Okay, thank you. I believe that's everyone, and so we can officially get underway. My name is Greg Faulkner. I'm the chair of the Panel for Education Policy. I want to thank you all for coming out tonight. And with that, I will call the April 29th meeting of the Panel for Education Policy officially to order and ask our secretary to please call the roll. Thank you, Chair Faulkner. Panel Member Alicea? Altman? Present. Alban? Present. Boged? Burley? Cassaratti? Collins? Deansteig? Fair? Present. Garcia? Present. Giordano? Present. Dr. Green? Present. Hannah Jones? Present. Hassan? Present.
Ho? Here. Izquierdo? Jimenez? Present. Oddwin? Ong? Parsons? Sapp? Chair Faulkner? Present. Chancellor Samuels? Present. Representing Comptroller Levine? Present. And then we also are joined by Panel Member Alicea. And then our two student panel members, Julia Nasif and Dalia Diaz Chan. Present. Present. Great. Thank you. We have a quorum, and we can officially get underway and conduct business. I want to, again, thank everybody for coming out tonight. We have a pretty big crowd. We still have a lengthy agenda. It's a little less lengthy than it was originally, but it is still a lengthy agenda. And so, let's
get right to the business. And we begin tonight with hearing remarks from our chancellor. It's always great to hear from the chancellor. And so at this point, I'd like to turn the microphone over to our chancellor. All right. Good evening, everyone. All right. I want to specifically thank and acknowledge Chair Faulkner, Vice Chair Dr. Green, and the panel, our host, MS 131, and Principal Gabale, and the superintendent, Kelly McGuire, along with other schools in the building, Peace High School, Principal Glatz, and Principal Beidleman.
I'm sorry, Superintendent Beidleman. Emma Lazarus High School, Principal Giovanchini, and Superintendent Solomon. As we near the end of April, I want to acknowledge Arab American Heritage Month, Autism Acceptance Month, as well as Multilingual Learner Advocacy Month. Please know that we celebrate and uplift these communities not only during one month, but throughout the year. Last week was also Volunteer Appreciation Week, and certainly as chancellor of NYC Public Schools, I want to give a special
shout-out to our family and community volunteers who dedicate their time, expertise, and care to making our schools stronger, including the panel itself. Thank you so much. Go ahead. Of course, we have incredible parent leaders and many individuals who support our schools in different ways. Please know that I see you, and I appreciate you, and I value your input. We're approaching May, which marks both AAPI Heritage Month and Jewish American Heritage Month, along with, of course, Mother's Day.
And I want to thank all of the mothers, guardians, and caregivers who support our children. And finally, on Saturday, I finished my 10-stop Chancellor's Conversation Tour with a listening session in Staten Island. I want to thank everyone who joined us at these conversations throughout the boroughs, our families, our staff, and students. The conversations have been inspiring and are directly shaping my vision for our schools. Now I want to note that, as many of you already know,
NYSED experienced issues with their testing system platform today, and it had impacts for districts across the state, including our own. We are assessing these impacts and are in communication with SED about next steps for schools and families. I know this issue has been challenging and frustrating for schools, students, and families who have been working hard in preparation for these exams. I want to extend my gratitude to everyone in our school communities who've problem-solved and worked through this today,
and we're looking forward to further discussions with SED on how to prevent issues like these in the future. Now, I want to also acknowledge that some of the proposals that were intended for tonight's agenda have been pulled down, specifically the Next Generation High School proposal and the District 3 proposals. I want to be clear. This decision reflects one of the core values of my leadership:
engagement. We engaged deeply on these proposals, and the common thread in what we heard from our families and communities was that more time was needed to discuss and deliberate. We heard youLoud and clear, and we are listening. I still believe many of these proposals met important goals, supporting high-quality academic opportunities, including advanced coursework, arts programming, and enrichment, meeting the class size mandate, ensuring sustainable enrollment, and fostering integration across our system.
