 community are eliminated from the public
19 debate? Why should superintendents be
20 subject to removal or transfer at will?
21 Where would parents get the help that they
22 need to navigate this system? And why would
23 you dismantle functional districts which
24 have a continuity of leadership and a proven
25 record of success?
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2 As parents and community, we have the
3 right to proffer ideas and concerns about
4 our district, the districts in which we
5 live. And in closing, I would like to
6 remind everyone of the words of Marian
7 Wright Edelman, she said, "If there was ever
8 a time to stand up, to speak out and to take
9 risks, and to act courageously to defend the
10 right of our children and democratic values,
11 the time is now."
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
13 MS. ROBERTSON: At this time, I
14 really would like you to hear from the
15 children who have been the beneficiaries of
16 working in a district that not only honors
17 children, but respects them and looks at the
18 bottom line, that every child should
19 participate fully in their own education,
20 and who believe that they're not only
21 looking at rhetoric, but can these children
22 achieve, and I think they can, they have and
23 they will.
24 So our next speaker will be Tai
25 Ijelu.
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2 TAI IJELU: Hello. Our names are
3 Tai and Kenny Ijelu. We attend PS 329 in
4 Coney Island. We want our parents to have
5 the same right to vote that is enjoyed by
6 all other New York State residents. I know
7 Mr. Stewart and Mr. Bowens. They have
8 worked very hard to make sure that our
9 school gets the resources they need. We
10 have computers and up-to-date books.
11 When we walk into school, we know
12 that we are there to learn. When we need
13 help with -- when we needed help with our
14 fourth grade ELA, our community school board
15 members, superintendents and local community
16 organizations worked together to get us test
17 prep for eight weeks prior to tests.
18 KENNY IJELU: I was glad we had a
19 test prep. We both got threes on our state
20 test. And did not have to go to summer
21 school. This was a special need met by the
22 school board. Dr. Bonhoeffer once said that
23 the tests of the morality of a society is
24 what it does for its children. We don't
25 need lip service, we need real education.
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2 We need you to stop playing with our lives.
3 Every year there's a new buzz word for
4 education. Our district is working because
5 we are working together. Leave our district
6 alone. Thank you. Next up is Joaquil
7 Harden.
8 JOAQUIL HARDEN: Hello. My name is
9 Joaquil Harden. I want my mother to have
10 the same right to vote as a mother at Utica,
11 Albany. What about our constitutional
12 rights? Upstate New Yorkers can get a good
13 education, have power and representation,
14 and get to build as many jails as they need.
15 New York City children are not entitled to a
16 good education? That we should have no
17 power and no representation? We are only
18 fit to fill the upstate jails.
19 I deserve an education and the
20 opportunity to success.
21 MR. WILLIAMSON: Good evening. My
22 name is Nelson Williamson. I am a father of
23 three children, all whom attend public
24 schools. I deserve the same right to vote
25 for school governance representatives
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2 enjoyed by all other New York State
3 residents. It has always been a source of
4 personal pride for me to vote in each and
5 every election. I am particularly disturbed
6 that the governance change erratic the right
7 of Immigrant parents to vote.
8 My neighbors are Russian, Mexicans
9 and Pakistani. What about their voice?
10 Community school boards are effective in
11 making sure their parents' voices are heard.
12 I have worked continuously with Immigrant
13 and non-Immigrant parents to encourage them
14 to vote in the community and the school
15 board elections, held workshops, and
16 representation. It was the only body that I
17 could go to to get the school issues
18 resolved.
19 School boards serve as effective
20 function by setting district educational
21 policies, participating in the capital
22 planning process, setting district zoning,
23 policies and approving the district
24 Comprehensive Education Plan.
25 Let's make it plain, why do upstate
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2 parents, who are mostly white, have the
3 right to vote, but parents who live
4 downstate, who are primarily black, Latino
5 and Immigrants, not have the right to vote?
6 The entire education reform committee --
7 community excuse me, should be outraged that
8 we are being denied the right to vote, the
9 most basic tenant of American society.
10 If this was Johannesburg and it was
11 split in half like New York State is being
12 split in half, the education community and
13 constitutional law community would be
14 outraged.
15 The re-centralization of the New York
16 City Board of Education will set our
17 children back 30 years. Why is New York and
18 New York City Board of Education -- New York
19 City prepared to become a city of
20 discrepancy? Why is New York City prepared
21 to become a tale of two cities? I
22 understand this is a fact-finding body. At
23 the end of the day, let the record show, I
24 want representation and public access, and I
25 want the right to vote.
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2 Last, but not least, to all the
3 elected officials, we know who you are, we
4 don't know what was offered or promised to
5 you for your silence throughout this ordeal,
6 but your re-election is not one of them.
7 Are you with me people? If the Mayor
8 is given the power to dismantle the school
9 board, I assure you, you will be dismantling
10 your own political career. God bless
11 America.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We have a long
13 evening. Let me first of all, I want to
14 thank Ms. Robertson and Mr. Williamson for
15 your testimony. It was important. It was
16 well delivered and eloquent, but I can't
17 help but think that the stars of this panel
18 were the three youngsters sitting in between
19 you. I just want you to know, on behalf of
20 the entire task force, that we understand
21 very, very well that the mission ultimately
22 is about making sure that not only are
23 parents and community members represented
24 and have representation, but that ultimately
25 all of that and all of the talk and the
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2 rhetoric, leads to a world-class education
3 for the children of the City of New York.
4 That's our mission. We share that with you.
5 We thank you very much. Thank you.
6 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
7 Our next panel, Sarah Kennedy, Faizah Ijelu,
8 Frances Soto, Diana Igelu -- I think we have
9 a Coney Island dynasty -- Kaity Packer, and
10 Al Wilson. Also South Brooklyn Youth
11 Consortium.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: As this panel is
13 coming down assembling, I just want to make
14 the point that Terri Thomson just made.
15 These three panels all represent the South
16 Brooklyn Youth Consortium, and are mostly
17 students, but are accompanied by wonderful
18 adult leaders. So, again, if you will, all
19 decide what order you wish to speak and just
20 let us all know who is speaking so we will
21 be able to greet you all properly.
22 MS. FOWLER: Hello. My name is
23 Kathleen Fowler. I'm a mother of three
24 children who attend public schools. I don't
25 want to be forced to travel downtown
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2 Brooklyn, lower Manhattan or Staten Island
3 to resolve issues affecting my children. I
4 appreciate the fact that I can walk to my
5 local school district and attend open public
6 meetings. I can meet with my local school
7 board members to discuss education policies,
8 especially the district's Comprehensive
9 Education Plan. This is important, because
10 I am meeting with the school board members
11 who are from my community and who understand
12 the specific dynamics of my community.
13 If community school boards are
14 eliminated, I will not have a voice. I
15 would be denied the opportunity to publicly
16 participate at the local level. The Mayor
17 is announcing profound changes in the
18 educational system. Each day, as a parent,
19 I receive new sound bite by way of
20 newspaper, radio or television. But I have
21 yet to see a written plan. We have a right
22 to a written plan, which we can read,
23 analyze and evaluate.
24 We have a right to be involved in the
25 process of public consultation. We applaud
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2 the efforts of the task force and we hope
3 that you will have the courage to draw the
4 proverbial line in the sand and reject the
5 proposition that community school boards
6 should be eliminated. Good evening.
7 MS. SOTO: My name is Frances Soto.
8 And I attend the Brooklyn Studio School in
9 community school district 21. I am a sixth
10 grade student. Because of my local
11 district's long standing commitment of
12 education, I have been able to attend
13 school-based and community-based programs,
14 which provide for a seamless transition
15 between regular school and after school.
16 At PS 329, I had a mentor who worked
17 with me one on one to improve my test taking
18 abilities. My mentor worked with me by
19 improving my self-esteem. My school was --
20 my old school was able to create such a
21 mentorship program, because they worked with
22 the community school board as equal partners
23 in the educational process.
24 I am a member of the South Brooklyn
25 Youth Corporation. The youth corporation
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2 worked with Mark Twain Junior High School
3 during its hunger drive. I have packed and
4 given out bags of food between the true
5 effort of the students at Mark Twain Junior
6 High School. On two occasions, we have
7 given out over 1,800 bags of food.
8 I also attended a workshop on the
9 cautions and prevention of hunger in New
10 York City and throughout the whole world. I
11 have learned a lot and know I will be a
12 learner for life, because I am beginning to
13 educate in a school district which know my
14 needs. I wonder what would happen to our
15 students -- to other students like me if
16 there is no district office to go. I wonder
17 what will happen to students like me if we
18 get a superintendent who doesn't want to
19 know or care to know the community they
20 serve.
21 Community school boards give
22 community access. I know Mr. Ronald
23 Stewart. I know that he works hard for
24 children in our community. We need
25 community school boards. Don't take away
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2 our parents' voice and educational system.
3 Public schools need public representation.
4 Thank you.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
6 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
7 FAIZAH IJELU: Hello. My name is
8 Faizah Ijelu. I am very honored to be
9 giving testimony before the task force on
10 community school district governance reform.
11 I attend David A. Boody Junior High School.
12 I am in the eighth grade. I am also a
13 member of the South Brooklyn Youth Law
14 Committee.
15 The recommendation to eliminate
16 community school boards can only have one
17 effect. It will terminate and obliterate
18 community, student and parent involvement.
19 It took our community 26 years to elect a
20 parent and community representative to the
21 community school board. As a direct effect
22 of the election of Ronald Stewart to the
23 community school board, the educational
24 outcomes of children who attend the four
25 local school in Coney Island has improved,
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2 and they have improved because we now have
3 community school board members and community
4 involvement. They show that we have
5 educational forums which foster community
6 and public participation. Held two working
7 sessions. Held four quarterly meetings with
8 PAs and held many consultation meetings and
9 public hearings with public participation.
10 They have met with previous
11 Chancellors. Our community school board
12 works hard to recruit qualified minority and
13 certified teachers to the Coney Island
14 community. As we fight for democracy all
15 over the world, how can democracy not allow
16 for public representation in public
17 education? How am I different from the
18 children who live upstate New York? Why do
19 parents who live in upstate New York have
20 the right to have public voice in their
21 children's education, but my mother who
22 lives in Brooklyn does not have a right to
23 have a public voice in my education?
24 We demand that you set up a public
25 school governance body with broad public
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2 representation. I demand that my mother's
3 right and my father's right to be my voice
4 be preserved. Thank you.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
6 DIANA IJELU: Good evening,
7 everyone. My name is Diana Ijelu. I
8 thought about Martin Luther King the other
9 day. I thought about how he went to help
10 the sanitation workers, and one of them had
11 a sign that said, "I am a man." Why do
12 students who live upstate New York are
13 different from me? Why do students who live
14 upstate New York have to get the right to
15 have more money? Why do parents upstate
16 have the right to local community control?
17 The Mayor only plans to save money on
18 children's backs. It's a shame that in 2003
19 I now have to come to a public hearing for
20 my humanity as a student.
21 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
22 MS. PACKER: Good evening. My name
23 is Kaity Packer. I was privileged to attend
24 Mark Twain Junior High School. I understand
25 that the Mayor now has control of the New
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2 York City public school system, but does
3 that mean that my parents and the community
4 should not have the right to participate in
5 local school governance? I think not. This
6 is the opportune time to ensure that all
7 stakeholders play a meaningful role in the
8 education of the children of the City of New
9 York.
10 I want my mother and father to be
11 able to attend local school board meetings
12 in our community. I want my parents to be
13 able to continue to meet with the
14 superintendent. Mark Twain Junior High
15 School is in the top five. I was proud to
16 attend a school that reflected the diversity
17 of New York City, believed in accountability
18 and maintained high standards.
19 I don't believe that in the richest
20 country in the world, we don't know what it
21 takes to educate a child. We do know. We
22 know that the whipping boy of school
23 governance should not be community school
24 boards. The real fight is fiscal equity.
25 The real fight is having the Legrasse
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2 decision upheld. The real right is no
3 longer tolerating two systems of education
4 of have and have nots.
5 It is appalling that upstate New
6 Yorkers have the right to local community
7 control. It is equally appalling that
8 upstate children get more money than
9 children in New York City. We urge the task
10 force not to take away the last vestige of
11 protection we have, and that is local
12 community school boards. Thank you.
13 MR. WILSON: Honorable Mr. Sanders,
14 Ms. Thomson, I'm probably the most
15 transplanted person here, because I'm from
16 Connecticut and I got stuck here, so if you
17 don't hear a New York slang, and you hear a
18 Connecticut twang, you know where I'm from.
19 First of all, I came here probably 20
20 years ago. My daughter was born here. I
21 was born and raised in Connecticut, New
22 London. Worked in every city. Some of the
23 programs that I was able to start have all
24 dealt around education. The first job I got
25 I spent 10 years working for the city as a
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2 dedicated vocational instructor. In fact,
3 the only dubious honor I had out of that I
4 was the first and youngest black person to
5 ever take to such a position at the age of
6 22 years old.
7 The thing that I think that has
8 helped some of the youth since me coming to
9 South Brooklyn, I first came back to New
10 York City as the World Trade Center memorial
11 event chairman. Along with that, we did the
12 Festival of Lights which was a week long
13 event, but we didn't go to ground 11, we
14 went into the communities, and that's what
15 I'm here for.
16 In fact, the reason I'm here for
17 South Brooklyn, because I got stuck in South
18 Brooklyn after the event was over and
19 probably after my speech here, they're
20 probably going to tell me to go back home,
21 but -- no, they're not. One of the major
22 things that I have seen as working in
23 education is two things, one, there was a
24 program in Connecticut we have something
25 called the two Connecticuts. There is an
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2 inner-city Connecticut, which they call the
3 poorest in the nation. Then we have the
4 richest Connecticut, which is suburban
5 Connecticut.
6 There were some programs that were
7 started, the university sought me out to
8 start which was called Concap. We took the
9 50 toughest students in one of the roughest
10 neighborhoods, and the teachers -- and part
11 of those 50 students that we took, we were
12 supposed to make them college ready at
13 seventh and eighth grade. That means half
14 of those students or all of the students, 85
15 percent of the students never made the honor
16 roll, never was classified as college level,
17 and never probably had the motivation to go
18 on to college.
19 Those students had to come to a
20 program in which I demanded that their
21 patients show up at meetings once a week.
22 If your parents don't show up to the
23 meeting, don't think that this program is
24 for you, because what we were promising the
25 youth was college guaranteed from the
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2 University of Connecticut state college
3 system.
4 Now what happened after that, when we
5 were finished with the program, and since
6 the parents first came together as a
7 community -- this is seven years ago --
8 after three semesters, 85 percent of those
9 students made the honor roll. 75 percent of
10 those students then made it into college
11 level courses. 95 percent of the parents
12 showed up to every meeting, and that was the
13 difference.
14 Taking away the community board is
15 almost like me trying to govern my kids from
16 California, and I live in Connecticut. It
17 can't happen that way. In order to do that,
18 the people that are around them who know
19 them are the ones that going to bring them
20 up. I firmly believe that in order -- now
21 I'll get to my statement -- I firmly
22 believe that in order to better our
23 education system, we must empower district
24 bodies and make them accountable. They
25 should have responsibilities which include
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2 responsibility for the budget and
3 educational policy.
4 This must include a superintendent
5 evaluation and consultation with the parents
6 and community. Parents in the community
7 need an elected voice. The Coney Island
8 community has made tremendous strides in
9 education, because we partnered with
10 community school district 21 to improve the
11 lives of our children. How can you take
12 away a community school board which has
13 assisted and empowered thousands of parents
14 and students partnering with our school
15 board members which allowed us to keep
16 informed on school governance, school
17 leadership teams, new tests, etcetera?
18 We also firmly believe that the task
19 force on community school district
20 governance reform has a duty to propose a
21 plan which is inclusive of all public
22 stakeholders, administrators, parents,
23 students and community. And in order for us
24 to do this, we are now -- we're looking at
25 you, I sit here and see your faces and so
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2 forth, and I haven't seen you before and you
3 you haven't seen my JJ look alike face
4 before either.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I know who JJ
6 was.
7 MR. WILSON: I like to consider
8 myself a Denzel Washington, but I'm working
9 on it. But we will remember your face when
10 this is over.
11 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I'll remember
12 yours too. Mr. Wilson, first of all, let me
13 just say that Connecticut's loss is our
14 gain. Stay here. We need you here. To all
15 of you, and especially the students who are
16 here, I can't tell you how much we
17 appreciate and are indebted to all of you,
18 but in a way, especially the students,
19 because after all, that is what all of this
20 is about, to make the schools as good as
21 they can be for this generation of students.
22 So your telling us what you need every day
23 and every year in the schools is very
24 meaningful to us. We appreciate you.
25 MR. WILSON: Mr. Sanders, I have
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2 one point that I forgot to make, I told you
3 the program was seven years ago and I said
4 we had 50 students. 90 percent of those
5 students are in college today.
6 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: That's great.
7 We thank you very much. Thank you.
8 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I think we
9 have one more group from South Brooklyn
10 Youth Consortium. David Gaddy, Eddie
11 Brumfield and Kathleen Fowler was just with
12 this group. Is there anyone else from South
13 Brooklyn? I feel very safe here tonight. I
14 just wanted to note that the student safety
15 patrol is here with us tonight. If the
16 young man would stand up.
17 MR. GADDY: By the way, district 13
18 invented this about 15 years ago. I've been
19 volunteering for 30 years.
20 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We need you at
21 the microphone so everybody can hear you.
22 MR. GADDY: My name is Mr. Gaddy.
23 I'm a parent volunteer for 30 years. I
24 started volunteering when I was 14 years old
25 in downtown Brooklyn Ft. Green. And we had
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2 good superintendents then back in those
3 days, Young, Ward, and I tell you, we need
4 our school boards. We don't have them, we
5 don't have nothing. This is my friend David
6 Gaddy Jr. I raised my daughter Shamika for
7 22 years by myself as a single parent.
8 Without the district, I couldn't have done
9 it by myself.
10 I have been involved as a parent
11 leader advocate for over 26 years. I have
12 attended parent training and parent
13 workshops with many districts, community
14 board, district school board members, other
15 local schools, principals, after-school
16 program, allowed me to have a relationship
17 with the children in local school and
18 principals and school board members.
19 I always felt welcome at the school
20 board meetings, which were always well
21 attended and informative. I always felt a
22 part of the process with the superintendent,
23 you know, at the state education. I could
24 go past a lot of this stuff, because it
25 bothered me that they can build all those
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2 jails, they got money for all these jails,
3 but they don't have money to keep the school
4 boards intact.
5 I'm here today on behalf of all the
6 children of New York and district 21, and
7 especially my daughter, Shamika Gaddy, and
8 my son, David Jr. My daughter is 22 years
9 old. I raised her by myself, as I was
10 saying. It was hard, but without the
11 district, I couldn't have done it, because
12 every time I had a problem with the
13 principal or the assistants or parent, I
14 would go to the district and sit down with
15 one of the district members, and we would
16 work something out.
17 I have 25 stepchildren, and I have a
18 son named Cameron, and he -- train driver
19 today, and he's a mechanic. He went to tech
20 high down Ft. Green over here, and he was I
21 call him the school preacher. The teacher
22 had him running around the school doing all
23 kind of work and stuff in the school and he
24 was a very bright children. When it was
25 time for him to get somewhere, they closed
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2 the door on him. I went down to district 13
3 and I fought for my son to get into a better
4 school, and it was -- his average,
5 everything was fine, and you know, they did
6 it. Now today he's a train driver and he
7 fixes trains, and he's only 22 years old.
8 And if it wasn't for the district, it wasn't
9 for the district, where would I be.
10 So I'm here tonight to tell you,
11 district 21 I've been part of and it has
12 tremendously helped my daughter, Adele
13 Cohen, South Brooklyn. I had no money. No
14 income. Disabled. Open heart surgery.
15 They worked hard with me. Got my daughter
16 to Kingsboro College for Business. She's a
17 cosmetologist.
18 If it weren't for the school boards,
19 my 22 year old wouldn't be where she is at.
20 I urge you, please, I pray at night, please,
21 please -- stand up. He's only six years
22 old. If he don't have district 13, I don't
23 want the cops to get him, the prisons to get
24 him. I want him to complete his education,
25 and student safety patrol is part of our
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2 lives.
3 Community board, most of you all
4 might have met me before with Grenadier
5 situation, you're a great board, but I
6 promise you, we'll remember your faces.
7 Thank you, sir.
8 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I've never met
9 so many people in one room who can remember
10 my face. Even my family doesn't remember my
11 face that well. Thank you very much. Thank
12 you very much, Mr. Gaddy.
