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New York City's Classroom Space Crunch


 classroom

(photo: Michael Albans)


Last week Class Size Matters released a new report, Space Crunch, which analyzes the school overcrowding crisis in New York City, and points out the need to improve the City's proposed five year capital plan for school construction. While the real need for seats is likely over 100,000, the plan would create only about 38,000 new seats at most.

Among the findings in the report:
School overcrowding has worsened in the last six years, especially at the elementary grade level. Elementary school buildings currently average 97.4 percent capacity, according to the DOE's figures in its utilization report, known as the Blue Book. The median figure is at a shocking 102 percent. High schools are not far behind at an average of 95.2 percent.

What this means in real life terms is that class sizes are pushed above reasonable levels, students have lost their art, music and science rooms, are assigned to lunch as early as 10 a.m., or have no access to the gym. Many special needs students are forced to receive their mandated services in hallways or closets rather than in appropriate dedicated spaces.

In eleven city school districts, elementary schools average above 100 percent capacity; in 20 out of the 32 districts, they average above 90 percent. In addition, high schools in Queens and Staten Island average above 100 percent. More than 30,000 additional seats are needed in just these districts to bring their average down to 100 percent.

Even more seats are needed to address overcrowding at the neighborhood level, as evidenced by thousands of students sitting in trailers in 21 districts, and thousands of prospective kindergarteners on wait lists for their zoned school in 19 districts. In addition, the city's population is growing fast, and the two consulting companies hired by DOE to project enrollment have predicted increases of 60,000 to 70,000 students over the next five to ten years.

At the same time, most experts believe that the utilization figures reported by the DOE are faulty and actually underestimate the actual level of overcrowding in our schools, The Chancellor has appointed a taskforce to improve the formula.

Thus while the real need is likely greater than 100,000 seats, there are only 33,754 to 38,654 seats in the proposed five year capital plan – with the latter figure dependent on whether the state's "Smart Schools" bond act is approved in November. Unless the plan is significantly expanded, our students are likely to be sitting in even more overcrowded schools in the years to come.

The capital plan is also unlikely to achieve the DOE's widely-publicized promise to eliminate trailers or temporary classroom units (TCUs). While it has been reported that "only" 7,158 students are sitting in these trailers, the actual number of these students is likely 50 percent higher – as the DOE has omitted from its count thousands of high school, middle school and elementary school students, as well as severely disabled students, who attend classes in these substandard structures in more than 40 schools.

Moreover, although DOE officials have promised that the capital plan will accomplish the goal of eliminating trailers, many of which are in disrepair and long past their expected lifetime, and have allocated nearly $500 million to remove them and recondition the school yards on which they sit, there is not a single dollar in the capital plan dedicated to replacing their seats.

The past failures of the City to adequately address the problem of school overcrowding is due to many factors, including the disappointing record of the Bloomberg administration in school construction, with fewer schools built than in earlier periods. In addition, the DOE has redefined the size of a classroom downward in recent years, which may lead to building code violations, as more and more children are squeezed into smaller and smaller spaces. This year, the city's class sizes are at a fifteen-year high in grades K-3, and the largest in grades 4-8 since 2002.

The Department of Education has also made policy choices that have worsened overcrowding; including hundreds of small schools and charter schools inserted into existing buildings, eating up classroom space through replicating administrative offices and specialty rooms. In the report, these breakdowns of policy and planning are revealed by the DOE's own data, surveys, and interviews with principals and other school officials.

The report concludes with a number of policy recommendations, suggesting how the DOE can improve the school utilization formula. These reforms, along with enhancements to the planning process, and a more aggressive capital plan funded in part by "impact fees," would help ensure that more of the city's students are provided with the space they need to learn.

We are urging the City Council to insist on expansion of the plan to at least 50,000 seats this spring -- the DOE's admitted need – and for the City Comptroller or another independent agency to undertake a needs assessment that is more credible than the DOE's. There has not been a transparent needs assessment for our schools undertaken for more than twenty years. None of the goals for improving public education, including expanding pre-kindergarten, reducing class size, providing a well-rounded education, or establishing community schools with wrap-around services, are possible without a more ambitious capital plan. Only with significantly improved planning, policies, and funding can our public school students be provided with the facilities – and the quality education – they deserve.

***
Leonie Haimson is the Executive Director of Class Size Matters, a citywide advocacy group dedicated to improving opportunities to public school students through reducing class size.
***

@GothamGazette

Vergara's Shaky Significance


students matter vergara

The students of Vergara (Monica Almeida/NY Times)


A June 10th lower court decision in Vergara v. California found that five California teacher employment statutes violate the State Constitution's Equal Protection Clause by disproportionately maintaining "grossly ineffective teachers...in schools serving predominantly low-income and minority students."

Speculation immediately turned to Vergara-type suits in other states with the aim of eliminating or weakening teacher tenure and other job protections across the country.

Not so fast.

The ink is hardly dry on Vergara and a lengthy appeals process awaits. Meanwhile the contested statutes remain on the books. Final victory for plaintiffs is hardly inevitable since the trial court decision shows scant evidence proving that the statutes themselves, rather than feckless administrators' failure to initiate required evaluation and termination proceedings, were the cause of plaintiffs' alleged educational injury. In addition, the court's high bar requiring the state to show a compelling interest in preserving each of the current statutes is wide open to appellate attack.

On the other hand, there is little legal traction to arguments that Vergara is over-dependent on suspect test score data and predictions that teacher quality will fall without the statutes' job security guarantees. Not that those aren't good points - but they are not legal arguments. As the court took pains to address, this case will be won or lost on legal principles of equal protection based on California precedents and facts established at trial, not policy pronouncements about the best system of teacher evaluation and due process rights for optimal educational quality. Judge Treu made clear that he believes the judicial system is too crude an instrument to decide those matters and that, under our system of separation of powers, curtailing the evidentiary parade of horribles that he said "shock the conscience" requires legislative remedies.

