Children First? Dist. 30 Holds Special Meeting, Mar. 30

A special meeting is being scheduled for Friday, March 30, at 6 p.m., at Community Education Council, District 30, Region 4 Learning Support Center, 5th Floor Conference Room, 28-11 Queens Plaza North, Long Island City to vote on a resolution, based on the Department of Education's (DOE) Children First and Fair Student Funding Plan. Herein is an excerpt of the resolution to be voted on:

+Personnel and salaries of Tweed employees has grown substantially, and continues to grow, with a projected increase of 12 percent in spending for Tweed staff next year.

+Schools have been financially penalized for having experienced teachers.

+The quality of the children's education is suffering from severely overcrowded classrooms. Schools in District 30 are being penalized for low levels of achievement as a result of this overcrowding.

+The DOE acknowledges they provided only 41 additional seats in District 30.

+Overly large classes and overcrowded facilities have resulted in only 43.5 percent of our students graduating.

+ Smaller classes have been one of the top priorities of New York City parents, teachers, elected officials, and many constituents for the last 20 years.

+The New York State Supreme Court found that classes in NYC schools were too large in all grades. Despite claims from the DOE to the contrary, state data shows that there has been little or no progress in reducing class size since that decision was written, and in some key subjects, class sizes have actually risen.

+An audit released last March by the state Comptroller's Office found that $89 million in state funds were targeted to create 1,586 additional classes to reduce class size, the city created only 20.

+The DOE does not intend to reduce average class size in any grade higher than the 3rd grade, and to use only 2 percent of the extra funds for the smaller classes.

+There is no independent evidence that in the last round of reorganization, $200 million was never redirected directly into the classroom. As a result of that reorganization, thousands of special education students were not evaluated in a timely fashion and many were denied their right to mandated services. The DOE also cut spending on special education by $445 million in one year.

+Total dollars spent on general education declined by $144 million.

+According to the Educational Priorities Panel, a smaller percentage of the overall budget has gone to instruction each year. Under the new system, up to half of all schools may have their budgets cut more despite the $1.1 billion in additional education spending next year and more than $5 billion over the next four years.

+The implementation of a similar proposal- supposed to make funding fairer, and more flexible- caused one of the largest educational crises in Great Britain, followed by the threat of massive teacher lay-offs and where children were actually sent home from school after only four days of instruction.

+Sir Michael Barber, the Chief Education Advisor at the time of Great Britain's educational crisis, is now a top consultant at Tweed. He helped to devise "weighted-funding" budgets. There is no evidence of any school system in the world that has adopted weighted funding making any significant progress in student achievement.

+The DOE claims that many principals in the "empowerment zone" last year used their additional funding and flexibility to hire extra teachers to reduce class size. Some principals actually reported that they were simply sent more students by Tweed as a result, erasing any chance of actually providing them with smaller classes. The [DOE] administration has admitted this may have occurred in many instances, yet refuses to promise that it will not happen again.

+It would take an additional 40 hours per week for middle- and high-school teachers to spend just five minutes out of class conferring with each student, and another five minutes correcting their students' daily/weekly homework.

+The DOE has contracted with IBM for $80 million to produce a new computer system to help teachers individualize instruction to meet the needs of each student. With class sizes of 30 or more, and teaching loads of 150-180 students, teachers will continue to find it difficult to individually instruct their students.

+ The new accountability/grading system may lead principals to discharge, transfer, suspend, and otherwise try to rid their schools of low-achieving students, since their jobs depend upon raising test scores.

+Data used by the DOE regarding class size, graduation rates, and many other measures is often inaccurate and unreliable, so the new formula for assessing the progress of schools will be based on similarly erroneous metrics.

+Trying to impose any kind of new system citywide without adequate consultation, careful thought, or testing, has previously resulted in major problems.

Concerned parents, caregivers and teachers can attend this meeting on March 30 to support District 30 in rejecting the DOE's Children First proposal and call upon Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to designate that the CFE funds are utilized to reduce class size in all grades throughout all of New York City's public schools. For more information, call 718-391-8380.