13 MR. BRUMFIELD: My name is Eddie
14 Brumfield. I'm out of South Brooklyn. And
15 I'll just say, I've been on the battlefield
16 my whole life, and there's no compelling
17 argument that can be made to eliminate
18 community school boards. Especially in
19 light of the Mayor's announcement on January
20 15, 2003. The idea that we should have a
21 network of good schools and a network of bad
22 schools is a smack in the face of the
23 children of New York City. The notion that
24 destroying district offices will free up
25 space is ludicrous. Sure, it will free up
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2 space in that particular school, but it will
3 not create additional, substantial space,
4 because most children, most schools have
5 limited space as it is.
6 And what about the people who work in
7 the district offices? Why should they be
8 forced to retire or join the unemployment
9 line? What about their families? At
10 community school board 21 we had a legacy of
11 exceptional leadership in the form of
12 superintendents. Why should our children
13 suffer and be forced to share a
14 superintendent or lose our superintendent
15 altogether?
16 Mayor control should not mean the
17 elimination of community and parent input.
18 The recommendation of parent engagement
19 boards means that we're replacing one level
20 of bureaucracy with another. The effect is
21 to defraud the citizens of New York City of
22 their right to effective and authoritative
23 representation. The effect is to eradicate
24 our voting rights. We demand the right to
25 participate in this district decision-making
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2 process. Local community elected
3 representation provides the only check and
4 balance in a democracy. And the last time I
5 checked in the United States of America, was
6 still -- it was still a democracy, but our
7 legacy continues to be that of a democracy
8 for some and not for others.
9 We demand a place at the table. We
10 demand a voice. I thank you for your time.
11 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
12 MR. STEWART: Good evening, ladies
13 and gentlemen. My name is Ronald Stewart.
14 I'm the guy they been talking about. I'm
15 currently a member of the community school
16 board and as Mrs. Robinson and the rest of
17 the members of the communities and members
18 of district 21 have said, that we have
19 worked long and hard to make sure that our
20 children have a quality and proper
21 education.
22 I have seven children, all of whom
23 attended schools in district 21. I am a
24 product of district 21. I lived on the site
25 where Donald Trump's grandfather has built
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2 the Trump Village. I lived in a bungalow in
3 the Coney Island area most of my life.
4 I have five grandchildren who also
5 attend schools in district 21, and we worked
6 hard for many years. I don't want to go
7 over what many of the parents and PTA
8 members have said, because it will just be
9 unjust, because they have already laid out
10 what you need to hear, and I appeal to you,
11 I call to your great conscious to listen to
12 what these people are saying.
13 I have meetings every Sunday with my
14 children at my home. When I make a mistake,
15 and I and my wife are the governors or the
16 governors to the home, but we make sure that
17 they share in whatever happens in that home.
18 These parents, these children, these members
19 of district 21 and the other districts in
20 New York City deserve a right to make and
21 help make decisions with their own
22 education.
23 When I'm wrong about -- when I'm
24 wrong, I tell my children and I find out
25 that parents and adults find it very hard to
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2 apologize to children. And if we take the
3 position that the Mayor is planning, we will
4 be, 10 years down the line, apologizing to a
5 generation. Not only am I parent, a school
6 board member, but I'm a New York State
7 parole officer. I supervise 60 to 80
8 parolees in the Brownsville area, and you
9 have heard what's been happening there in
10 the last few days.
11 These are young men that I see coming
12 out of the prisons, that prisons that are
13 built on the word of legislators that are
14 upstate. I see these men, the roughest,
15 toughest meanest cats that tell me,
16 Mr. Stewart, when I was a little boy, all I
17 wanted to do was go to school and be a
18 doctor. I don't know what happened in
19 between that time and now, but we need to
20 think about that.
21 So I'm saying, there was a man who is
22 currently a city councilman that introduced
23 a lawsuit and proved that the children
24 upstate financially were receiving more
25 money -- now he was a former school board
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2 member -- then the children in New York
3 City. I felt that that was a great fight
4 for the politicians to champion that cause,
5 and I challenge you to take up that cause.
6 Did we have problems in district 21?
7 Yes, we did, but we sat down with the former
8 school superintendent, Mr. Donald Webber and
9 the current superintendent,
10 Mrs. Effeltucker, and the officials, and we
11 sat down and we worked hard to make the
12 district work for all of our children. And
13 we will continue to do that. But I'm asking
14 you in good conscious, to listen to these
15 people, because we living in a time as no
16 time before. And when my children come to
17 me and say daddy, you know, you had the
18 humility to say you were sorry, you made a
19 mistake, don't make a mistake with the lives
20 of our children. Thank you.
21 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
22 Thank you very much.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Stewart, I
24 want to thank you, and I want to thank you,
25 Mr. Brumfield, and I want to thank you,
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2 Mr. Gaddy and Mr. Gaddy. Thank you all very
3 much for being here. We're listening very
4 carefully to what you are saying, and I can
5 certainly tell you on behalf of all the
6 members of this task force, that we hear
7 your message, we're listening carefully, and
8 we hope to do the right thing. We thank you
9 very much.
10 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Stanley Kinard,
11 director of the Woodson Project.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: As Mr. Kinnard
13 makes his way to the table, let me just say
14 that the last groups of speakers were groups
15 of speakers. We obviously allowed greater
16 liberty with the five-minute rule, but
17 because we have so many speakers, we have to
18 pretty strictly limit the individual
19 testimony to five minutes, and I hate to
20 interrupt people and be rude, but if we're
21 getting to that five minutes, I need to hold
22 up this gentle reminder so that you'll
23 conclude, and we can hear everybody tonight.
24 We have about 40 speakers who want to speak.
25 Thank you for being with us, Mr. Kinard.
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2 MR. KINARD: Thank you, Mr.
3 Sanders. My name is Stanley Kinard. I am
4 the executive director of the Carter G.
5 Woodson Cultural Literacy Project. A
6 community-based organization, who in the
7 spirit of its founder, its namesake, has as
8 its mission, the teaching of African history
9 and culture to students in high school and
10 elementary school in New York City.
11 I was born in Brownsville, the home
12 for the battle for community control. In
13 1964, I remember the boycott of schools lead
14 by the late Reverend Milton Glammason, and
15 the call for quality education and community
16 control of schools. While I was a student
17 and was not able to participate in the
18 Oceanhill-Brownsville call for community
19 control, I was as a student of its leaders,
20 as an undergraduate at University of
21 Massachusetts.
22 In 1970, Rhody McCoy, the leader of
23 the Oceanhill-Brownsville fight joined the
24 faculty as professor in the school of
25 education. Dr. McCoy brought with him
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2 another leader of the Oceanhill battle, a
3 young student by the name of Paul Chandler,
4 and they were later joined by Dr. Harvey
5 Scrimner, the former -- the late Dr. Harvey
6 Scrimner might I add, because he just passed
7 -- former superintendent of New York City
8 schools during that period.
9 Dr. McCoy later became my faculty
10 advisor and was a great influence upon me.
11 During my tenure in Amherst, I came to New
12 York City on weekends to listen to Brother
13 Jitu Weusi lecture at the east culture
14 center, regarding the need for African
15 centered education and for community control
16 in the school system.
17 So inspired by Dr. McCoy, Dr.
18 Scrimner, Brother Jitu and being introduced
19 to the teachings of Dr. Carter G. Woodson,
20 my life's mission was carved out. It is in
21 this life's mission that brings me here
22 today to discuss this important changes that
23 is currently occurring in the New York City
24 school system.
25 The conversation and action
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2 surrounding the reforms are needed and are
3 extremely timely. However, in the rush to
4 reform and the excitement of the hour, there
5 is an essential and critical part of school
6 reform that is being ignored. It is the
7 issue of cultural rights. It is also the
8 issue of voting rights. In 1903, Dr. W.E.B.
9 DeBois stated that the problem of the 20th
10 century is the problem of the color line.
11 This statement is even more important today,
12 in the year 2003, a century later, 100 years
13 later, as we address the school governance
14 issue in New York City.
15 The problem of the 21st century is a
16 recognition of the cultural rights of people
17 African decent and all people of color as it
18 pertains to their education. This issue has
19 been played out before our eyes -- is being
20 played out right before our eyes in the New
21 York City school system.
22 Students of African decent make up
23 approximately 40 percent of the student
24 population. Yet, it is only school
25 districts that are predominantly black and
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2 Latino that are failing school districts.
3 There are no white failing school districts
4 in New York City or New York State. This
5 issue is evident.
6 When looking at the recent ruling in
7 the Campaign for Fiscal Equity court case
8 where the judge ruled -- and this has been
9 stated over and over again tonight -- that
10 students in New York City were being
11 shortchanged by billions of dollars. The
12 government challenged this ruling and it was
13 overturned.
14 Basically this law supports the
15 continued inequity in public education that
16 affects particularly black and Latino
17 students and is very reminiscent of Plessy
18 versus Ferguson decision in 1896 which
19 stated that separate but equal is
20 unconstitutional.
21 The issue of color rears its head
22 during February which we call Black History
23 Month. Several years ago the central Board
24 of Education voted to close schools for a
25 week during the month of February. This
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2 makes no educational sense and it's
3 certainly not putting children first.
4 Additionally, it is an affront to the spirit
5 of our ancestors and every African child and
6 parent in New York City. February is the
7 shortest month in the year and Black History
8 is the only time that the school system
9 uniformly addresses the contributions of
10 Africans and the people of African decent
11 that they have made to the world at large.
12 It makes no educational sense, because in
13 high schools, the winter break comes two
14 weeks after the start of the new semester.
15 Students come back after taking their
16 regents on February 3 to receive their
17 report cards, and two weeks later they're
18 out of school for an entire week. This
19 certainly again does not put children first.
20 And might I add, black or white children.
21 If there were real community control,
22 this law would never have passed. Which
23 brings me to the most important and critical
24 part of the cultural rights issue, as it
25 pertains to the New York City education
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2 system, that of school governance and
3 community involvement in that process.
4 If there were really community
5 control, if there really had been a sense of
6 school governance, this law would never have
7 passed. While community involvement in the
8 government process, we can never ensure that
9 the cultural right -- I'm sorry -- without
10 community involvement in the governance
11 process, we can never ensure that the
12 cultural rights of children of African
13 decent will ever be realized in the New York
14 City school system.
15 To this date, we're still suffering
16 from the trauma of the Post Atlantic Slave
17 Trade, and neither the city, nor the country
18 has yet to identify it as a crime against
19 humanity. In listening carefully to Mayor
20 Bloomberg's address yesterday, he used a
21 quote from Dr. King. Mayor Bloomberg stated
22 that Dr. King regularly reminded us that an
23 injustice anywhere threatens justice
24 everywhere. Yet, we do not receive this
25 action reflected in his action on school
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2 reform. Mr. Bloomberg's definition of
3 justice does not address the injustice of
4 disempowerment. Justice is not censorship
5 of people talking about education policy as
6 being proposed, as being pushed, you know,
7 that an advisory board was just impaneled to
8 replace the central Board of Education, and
9 the day that they were introduced to public
10 they were also told that the minute that I
11 hear one of you speaking to the press, you
12 will be immediately fired.
13 Justice is not shutting schools down
14 during Black History Month. Justice is not
15 inequality in the distribution of resources,
16 as evidenced in the Campaign For Fiscal
17 Equity, and justice is certainly not
18 ignoring the culture rights of people of
19 African decent for African-centered
20 curriculum, if they so choose. The only
21 thing that can stop this injustice is to
22 have a governance structure that is
23 community controlled and inclusive.
24 A governance structure that must be
25 able to speak out publicly about their
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2 concerns. To ensure that we do not go
3 backwards to this dangerous era of state's
4 rights. I urge this panel to vote for the
5 creation of independent school councils
6 compromised of both parents and community
7 members.
8 Now I want to say one thing, that I
9 feel that we have reached a historic point
10 in the evolution of the New York City public
11 school system. I too believe that change is
12 in order and there's certain things about
13 that Mayor Bloomberg has proposed that I
14 applaud. I welcome smaller schools. I
15 welcome smaller class size. I too believe
16 that some of the staff in district offices
17 need to be deployed back to the classroom.
18 My concern, however, is that we not
19 get overwhelmed in the euphoria of the
20 moment and lose sight of the fact that we
21 could be laying the framework and the ground
22 work for privitization and for school
23 vouchers. Thank you very much, sir.
24 One person's ideas and opinions
25 cannot dominate a system of 1.3 million
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2 students and is potentially dangerous and
3 totalitarian, and it is not what the good
4 Dr. King had in mind when he spoke of being
5 mindful of injustice. He stood for
6 inclusive democratic governance. Thank you
7 very much.
8 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you for
9 your strong, eloquent statement and for your
10 years of work in fighting for public
11 education.
12 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Next Vilda
13 Simone, consultant, UPA, United Parents
14 Association. I believe she's here now.
15 MS. SIMONE: Yes. Good evening.
16 I'd like to apologize. Excuse me. Good
17 evening everyone. I would like to apologize
18 for having my back to the audience. I felt
19 a little uncomfortable, I don't know about
20 anybody else, by having Chancellor here to
21 discuss such an important issue as the one
22 we are here this evening to what is it 12
23 midnight you guys, and his back was to
24 everyone, and it says a lot about what we
25 feel really about our children and the
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2 parents and their involvement.
3 I need to go home soon, but as a
4 consultant for professional development for
5 parents, I can't begin to tell you how
6 outraged I am about the fact that you want
7 to put the cart -- and I don't mean the
8 panelists here, and I certainly don't mean
9 parents and educators and supporters of the
10 public education in the audience, but how do
11 you put a cart before the horse when you
12 don't even have fiscal equity? Don't get it
13 twisted. Let's get it right. You are not
14 going anywhere without the money to create
15 better schools. Without the money to ensure
16 the resources to pay a parent coordinator,
17 whether they are elected, selected,
18 rejected.
19 My point is simply this, in 2003,
20 where there is money to finance war, and by
21 the way, the young men and women who today
22 at 18, are in forts and who have left and
23 are about to gear up and leave, are
24 listening to Nas and respect, and if you
25 don't know who Nas is, you're really not
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2 connected to the adolescence in this city,
3 because they are in the forefront and going
4 to be on the front line of what is happening
5 overseas, and they have public education.
6 They have public education. Many of them
7 are from New York City. I have met them.
8 I've talked to them. It's very interesting
9 their perception of what in fact they have
10 as education instilled in them, and why they
11 joined the army, to have a better education
12 and have money for college.
13 I'm going to tell you what, there is
14 the cart before the horse. Fiscal equity
15 must be resolved. I suggest that Mayor
16 Bloomberg knock on the door of Pataki, and
17 you know, and get with him about it so that
18 he can make this interesting, by the way,
19 plan reach fruition.
20 We'd like to see change. We'd like
21 to see a lot more done, but not without
22 parents at the table. Why? Because this is
23 my child who's in school from 8:00 to 3:00
24 that pays your salary. It's as simple as
25 that. I'm concerned about what she gets and
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2 how much of it. Privatization. Listen,
3 what are you going to do with the tax
4 dollars? Do we all get a refund, because
5 the money is now being siphoned into
6 something else. I don't want to get it
7 twisted. I really want to get it right.
8 My child is in one of the premiere
9 districts in New York City, which is
10 district 13, and I can tell you how hard the
11 superintendent and its staff there has
12 worked. We have some very unique and
13 dynamic programs for children going on and
14 have done so. Benjamin Banica had the
15 highest scores in New York City. That is a
16 district 13 school.
17 One thing we need to go home with
18 tonight as an afterthought when we watch the
19 news, whether it's censored or not, is what
20 is being done with the tax monies that you
21 can't have fiscal equity if you are about
22 public education. I thank you so much.
23 Good night.
24 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
25 much. Levita Clarke, district 17.
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2 MS. CLARKE: Hi. Good night. My
3 name is Levita Clarke. District 17.
4 Concerned and hard working parent. I would
5 like to thank the task force dedication in
6 leveling the playing field in the process
7 for governance. The process has been a
8 successful one, and I have heard no
9 complaints thus far, except for the -- I
10 would like to add -- the relocation of not
11 knowing the place that the meeting is going
12 to be held in advance, so you can spread the
13 word even more.
14 The job/responsibilities of the
15 incoming body has been made a little easier
16 due to the sweeping changes in education
17 being proposed by the Mayor. The children
18 in New York City will always need a champion
19 with their best interests at heart.
20 In 99 percent of all cases, this has
21 been their parent. Based on that
22 revelation, this leaves me as a dedicated
23 concerned parent leader, to recommend to
24 this task force that the make up of the
25 incoming governance be made up of
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2 governance.
3 In our present society, parents are
4 overloaded with responsibilities. So in
5 order to be able to find those exceptional
6 parents that always focus on children's
7 education, there must be a process. It is
8 my belief that this task force's conclusion
9 should be and must now engage in a further
10 mission. This mission must be to define the
11 rules that produce fair representation
12 across the board.
13 In order for this task force to be
14 able to come up with a more quality
15 recommendation proposal, they must include
16 the local strong and unbiased parent leaders
17 in this process. Again, the parent leaders
18 who will be elevating to the highest level
19 of advocacy for our children, must not be
20 the pick of administration.
21 These parent leaders must have
22 experience. Their volunteerism must not be
23 the only point of reference in the time
24 frame when they hold a title. Talk to the
25 local parent leaders. They know how serious
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2 this effort needs and an honest answer.
3 Parents must have a voice at the table where
4 ideas are formed. The mission of the new
5 representatives must be to change for a
6 positive culture in the individual schools.
7 This will be a monumental task which will
8 require experienced members in the new
9 governance. Getting high quality education
10 to be delivered to every child in the
11 Department of Education would be a miracle.
12 This culture changing could become a very
13 dangerous mission. There must be a mandated
14 protection put in place to avoid children of
15 parents seeking the new government from
16 being penalized for the steps that must be
17 taken to bring about true change.
18 Once parents know that their children
19 are safe from reprisals, they can put their
20 full concentration on the business of
21 advocating and on a limited length. There
22 must be a real authority with this position.
23 A lot of hiding and protecting goes on in
24 the Department of Education. In order to
25 bring about effective change, the new
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2 representation must have all the
3 information. There are also a few community
4 people that should be included in the
5 choice, the true advocates for children.
6 The community people should never outnumber
7 the parent leaders in the new governance
8 package.
9 In conclusion, I as a parent leader
10 have a lot more suggestions of not only my
11 own, but parents overall. I communicate
12 with parents from every borough. I also
13 listen to everything they have to say. So I
14 believe I have my finger on the pulse in the
15 local schools. I have served parents in
16 every capacity that exists. I have
17 advocated with a title and without a title.
18 I was even given an award for being a
19 constant pain to administration all year. I
20 must admit I was surprised.
21 There are rules everyone must follow.
22 This is the culture that the school should
23 have, a hard working but yielding positive,
24 high quality learning environment, which is
25 exactly what should be happening. Every
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2 parent leader, like myself, should be
3 cloning themselves with every parent they
4 meet. Elevation of knowledge on different
5 levels should never bring about exclusion of
6 the local parents.
7 The education of the local parents
8 must be ongoing. There are some Department
9 of Education local staff who do not realize
10 an educated parent is an asset. Thus,
11 they're not able to tap into this endless
12 supply of support. This task force have the
13 great privilege of changing millions of
14 children's lives. Make sure history looks
15 back on you kindly. You may be compared
16 with when education was decentralized.
17 I hope I was able to be of some help.
18 This is my first task force testimony. I
19 was not sure about the format, but I love
20 learning knew things and I will continue to
21 stay involved. Thank you. Get home safe.
22 Good night.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
24 much. You did just fine. We appreciate it,
25 Ms. Clarke.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Benjamin
3 Greene.
4 MR. GREENE: Good evening. I'd like
5 to introduce myself. I am the PTA president
6 of PS 256 in district 13. I am also the
7 president of the President's Council in
8 district 13, but far most and more
9 important, I am a parent of a student in
10 district 13, and of this Department of
11 Education.
12 I'd like to read a little bit of my
13 testimony and the testimony of some of our
14 concerned parents in district 13. We, the
15 concerned parents of community school
16 district 13, are disturbed and outraged over
17 the sweeping reforms Mayor Bloomberg has
18 proposed for New York City public school
19 education system.
20 Mayor Bloomberg's proposal is the
21 most massive and radical budget cut in the
22 history of New York City public school
23 educational system. Must our children
24 always be the sacrificing lambs of the New
25 York City fiscal budget crisis? The Mayor
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2 pledged in his election campaign to replace
3 partisanship and patronage with
4 accountability and intervention, so why are
5 we forced to settle? A lot these one step,
6 one size fit all to -- and requirements for
7 our children. Does the Chancellor pose the
8 12 minimal educational standard credits
9 required to become a teacher? The
10 Chancellor is now using search committees to
11 see what is the most need by out school
12 system. Mr. Klein should have, at the very
13 least, the minimal requirements standards as
14 described by the chapter, if a proposed
15 overall education curriculum hitting the
16 ground running.