Which is why Vergara is more an opening for public debate - likely the main intention of the lawsuit - than it is a catalyst to directly bring about substantial changes in state or national education law. For example, Judge Treu found that California's two year probationary period prior to tenure was too short to adequately evaluate teacher quality, disproportionately penalizing poor and minority students. What if, in response, the state legislature changes that period to three years, which Vergara looks upon favorably? New fact, new case! Any or all of the statutes in question can be tweaked - cynically or not - to meet legal requirements surviving appeal.

Similarly, beyond California, any attempt to nationalize Vergara faces a tortuous path, much like the school finance battles that ensued late in the twentieth century and continue today. Each state, assuming the presence of equal protection, will have its own precedential scheme for interpreting those laws. Each will have its own constellation of teachers' employment rights. Each will have different statistical profiles of the presence or absence of incompetent teachers based on differing measures. In short, each years-long case will need to be financed and litigated individually, an extremely tall order, especially when legislative responses after any wins will have the potential to undo plaintiffs' initial expectation of educational improvement.

Remember, too, that teachers' working conditions are not generally statutory but bargained with school districts. It's even a little weird that tenure is a statutory right at all, treated as a public good rather than a private benefit. Teacher unions have been particularly successful in selling that idea so that they do not have to subject tenure, first-in-first-out, and other job protections to the give-and-take of cyclic contract negotiations.

But surely, if the Vergara plaintiffs ultimately succeed at total elimination of tenure, FIFO, etc. at the state level, the fight will just move to districts where school boards will vie with one another to offer sweet deals on job security and due process to attract the best teachers. Like white flight after Brown v. Board of Education, invoked by Judge Treu in the first line of Vergara more as a benediction than a precedent, any state-level evisceration of teacher job protections will have a negative checker-board effect on districts.

I support teacher tenure since it allows teachers uniquely necessary opportunities for classroom freedom and student advocacy that would otherwise be threatened by supervisors or public disapproval. But, with varied experience as a teacher union organizer, New York City Board of Education General Counsel, and expert witness for school districts in termination proceedings, I have too often seen procedural protections used as a sword to preserve ineptitude rather than, as intended, to shield professionalism.

Healthy debate is necessary over these policies and practices, including the crying need for administrators to vigorously exercise their supervisory duties toward probationary and tenured teachers alike. As a catalyst for this debate, Vergara serves a useful purpose even if, as legal mandate, it stands on shaky ground.

***
David C. Bloomfield is Professor of Education at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of American Public Education Law, 2nd ed. and many other works, including an earlier column, Teacher Tenure Tantrum.
***
@GothamGazette

New York City Must Care for Seniors


Rosenthal seniors rally

Council Member Helen Rosenthal speaks at a rally in support of seniors (ALIGN)


Take a close look around your neighborhood and your house of worship and you'll see an aging city. New York, like the rest of the country, is experiencing an unprecedented age wave, as Baby Boomers grow older and life expectancy rises. By 2030 - in 15 years - one out of every five New Yorkers will be a senior.

With this major demographic shift, the need for home care is rising dramatically. Approximately two-thirds of seniors need some form of long term care at some point in their lives. Many are like a 92 year-old member of B'nai Jeshurun we met recently who is struggling to age in place with dignity. She would like to live independently in her home for as long as possible, but the simple physical tasks of daily life are becoming too difficult to manage. She cannot rely only on help from family and friends, and she cannot afford home care services. There are many people like this senior, whose incomes are too low to pay for home care out-of-pocket, but slightly too high to qualify for services through Medicaid.

Seniors should be able to age in place - in their homes - maintaining their lifelong connections to friends and community. As Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel says, "A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old."

As neighbors and people of conscience, we must come together to meet the challenges of caring for seniors.

One small program that has been helping New York City meet these challenges is the Expanded In-Home Services for the Elderly Program (EISEP). It helps low and moderate-income seniors over the age of 60 who are above the Medicaid threshold pay for part-time home care services. It also provides home care to undocumented seniors, who do not qualify for federal programs like Medicaid even if they are below the poverty line. Unfortunately, in 2008, City funding for EISEP was drastically cut. In 2008, City funding was at $15 million a year, and today it is at less than $5 million. What was once a robust program currently serves fewer than 3,000 seniors with care needs; that is less than 4 percent of the seniors who could benefit from the program. And the wait list for services is long.

As a first step, the City should increase funding for this vital program. Just this week, the City Council requested that the Mayor include an additional $1.8 million in this year's budget, which would ensure that the 240 seniors on the waitlist are able to receive home care services.

Beyond restoring some funding this year, we need an expanded and sustainable long-term investment in seniors and home care services. Investing more in care for seniors will benefit low-income and undocumented seniors, family caregivers who often juggle work and arranging care for a loved one, and home care workers who earn a living wage working with EISEP clients.

Many of us are dealing with difficult family situations - whether it's how to care for an ailing parent, or planning and saving for our own future care needs. At times it can seem like a private struggle, but we are not alone. By 2030, close to one million New York City seniors could need home care. It's time we heed Rabbi Heschel and start preparing for how we, as a society, will ensure dignity, respect and a decent quality of life for both caregivers and those who receive care.
***
Helen Rosenthal represents New York City's 6th City Council District and Marilyn Williams is a member of B'nai Jeshurun and a leader in the Elder Care Dialogues.
***
@GothamGazette



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