17 Did he pool the educators that we
18 have already in the system that has been
19 here for over 20 some odd years to be his
20 number one or number two person in charge of
21 the city education? The concerned parents
22 of district 13 understand that the overall
23 education prospect of our district or any
24 district range from pre-K to high school and
25 through college. We place our emphasis on
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2 what is the best interest of our children,
3 and I do repeat, what is in the best
4 interest of our children, and not those who
5 profit or special interest groups.
6 Parents in district 13 identify a
7 juvenile as a dependent student or person
8 who relies on their parent and guardian or
9 caregiver up to the age of 18, and in some
10 cases, to the age of 21. Parents in
11 district 13 embrace the motion of
12 educational reform from the basic readiness,
13 skills and early childhood education to
14 prepare them for the rights of passage to
15 adulthood from middle school to high school
16 and through college. We want the Department
17 of Education to adopt our philosophy of
18 being a coma district while illustrating a
19 curriculum like the model school district.
20 The model school district pilot
21 program gave the parents of district 13 an
22 opportunity to implement programs and assume
23 responsibility for the selective functions
24 and administrative centrally, hosting
25 visiting the district staff and serving as a
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2 demonstration district for the New York City
3 public school system.
4 The objective of the model school
5 district was to promote the three Rs.
6 Re-think the way we do business, restructure
7 our organizations and practice while
8 reorganizing the district educational
9 administrations. The success of the model
10 district was outstanding. Parents
11 participated in record numbers. Businesses
12 became corporate partners and educational
13 outcomes soared. Parents, teachers,
14 businesses and the community became
15 partners, illustrating the school
16 development program, otherwise known as SDP.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Greene,
18 we'll need you to summarize the rest of your
19 remarks. We're well passed the five
20 minutes. As much as we enjoy listening to.
21 Thank you, sir.
22 MR. GREENE: Okay. Summarizing,
23 where we have in district 13 felt that the
24 children come first. Like similar to what
25 the Mayor is saying in a lot of his
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2 proposals, children come first. But we also
3 feel that a lot of these changes are not in
4 the interest of the children.
5 They are more into the interests of
6 special interest groups. They are more in
7 the interest of self-gratification. And you
8 know, as far as politicians going up in
9 front and grand-standing, I made a change,
10 but in the long run, is this beneficial to
11 the children? Taking away that core of
12 district offices right there that parents
13 can go to, or staff can go right there and
14 putting them in this big pool of more than
15 one school. I kind of read over briefly
16 some of the changes that he's talking about,
17 but I think if we talk about reduced class
18 sizes and that we need smaller class size
19 with students in there, why are we now
20 turning back and contradicting ourselves and
21 saying that we want to make this one big
22 district, when we already said the smaller
23 it is, the better we can teach these
24 children? We can identify some of the areas
25 of weakness with these children, and better
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2 educate them, why are we going to put our
3 educational system in a big pool?
4 The other thing is that I feel that
5 not to change the system, but reform it,
6 correct it and put more watchdogs. Have the
7 parents have more power that they have. I
8 understand that we are talking about
9 eliminating community school boards, but
10 instead of eliminating or changing their
11 names, also put something up there. If
12 we're going to replace them, replace them
13 with something where parents have more power
14 and agree with and can come with their
15 grievance or make a purpose and not we be an
16 advisory council.
17 For too long we have heard in this
18 public school system that we're advisory.
19 Oh, we'll take that under consideration.
20 Let our thoughts, let our ideas be fact.
21 Let us have some say so in something how the
22 business is being done in the school system.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you,
24 Mr. Greene. We thank you very much. I
25 actually think the best part of your
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2 testimony was that which you spoke about off
3 the cuff. It was very compelling. We thank
4 you very much.
5 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Mrs. Dorothy
6 Ellis, president of community school board
7 23. Okay. Who's next? Denise Gordon, vice
8 president, United Parents Association. And
9 Jan, when Mrs. Ellis comes in, could you ask
10 her just to come down to the table. Save a
11 few minutes. Good evening.
12 MS. GORDON: I'm sorry. Good
13 evening, everyone. I'm Denise Gordon. You
14 need to accept my apology. I think it's the
15 first time that I'm prepared to give a
16 testimony, but it's not in writing, and I
17 think there is some certain times, there are
18 certain things that you just cannot put in
19 black and white. But there is something
20 that came across, that I came across within
21 the last maybe about three months that is in
22 black and white, and that's the summary of
23 the 1969 School Decentralization Law for New
24 York City. And I'm sure most of you in your
25 research about replacing the school board,
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2 I'm absolutely certain that you might have
3 done your research, and you would have
4 realized that it's 32 years to the exact
5 date, January 16, 1972 was the date that
6 parents and the communities were allowed to
7 give their testimonies or actually decide
8 who's going to be voting for school board.
9 Let us not be dismayed in thinking
10 that 32 years ago the members that sat on
11 the school board were parents. Now 32 years
12 later, we are saying let's come together
13 with the parent policy. I do agree with
14 that, but first of all, I think we need to
15 give an apology to the good functioning
16 members that are sitting on school boards.
17 There are some wonderful individuals,
18 wonderful individuals and there are some
19 wonderful examples of good functioning
20 school boards, and I'm glad district 21
21 folks went out of here, because I'm a
22 district -- all right. I thought I was glad
23 they were out of here, because I'm a
24 district 21 parent, and tonight, the
25 president of the school board in district 21
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2 decided -- tonight is my PA meeting. I'm
3 also PA president of district 21. The
4 president of the school board decided to go
5 to my school to run the program so I could
6 be here tonight. So I'm wearing three our
7 four different hats.
8 One would think if the Mayor is
9 saying and the Chancellor -- the
10 Chancellor, by the way, was given -- he was
11 given rule or reign over our schools, but
12 not over our children. And there's a major
13 difference. You cannot call parental
14 involvement parental involvement and yet
15 parents aren't being developed the way they
16 should be. There's a fundamental problem
17 with the previous school boards. The school
18 boards were there. There were people who
19 were paid to make sure those school boards
20 function well. They didn't do their jobs,
21 but the school board has been removed, but
22 those individuals are still at the Tweed
23 Courthouse getting a salary. Something is
24 wrong with that.
25 The CEO of Mr. Gerald Levin, and I'm
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2 sure Ms. Terri Thomson, Honorable Steve
3 Sanders, I'm sure, you know, that if
4 something is wrong with the corporation, you
5 do not get rid of the body, you get rid of
6 the head. And until you get rid of certain
7 members, and I'm not going to call their
8 names, I'm sure you know who they are, those
9 individuals who were set to oversee the
10 school board, until you get rid of those
11 individuals, it's going to be a vicious
12 cycle. It's a cycle that's preparing our
13 children.
14 You are saying to us, the high
15 schools are so large, we're going to break
16 them into three or four or five. One high
17 school. And yet you're saying the community
18 school boards -- the community districts
19 are so small, that we're going to add three
20 and four. Something is wrong with that.
21 Let me tell you something, I need to tell
22 you, I live in a district -- I do not live
23 in 21. I live in another district, and if I
24 were to say community school board in that
25 district, I would have absolutely nothing
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2 positive to say about that district, and it
3 will remain nameless as of tonight, but when
4 I look at district 21, if something works,
5 you stick with it. You use it as a model.
6 The Chancellor is saying we're going
7 to keep the 200 best schools. To me it's
8 almost a slap in the face. The former
9 Chancellor was on New York One last night
10 and he said, the black and Latino children,
11 they are failing. They are failing. And so
12 the Caucasian and the Chinese children,
13 they're excelling. Now let me ask you, it
14 doesn't take hindsight to figure out where
15 those 200 schools are. You know what I'm
16 saying?
17 I'm fortunate enough to have my
18 children in district 21 school. My child in
19 an eighth grade class passed a math regents,
20 earth science, a Spanish regents. She no
21 longer has to take it now that she's in
22 Midwood as a pre-med student there, but what
23 about the other students? I dare to say
24 that something is fundamentally wrong with
25 our system. A system that is saying we're
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2 building prison cells. On the fourth grade
3 records there's a prison in East New York
4 for 10 year old children. No one talks
5 about that. And you know, I have never been
6 a fan of -- I know my president,
7 Mr. Clayton, will probably strangle me at
8 this point, because I've never been a fan of
9 Mr. Levy, but Mr. Levy has made it so clear
10 that there's two different standards in our
11 system. And for some reason, that is
12 continued. That's going on right now. And
13 we need to say if you're going to bring a
14 policy board of parents, we cannot allow 110
15 Livingston Street or the Tweed Courthouse to
16 do the training. You must get a group like
17 United Parents Association to train those
18 parents, this way we have professional
19 developments for parents. Otherwise, I need
20 to say to you, and I've been telling
21 Mr. Clayton this for about five years, that
22 I got myself a brand new pair of sneakers,
23 I've got myself a pair of sweatpants. Rosa
24 Parks was so tired of standing on December
25 15, 1955, that she sat down, and for some
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2 reason as parents, we've been sitting down
3 since, but I've been sent above. Someone
4 sent me a message, Denise Gordon, it's time
5 for us to march. We will march.
6 These are our children. You cannot
7 incarcerate them. That's what's going to
8 happen. Getting rid of the school boards.
9 Breaking it up. What's going on with us?
10 And I'm saying to you, the names of all 13
11 of you here tonight, the names of all 13
12 individuals that sat in this hearing 32
13 years ago, happens to be listed in the
14 second page in bill number S569087175 of the
15 Marching Act in school decentralization, and
16 I'm almost guaranteeing that your names will
17 be written in another book also.
18 Parents are going to walk. District
19 21 parents are prepared to walk. We've got
20 a good system there. Let it stay. Make
21 parental involvement a reality. It's not a
22 policy. Parental involvement, it's a
23 process. It's giving parents a voice.
24 Something to identify with. I'm saying to
25 you, we're in major, major trouble, unless
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2 we take parental involvement seriously and
3 take parents and our children who are our
4 investment seriously, otherwise, Clayton,
5 I'm sorry, with or without you, my brother,
6 I'm going to walk.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you,
8 Ms. Gordon. And I just want to assure you,
9 and again, everyone else here, that it is
10 the purpose of this task force, it was our
11 mandate given in law to recreate parental
12 involvement and community representation in
13 a way that hopefully will be even better
14 than that which has existed. That's what
15 we're listening to you about and that's what
16 our purpose is.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Did Dorothy
18 Ellis return? Please join us. Good
19 evening.
20 MS. ELLIS: Good afternoon. My
21 name is Dorothy Ellis. Currently president
22 of community school board 23. I have been a
23 community school board member for six and a
24 half years, and a school volunteer for 16
25 years. I'm a grandmother of three as their
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2 guardian on the public school system.
3 I am hear tonight to speak on behalf
4 of parents. I'm overly concerned about the
5 manner in which parents are being programmed
6 to represent more or less as a replacement
7 of the school board, and that concern
8 reaches me because of the fact that the
9 school board, the current school board never
10 received the proper training. Therefore,
11 the training that they did not receive in
12 the area of organizational skills, to meet,
13 to be able to work with educators, they did
14 not receive administrative instructions.
15 They did not receive schools finance in the
16 terms and in the manner of working with
17 operational management. And theoretical
18 constructions of the bureaucratic design of
19 schools.
20 Lacking the knowledge of external
21 politics and internal organizational
22 constraints under the current law, we have
23 to be overly concerned of the responsibility
24 that is being pushed at this time, and
25 considering the fact that very few people
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2 really know the work of the school board.
3 Exactly what those responsibilities are.
4 What they consist of.
5 I have submitted a paper to you
6 relating to those responsibilities and ask
7 you to please look at it. To please observe
8 such responsibilities very carefully,
9 considering the fact that we now want to
10 move this responsibility down to parents at
11 the school level. Parents are working as
12 school leadership team, on the school
13 leadership team. They are working with
14 teachers who are receiving post-graduate
15 training on the school leadership team, and
16 within that area, they are learning
17 curriculum instructions, finance, school
18 law, etcetera.
19 That is absolutely an imbalance. It
20 is a system of imbalance, because of the
21 fact that the parents are not receiving that
22 type of training. Because of the fact that
23 it is on a post-graduate level, in which a
24 large number of parents -- and let me say I
25 will speak to the parents on my district and
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2 many of the districts that I network with do
3 not have the training or the background in
4 administrative procedures to work with
5 teachers, with supervisors, who are part of
6 the school leadership team and receiving
7 post-graduate training at Baruch College.
8 This training has been organized by
9 the United Teachers Union, and I'm asking
10 you to reflect upon the imbalance in
11 training and education in which we are at
12 this time talking about pushing parents to
13 take this responsibility on the school
14 level. I heard recently from Eli Broad of
15 the Broad Foundation that public education
16 is a key civil rights issue of the 21st
17 century.
18 On hearing this thought and the work
19 that came behind it, it forced me to give
20 serious thought to the program, the plans
21 that the Mayor is at this time trying to
22 push through on our districts. We search
23 for leadership, outside the box thinking and
24 bold determinations can make a clear and
25 remarkable difference, if we all are on the
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2 same level. Within that area, if a
3 distinction is being made between groups of
4 children and the manner that we heard
5 yesterday concerning the separation of
6 networks of children, relating to those who
7 are elite for a better word and for the
8 children who are on the failing districts, I
9 must say that take a look at this
10 classification of children to be set up to
11 be educated within the future. And I am
12 asking you, please, do not move within that
13 direction.
14 I have worked with high school drop
15 outs as a teacher. Within that area, the
16 children were 17 years old, from 17 to 25
17 years old who could not read. Who could not
18 do math. And it didn't take an awful lot to
19 help them to be able to overcome that
20 barrier. And I'm asking you to think and to
21 realize what I'm opening up to you. That in
22 working with young people 17 to 25 who had
23 families, who realized how they had been
24 short changed, how they had been
25 miseducated, but yet they tried to find
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2 their ways back to the classroom, to try to
3 remedy their lack of knowledge that they did
4 not have because they could not make a
5 living.
6 So I'm asking at this time, the
7 panel, and I'm asking those that are sole
8 assemble, to reflect on education and the
9 fact that education means prosperity, and
10 that ignorance means poverty. Thank you
11 very much.
12 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
13 much, Ms. Ellis.
14 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Alice Boles
15 Ott, co-president of PS 295 PTA, and she's
16 also speaking for PS 107 ans PS 154.
17 MS. OTT: Good evening. My name is
18 Alice Boles Ott, and I am the co-president
19 of the PTA, as you said, at PS 295, which is
20 on 18th Street and Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn.
21 As you said, I am speaking on behalf
22 of the presidents -- we are a three school
23 magnet cluster, PS 107, 154 and 295. We
24 just thought it would be a better use of
25 time for us to speak as one.
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2 All three of our schools very luckily
3 have principals that encourage the parent
4 body to become active and involved in our
5 schools. We have well functioning PTAs,
6 productive school leadership teams and we
7 participate in the PACs and other district
8 committees. Such parental involvement has
9 greatly strengthened and enhanced our own
10 individual schools, as well as our
11 communities in general.
12 Our three schools, 107, 154 and 295,
13 have benefitted from the hard work of
14 district 15's community school board and we
15 want to publically thank those dedicated
16 volunteers and professionals for the
17 outstanding work they've done for our
18 schools and our communities over the past
19 years.
20 So as we approach the coming
21 dissolution of community school boards in
22 New York City, we wanted to state before
23 this legislative task force how important we
24 believe it is that an alternative structure
25 be developed which would allow parents,
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2 guardians and stakeholders to continue to be
3 engaged in and involved with their
4 children's schools.
5 It's our hope that this legislature
6 body will recognize the power of parent
7 input and although the format will be
8 changing, we hope you develop a viable and
9 user friendly structure for parents to
10 become involved and stay involved with their
11 children's and their community's school.
12 In preparing for this testimony, we
13 PTA presidents discussed the issues being
14 considered today. In addition, we met with
15 key members of our community, as well as our
16 elected officials. We came up with the
17 following suggestions for this task force to
18 consider.
19 School leadership teams have been
20 extremely important in our three schools.
21 School leadership teams provide a serious,
22 thoughtful means for parents to consider the
23 academic environment and budgetary decisions
24 in our children's schools. We recommend
25 that the school leadership teams be
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2 maintained and strengthened by providing
3 technical assistance and any other resources
4 which enhance the functioning of the school
5 leadership teams in our schools.
6 Secondly, provide support and
7 resources for the parents through the PTAs.
8 For example, translation services for school
9 and PTA meetings would be extremely helpful
10 so that non-speaking English parents can
11 become involved in the schools in an
12 informed manner.
13 Another suggestion is to make on site
14 technical assistance available to PTAs in
15 such areas as fund-raising, accounting bylaw
16 development and other basic management for
17 PTAs. This would be extremely helpful to
18 the parents, as well as to the school
19 administration.
20 Third, we're aware that several
21 school districts have district level school
22 leadership teams. Although these district
23 level teams are not widely implemented, we
24 suggest they be encouraged and strengthened
25 so they can function as a vehicle for parent
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2 participation.
3 Fourth, we believe it would be wise
4 to allow a modest number of publicly
5 appointed representatives to join the
6 district level leadership teams and the
7 school leadership teams. Publicly appointed
8 representatives can bring much needed clout
9 and political expertise to these teams, as
10 well as a fresh perspective and new energy
11 to parent groups.
12 Fifth, assure that community input in
13 the selection of supervisory personnel, such
14 as superintendents, principals, etcetera.
15 For example, the C30 process is maintained
16 in law. Many of us have served on C30 teams
17 and we have found that working partnership
18 between teachers, administrators, union
19 representatives and parents created a
20 dynamic environment in which to select or
21 recommend a principal or other supervisory
22 staff.
23 We believe that strong school parent
24 partnerships help to maintain and create
25 strong schools. Only when parents,
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2 educators and administrators function in an
3 environment of mutual respect and
4 cooperation, do our children reach their
5 greatest achievements and capacities. We
6 encourage this legislative task force to do
7 all in its power to develop a structure
8 which will enhance and strengthen parent
9 involvement in our New York City school
10 system, and we thank you for giving us, PS
11 107, PS 154 and 295, the opportunity to
12 address this task force and voice our
13 concerns and suggestions to you. If you
14 have any questions, I'd be happy to answer
15 them.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
17 very much for delivering that testimony,
18 those recommendations on behalf of yourself
19 and the other two schools as well. It's
20 very helpful to us. We thank you.
21 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Taneisha
22 Pearson, DPAC chairperson. She had to
23 leave. James Lola, a parent, Taxpayers of
24 New York, organization.
25 MR. LOLA: Good evening. Just for
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2 timing here. When I had to fill out the
3 form to register to speak, one of the blanks
4 was "title," and the most important title
5 real to me for why I'm here is dad, but I
6 thought that was a little bit too familiar.
7 So I put parent, and when I put in Taxpayers
8 of New York, I put a big question mark next
9 to it, because I really didn't know what to
10 say for my organization, but I am a
11 taxpayer, but the question mark didn't make
12 it on to the agenda here. As far as I know,
13 there's no official organization Taxpayers
14 of New York. If there is, I apologize for
15 forcing myself into membership.
16 I am vice president of PS 372 in
17 district 15 here in Brooklyn. But I'm here
18 really speaking as a parent and for myself.
19 Our education system certainly has been in
20 obvious need of help and attention, and I
21 thank Mayor Bloomberg for Chancellor Klein
22 for taking that need seriously, for
23 addressing it so quickly, and for the task
24 force for having these hearings. It's clear
25 that they and you have the best intentions
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2 to improve the quality of our education and
3 the chutzpah to take the steps you feel are
4 required. I started composing my five
5 minutes a few days ago and had a number of
6 points that I wanted to cover. I had
7 concerns about the geographical
8 redistricting of the zones, concerns about
9 streamlining operations stuff away from
10 education stuff. Concerns about the need
11 for ombudsmen and concerns about fixing
12 schools that ain't broke as the Mayor so
13 eloquently said in his speech last night.
14 Many of my concerns were addressed in
15 the Mayor's speech, and I applaud him and
16 the Chancellor for trying to be as thorough
17 as they can in the scope of where they think
18 changes ought to be wrought. However, I do
19 urge the Mayor, the Chancellor and you, the
20 task force, to take two points at least into
21 account, maybe more if I have enough time.
22 One is that children with special
23 needs and their parents -- and I'm not one,
24 so I'm not self-serving here, but that they
25 not be left out of the equation in the
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2 changes that are to be effected.
3 In the community school boards that
4 are soon to be gone, there was no community
5 board for district 75, which is the special
6 education school district. That was a
7 travesty then. Not to include this group in
8 any new system would be a travesty if that
9 happens.
10 And maybe I'm being redundant here,
11 but yes, please ensure somehow that parents
12 have not only more of a voice. Everyone's
13 been saying we need more of a voice. Make
14 sure we have a voice, but more than a voice,
15 we need teeth. Anybody can speak. Anybody
16 can advise. Give us some teeth in how
17 things are run. More so than they appear to
18 be proposing.
19 What I see now, the parent engagement
20 boards, parent coordinators, they're
21 advisory positions. They're advisory
22 positions. Anyone can advise. Now I grant
23 that many of the community school boards
24 have been counterproductive or not
25 productive, but I submit that there are a
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2 number of them -- my own district 15
3 included -- that have helped, that do help
4 their local schools achieve a high level of
5 excellence, and that by abolishing all of
6 the school boards, that you will be fixing
7 things that ain't broke.
8 Neither the Chancellor nor any of the
9 regional superintendents he's proposing are
10 elected officials, and by abolishing elected
11 school boards, you'll be taking away the
12 community's last resort. The ability to
13 vote powers that be out of power. If you
14 make the school community, the parents of
15 our children feel helpless and feel
16 powerless, you'll foster resentment and
17 disquiet and you'll risk undermining an
18 important part of the educational process,
19 that education begins at home.
20 Give us an independent education
21 office, a body staffed by personnel either
22 elected by the community or by community
23 members themselves. A body that when
24 necessary, can say, this is wrong. Fix it.
25 Or don't do it. Or that can say, this is
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2 needed. Make it so. Or this would be very
3 helpful. Do it.
4 I urge you to please give some
5 control back to the communities. Control,
6 not just voice. Control back to the
7 communities. Especially the communities
8 where the children and the schools have been
9 thriving. Please, make it so. Do it.
10 Because one way or another, we parents who
11 are concerned and who care, we're going to
12 get the control back if we have to. And it
13 would be far better if we do it with
14 cooperation rather than by confrontation.
15 Thank you.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
17 very much, Mr. Lola. Thank you for being
18 here.
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Carlo
20 Scissura, Rosemary Izzo, and Alan Dubrow,
21 together. Who's missing?
22 MR. DUBROW: Carlo. Mr. Scissura
23 had to leave for another meeting. Good
24 evening. I'm Alan Dubrow. I'm secretary to
25 community school board 20. I applaud you
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2 all for the task you are taking.
3 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: May I interrupt
4 you for a moment. It is getting a little
5 noisy, and it's hard for the witnesses to
6 hear themselves speak, and hard for us to
7 hear what they're saying, so if you do need
8 to have conversations, if you can please
9 take it outside of the room, we would all
10 appreciate it. Thank you.
11 MR. DUBROW: I did not have a
12 prepared text. Ms. Izzo will read that, but
13 just sitting here and listening to all of
14 the various communities and people speaking,
15 my background, I'm a retired banker. And I
16 retired five years ago, and I decided to
17 give back a little bit. So I ran for the
18 school board. I felt I had something to
19 give back.
20 I know budgets. I know management.
21 Etcetera. Community district 20 is like a
22 number of other school boards that here,
23 very successful and should really be used as
24 a model, as others also are. But sitting
25 here and hearing what's going on and
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2 etcetera, and it's true, you're taking away
3 a lot of control it seems. It's amazing
4 that any time control is given to the
5 community, the powers that be want it back
6 for whatever reason, and it's not the right
7 thing.
8 Tip O'Neill, I'll use a dirty word in
9 politics, but he said all politics is local,
10 and it's the same thing. We all know our
11 communities. We know every little thing
12 within the community. So all I want to say
13 is that whatever you decide to do and
14 whatever you decide to put in place, it
15 should include parents and community
16 representatives, and they should be
17 independent and they should have a little
18 authority and they should be accountable to
19 the community. That's all I want to say.
20 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
21 MS. IZZO: Good evening,
22 Mr. Sanders, Ms. Thomson and members of the
23 committee. I just like to give my
24 credentials here. I'm a product of district
25 20 schools. I am a teacher. I am a former
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2 PTA president. I'm a former vice president
3 of President's Council. I was one of the
4 first members of one of the first district
5 leadership teams, which in those days we
6 called school base management, shared
7 decision making. I was treasurer, vice
8 president and currently proud to be
9 president of community school board 20. I
10 chair the parent involvement committee in
11 school board 20. The parent involvement
12 committee -- as chair of the parent
13 involvement committee, I have run workshops.
14 One of them we had 400 parents at different
15 workshops. I run help sessions for parents.
16 I try to get parents involved as much as
17 possible, being a parent myself. And I am a
18 proud parent of two graduates of district 20
19 school and one current, my daughter is in
20 eighth grade in district 20. So we'll be
21 leaving, but hopefully what I've be done
22 will not be leaving. So I will give my
23 statement now.
24 I'm testifying on behalf of community
25 school board 20 in Brooklyn. We're a large
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2 and very involved school district. Our
3 school board represents the various parts of
4 our district and includes parents and
5 community leaders. Our sole purpose as
6 school board members is to represent the
7 needs and concerns of the children and
8 parents of our district.
9 As school board members, we were very
10 saddened by the legislation designed to
11 eliminate our community school board. We
12 are here this evening to urge you to
13 continue to allow input by the parents and
14 community members in the day-to-day
15 management of our children's schools.
16 The needs of each community is
17 different. These needs can only be
18 addressed by a local body that is sensitive
19 to the needs of the people in that
20 community. Input is necessary from parents
21 and community groups including cultural,
22 civic and religious groups. These are the
23 groups that are most concerned about the
24 successful education of the children in
25 their district. These are their children.
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2 The future of their community.
3 The needs of parents, especially
4 Immigrant parents, are best served by local
5 representatives, representatives with whom
6 the parents of the community are comfortable
7 speaking with and contacting. These
8 representatives should be part of the
9 community so that they become the eyes and
10 ears of the administrators.
11 They should be the people that are in
12 the community in the grocery stores, taking
13 their children to school -- I'm sorry, I
14 lost my place -- at local civic and
15 religious meetings, listening for concerns
16 of parents and community members. They
17 should be accessible and familiar to all
18 members of the community. Someone they can
19 be comfortable with, just a phone call or
20 e-mail away. These representatives could
21 then navigate the system for parent or
22 community member, especially the immigrant
23 parent, addressing their needs on a more
24 immediate and personal level. After all,
25 these parents are entrusting their most
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2 prized possessions, their children, to us.
3 School boards should be independent
4 bodies, elected not appointed, as to ensure
5 their independence from any persons that may
6 have appointed them. The responsibility of
7 the school board should be to the children
8 and their parents. The only way in which to
9 guarantee this independence is by election.
10 Parents should be encouraged to run for a
11 position on this new board. The board, much
12 like school leadership teams, should consist
13 of a majority of parents. Community
14 leaders, administrators and teachers should
15 also be included. Schools could be grouped
16 and one parent elected from each group of
17 schools to ensure representation from all
18 schools.
19 The election should coincide with the
20 November election ensuring voter turn out.
21 Parent representatives could be selected
22 with the separate ballot for each grouping
23 of schools. Parents that are not registered
24 voters should be allowed to vote for their
25 parent representative. Community candidates
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2 should be placed on the general ballot.
3 Administrators and teachers should be
4 elected from their local constituencies.
5 After the election, the remainder of the
6 school year should be used for mandatory
7 training and mentoring of the newly elected
8 representatives. Term limits should be
9 placed on these positions.
10 The responsibilities of these
11 representatives should include meeting
12 monthly with the superintendent in order to
13 get updates and to be able to voice their
14 concerns of their constituencies. The
15 superintendent should be accountable to
16 these elected representatives. The
17 representatives should be accountable to
18 their constituencies giving monthly updates,
19 reports and general information. The
20 community representatives should schedule
21 meeting for community organizations,
22 teachers and administrative representatives
23 might want to distribute a monthly
24 newsletter with some opportunity for
25 feedback and parental representatives should
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2 schedule meetings in either their individual
3 schools or for their groups of schools. At
4 these meetings, information could be
5 disseminated, like test scores, new
6 initiatives, new appointments and concerns
7 could be addressed.
8 Participation by parents and
9 community members at the local community
10 level is essential to the well being of our
11 schools. Schools are not institutions, they
12 are the very places that we entrust our
13 children for six to eight hours each day.
14 Who better to be the guardians of our
15 children, but their parents and community
16 members that genuinely care about them? Do
17 not entrust them to a massive, far away
18 bureaucracy that only knows them as a
19 statistic.
20 And just let me say one more thing.
21 I do have, as I said, three children at
22 home, and I put aside in all of these years
23 a lot of time with my own children to serve
24 the needs of the children in district 20,
25 and it saddens me to think that all of that
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2 would go for nothing. And I hope that when
3 you decide on what committee is going to
4 represent the parents, you remember all of
5 the hard work of parents like me and all the
6 time that we have put in and all the time I
7 have taken away from my own children to be
8 part of the system. Thank you.
9 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Well, we thank
10 you both. And Ms. Izzo, we honor your
11 service as president of community school
12 board 20, and we certainly hear your
13 arguments and your suggestions and take them
14 to heart. Thank you.
15 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We now have a
16 panel from community school board 13.
17 Audrey Jackman-Wesson, Richard Daniel, Kiney
18 Corbett, Hyacinth Graham, Joyline Tomlin.
19 Good evening.
20 MS. TOMLIN: Good evening, task
21 force. My name is Joyline Tomlin. I am
22 president of the PTA middle school 117 in
23 district 13, and I truly have a vested
24 interest in what comes out of what you are
25 about to do, because I do have three
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2 children in the schools. I have one in
3 elementary, one in junior high school and
4 one in high school. So whatever your
5 determination is here, I truly have a vested
6 interest, because I love my children and I
7 want the best for them. So I am pretty much
8 speaking from a parents' point of view, and
9 also I represent the parents at middle
10 school 117.
11 My Lord, Jesus Christ, I'm just going
12 to bring that in in the beginning, he gave
13 me a charge to train up a child in the way
14 they should go, so that when they're old
15 they will not depart from it, and I take
16 that charge seriously in training up my
17 children, and I know this governance
18 committee must decide on what form or model
19 that the new school boards or leadership
20 teams must re-shape our education.
21 And it is really my determination
22 that more harm than good will come to a
23 child if their parent, guardian or primary
24 caregiver who wakes them in the morning,
25 sends them to school in the morning, raises
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2 them, nurtures them, dwells with them, feeds
3 them, shelters them, listens to them,
4 responds to them on an intimate and daily
5 basis, is excluded from the decision-making
6 process.
7 We are our children's first teachers.
8 We know what we want for our children, and
9 if -- you cannot leave us out of the
10 decision-making process. Now, I am also on
11 the school leadership team at 117 and I have
12 had a positive experience being on the
13 school leadership team. Last year I was
14 vice president, and when I went into 117, I
15 was not happy with the way the school was
16 going. I joined the school leadership team
17 and I came up with a plan on what the school
18 should actually do as far as the different
19 academies that they have in that school.
20 I said such such and such needs to
21 take place. It couldn't be implemented at
22 that particular time, but the next year when
23 I came back, I was happy with the principal
24 had done, because he let me know that what I
25 had said did not fall on deaf ears. That he
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2 did listen to me, because I drove it every
3 time I went a leadership team meeting, that
4 this needs to take place for the school,
5 because my child is in the school. He did
6 not want to go to that school, but I let him
7 know that I'm going to be there for him, and
8 I joined the PTA, and something positive
9 came out of being on the leadership team.
10 I'm not saying that the school is
11 perfectly by any long shot, but my decision
12 and my input in that school really helped
13 that school along for this year. It has a
14 long way to go, but at least I had a voice
15 in what the school did as far as their CEP
16 plan and everything, and I don't want that
17 power to be taken away from me.
18 Also, as a parent, I don't want to be
19 a silent partner. I want my decision to be
20 accountable. I want it to be made that when
21 decisions are made, and I say that I want
22 something done in my school, I don't want it
23 to fall on deaf ears. As the principal
24 listened to me, I want to make sure that
25 what I say, they actually listen to and it
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2 actually counts, and that my vote actually
3 counts. I want my vote to count.
4 I don't want them to put something in
5 place and then a year later I'm sitting in a
6 meeting and I'm putting all my effort and
7 taking all my time out, and then the
8 decisions that we make in that leadership
9 team or whatever team that it's called, that
10 later on that year, nothing ever comes of
11 it. I want to make sure my voice is heard
12 and that my voice actually counts.
13 I pay my tax dollars and I want a say
14 in the budget and how it's spent, because my
15 child's needs are not same as other
16 children's needs. I want to make sure that
17 my child's needs are met and that the other
18 parents in that school child's needs are
19 also met. So those tax dollars that I pay,
20 must go into back into the schools.
21 The New York City has about a 12
22 billion dollar budget, and I want to make
23 sure that every dollar goes into the
24 education of my child and to the education
25 of all New York City child. I don't want
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2 that money to pad anyone's pocket. I
3 sometimes think less is more. Less in their
4 pocket, more in my child's mind. More in my
5 child's mind. More in the school. Less is
6 more. Less in class sizes. Larger school
7 districts are not an option to me. Less is
8 more. Smaller school district, if possible,
9 is a better recourse than larger, because
10 when you become larger, you become more
11 manageable.
12 They could have chose 50 people to be
13 on a task force, but that would not have
14 been manageable. Now they're making 10
15 districts instead of the 36 or 32 we have,
16 that also is going to be more -- less
17 manageable.
18 I just have one other thing to say.
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Briefly.
20 MS. TOMLIN: I have one other
21 thing to say. We have to revitalize our
22 community and not just inhabitants in there.
23 It has to be a community effort and parent
24 involvement has to be much broader and
25 parent training must be included in your
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2 decision making. Thank you.
3 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
4 much.
5 MS. JACKMAN-WESSON: Good evening,
6 panel. My name is Audrey Jackman-Wesson. I
7 am the president of community school board
8 13. You have our collaborative statement
9 that we submitted. I'm not going to go over
10 that, but what I want to do is touch on some
11 things that I think that maybe you haven't
12 heard.
13 My biggest concern with the schools
14 is that teachers hired and never trained.
15 You wouldn't want a doctor to perform
16 surgery on you whose never had any kind of
17 experience, and that's what we did do with
18 our children. This is one of the reasons
19 why I feel the New York City public school
20 system is in somewhat of a shambles when it
21 comes to education and children reading.
22 Teachers are put in a classroom cold.
23 They're given a class. They have no
24 experience in how to run that class. They're
25 given minimal supplies. And these things
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2 need to be written into somewhere in the
3 language of the legislation that teachers
4 need to be trained. They need to have six
5 months of training in a classroom before
6 they are able to take over a classroom or
7 some kind of mentorship program.
8 I did not see that in the Mayor's
9 announcement today. He did touch on
10 mentorship, but I feel that you shouldn't
11 have a person in the classroom with 23, 32,
12 36 minds sitting up there and don't know how
13 to control it or even excite these minds.
14 But I'm going to read something from the
15 collaborative statement that we have.
16 And I am a parent. I'm a parent of
17 two children, one who happens to be a
18 handicapped child. And my passion is for
19 children. Most of the people in district
20 13's passion is for their children, and our
21 board consists of parents, not political
22 clonees or people selected by political club
23 to sit on the board.
24 Our school children are not customers
25 or workers, they're children. Children
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2 should be recipients of quality education.
3 They need to be nurtured, guided, protected
4 from the corporate monsters that lack
5 experience and qualification of what it is
6 to be a master educator. Educational
7 schools of learning cannot function like
8 corporate facilities. Each school community
9 must address the needs of its population.
10 The diversity of each community makes
11 educational process some special and unique
12 situation. One shoe does not fit all.
13 The concerned parents of district 13
14 would like to know where's the Mayor and
15 Chancellor's Comprehensive Educational Plan?
16 Parents need to have a direct input into the
17 decision making of their school regarding
18 hiring the principal, superintendent, staff
19 and the overall operations of the school.
20 Public hearings on any school proposal,
21 capital plan, comprehensive educational
22 plan, must be maintained and open to the
23 public.
24 Language in the new legislation must
25 ensure that the Chancellor will maintain a
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2 collaborative and responsive relationship
3 with the local school districts. Parental
4 involvement in electorial process of the
5 schools represent and afforded people who
6 were not citizens under the decentralization
7 law to vote. The election of board members
8 gave political equity to parents to select
9 their educational representative. We
10 suggest that those elected officials be
11 parents of children in the community.
12 Parents must maintain an electorial
13 vote voting right, not just any old function
14 of advisory or -- I forgot -- enhancement.
15 I forgot what the Mayor had said, but that
16 to me is a lot of hogwash. Despite the
17 composition or merge of districts, because
18 for me, I'm not going anywhere. I'm a
19 parent, and whether there be a school board
20 tomorrow, I'm still going to be here. I'm
21 not disappearing.
22 But we urge the task force to
23 consider our recommendations very seriously
24 and to take what we have submitted in terms
25 of some of the accomplishments that district
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2 13 has done under consideration and use it
3 in the city plan. Thank you.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you.
5 MS. CORBETT: Good evening,
6 everyone. My name is Kiney Corbett. I'm a
7 parent of district 13 and I'm basically just
8 going to brief as I could, kind of reiterate
9 basically what you have heard all evening.
10 That I won't do. I'll just basically say
11 that as a parent, I'm a strong advocate of
12 public education. I know it works. I have
13 been a product of the public education. My
14 mother was a teacher in the public school
15 system for over 38 years, so I know the
16 public school system works. I know it can
17 work.
18 I guess my only thing, my only
19 concern is to separate the districts and
20 narrow down the -- eliminate, without having
21 parental input, in that very component would
22 be totally disastrous. I mean, I'm not
23 going to hold up your time any longer. I'm
24 very passionate about it. We can talk about
25 it all night long and we have been. We've
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2 been talking about it collectively behind
3 closed doors, in front of closed doors. The
4 decision has to be and the parents have to
5 be involved in that component. That's like
6 taking children out of school. There's no
7 way you can do that.
8 So again, I'm trusting people that I
9 don't even know, to hope that you will
10 advocate for us as parents to make sure that
11 everything is done in the right manner,
12 please.
13 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
14 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
15 very much.
16 MR. DANIEL: Good evening. My name
17 is Richard Daniel. I'm a school board
18 member in district 13. Last year's
19 president. And I'm appalled that the Mayor
20 would refer to us as dinosaurs. I didn't
21 come to sit on this board through some
22 political office, or you know, with any
23 outside agenda. I came through as a PTA
24 volunteer back in the '80s. I've been
25 through three superintendents in this
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2 district. See, and something that he would
3 never understand, I'm a volunteer. I
4 haven't been paid. I drive a bus for the
5 city, and I do that every day. I do that --
6 I was doing it every night, and in my
7 schools as PTA presidents, for years and
8 years. Years that he wouldn't know anything
9 about where he didn't even care about our
10 children.
11 You know, we all agree that there
12 needs to be change, you understand, and he's
13 come up with a lot of good sound bites. And
14 I thought hard and long, you know. I mean,
15 where are test pilots for this big plan that
16 he has. I mean, you just take out one
17 million school children and just say hey,
18 I'm going to try it, and if it don't work,
19 don't vote for me, and if it don't work, it
20 will take 25 years for us to straighten it
21 back out.
22 We're not saying that the system is
23 perfect. Since 1996, these school boards
24 have not controlled the budgets. They have
25 not controlled the hiring. We are not
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2 responsible for the failure of the children,
3 see, and he's written that off and convinced
4 the city that this bureaucracy, you know,
5 that they pay me $125 a month, and that's
6 not even the car fare that covers for the
7 meetings that I attend.
8 See, I'm a little, you know, I'm a
9 little upset about the whole situation.
10 Like I said, we're not afraid of change. I
11 put three children completely through
12 district 13. I have a daughter that's in
13 the sixth grade. So long after the Mayor's
14 gone, I'll still be here. See, send him
15 that message. Parents, we are parents on
16 this board now. The bureaucrats left when
17 you stripped them of their powers in '96.
18 They left. They didn't want no more parts
19 of it. A lot of them are now in the
20 Assembly. A lot of them are on the City
21 Council. A lot of them are Senators. You
22 know, Jimmy Carter became president of the
23 United States.
24 You know, there's no more games here.
25 We're not playing games. We as parents are
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2 serious. The part of the piece that I
3 submitted, centralization in New York City
4 failed because it became a process that left
5 out the very people that it served, the
6 minorities. When I went to school here --
7 I'm a product of the public school system,
8 and I never saw a person of color as a
9 superintendent or anything like that when I
10 went to school in the '60s. I'm not saying
11 there weren't none, I'm just saying that in
12 the district where I attended, 32, at that
13 time, there were none.
14 You know, decentralization failed
15 because it came a patronage mill for
16 corruption and political wannabees. School
17 boards were used as springboards for
18 political offices with no regard to
19 children, see, and we've all seen it, you
20 know, and we've all been mad about, and I'm
21 not saying it should -- but there are some
22 inalienable rights that communities and
23 parents have. We have the right to choose
24 our educational leaders. We have a right to
25 sit at the table when they're being
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2 selected. We have the right right now
3 currently, or before July 1, the school
4 board, we select five potential candidates
5 that we can live with and submit to the
6 Chancellor and he selected one from that.
7 Where is the corruption in that? And they
8 stripped us down to now the Chancellor
9 selects the superintendents. The
10 superintendents now select the principals.
11 And I don't hear C30 process. I don't hear
12 any of this, you know, as duties. Thank you
13 very much. We don't have the right to
14 select. We don't have the right to evaluate
15 our superintendent. We just take whoever we
16 get and accept whatever he puts down and
17 that's of it.
18 This is not the only city in America
19 that their children are less than 40 percent
20 reading on or above grade level. I don't
21 see a great cure. I don't see the Mayor's
22 plan as 100 percent, and I hate to see the
23 recourse, the only recourse we have as
24 parents is don't vote for him at the end of
25 his term. Thank you very much.
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2 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
3 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you all
5 very much, and we certainly thank district
6 13 board members.
7 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Excuse me, sir, I
8 just wanted to say, is my name on that list?
9 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: What is your
10 name?
11 AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kamela Payne.
12 I'm a parent.
13 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Yes, you're
14 here. Did you fill out your card?
15 AUDIENCE MEMBER: I didn't recall
16 getting a card.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We're not up
18 to your name yet, but if you haven't filled
19 out a card like this, please register at the
20 desk.
21 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Let me make the
22 announcement again I made a couple times
23 today. For those of you who pre-registered
24 several days ago or several weeks ago, you
25 still need to fill out a card. If you came
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2 in here and are expecting to speak, we don't
3 know you're here unless you filled out a
4 card. So if there's anyone else in this
5 room who hasn't, please do so.
6 For those people who did not
7 pre-register and still want to speak
8 tonight, we have a very full schedule. We
9 have told all of those individuals that if
10 there is still time between now and
11 midnight, we'll get to as many people who
12 appeared today to speak. We'll do our very
13 best, but in order to speak, you need to
14 have filled out a card behind the back of
15 this auditorium, and I see there are some
16 children in the room. Is there anyone here
17 scheduled to speak who has children with
18 them now? You have young children with you
19 here?
20 MS. SANCHEZ: They're out in the
21 bus.
22 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: What is your
23 name?
24 MS. SANCHEZ: Cynthia Sanchez.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Did you fill
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2 out a card?
3 MS. SANCHEZ: Yes, I did.
4 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: What we'll
5 do -- okay. I think what we're going to do,
6 because we don't want you to stay here until
7 midnight. Your card is in here, but you
8 were scheduled to speak after everyone else.
9 So I'll ask you to just come up for perhaps
10 two minutes to speak so that you can get
11 home.
12 MS. SANCHEZ: Thank you very much.
13 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We'll take
14 you, Ms. Sanchez. Then we'll go to the
15 group from Queens Bridge Community in
16 Action, and then we'll take the mother with
17 the three children there.
18 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Again, if you
19 can just be considerate and be brief.
20 MS. SANCHEZ: Okay. My name is
21 Cynthia Sanchez, and I'm from district 21.
22 I'm a mother of six wonderful kids who are
23 and was in the New York City Board of
24 Education system. I'd like to speak of how
25 many years of happy and unhappy encounters I
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2 have had with the system across the 28
3 years.
4 I'm against school boards totally.
5 They have done nothing to aid the parents in
6 the black, Latino, poor and low income
7 minority neighborhoods. They have been
8 political and principally ran. Peoples are
9 still on the board for the personal
10 interests rather than the issues that should
11 be at concern. They know nothing about the
12 children.
13 Parents should be should be allowed
14 to have more input in the education of their
15 child. I would say, when a child sees his
16 or her parent involved in his or her
17 education, it brings the child self-esteem
18 to the highest potential it possibly can. I
19 see that with my own kids. Keep corrupt
20 politics out of the school and allow parents
21 to have more say in the decision making in
22 the education system of our children.
23 Now what happened to our district 75
24 in Orchard schools, which got no attention?
25 Let's not continue to play politics
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2 bureaucracy, because we really know who are
3 the licks lacks, the black and Latino and
4 low and middle class people. I'm here to
5 say, school board really doesn't help here.
6 Parents know their child. Parents know
7 their kids, because we live with them, and
8 when we do continue to elect people who
9 doesn't know our children, we don't have
10 children's interests.
11 Let me leave you with this, it takes
12 a parent with the help of a concerned
13 community, neighborhood and you, to make our
14 system work. I'm tired of going to people
15 who say doesn't support, doesn't support me
16 at all. Only thing they say to me is when I
17 need their help is, your child have a
18 behavioral problem or your child is not in
19 this district.
20 I can't find any representation at
21 all from school boards.
22 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Ms. Sanchez,
23 you have to wrap it up now, okay?
24 MS. SANCHEZ: Okay. I will. And
25 I got to say successfully, that I have three
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2 children who has done very well with parent
3 involvement, because I am their parent.
4 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
5 much. The Queens Bridge Community in
6 Action, Maria Dilworth, Yvette Grissom,
7 Rolando Bini.
8 MR. BINI: Good evening. My name
9 is Rolando Bini, Queens Bridge Community in
10 Action in District 30, and we are part of
11 the Parent Organizing Consortium. I am a
12 Latino Immigrant who has a 10 year old boy
13 who I am home-schooling, since I consider
14 that at present, public schools in New York
15 not only do not educate our children, but
16 place them in grave danger. Of course, with
17 the new leadership of Chancellor Klein, the
18 Mayor and the legislature, I pray that those
19 conditions will change, so I can have my son
20 back in the school.
21 I think that the changes the
22 Chancellor Klein is making are very positive
23 steps in the right direction and he should
24 get credit for that. But it's still more
25 needs to be done. I will point areas where
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2 radical change is missing.
3 The school leadership teams need to
4 be revamped. If the school governance is a
5 building, then the school leadership teams
6 are the base of that building. If the base
7 is faulty, sooner or later, the building
8 will crumble. Keeping the status quo of the
9 present school leader teams would be
10 self-defeating. At present, the principal
11 controls most of the school leadership
12 teams. In some schools, parents have been
13 appointed by the principal. The schools are
14 part of the community, not foreign, isolated
15 entities, and parents need the help of the
16 rest of the community.
17 At present, parents in the school
18 leadership teams are no match to the sharks
19 who control the school. The principal, the
20 school guidance counselors and the teachers.
21 The school leadership teams must contain
22 community members in order to be a natural,
23 organic, productive, living entity. There
24 are plenty of community members who can be a
25 valuable contribution to the school
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2 leadership teams, grandparents, church
3 leaders, retired people, community-based
4 organizers, and they have the skills to
5 challenge the abusers of the local school
6 bureaucrats.
7 Here is my ideal school leadership
8 team. It has three components. The parent
9 component, the school component and the
10 community members component. The first
11 part, the parents, they should be seven
12 parents. Of course, elected by the parents.
13 The school component should have seven
14 members. The principal, plus four school
15 bureaucrats, for a total of five, and there
16 should be two students who should be elected
17 by the students themselves. They should
18 have a voice in their own education. It's
19 very important the student part.
20 Also we need the community and there
21 should be three community members who have
22 no children in the schools. We cannot
23 dislocate and break up the parent from the
24 rest of the community. This is part of the
25 strategy of divide and conquer. This chair
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2 of the school leadership team must be a
3 parent. The principal should be barred from
4 that position. A lot of the school
5 leadership teams have at present the
6 principal as the chair. He has already too
7 much power.
8 We need to have elections on all the
9 parent association and the school leadership
10 teams and make sure that the vote counting
11 is monitored and open to scrutiny by anyone.
12 Make sure that the school leadership team
13 are renewed yearly. A school that have a
14 significant percentage of parents with
15 language other than English must provide
16 translations to all meetings and elections.
17 Last, we need to enforce a real
18 parent involved policy. Open the classroom
19 to the parents. Taking into consideration
20 safety issues and I think that every parent
21 should have a photo ID provided by the
22 school. Parents should be welcomed in the
23 classroom at any time at their pleasure.
24 There should be a protocol, of course, how
25 they should behave into the school and in
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2 the classroom, but schools are part of the
3 community, they are not prisons. The parent
4 present in the classroom will provide
5 accountability not only of the teachers, but
6 also of the school personnel. Open the
7 classroom to the parents and you will have a
8 win win situation.
9 Parents should be seen as a resource,
10 not as the enemy. At present, the open
11 school policy is a joke. Allowing parents
12 to visit the classroom one day a year for a
13 window dressing purposes.
14 I want to read briefly the six points
15 principals of the school governance that the
16 Parent Organizing Consortium have drafted.
17 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Mr. Bini, let me
18 just say this, because time is running very
19 short, we have the document. It will be
20 entered into the record.
21 MR. BINI: Thank you.
22 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: I assure you
23 the fact you're not reading it, it will
24 still be in the record.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: As long as
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2 it's written testimony, it's in the record.
3 I would just ask that you be brief. We have
4 so many people that want to speak tonight,
5 and we have to be out of the building by
6 midnight.
7 MS. DILWORTH: Good evening. My
8 name is Maria Dilworth. I'm a member of the
9 Parent Organizing Consortium, and I'm a
10 member of Cypress Hills Advocates for
11 Education. There was a mix up with the
12 registration. There's a woman on the
13 registered registration, Darma Diaz. I was
14 also registered with her on one card. And I
15 guess her name went on. She couldn't come.
16 I could come and my name wasn't on. So I'm
17 sorry about the mix up on that.
18 My testimony is on the importance of
19 parents participation in school governance.
20 The need for better communication with
21 parents and the need for access to
22 information about our schools. The POC, of
23 which CHAFE is a member, believes that the
24 best way for parents to have a say in the
25 education of their children is to have
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2 school leadership team with real democracy,
3 accountability, and power. That is what we
4 should have in place of the soon to be
5 defunct community school boards.
6 In order to maximize parent
7 participation, we must be able to get
8 information to all public school parents
9 about the SLTs. Most of the information I
10 have on SLTs comes from the ads on the
11 subway and from CHAFE. My daughter's
12 schools use children as messengers and
13 parents often don't get information about
14 SLTs. As a result, some SLTs have a hard
15 time getting and keeping members. I know of
16 one person who was asked to be on an SLT by
17 a PTA president because they had a spot
18 available and wanted to fill it.
19 We wanted SLTs to be regulated so
20 they are democratically elected, not
21 appointed. The POC proposal addresses these
22 weaknesses. We believe that the schools
23 should send parents information on the SLTs
24 by mail. Part-time staff people should be
25 available to support SLTs by doing the labor
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2 intensive work of outreach, recruitment and
3 retaining SLT members. Information about
4 SLT should include what they are, what they
5 do, how to run for election to one at your
6 child's school.
7 The meeting schedule for the SLT
8 should be sent by mail to all parents with a
9 child in the school. All parents with
10 children in the school must be sent
11 information by mail about how to run for a
12 seat on the SLT at least 90 days before the
13 election. SLT elections should be held
14 annually. They should also be widely
15 publicized by mail at least 30 days in
16 advance and once elected, all SLT team
17 members should be required to attend SLT
18 training.
19 Parents should have a voting majority
20 on the SLTs and this way parents can have a
21 real say in what goes on in their child's
22 school.
23 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Could I ask
24 you to just shorten your testimony a bit.
25 We do have the written copy and we will read
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2 it, I promise you.
3 MS. DILWORTH: Okay. In closing,
4 I just want to say that the Parent
5 Organizing Consortium wants for our school
6 SLTs democracy, accountability and power.
7 That is what we'd like.
8 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
9 MS. GRISSOM: My name is Yvette
10 Grissom, and I'm speaking on behalf of the
11 POC and I'm from Queens Bridge Community in
12 Action. And I'm also a parent of a child in
13 a district 30 school. I will not go over a
14 lot of the things that my colleagues just
15 said and that you have in the record, but
16 some things we still have to say.
17 As we all know, the most sweeping
18 reforms in 30 years are being made this
19 school year, and although many of them are
20 very necessary for a system that has seemed
21 to be broken and dysfunctional in parts for
22 quite sometime, we at the POC have come up
23 with the school governance platform for
24 which you already just heard about. We
25 cannot continue to present our
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2 recommendations without addressing Mayor
3 Bloomberg's and Chancellor Klein's new
4 school plans.
5 The POC is glad to see that parts of
6 the school governance platform are being
7 addressed in these new plans, such as the
8 new governance structure must include strong
9 and adequate parent representation at the
10 school and district level. Parents should
11 hold the majority of the seats and
12 representative and all elected bodies.
13 Large school districts should be made
14 smaller and consistent with neighborhood
15 boundaries.
16 Although these are great first steps
17 in the overhaul of the New York City public
18 school system, there are still many areas
19 which have not been addressed, such as the
20 failure of Mayor Bloomberg's plan to address
21 the governance issue at the local school
22 level, mainly the needed reforms of the
23 school leadership teams.
24 If adopted, how will parent
25 engagement boards be held accountable to the
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2 communities they serve? What will be their
3 powers? Since we know the previous
4 community school boards did not have many.
5 And when and where will public forums be
6 held, so that parents have a public space to
7 voice their concerns?
8 We are also certainly hoping that the
9 Mayor and the Chancellor will instruct
10 school level staff persons to work closely
11 and cooperatively with community
12 organizations. We understand that the job
13 before this task force is a huge one, given
14 the size of the New York City public school
15 system and population. We hope that the
16 recommendations of the POC will continue to
17 be considered and implemented as the final
18 recommendation are made. Thank you.
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
20 much. Amy Wu and family.
21 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We will have to
22 limit the people who didn't sign up in
23 advance to only two or three minutes. We're
24 sorry to limit you that way, but it's the
25 only way we can get through this evening.
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2 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Please sit
3 down.
4 MS. WU: Thank you for your
5 consideration. Good evening, task force
6 panel. Loving parents, dedicated teachers,
7 precious students, caring community members.
8 A pay homage to the men and women who died
9 at 9-11. To them I dedicate my poem with a
10 heavy heart. I'm sure many of you feel the
11 same way about our school system. What is
12 going on? Carse and Burke said, time is
13 like a coin. If you do know how to spend
14 it, someone else will spend it for you. I
15 know what I want. I want all children in
16 American public school to be guaranteed the
17 liberty for the pursuit of excellence in
18 academics and character within a kind and
19 respectful, safe and healthy environment.
20 Life is short and precious. There is
21 a population targeted to receive the
22 hand-me-downs in the pits. I refuse to be
23 tracked and trapped into prison. I refuse
24 to be hunted down by cops and gangs. Dr.
25 King believed that -- it was mentioned
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2 already -- justice denied to any race is
3 injustice to the whole human race. Let us
4 take the responsibility to raise them.
5 MS. WU's CHILD: To parents, to my
6 dear folks. Let's walk down the memory
7 lane. You tell me when I came along into
8 this world it was the best living thing in
9 your life. You please always treasure me as
10 you did when I was a new born. Love me
11 always. You are my first teacher. You
12 raised me to respect you and others. You
13 talked to me like I was the most precious
14 thing on the world. Am I still?
15 MS. WU: To teachers, what type of
16 teacher are you? What do you plan to teach
17 me? Would you teach me true knowledge and
18 true history at the risk of losing your job?
19 Would you allow me to steal? To curse? To
20 hit? To kick and jump on my peers? Now
21 fighting the status quo helps perpetuating
22 it. I want to make this world a better
23 world. You can help me realize it. Let me
24 shine.
25 To al, choices bring consequences.
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2 Everyone seems to be looking the other way.
3 Teachers and even you, my folks, you see
4 not, you hear not and speak not. You do not
5 understand what I see daily. Please do
6 something meaningful for my life. Am I not
7 your future? Don't I count? Fight for an
8 excellent education for me. I deserve
9 better. I am your child. Stop living in
10 fear. Nothing ever changes with taking
11 risks.
12 Learn from history in order to stop
13 the destruction. To walk the walk, we need
14 to take a stand. We may fold our hands,
15 turn our back, point fingers and do nothing
16 or we can make our voices heard, be counted
17 and make history. It took one person, Rosa
18 Parks. She saw the needs of fight racism at
19 the risk of being shot on the spot. Staring
20 at segregation in the face, she said no.
21 She was tired of giving in. Change takes
22 time, strength, support, unity and faith of
23 good people.
24 The price of liberty is eternal
25 vigilance. When we do not protect teachers
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2 who truly value our children, not conforming
3 to the Board of Ed system, we cannot protect
4 our children inside closed doors. Give real
5 teachers a chance to fight the good fight
6 instead of being kicked out of the system
7 through the back door. Only creating
8 okay -- back door.
9 Dr. Kunjufu said the education system
10 has a conspiracy. Good programs for
11 minority schools have been cut in the name
12 of budget cuts. Good and real teachers are
13 being removed under all kinds of -- to shut
14 them up. It is time to break the silence.
15 Check end teacher, end, E-N-D teacher
16 abuse.org. Check Dr. Joe and Dr. Joseph
17 Blasis. Their books on breaking the
18 silence, overcoming the problem of principal
19 mistreatment of teachers.
20 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We need to say
21 thank you.
22 MS. WU: Just one minute.
23 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Very quickly.
24 Very, very quickly, please.
25 MS. WU: Well, okay. We talk
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2 about safety. What makes the US school
3 system above the law. Our country's
4 education operates like prison, like the
5 Mafia. In schools where God is denounced,
6 there is a big whole filled with that
7 violence and hate. Schools in European
8 countries have similar problems on school
9 violence of great schools. God is the
10 answer. God is love. Hate makes one
11 wicked, love makes one kind.
12 What prohibited US school system to
13 progress? Our public education system
14 purposely blocks the success of average and
15 gifted students. In schools where those in
16 power view themselves superior over all the
17 races and creeds, there is racism and I'll
18 mention slavery over the minds.
19 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Ms. Wu --
20 MS. WU: And also about the --
21 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Ms. Wu --
22 MS. WU: Okay. That special
23 education, there's a lot of black and Latino
24 boys in special education. It's the same
25 what you call proportion as in the jail
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2 system. So we see the pattern.
3 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
4 much.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
6 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Jerry
7 Wechsler, PTA secretary, School for
8 International Studies. Good evening.
9 MR. WECHSLER: Hi. Well, you're
10 tired. I'm tired. I really will try to be
11 brief.
12 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We would
13 appreciate it.
14 MR. WECHSLER: I hope it's five
15 minutes. Thanks for the opportunity to
16 speak. My name is Jerry Wechsler. I'm
17 going to read this, because I've never
18 spoken in public before. As PTA secretary
19 from the school for International Studies in
20 Cobble Hill, I represent the school's 600
21 families, and by reflection, the entire
22 district 15 community.
23 We support our new Chancellor and his
24 staff as they undertake the daunting task of
25 transforming New York City schools.
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2 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Little bit
3 louder.
4 MR. WECHSLER: Of transforming New
5 York City schools. So I would like to point
6 to a transformation that is already
7 happening. My 14 year old daughter came
8 from Korea two years ago. She came to the
9 International Studies one year ago. Her ESL
10 classmates speak Arabic and Spanish,
11 representing the great diversity of our
12 community. Our school and our district are
13 in the midst of great change, all of it for
14 the better.
15 You can feel it as you walk through
16 the halls. Has anyone been for the school
17 for International Studies? It's a pretty
18 great change there. Even since last year
19 the entire tone of the building has changed
20 dramatically for the better. Local
21 merchants have noticed and spoken to the
22 school board members about it and the
23 teachers. Okay.
24 There is different attitude on the
25 part of the kids. My daughter says they are
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2 more attentive in class and less boisterous
3 than last year. They do their homework and
4 attend after-school functions.
5 I'll talk about that. There are
6 dances and movies with free admission for
7 honor roll and perfect attendance. They
8 didn't used to have that, but there are also
9 a lot of now educational enhancements.
10 Math tutoring. They had Saturday
11 Scholars. ELA seminars to help kids prepare
12 for the city-wide test, art and film
13 workshops. My daughter goes to
14 Mr. Luciardi's art classes after school.
15 Attendance is way up from anything they ever
16 had at that school before.
17 Just yesterday evening I attended
18 Family Math Night at the school where the
19 districts professional developer for
20 mathematics, Leslie Hefez, you may know her,
21 and Ms. Henry from our math department
22 hosted more than 30 parents and children who
23 had fun solving math problems, logic.
24 That's double anything we had last year of
25 that sort in the attendance.
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2 What is the source of this change?
3 Good schools come only with the support of
4 good school districts. Here are some of the
5 transformations Carmen Farina
6 has wrought, not only at International
7 Studies, but throughout district 15: The
8 top priority is now the academic curriculum,
9 not behavior problems, like it used to be at
10 our school anyway. Professional development
11 and support for classroom teachers is not an
12 idea, it's a fact. Teachers are getting
13 real support from the principal. I heard
14 some contrary statements. Not at our
15 school. They're getting incredible support,
16 I'm happy to say. That's why we're there.
17 Principals are getting real support
18 from our district office. We get fed back
19 to the board from Sandy. Teachers feel like
20 part of the team now, and so the morale is
21 up. Students actually are learning,
22 amazing. Last year, district 15 exhibited
23 one of the biggest jumps in test scores in
24 New York City. I'm told Carmen Farina was a
25 successful principal before becoming
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2 superintendent, and I do believe it, because
3 she recognized, recruited and retained our
4 great principal, Sandy Ferguson.
5 Sandy comes to us with 12 years of
6 experience, turning New York schools around.
7 Do any of you know him? Have you met him?
8 You'd be very impressed. It's quick. I
9 don't know if you've even met Ms. Farina. I
10 hope you have. She very eloquent woman,
11 much more than I am.
12 Okay, I'll go back to the text. He's
13 going to have a success at International
14 Studies as well. He was, of course, there
15 last night. Every time there's an event,
16 he's there. I don't know if he's taking art
17 class, but Carmen has given Sandy the tools
18 to hire and inspire a group of dedicated new
19 teachers at International Studies, and
20 teachers are our most valuable and
21 undervalued resource. You should all
22 applaud right here. You applauded before.
23 Applaud the teachers for two seconds,
24 because teachers get paid too little and
25 thanked too little.
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2 The turnaround at International
3 Studies and throughout district 15 is
4 happening very quickly. I'm going to quote
5 Sandy and he's not here, which that's good.
6 Not long ago he said to me, you know, we
7 could accomplish this much in so short a
8 time only in this district. Draw your own
9 conclusions.
10 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: If you could
11 just skip the next bullet point where you
12 say Carmen Farina is absolutely fabulous. I
13 said it for you. If you can just get to
14 your conclusion.
15 MR. WECHSLER: Thank you. I'm
16 trying to read faster than I would practice
17 it. So I am hear before you tonight to
18 thank you for seeking input from parents and
19 to ask that you judge principals, as well as
20 superintendents, by taking careful account
21 of what parents think, all of us and others.
22 I am here before you tonight to testify that
23 real change for the good is happening in my
24 daughter's school. I am here before you
25 tonight to support this change and to
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2 support the people whose hard work has
3 engendered it, and just in case you think I
4 must be Carmen Farina's marketing director,
5 it ain't so. I'm just a plain old dad
6 getting older, who sees some good things
7 unexpectedly happening in his kid's school,
8 so by all means, please renovate, revise --
9 Jessie Jackson here -- renovate, revise,
10 remove, improve, recharge and discharge, but
11 don't toss out your innovative babies with
12 the bureaucratic bath water.
13 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
14 much.
15 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
16 much, sir.
17 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We're going to
18 be very efficient now. I'm going to call
19 the last four pre-registered speakers to
20 come sit up at the table, so we don't have
21 to do the waiting in between. Ronald
22 Clinton, Elizabeth Ritter, Kamela Payne and
23 Marcelle Lashley. So let's begin with
24 Ronald Clinton, who has no written
25 testimony, but you'll give us your brief
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2 comments.
3 MR. CLINTON: Good evening,
4 everyone. My name is Ron Clinton. I'm the
5 executive director of Helping Hands
6 Unlimited, community-based social service
7 agency that provides services in the
8 Williamsburg and Bushwick region, district
9 14 and district 32. I was sort of listening
10 to the testimony before me and a lot of
11 people hit on significant points that I
12 thought are important.
13 I was sitting back there and I stood
14 there and I wanted to ask the committee, and
15 hope that this testimony is not just
16 following policy and procedure, and hope
17 that you realize the struggle for our
18 children and our children's education in the
19 Williamsburg, Bushwick and all over the
20 region of the metropolitan area.
21 You know, I ran for district 32
22 school board just recently and received a
23 notice in the mail about abolishing the
24 school board and was really disappointed in
25 understanding this decision was made by one
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2 individual, and that's the Mayor of New York
3 City. I'm concerned on how implementation
4 of the task force and their mission ahead in
5 regards to parent leadership and the
6 professional leadership that's going to be
7 necessary to carry out and administer some
8 form or fashion of school boards. I hope
9 that the testimony that people have brought
10 forth is taken into consideration and that
11 you use a collective decision process where
12 you are making a decision solely as a task
13 force and not as an individual, taking in
14 light the minority community.
15 Sheldon Silver had spoke in a public
16 television show and he talked about that
17 sunset clause. Hopefully we don't have to
18 wait seven years until the eclipse of our
19 education. Hopefully our children don't
20 have to wait seven years for the eclipse of
21 our education to happen and the failure of
22 our educational system at this particular
23 point.
24 So to keep it brief, I hope that you
25 take in consideration what people have
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2 already said multiple times, and that you
3 come up with a sound decision and
4 supervision around helping the parents have
5 the necessary education and training around
6 implementing and monitoring the
7 superintendents and the principals and our
8 schools. So I thank you.
9 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
10 very much.
11 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: The answer is
12 yes and yes. Elizabeth Lorris-Ritter,
13 parent district 6 and district 2.
14 MS. LORRIS-RITTER: Good evening,
15 Assemblyman Sanders, Ms. Thomson, rest of
16 the panel. My name is supermom. Actually
17 my name is Elizabeth Ritter. I live in
18 Washington Heights. I have a fourth grade
19 son in the Miscoda New School, an academy
20 within district 6's PSIS 176 northern
21 Manhattan, and a sixth grade daughter who
22 graduated from that school and moved to the
23 Sauk School of Science, a small school of
24 choice housed in district 2's PS 40.
25 Actually, my kids go to the newest and the
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2 oldest facilities in Manhattan respectively,
3 which is kind of cool.
4 First, let me apologize for not
5 having been earlier and heard everyone's
6 testimony. I was attending a curriculum
7 night discussion between parents and
8 teachers at my son's school, and it felt a
9 little too ironic to forego actually being a
10 parent participating in, you know, pedagogy,
11 so I could come here and talk about the
12 importance of parent participation.
13 So I'm grateful that you're allowing
14 these to go over, and I'll tell you a little
15 bit more about that curriculum evening this
16 evening, but that's what those handouts are
17 about. Second, let me tell you there are
18 many aspects of community school district
19 system that make me absolutely bananas,
20 despite the many reforms, the stunning
21 variety of options for patronage and Peter
22 principled promotion remain, it makes me
23 rabid to go to the district office and see
24 these stacks of Xerox papers, six high and
25 eight wide, and I'm doing monthly runs up to
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2 Staples and Office Max so my kids' teachers
3 have something to photocopy the homework on.
4 It's not okay, and this is really happening.
5 But when I have an issue with my
6 school, whether it's a problem with a staff
7 member or a pedagogical suggestion or
8 there's a field trip that I want to organize
9 or there is an interesting community group
10 that can maybe do some supplemental activity
11 in the school to enrich how teachers are
12 teaching, I know that I can go to my
13 district office and work with the district
14 level staff who knows the people on the
15 community board and who knows the friends of
16 such and such park and the local arts group
17 that does, you know, performing dance and
18 music program in the parks and can figure
19 out how to figure out how to work with
20 school-based teachers to integrate these
21 kind of supplemental arts and science
22 programs. When you lose local community
23 school boards and local community school
24 districts and you centralize things, you
25 begin to get that very vanilla flavor, one
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2 size fits all, if this is Tuesday, we must
3 be learning how to spell aardvark education,
4 and that's not what I want for my child, and
5 I think that's not the kind of voter that
6 you want pulling the lever for you every
7 other November.
8 You want educated, smart people
9 voting for you. You want educated, smart
10 taxpayers forming the financial base for
11 your salary. You can't have that with
12 crappy schools. And you can't actually have
13 that with consistent, this is how we do this
14 at 9:00 in the morning on Tuesday education.
15 In his comments yesterday, the Mayor
16 articulated a sweeping vision for the
17 administration and management of these
18 schools, and in a lot of ways it makes sense
19 to, you know, take the paper out of the
20 centralized offices and get it in the
21 schools. To take the resources and get it
22 as close to the children who are consuming
23 the educational services possible, but I
24 worry about any system that says, you know,
25 it's going to be standardized. We're going
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2 to have tests. We're going to be able to
3 measure what the kids do. These are not
4 widgets, they are children.
5 I have, as I mentioned before, two
6 children. They are both two dips into the
7 same gene pool. They were raised in the
8 same home in the same community. Educated
9 in the same school. They are two very
10 different children. They read differently.
11 They math differently. They're different at
12 science. They have different artistic
13 abilities. They have different
14 temperaments, and that's two kid from the
15 same family. So how can the Mayor or
16 Chancellor or anybody in the Department of
17 Ed say we're going to get this educational
18 system that's the same across the board,
19 that is consistent, that is standardized.
20 That is not flexible. That doesn't take
21 into account the different needs of the
22 community and the different resources of the
23 community.
24 One of the things that bothered me a
25 great deal recently, when the teachers
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2 contract added extra time, there were a
3 number of innovative plans that different
4 districts came up with on how are we going
5 to add these 100 minutes, and some people
6 said, you know, we're going to make every
7 period of instruction 90 seconds longer than
8 it used to be. I don't know about your
9 children or about you when you were kids,
10 but 90 seconds, it's not a lot of time.
11 Some -- and there's really a limited amount
12 of stuff that you can do, and I don't feel
13 like my kid's math experience is being
14 enhanced dramatically with that 90 seconds.
15 Some districts said we're going to do
16 something different. We're going to make
17 Tuesday longer. We're going to come up with
18 a solution that makes sense given the
19 teachers in the building and given the
20 children in the building. They weren't
21 allowed to do that. Whatever it is that
22 gets done with the boards and with the
23 community schools, whoever's running this
24 operation, needs to be sensitive to the
25 individual need of the kids doing the
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2 learning, the teachers doing the teaching.
3 Thank you.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
5 much.
6 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
7 Kamela Payne.
8 MS. PAYNE: Good evening. My name
9 is Kamela Payne and I'm here as a parent. I
10 have two children within the Board of
11 Education, the Department of Education. One
12 in the 12th and one in the second grade.
13 I'm here to say that I am very much in favor
14 of the elimination of the community school
15 board. To me, it represents an extension of
16 a bureaucratic Board of Education system.
17 The role of the school board is not
18 clearly visible. However, I feel that a
19 panel of parents and a representative of the
20 City Council's office, along with a
21 representative of the Chancellor's office
22 within each borough should be appointed to
23 deal with the issues that affect our
24 children. It is not enough to give a parent
25 the right to advise on issues that affect
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2 our children. The parents on this panel
3 must have a right to vote, to participate in
4 in effecting change. The board should
5 reflect a diversity of the children
6 attending our schools.
7 I feel the school leadership teams
8 should remain as they are and they should
9 work to bring together more parent
10 involvement. They do work very closely with
11 the principals. I, as a parent, had to
12 fight to get my child into a school that was
13 out of my zone. I was not -- the principal
14 initially would not speak to me. I had to
15 go to the superintendent's office to get her
16 enrolled. I was told there was no space. I
17 had to go with numbers to make them aware
18 that there was space. There was 20 kids and
19 not 25. She's an eagle student. When I
20 asked that she be tested for the CIG
21 program, I wrote a letter because my child
22 had scored very well and had tested prior to
23 entering into kindergarten. I was told by
24 that same principal that he would not
25 placate me. I wrote to the superintendent.
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2 I requested a meeting. I wrote to the
3 Chancellor. I did not get a meeting or a
4 conversation by telephone. I also sent a
5 notice to district 22 community school board
6 leader Sal Nido. No one returned my call.
7 I recently wrote to the Chancellor's
8 office in September regarding the
9 ill-treatment of my child. My daughter was
10 made to feel like she was not wanted because
11 this principal felt that I was a threat, and
12 the only thing I was asking for was that if
13 my child could perform and she could show
14 excellence, that she be given that
15 opportunity. I had to fight to get her into
16 this school, and as a result, she paid the
17 price. I had to remove her from the
18 classmates that she knew from kindergarten,
19 because I felt the situation was no longer
20 fair on the child. At one point, racism was
21 blatant, and it's unfortunate, because I
22 couldn't explain to my child that this
23 principal was not here to serve the needs of
24 every child in this school.
25 I had to find some place better for
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2 my child and I had no one to go to. I did
3 write to our borough president, who's very
4 helpful. And Wendy Weingart earlier today
5 talked about walking in each other shoes.
6 It's good to be able to walk in each other's
7 shoes, but sometimes we have to able to step
8 -- to basically address issues that may
9 affect how another person feels.
10 We cannot continue to just say, you
11 know, go along with status quo. You have to
12 be willing to step on the other one's shoes
13 and say this is not right and this is the
14 problem. How can you expect us as parents
15 to feel that we're effective if we have no
16 vote?
17 In the end, it is our responsibility
18 to ensure that our children get the best
19 education that they can, and when I wrote to
20 the district office and told them I wanted
21 my daughter down to Manhattan Beach, they
22 told me there was no room. I told them
23 about No Child Left Behind, and the same
24 letter came through the Chancellor's office,
25 and then Bush came back out again and said
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2 you know what, there's no excuses for no
3 child left behind. You have to make room.
4 But I said, you know what, I've done enough
5 shuffling with my child this year. I'm
6 going to have to stake her some place where
7 she feels comfortable and wanted. That was
8 my first concern. Her emotionally
9 stability.
10 She can perform. She can perform
11 anywhere, but she should not have to sit in
12 a classroom where children are in an eagle
13 classroom, are supposed to gifted, are doing
14 work that children -- that she did in the
15 first grade in my neighborhood. Why is it?
16 Because with my oldest daughter, I had to
17 take her out of my school district to ensure
18 that she would get the education that she
19 deserves.
20 I feel that so many people have
21 really ridden on our children's backs, and
22 in the end, I as a parent, I am responsible
23 for the type of education that she gets, and
24 that's why I'm here tonight, because she
25 deserve it.
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2 I had to fight alone. I wrote to
3 Carmen Farina of district 15. Everybody's
4 closed their door. When Bush said No Child
5 Left Behind. You call public accounting,
6 they won't give you numbers, and everybody
7 close their doors. I sent them test scores.
8 My daughter started getting things home like
9 competent. What is competent to a seven
10 year old? And this is not here
11 self-portrait. She didn't draw this. She
12 said, mommy, I didn't draw this
13 self-portrait of me. This is a little brown
14 face with big brown eyes and short part blue
15 body, and these are the messages that were
16 sent to my daughter, but no one could hear
17 me. I didn't have a voice, and I need a
18 parent to sit down in a forum in my
19 situation, to hear someone like me. To
20 effect change.
21 I raised one. She going to be going
22 on to high school, and I find it's gotten
23 more difficult, and we can't allow it to
24 remain the way it is. Martin Luther King
25 fought that fight a long time ago. Let's
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2 stand up and let's stand up for what's
3 right. I want to be a part of that change.
4 I want to have a voice.
5 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
6 much.
7 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Can I just
8 say, I just want to say, none of us here
9 have the power. We're not part of the
10 Department of Education. We don't have the
11 power to help you. If I could, I would, but
12 several people who were here today do have
13 the power. One was the Chancellor, who
14 although I know you've contacted him, he did
15 assure us --
16 MS. PAYNE: I would like to send
17 this to him.
18 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: That's fine.
19 Also the second person was public advocate
20 Betsy Gotbaum, who said she often advocates
21 for parents. So those are two options for
22 you.
23 MS. PAYNE: It just filtered back
24 down to our superintendent, and it's the
25 same system, but I would like to submit it
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2 to your panel, so that he may personally be
3 able to take a look --
4 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Well, he won't
5 see it through here.
6 MS. PAYNE: He won't get it?
7 Because I did send all of my information,
8 but it didn't help.
9 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Try Betsy
10 Gotbaum then. Thank you. Keep on fighting.
11 Marcelle Lashley.
12 MS. LASHLEY: Good evening, task
13 force. The next time Robin tells me to call
14 in, I will do it immediately so I'm in the
15 a.m. I was here for your first cup of
16 coffee. And you guys have grown weary over
17 the evening. Thank you for staying, those
18 of you who are still here.
19 I'm going to read my testimony
20 briefly. First, as a correction, I'm PTA
21 vice president of PS 20 and the vice
22 president of district 13's President's
23 Council. My name is Marcelle Davies
24 Lashley, and I am the mother of three
25 wonderful children ages 12, seven and six.
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2 They all attend public school in district
3 13, Brooklyn, and have thus far had a great
4 academic and social experience.
5 These children are the products of
6 planned parenthood of two loving, married
7 parents that made three conscious decisions
8 to create life and love in our cherished
9 offspring. In turn we have chosen to share
10 them with the public school system of New
11 York City.
12 My vested interest in what is the
13 public school which exists in my community
14 that I love, happens to be part of the
15 heartbeat of the neighborhood. The same
16 jungle gym in Ft. Green park where my
17 children now play and where I in turn off
18 the sprinkler in the humid summer nights,
19 has replaced the treehouse where I played as
20 a child. I have pictures and the splinter
21 scars to prove it.
22 I live and reside in the historic Ft.
23 Green, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn where the hugs
24 of children and the grocery store brings a
25 smile to my face on any given evening or
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2 Saturday afternoon, due to my consistent
3 involvement in the schools. We can spend
4 forever playing the blame game about the
5 efforts and past behavior of the community
6 school boards. That won't get us anywhere
7 or very far. Besides, I happen to be in
8 good standing and respect those who
9 represent my district at the school board
10 level.
11 Having served as the President's
12 Council president of my district for the
13 past three years, the one thing I do know is
14 that parents care, will go above and beyond
15 the call of duty for anybody's children and
16 want the best for their own children. I
17 would go out on a limb to say that most
18 parents representing our schools on their
19 local PTAs or Ps are committed to school
20 improvement and well-run institutions of
21 learning for all children.
22 They work tirelessly attending
23 meetings, workshops, forums training and
24 whatever else we've been advised to do to
25 help our children obtain the best possible
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2 experience in education. This is in
3 addition to running their households working
4 full-time jobs sometimes single-handedly and
5 most certainly, unstipend by this great
6 city.
7 Volunteer means just that, volunteer.
8 Often times these are the parents of
9 children that would get what they need to do
10 well, regardless of the resources in their
11 schools because their parents won't have it
12 any other way. They make the sacrifice
13 because they are certifiably crazy and are
14 concerned about the big picture, the
15 community.
16 Our children play, live and are all
17 educated together. It would be behoove us
18 to make sure that they all receive adequate
19 education. It is their fundamental human
20 right. They trust and feel safe in the
21 presence of their parents. They feel a
22 sense of pride when their parents are
23 involved.
24 My seven year old a while ago in Head
25 Start after attending for about a year
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2 started crying in class. I happened to be
3 in the parent room with a meeting and he was
4 crying because, and I quote, you are always
5 volunteering at Atianne's school, which was
6 my older son, a student at PS 20.
7 The heartbeat of a child is the
8 mother, as the school is the heartbeat of
9 the community. The schools with the most
10 parent involvement, have the best outcomes
11 per the research parent involvement is not a
12 program, but a process. Increase schools
13 outcomes and improvement by engaging parents
14 in a meaningful way, and the parent and
15 community councils that you've suggested and
16 we agree with could possibly replace
17 community school boards.
18 These new entities should be
19 systemic, not ad hoc fluff groups to keep
20 parents at bay and not really connected to
21 the education process. In any household if
22 mom is unhappy, everybody's unhappy. So is
23 the same for school. If the parents are
24 unhappy, for the most part, the schools are
25 not very happy.
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2 Level the playing field by providing
3 professional development for parents so that
4 there can be a fair exchange at the
5 bargaining table. If parents of our 1.1
6 million children don't have an adequate
7 voice and representation, it's like writing
8 a death sentence for the success and future
9 of our children. A failing educational
10 system for parents can be both arduous and
11 painful for those of us that know the value
12 and importance of a well-educated nation.
13 It will prove to be mismanagement of
14 the future of this city by educational
15 negligent of our children, our future. It
16 is ironic that these forums are taking the
17 place on the day after the birthday of
18 Martin Luther King Jr. Is there equity in
19 education and a fair platform for parent
20 concerns, voice and expression? Justice is
21 about forgiveness, mercy and compassion. If
22 we feel any of the above and have a small
23 amount of empathy for human life and the
24 quality of life, the time is now to
25 guarantee best practices in parent input and
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2 involvement.
3 Parents are the primary educators of
4 their children. Trust their abilities and
5 put them to task with the parent councils
6 compromised of parents, for parents and
7 children, by the parents with the love of
8 their children in their hearts and minds.
9 Parents do deliver and have always been
10 accountable. Thank you.
11 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
12 much. That completes the list of people who
13 had pre-registered. There are several dozen
14 people who arrived today who asked if there
15 was time, and I think we indicated to most
16 everyone that at the end of the evening,
17 sometime after 9:00, if we still had time,
18 we would try to do that.
19 So in five minutes, we're going to
20 take a five-minute break. When we return,
21 we are going to call the people who had
22 registered today. We will have to limit you
23 to two minutes. I know it's a short amount
24 of time. I know many of you have been here
25 for a long time. So try to say some things,
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2 summarize your thoughts to perhaps haven't
3 been said or agree with other speakers who
4 came before you, but we will have to limit
5 you to two minutes, because we want to hear
6 from as many people as we can before
7 midnight when we must leave. So we'll take
8 a five-minute break now. So gather your
9 thoughts, make them succinct. We want to
10 hear from you.
11 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: I'll read you
12 the four names who we'll begin with, just so
13 you can get ready and come up to the front.
14 Yvonne Dades, Queen Mother Jordan, Irene
15 Varon, and Betty Minter will be the first
16 four speakers.
17 (A break was taken.)
18 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: And let me once
19 again make mention of the fact that we
20 regret we have to limit the last speakers to
21 two minutes who registered today, but we
22 have not choice. We have to be out of this
23 room before midnight, and we still have
24 quite a number of people to hear from. So
25 for this last group of people, I hope you
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2 will not consider me rude when I have to
3 interrupt you and thank you for your
4 testimony so we can move on.
5 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We're going to
6 begin right now with Yvonne Dades.
7 MS. DADES: Good evening to all.
8 My first thing is to commend you all on the
9 task force for trying to bring about a
10 change throughout our city.
11 From all the testimonies I heard
12 tonight, none of them were relevant to which
13 you are supposed to be here for. We're
14 supposed to know whether we want these
15 school boards, who are to replace them, and
16 what are their purposes and they'll be
17 accountability.
18 I am a parent who I represent parents
19 throughout the city, as well as children and
20 seniors, and I would like to let you know
21 that we do have an organization called
22 Parents United For Change who is willing to
23 accept you all as the change along with the
24 Chancellor and the Mayor. We have to learn
25 to collaborate.
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2 I'm going to try to synopsize in a
3 few minutes for you all because I've been
4 waiting, but my point is this, we do not
5 need the same thing that has happened in the
6 past. What I do like about the new day is
7 that it not only touched one person, it
8 touched across the board. So it's no
9 personal this here. What happened in one
10 district with good school boards did not
11 happen in the others, okay, so if you had a
12 good board, I grant you, you wanna keep it,
13 keep it, but take that and make it a pilot
14 as our piggyback along with Ms. Williams,
15 Denise said. Make it a pilot program and
16 show it to others.
17 If you want to bring it back in 2010,
18 but right now it's out. My point is this,
19 it's time to let parents stand up. They
20 asked for the control. They wanted the
21 forefront. Give it to them. You gave it to
22 them. It's out of here. Why now are they
23 not going to be able to stand up and be on
24 their own. We have a plan. Why is the plan
25 ignored? We don't need a school board we
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2 know what to do in our district, but the
3 point is, have the people there together
4 with the parents, like administrators or
5 community people, CBOs or whatever have you
6 that can bring the administrative leadership
7 that we might need that would supercede our
8 education, because we're not informed. The
9 majority of us.
10 I've been here since 1980.
11 Mr. Sanders, I done seen you plenty. I come
12 up state. I speak with different districts.
13 The whole nine. I'm not going to put on the
14 floor here the case that will take us out of
15 compliance. I'm not here for that, but my
16 point is this, can you accept the group of
17 parents and you'll give us the support. I
18 have a group of parents, over 150 from the
19 Marriott, the conference we had, that
20 they're waiting for answers. We are victims
21 of No Child Left Behind.
22 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Okay. We thank
23 you. We hear you and we thank you very
24 much.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Queen Mother
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2 Jordan, Universal Educational Partners in
3 Education.
4 QUEEN MOTHER JORDAN: Good evening
5 to the task force and to all here assembled,
6 representation of parents, teachers and
7 students. I am here as a universal mother
8 for education. My purpose is to hear and
9 observe what is being said by each and every
10 one. It is for the benefit of the children,
11 because they are first. They are number
12 one. They are our future leaders.
13 Universal wise it's needed.
14 It's imperative that we make it so it
15 become perpetual that parents must have
16 direction and must have some sort of input
17 for the children in their behalf. So as a
18 universal mother, that is my reason.
19 We cannot separate according to
20 children, whatever their intelect is,
21 whatever their health is, it's important.
22 Some may be a little slower than others.
23 Some may have dyslexia, but whatever it may
24 be, some may be brilliant and excel.
25 However it is, each one can contribute.
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2 Because even one that is autistic, can have
3 some special gift, God given gift that can
4 take them through.
5 So my purpose is to ask the community
6 board that we know has done the best they
7 could at the time, and all those who have
8 contributed could not be here because there
9 wouldn't be room enough to hold them. We
10 would need a large forum, even larger than
11 Madison Square Garden, for what has already
12 put into it. So therefore, I feel that it
13 should be in some way given an endowment
14 policy. One that's a permanent policy that
15 gives life. Our children are our life.
16 They are our life line. They are our future
17 leaders.
18 So therefore go forth. Communicate.
19 Whatever can be contributed towards it, see
20 that it's implemented, and that is the love.
21 We must have the love for the children. It
22 must not so that we pocket whatever is given
23 to go forth to present, to preserve or to
24 purchase whatever's necessary. The sweat of
25 our brow and our energy is needing. Give
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2 it. Just like you contribute a pint of
3 blood, donate your blood. Donate your
4 sweat. Donate your love. And let it go
5 forth, but you cannot amputate the parents
6 from the children. You cannot amputate the
7 teachers from the children. And you cannot
8 amputate the children from them.
9 So go forth for education and love.
10 That's coming from Universal Queen Mother of
11 Creative Crusade for Education and partners
12 of parents, teachers and students. I am
13 Mother Universal and I love all children.
14 So let us make it be universal. We call
15 everyone to war to go to see what we can do
16 to try to get peace. So whatever we're
17 saying now, what we preaching, let's put it
18 into action.
19 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: And we thank you
20 very much, and I would just note that all of
21 us here and I think in the audience took
22 note of your presence in the first row
23 observing these proceedings, and I must say
24 that your being here added a certain degree
25 of dignity and grace and regalness we all
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2 couldn't help but notice. We thank you for
3 being here Queen Mother Jordan.
4 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Irene Varon.
5 MS. VARON: Thank you. I applaud
6 the fact that you guys are willing to stay.
7 I'm totally amazed that you can be here this
8 long, and I do know that you do listen.
9 I've been around the system a long time.
10 I've been very fortunate in my choice of
11 schools and in my district. I'm in district
12 22, at first as a parent, and now I work
13 there. We have a very well functioning
14 school leadership team in a lot of our
15 schools. There's room for improvement and a
16 lot of areas in the system. But we also
17 have a functioning district leadership team.
18 And I have to say, between the school
19 leadership teams, which have been supported
20 through district training, we do six
21 workshops on CEP, data analysis, all sorts
22 of planning, six workshops on budget, and
23 the deputy superintendents gives us the
24 workshops. We're taught how to plan
25 budgets, what they mean, what happens. I
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2 don't think that would happen with 10
3 regions, with six operational regions. They
4 don't even overlap.
5 Budget is only a tool to implement
6 your educational plan. So to separate them,
7 doesn't work. But the district leadership
8 team and the school leadership teams in our
9 district have managed to keep student
10 achievement high. My school makes state
11 standards. We're 93 percentile one. We
12 figured out from the home language surveys
13 about 2/3rds of our parents don't speak
14 English at home. The children don't speak
15 English at home. Yet we still make state
16 standards, because parents, teachers and
17 administrators have worked together and we
18 have been supported by the district office.
19 Our funding director, when we became
20 a school-wide program school, and we were
21 first in the district, came to our meetings
22 all the time to help us, because we didn't
23 understand the language. We had
24 facilitators that taught us how to be a
25 team. It's not all smooth sailing. I'm the
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2 chair of the committee, and sometimes I
3 resorted to using a hammer. And it's fun.
4 We conflict, but something better comes out,
5 because we have different points of view in
6 the same room. Having parent groups
7 separated from teachers and administrators,
8 it's like making plans, I say it -- making
9 plans over the telephone with six people.
10 You want to go here and you're on the
11 telephone and you're going around to
12 everybody, by the time you get back to the
13 first person, you're confused. Everybody in
14 the same room comes out with a product at
15 the same time, and I think district
16 leadership teams -- and I know you have to
17 have to have some other elected --
18 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We'll need you
19 to conclude.
20 MS. VARON: Okay. But these
21 teams, because they have been trained,
22 because they have put their egos aside, have
23 managed to keep up with changing population,
24 changing demographics and still make
25 standards. Thank you.
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2 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you.
3 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
4 much. The next group we'll call Betty
5 Minter. Not here. Linda Sanders. Sabina
6 Ellentuck, William Cruz and Valerie Hill.
7 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Is Linda Sanders
8 here?
9 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: No. Okay.
10 Sabina Ellentuck. Okay. William Cruz, no.
11 Valerie Hill, no. Ingrid Roman? Come join
12 us up here, okay. And Vivian Natale. Great.
13 This is Sabina?
14 MS. ELLENTUCK: Sabina.
15 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Welcome.
16 MS. ELLENTUCK: Hi. I specifically
17 want to talk to something I read in the
18 paper today that the division of the
19 instruction department, I'm not sure if I'm
20 getting it right, is going to come out with
21 very specifics about what schools should do,
22 and for example, they said that from K
23 through third grade I think the literacy
24 should be focused on phonics. Then there
25 should be math every day. So my statement
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2 is that standards are good. Have standards,
3 but do not micromanage the entire school day
4 like they do in Chicago public schools. I'm
5 also from the Miscoda New School. I came
6 late because I was at a fabulous homework
7 session tonight for parents and teachers.
8 My son graduated from this school. I have a
9 younger son in second grade. This is a
10 small school of 300 kids. We have Spanish
11 kids, African American kids, Asian kids, all
12 kinds of kids, white kids, from everywhere.
13 They're all up in Washington Heights and
14 they all come to this school. It's really
15 wonderful.
16 These kids do a lot of writing. They
17 write stories, books, drama dialogues,
18 plays, newspapers, and I'm not talking about
19 the fifth graders. K through five, they're
20 all doing this. The fourth, fifth graders
21 study Shakespeare the whole year and there's
22 a Shakespeare play that's put on at the end
23 of the year, but the acting is terrible, but
24 you ask them what something means and they
25 know it. They understand Shakespeare. It's
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2 truly amazing, okay.
3 It's not the focus to create actors.
4 It's to create understanding and literacy
5 and speaking and self-esteem. They do math
6 projects linked to science projects.
7 They're doing a science project, they do
8 graphing. They understand why they do
9 things. They do science experiments and
10 document things. They build habitats for
11 animals. They do art projects based on the
12 science, based on the social studies. It's
13 a very integrated program.
14 What I want to say is that this
15 school does not teach just phonics or just
16 whole language. They mix, okay. You can't
17 just teach one thing. You can't say the old
18 way versus the new way. They teach
19 constructivist math with real life problems,
20 but of course there's some memorization
21 going on. It's problem solving as the
22 focus. There are a variety of ways to teach
23 and they do it at this school.
24 They do not teach from textbooks.
25 There are libraries of books for what we can
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2 have in each room. The teachers Xerox from
3 all type of sources. The teachers go out
4 for training through new visions at Bank
5 Street, different places. They come back.
6 They share with the teachers. This is a
7 school where the director and teachers and
8 parents support each other. They work hard.
9 We have workshops to educate the
10 parents so we know how to help with
11 constructivist math homework. Everyone has
12 to learn together, and that's what we have
13 at this school. So again, I'm saying yes to
14 standards. They're good. You have to say
15 you have to learn math this and that, but no
16 to cookie cutter approach.
17 Please be very careful. Don't
18 destroy some of the good things we have like
19 this other man was saying, the innovative
20 things at his school. The great things at
21 this school. Leave room for creativity and
22 a variety of ways to teach and learn.
23 So I invite you all, please, come
24 visit. I've been an active parent at this
25 school for five years. I'll set up your
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2 visit. Come visit the Miscoda New School,
3 district six, Washington Heights, Inwood.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
5 much.
6 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
7 Ingrid Roman.
8 MS. ROMAN: First, I want to say
9 that I'm glad to see all of you here today,
10 because I hear people speak of well, we're
11 going to remember your face. Well, I'm
12 going to remember your face in a good way,
13 because you took the opportunity to come out
14 here and hear us. The people, and everyone
15 discuss well, we want to be heard. We are
16 being heard. We are the people that voted
17 and elected Bloomberg to come in, because we
18 all knew that he was going to abolish the
19 Board of Ed. This is why he one the
20 majority vote, and I personally, I am very
21 glad that he is the Mayor and I have the
22 confidence within me to say that I am
23 confident that he will do the right thing.
24 This is why you are here. This is why we
25 were given this opportunity to speak here
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2 today.
3 I will not discuss issues relative to
4 other communities, because I don't live in
5 certain other communities. I'm here with
6 regard to district 20. In that vicinity, we
7 have a lot of bureaucratic stuff going on.
8 We have retribution. We have -- you have to
9 pay the price of the parents. Their
10 outcries are not being heard. At the
11 community level, they disregard what you
12 have to say. And it's pretty disgusting.
13 I've been involved in the school as
14 far as on the PTA as first vice president.
15 I'm on the school leadership team. I'm on
16 the learning leaders team. I was a member
17 of the Parkville Youth Organization for
18 three years, baseball, football, whatever,
19 free. I don't get paid. I don't want a
20 salary, and it's amazing to me that you --
21 you have to care about the children. If you
22 don't care, you don't belong there. And the
23 reason that these people are placed in these
24 positions is because you at one point have
25 given the impression that you care about the
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2 children, but this is not the situation I'm
3 seeing in the schools.
4 And I've also have been given the
5 opportunity to help certain officials run
6 for office. For example, Councilman Marty
7 Golden who is now Senate, and he is a very
8 concerned individual when it comes to our
9 community, and he is trying relentlessly to
10 do what's right, but aside that, what I'm
11 seeing and dealing with all the people in
12 the neighborhood, because I do get around
13 and I'm very friendly with everyone and
14 anyone, and it doesn't mater who you are or
15 where you come from, as long as you're a
16 civil, kind person and you're trying to do
17 what's right, more so for the children.
18 And this is what bothers me most, is
19 no one's doing what needs to be done for the
20 children, and at the school level, district
21 20, I personally feel that that school
22 should be demolished, that community school
23 board should be demolished. I've listened
24 to so many parents complain and complain,
25 and when they call, they don't want to hear
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2 it. The secretary takes the phone calls.
3 You know, those in charge, the'll respond to
4 the secretary. The secretary will respond
5 to the parent. They're not being listened
6 to.
7 I've been fortunate enough, whatever
8 complaints I've had for that district, to
9 deal with somebody in the community
10 assistance unit, who was willing to hear me
11 out. I have had the opportunity to find the
12 Chancellor's fax number and forward my
13 complaints, and hopefully somewhere down the
14 road something will come out of it, but I
15 think what's most important, when you decide
16 and go through all your paperwork is, you
17 have to have the input of the parents. It's
18 very important. We do scrutinize, but it's
19 important to have it there, and you also
20 have to focus on the teachers and the
21 principals in the school.
22 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you.
23 You did all that in one breath I think.
24 Thank you for that testimony.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Vivian Natale,
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2 no. The next four. Dawn Jones, chairwoman,
3 Manhattan community board number 15. Dr.
4 DeLois Blakely, I don't think she's here.
5 Oh, is she here. Yes, I didn't see you come
6 back. Mario Aguila, parent from PS 17, did
7 you come back? No. Sharon Burke, president
8 of PTA, PS 181. Did Sharon come back?
9 Okay. Come join us, Sharon. Dr. Blakely.
10 DR. BLAKELY: I'm Dr. DeLois
11 Blakely, and I come as the community Mayor
12 of Harlem, and I come in the spirit of Dr.
13 King. Dr. King regularly reminded us, as
14 Mayor Bloomberg mentioned yesterday on his
15 birthday in his deliverance of his speech in
16 Harlem, remind us that "an injustice
17 anywhere threatens justice everywhere"
18 again, quoting from the Mayor Bloomberg,
19 "illiteracy permitted anywhere, threatens
20 learning everywhere."
21 As I continue to quote him, this
22 morning we are in community school district
23 five central and west Harlem lies within its
24 boundary. The most recent state and city
25 standardized test tells us that more than
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2 3/4 of the students in elementary and middle
3 school in district five cannot read, write
4 or perform math at grade level. Quoting
5 again, the Mayor, district 10 of the
6 districts in which African American and
7 Latin children make up 88 to 99 percent of
8 enrollment, more than 2/3 of students failed
9 to meet standards in reading, writing and
10 math. He quotes, the problem is systematic.
11 He quotes, the partnership between the
12 schools and the community organization that
13 delivers these services, he quotes, we must
14 make the commitment financial, morale,
15 political. After all, it's our future.
16 I quote again from the Mayor
17 Bloomberg. The right to a quality education
18 is just as much a God given and American
19 right as the right to vote or be treated
20 equally. I quote from Dr. Blakely, the
21 community Mayor of Harlem, let us live and
22 work for our children/youth in the spirit of
23 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I thank you.
24 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
25 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you
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2 very much.
3 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Sharon Burke.
4 MS. BURKE: Thank you. Good
5 evening, everyone. My name is Sharon Burke
6 and I'm the current PTA president of PS 181
7 in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. My children
8 have been attending that school, and I have
9 been a parent volunteer there for the last
10 15 years.
11 I'm mother of 10, five of which have
12 graduated out of the public school system
13 and five of which now attend -- four which
14 attend PS 181, and one is in high school.
15 PS 181 is a K to eight school. When I
16 became involved with the community school
17 board, there were times when I felt justice
18 was done and there were times when I felt
19 that many injustices were done.
20 When it comes to the abolition of the
21 school boards, I am ambivalent. I want to
22 hold onto what is the past, because I know
23 it. I am a bit afraid of the future,
24 because I don't know what it will bring.
25 And I'm kind of scared. You know, because
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2 it's like what do they have in mind for my
3 children? Is it a bunch of talk or is it an
4 earnest effort to elevate the level of
5 education for my children in the school?
6 The problem that I have at my school,
7 which I know extends outside of the school,
8 is the wish to control and that when I come
9 to the school as a parent, that I am just a
10 parent and that my voice is that of just a
11 parent. When I come and sit down at the
12 table as a parent on a leadership team, I am
13 seen as such, and that with the abolition of
14 the school board, I am fearful of the fact
15 that my word will be seen as just a parent
16 and not one as an educated participant in a
17 team.
18 I would say to you, though, that when
19 my children leave the home, they do not go
20 with just their brains. They do not present
21 their brain, okay. They present their whole
22 self. They present their esteem. Their
23 feelings, their heart, their dreams and
24 aspirations that which was born in my
25 household.
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2 So therefore, I should as a parent,
3 have a say and an input in the education,
4 because I'm not just educating the academic
5 child, I'm educating the entire being.
6 Parents must be allowed concrete input into
7 the education and the running of the school,
8 and I mean, all of it is just talk until
9 it's put into action. And I'm a parent who
10 I'm ready for the action, and I would like
11 to be a part of that. Thank you very much.
12 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
13 much.
14 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you.
15 Sol McCants, Valerie McAllister, and Miguel
16 Williams. And we believe these are the last
17 three. Sol McCants is first. Welcome.
18 Thank you for staying.
19 MR. MCKANTZ: First, I want to
20 thank you for staying, and I commend those
21 that are here, because those that are here
22 means to me that you are the only ones that
23 are left on this table that seem to care,
24 okay, and I have to put that out, because as
25 a parent, I was raised by my father that was
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2 a union leader in the post office. Long
3 meetings. I went along with him sometimes
4 as an education process. Nobody left those
5 meetings until the meeting was done.
6 Business is not done until the meeting is
7 over. Those that left here are going to say
8 well, I'll read this. I'll read that.
9 That's like a child going home and you tell
10 him do the homework and then come back with
11 the assignment half done. They're going to
12 get their assistant to do it. I don't
13 believe them. I only believe the faces that
14 I see.
15 I'm going to be short on that part
16 but, also, I'm a child of this school
17 system. I went to school here in the '60s.
18 And I beg you to look up the school called
19 110 in Queens. It was a wooden schoolhouse.
20 The last wooden schoolhouse in Queens and it
21 wasn't a fun thing, because where I lived in
22 St. Albans, I lived near the dividing line
23 at the time. Farmers Boulevard. You step
24 over Farmers Boulevard and it didn't look
25 like me. And there was a school across from
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2 Farmers Boulevard, and I couldn't go to that
3 school at that time, okay.
4 So this is before '62 and before
5 that. My parents walked picket lines along
6 with me. I watched them beaten and arrested
7 in this city, okay, under an apartheid
8 system of not only work, but also that
9 education system.
10 The wooden schoolhouse I went to had
11 sharecropper hours. Where the other school
12 had a full day, I had a half day. It was
13 like I said, I beg you to do your research.
14 The school was called 110. It was close --
15 the backside of it faced Baisley Boulevard,
16 and it was a such an abondable school, that
17 you know, like a wooden schoolhouse. Think
18 of the bungalows that you saw near Coney
19 Island, okay, but there were four rooms.
20 And it serviced the neighborhood, so it was
21 overcrowd. So the way the old board did it
22 was half a day for you and half a day for
23 you. Everybody else got a full education.
24 And my mother was a teacher. She
25 fought for me to get out of that school and
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2 got me into another school. She took off a
3 week's worth of wages, risking the mortgage,
4 because it took two incomes from our family
5 to pay the mortgage. Remember, we're
6 talking about apartheid times, even though
7 they had education.
8 Now I'm going to bring you up to this
9 time. Presently, as I said, I have child, a
10 male child, going to Sheepshead Bay High
11 School. I'm on the leadership team. I'm
12 also active in the PTA. And what's been
13 deeply troubling me since the past Mayor,
14 who I won't even respect to mention his name
15 to soil the microphone with his name, okay,
16 and the present Mayor, who is like the past
17 Mayor, but with a smile, and is basically
18 giving us the Department of Education, which
19 it is now called, and now called for the
20 decronyian monolithic thought of one
21 curriculum policy and no diversity along
22 with disbanding the community input and
23 control. This is both fascist and racist.
24 Okay. The demographics of this city is not
25 reflected in the ruling class of
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2 Mr. Bloomberg's administration. And I fear
3 for that. And I also say for you to fear
4 for that, because an uneducated child will
5 not be a skilled worker. He may be a
6 mechanic. And I say this to wake up the
7 teachers in my school because they're
8 insensitive. These children will become
9 mechanics that work on your car. They can't
10 read or talk wrench because they can't do
11 math. They're going to talk the wheels on
12 your car. They're going to come loose as
13 you go on your way down driving to retire on
14 I 95, and goes what, the person that hung
15 out and cut class with him, worked on the
16 truck. So when your car comes to a stop,
17 the truck that he worked the brakes on that
18 his partner worked on, basically rolls over
19 you on I 95. So let's change this attitude
20 about input and not listening to parents,
21 okay. I beg you to listen closely. And
22 think of that, because a guidance counselor
23 said well, I'll fly, and I had to remind him
24 that it's 9-11. C Minus in the White House,
25 when he wants to put the fear in the
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2 American public, cancels all flights. You
3 now have to still drive.
4 Those students that you don't
5 educate, are still putting you in danger.
6 They may work on the boiler in your house,
7 because now the military's closed off all
8 the bridges and you have to stay home. He
9 forgot to loosen or read the directions to
10 unloosen the steam valve and your boiler
11 blew up along with you and your house.
12 So I say this is very dangerous.
13 This is very dangerous, and I know the
14 difference between a good education and a
15 bad one, because I'm a product of the High
16 School of Music and Art, and we have had
17 free thought there, okay. Unfortunately our
18 teachers, and many of them were history
19 teachers, when we were talking about black
20 history, I mentioned a few names.
21 Unfortunately they didn't know Paul
22 Robinson. Paul Robinson you don't know.
23 Lieutenant General Benjamin O. Davis. He
24 was recently in the news. So if these
25 stupids who want to be insensitive -- and I
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2 call them stupids when you have a body of
3 students who are mixed and you choose not to
4 know any of their backgrounds or be
5 sensitive to anything in history -- he
6 recently passed away. God bless his soul.
7 But many a white bomber pilot is safe and
8 came home and had a family and was able to
9 spread his family name, because the red
10 tails never lost a bomber in World War II.
11 Benjamin Davis, and I have to
12 enlighten everybody, was a graduate upstate
13 of the military college. He basically took
14 over and was in control of the Catusky Gee
15 Air Men. Unfortunately, teachers aren't
16 held responsible to know these facts.
17 Quami Incuma is not taught. You have
18 a course called global history. Do you know
19 who Quami Incuma is? Write the name down if
20 you don't know, because if you are -- you're
21 old enough to know that in the '60s and the
22 '50s, what unfortunately what Eisenhower did
23 to overthrow with the CIA, he was first
24 prime minister -- okay, of an African
25 nation.
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2 Patrice Lumba you should know. They
3 don't know. These are very important names.
4 We're sending our kids off to the military.
5 You have the military marching in our
6 schools trying to snatch my son. But these
7 people don't know what the Port Chicago
8 Mutiny was, nor do the service men that died
9 there, and nor the fact that the last
10 President Clinton pardoned the last living
11 soul of that group. Therbert Marshall
12 defended that troop. Half of them were
13 under age and were in the military and had
14 no business being there, but they wanted to
15 serve the flag. Okay.
16 Another thing, we have the Pledge of
17 Allegiance. I was during an intervention,
18 because of the fact that I had to speak as a
19 parent sometimes, you have to go to school,
20 and there is a principal, there is the
21 assistant principal, and unfortunately
22 there's this unknowing history teacher who's
23 supposed to know, who has a degree, that
24 says I don't know what test she cheated off
25 of, but she's supposed to know and doesn't
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2 know, because I brought books, but the
3 bottom line is, the bell chimed, and they
4 said -- now imagine this. This is an
5 intervention. This is a private conference
6 of a parent, teacher, and assistant
7 principal, and concerned about basically
8 forwarding education. All business stopped
9 to turn and pledge the flag. So I beg you,
10 because once I was a medical photographer
11 and I to sit in the operating room, and I
12 wonder which one of you would like to have
13 your guts over open in Brookdale Hospital
14 where I worked, and they said oh, it's
15 10:00. We do the Pledge of Allegiance,
16 because C Minus and Rumsfell wants it this
17 way. This is not education.
18 Something is wrong here. Our
19 priorities are wrong, because that was
20 parental put it at a stop. That's what I
21 see when Bloomberg from the stop down says,
22 I want it this way and this way only and
23 this is all you get, and it's only upstate.
24 But you know one thing, I have to add this,
25 most of these teachers come from Long
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2 Island, but in Long Island, there is no
3 Nassau County Board of Education, is there,
4 which would about equal almost the same
5 amount of students in New York. Nor is
6 there a Suffolk County Board of Education.
7 Nor is there an Orange County Board of
8 Education. No. You have Garden City, and
9 Garden City has a school board. You have
10 Oyster Bay and they have a school board,
11 right? You don't make these teachers bring
12 their kids to the school where my son is and
13 say you will learn along with them.
14 And I have to ask you, because this
15 is what you're raising when you
16 basically -- because these kids understand.
17 I look at minority schools in minority areas
18 and I see that the school yard is a parking
19 lot. I don't see that happening in any
20 other school area, and yet there's parking
21 around the school. You're teaching kids
22 disrespect, and yet when parents want to
23 intervene on this, you only want top down.
24 Short cuts. In other words, you're Enroning
25 these children's minds.
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2 We got a dummy in the White House
3 that says, why do they hate us? Because
4 basically he was educated by the same kind
5 of mentality. How dare he, uneducated soul,
6 to trent lot in the White House and this
7 trent lot of a Mayor desecrate Martin Luther
8 King. I'll use a quote from Martin Luther
9 King. You won't here this speech on TV.
10 But look it up. It was spoken at Riverside
11 church. There are words in there, and he
12 used the words that, America, you've come
13 too arrogant. Well, I'll turn that quote a
14 little bit and say you know what, since
15 Pataki has hired a Georgia segregation law
16 firm to keep money out of my son's school
17 and waste the tax dollars, to keep that
18 legal fight on, even though it was told by a
19 judge that you were in the wrong, by a
20 judge. How dare he be above the law. Where
21 is the checks and balances that I read about
22 in the constitution? Why are we sleeping
23 about this?
24 Like I say, I'm going to use his
25 quote. You're too arrogant. You've become
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2 too arrogant. And you know one thing he
3 added, that it was about Vietnam, you're
4 making your own Vietnam, and that little
5 country of these minds are going to come
6 back and bite you in your you know what,
7 unless you change this around and start
8 having true input.
9 Now the one thing I will add, and
10 that they're getting rid of -- and I'm
11 going to end on this -- you forced my
12 superintendent away who I at least when I
13 had a problem, could basically go and say
14 hey, work with me on this. I'll work with
15 you. Okay. You want parent involvement. I
16 stood in hallways and tell the kids, okay.
17 It's not the '60s anymore. We don't wear
18 hats in the hallway and asked them nicely,
19 and sometimes I put mine on when I talk to
20 them and say, you take yours off, I'll take
21 mine off. All right, I showed my gray hair,
22 now show me yours.
23 Unfortunately I'm doing assignments
24 that an educator should be doing and I'll
25 submit that a later date in written
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2 testimony on things to where they were
3 suggested to basically have more student
4 involvement, but unfortunately, these
5 insensitive teachers, like cops that come
6 from out of the city that don't live here,
7 have no interest in the minds, but don't
8 realize that they're setting their own time
9 bomb off in having learned from history.
10 I'll close with this, it has been
11 proposed, and I said I do not want this
12 apartheid system, which is what you're
13 setting up. It's apartheid, that's what it
14 is. If you condone it, if you back it up,
15 it's apartheid. Mayor Bloomberg wants to
16 say as a cost cutting thing, he'll say,
17 okay, take this out the textbook. I see
18 textbooks already with anomalies in it. I
19 have a history book that doesn't have
20 the -- it has the Cuban Missile Crisis, but
21 is missing the bayer pigs. What are you
22 trying to do? You're not teaching them the
23 true facts of history. Obviously nobody
24 points missiles at us for nothing.
25 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We need you to
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2 wrap up.
3 MR. MCCANTS: A man that was stood
4 in gear and in jail for 27 years is my
5 mentor for the right to vote. Do you know
6 who he is? He came to this city and the
7 students of one school -- he would not --
8 and I commend him for this, because leaders,
9 politicians, said keep the schedule, bypass
10 Boys and Girls High, and this man said, no,
11 I will not do that to these kids. That
12 mentor is Nelson Mandela, and I want my
13 vote. I want my input, and believe me, do
14 not take it away, because I'm that little
15 country that comes back and bites.
16 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Thank you very
17 much, Mr. McCans.
18 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Valerie
19 McAllister.
20 MS. MCALLISTER: I'm going to be
21 brief. I'm going to be very short. Can
22 everybody hear me? I'm going to be brief
23 because I'm sure a lot of the things have
24 already been said that I talked about since
25 I've been here.
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2 My name is Valerie McAllister, PTA,
3 Sheepshead Bay. I've been involved in the
4 school system for 17 years through a program
5 that was sponsored by my district office, by
6 the district office, and community district
7 18, which was PAC, and what they did was
8 basically train parents in all boroughs to
9 be more involved in their children's
10 education. And these workshops took place
11 all over the city, and some of these people
12 had went onto be school board
13 representative, councilmembers and so forth,
14 and me, I just continue to be an advocate
15 for children throughout different districts
16 that my children have went to school in.
17 One of the things I would like to see
18 done is in the local -- this new policy,
19 where we have the new reform, which I hope
20 that 20 out of -- in that particular local
21 school governance council, when they
22 perform, that 20 percent of those come out
23 of the school leadership team, one member
24 from each school and parent member from each
25 school, and maybe 40 percent of our elected
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2 local population and 40 percent selected out
3 of those selected by local councilmembers.
4 This is one of the things that I
5 would like to see done, parents
6 participation in our school is very
7 important, and I'm hoping that Mayor
8 Bloomberg and Joel Klein sees an importance
9 of parents participation and keep us an
10 active member in choosing the quality of
11 teachers and principals that come into our
12 school and not take us out of the C30
13 process by having them select the applicants
14 that come into our school, because I think
15 these applicants should be diverse and
16 should know a little bit about the culture
17 in which the school they're going into, and
18 have teachers who can speak and educate our
19 children in English.
20 We have a lot of teachers now who
21 coming into the school who do not know how
22 to speak English, and therefore, our
23 children are not learning the math. They're
24 not learning the English. We have a 70
25 percent failure rate in the math inside of
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2 our school districts, because of this a drop
3 out rate of 70 percent with the math regents
4 across New York City, and this -- a lot of
5 this has to do -- a lot of teachers, they
6 cannot understand. I went into one of my
7 son's school and a Russian parent could not
8 understand them. I could not understand
9 them. When I asked them a question, he gave
10 me a math problem and I had to tell him to
11 break it down into layman terms. If I
12 cannot understand as a parent, I went to
13 school a long time ago, I do not expect my
14 son to learn the math easily, and that's the
15 problem.
16 We need teachers who are parent
17 friendly and also can speak English. Thank
18 you.
19 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you very
20 much. Miguel Williams.
21 MR. WILLIAMS: Good evening, board.
22 I'm going to be short and brief. I believe
23 that every action that we take has a
24 reaction, and I believe in unity and
25 communication. Everything that's going to
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2 be done from this point on needs to be
3 communicated back to members of the school
4 parents, teachers, and has to be constant
5 communication. Has to be really knowledge
6 of everything that's going on that's been
7 implemented day by day as much as possible,
8 whether it be through the media, through
9 newspapers. Whatever changes that Bloomberg
10 and his board came about to implement, we
11 was not told the way we should have been
12 told. And case in point, I didn't know.
13 Whatever media or channel you use to
14 tell the majority must be implemented, it
15 should have reached me. I don't care if
16 it's by radio, 1010 WINS, whatever. Every
17 full detail, so that when we have these
18 forums, we could communicate back and get
19 something going that's going to reflect the
20 education of our children.
21 My daughter's in PS 161, second
22 grade. She went to private school in first
23 grade. Currently her class, the work she's
24 getting right now is the same work that she
25 got in the first grade, and I'm trying to
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2 get her to be pushed to the third grade. I
3 believe that any children that can be pushed
4 to the next grade because their level of
5 understanding has reached that point, they
6 need to be pushed on. Push them on. Do not
7 hold them back within that same school. And
8 it shouldn't be no or it can't be done. I
9 need to speak to the principal. It should
10 be this is what the parent wants. Let's do
11 the test. The child can handle it. Let's
12 do it. It's that simple.
13 And I believe of the term let's keep
14 it simple is stupid, and I believe also in
15 service. Every principal, every teacher has
16 to give service, professional service. I
17 work for the Double Tree guest suites in
18 Times Square, and my job is to give service
19 to my guests, to make them feel at home, and
20 I will go out of my way to make sure that
21 whatever they want, whatever needs they
22 have, it be fulfilled. And any parent that
23 has any need, needs to be fulfilled. Every
24 individual parent. Teachers have to learn,
25 have to be trained in every person that's in
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2 the service to give out service, has to be
3 thought that you have to be -- to cater
4 their needs, first and foremost.
5 That's all I want to say. That
6 everything that's being done, you just got
7 to remember, you guys were put in a
8 situation to service us and you have to
9 service us in a professional manner. We ask
10 questions, it has to be answered. From
11 secretaries that are answering phones to
12 people that's giving that information to the
13 next person, you better get to that next
14 person. That's why I don't even like
15 sending information by letter. I like to
16 come to an office and sit down and talk face
17 to face, because I always believe that's the
18 way things are going to get done. Not by
19 writing somebody a letter, because it takes
20 too long. I believe in sitting down and
21 having a meeting, but of course, because we
22 dealing with a large community, it can't be
23 done always that way. That's why every
24 individual has a chance to read something.
25 It has to be professionally done. It has to
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2 be handed out to the next person, and
3 whoever's in charge, has to get the job
4 done. Have to get the job done correctly
5 and right, and if they're not doing their
6 job, give it to someone that will. That's
7 all I have to say.
8 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: We thank you.
9 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: We thank you
10 very much. Before we close, is there anyone
11 who signed up for testimony who we neglected
12 to call no?
13 MS. MCALLISTER: Let me just say one
14 thing. Information is getting to the
15 schools too late and getting to the parents
16 too late, because when it comes from the
17 district office, they want it to be done in
18 two days and it's not enough time for the
19 school leadership team, if you meet once a
20 month, for them to refer back to -- this
21 information is supposed to go back to the
22 school leadership team to get an agreement
23 on and get a vote, sometimes the principal
24 has to ad lib for parents because of the
25 fact that that time limit has already
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2 expired, because it's two or three days
3 before she has to turn it in.
4 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Okay, thank you.
5 CHAIRWOMAN THOMSON: Thank you all
6 for your input and your testimony and for
7 staying so late tonight.
8 CHAIRMAN SANDERS: Let me say a few
9 words at the conclusion here. The task
10 force on community school district
11 governance reform has finished its public
12 hearing phase of our deliberations. We have
13 conducted five hearings, one in every
14 borough. 55 hours of public testimony,
15 hearing from nearly 300 people. We
16 appreciate all of the residents of Brooklyn
17 for coming out and giving us the benefit of
18 their opinions, their experience, their
19 wisdom, as the residents of the other four
20 boroughs did before you.
21 We will now enter another stage of
22 our deliberation. We will be conducting
23 meetings of the task force between now and
24 February 15. The law requires us to make a
25 report which we will do on February the 15
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2 to the legislature, the Governor indicating
3 our recommendations and our views.
4 Those recommendations and views will
5 be heavily influenced and will have been
6 informed by much of the testimony that we
7 have heard over these 55 hours and five
8 hearings.
9 First of all, not first of all, but
10 almost last of the all, a few people need to
11 be thanked. These hearings, while it may
12 seem or maybe it doesn't seem, but they go
13 so smoothly, but they wouldn't go at all
14 were it not for the invaluable help that we
15 here on this panel have received from staff
16 people. I just want to mention a few names
17 from my staff, Giovanni Warren, Ann
18 Magnarelli, Clare Cusak, Debbie McDonough,
19 my chief of staff, Stephen Kaufman, who's in
20 the back, and really the point person who
21 really put in an enormous amount of time,
22 effort, work, Ayo Harrington. It wasn't
23 easy, but we all thank our staff very much.
24 Of course, all of this also would not be
25 possible without the magnificent,
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2 professional work of our various court
3 reporters. Our stenographers. We thank you
4 so very much.
5 Most of all, we, again, the members
6 of this task force want to thank the
7 hundreds of people from around the city who
8 took time out of their lives, out of their
9 family time, out of their professional time
10 to be with us, to inform us. I can tell you
11 that we have listened to the very best of
12 our ability, and now we will try to apply
13 our intelect, our wisdom, our judgement to
14 try to make the right decisions. These
15 hearings are adjourned. I thank everyone.
16 (TIME NOTED: 11:01 P.M.)
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2 CERTIFICATION
3
4
5 I, Edward Leto, a Notary Public in
6 and for the State of New York, do hereby certify:
7 THAT the witness(es) whose testimony
8 is herein before set forth, was duly sworn by me;
9 and
10 THAT the within transcript is a true
11 and accurate record of the testimony given by
12 said witness(es).
13 I further certify that I am not
14 related either by blood or marriage, to any of
15 the parties to this action; and
16 THAT I am in no way interested in
17 the outcome of this matter.
18 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto
19 set my hand this 28th day of January, 2003.
20
21
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23 EDWARD LETO
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