Withdrawing these proposals is not an end to the process or goals, nor is it an end to these conversations. And over the coming months, we will continue to partner with school communities to explore how we can address the needs our students and families face. We remain committed to strengthening parent and community participation in the engagement process surrounding school utilization changes. So thank you for your engagement, and thank you for continuing to
be in the process with us. Additionally, I want to speak about an important item we are voting on tonight, the capital plan. I am grateful to SCA President Nina Kubota for her partnership as we drive towards class size compliance and align our ongoing work to capital investments. And thank you to the PEP and the PEP's Utilization Committee for their work throughout this process. Together, we can meet the class size mandate and ensure
every child has excellent and high-quality spaces to learn and grow. We also have votes tonight on two key budget items. The estimated budget is a review of how the mayor's preliminary budget would affect the agency's funding. Overall, this is a strong budget for the agency, particularly as it is the mayor's first, reflecting a significant increase in investments in education. We look forward to continuing the conversation on this after the state and city budget negotiations have moved forward.
Finally, we are also voting on the fair student funding weights for this school year. These weights are essential to allocating funding to schools and ensuring they receive timely budget information to support critical planning decisions for next year. The end of this school year will mark three years since the most recent changes to the FSF weights, which gives us a good opportunity moving forward to start looking at how that decision and other budget decisions have been affecting our schools.
Those weights were determined after a robust engagement process and helped us ensure we directed funds to the schools with the highest-need students. I look forward to further engagement and discussion on these budget issues with panel members and others. And now, as we proceed to our meeting, I want to thank the PEP. This work could not have happened without you. Thank you for your partnership. Thank you, Chancellor. And also, I've said this privately, I've
said it to you personally, it's really important that the chancellor has really engaged with the panel and regularly communicates with us. We communicate back. We share ideas, and this really is what we're talking about for the future of education or setting education policy in New York City, that we have a cooperative leadership that looks to collaborate and is willing to engage with the community and is willing to listen very seriously to what the community says. And so I think that's an important step in a new direction as we move to the co-governance system within New York City public schools.
So excited about that. Now we get to hear from our student panelists. I guess, are you going first? Okay. So Julia Nasif is our first student panel member. Good evening, everyone. My name is Julia Nasif, and I'm a senior at Tottenville High School, a student leader, and someone who cares deeply about equity, student voice, and ensuring innovation is implemented responsibly. I would like to speak today about two important issues, AI and fair student funding. First, regarding AI, this continues to be a major topic among students across New York City. Through CSAC, the Chancellor Student
Advisory Council, I've had the opportunity to work with student leaders from every borough and speak directly with DOE leadership about issues impacting our education. Recently, we held a listening session with the chancellor, where students shared honest and thoughtful perspectives about how AI is affecting learning. It was a reminder that students are not only using these tools but thinking critically about their impact. Many students acknowledge that AI can be helpful when used intentionally. I've seen classmates use it to better understand math and science
concepts, generate practice questions, or review material when they could not get help elsewhere. Students also shared that AI can explain lessons in different ways, create visuals for students who learn differently, and help prepare for exams when traditional resources are limited. It could support multilingual learners, make learning more accessible for students with disabilities, and give students another way to engage with difficult content. Used correctly, it could be a powerful support tool. At the same time, students also raised serious concerns.
Many feel AI is teaching a dangerous message that results matter more than the learning process. Some of the most important learning happens when students struggle, make mistakes, ask questions, and improve over time.If students are encouraged to skip directly to answers, they may lose opportunities to build critical thinking, resilience, and confidence in their own abilities. I've also heard students say they feel
pressure to use AI because others are submitting AI-generated work, making authentic work feel less valued. As one student shared, when AI becomes the standard, students begin to wonder whether their own voice is enough. Students also shared concerns about how adults are using AI. One student explained, "I had a teacher use AI to create work for my class and wasn't transparent about using such. She used AI to actively create assignments, with these assignments lacking a rubric, adequate time to write the essay, and disconnect from the
subject of the class. I found this to be an immensely negative experience." That perspective shows why clear standards are needed for educators as well as students. There are also concerns about bias, misinformation, privacy, and over-reliance. Students noted that AI is not always accurate, and when teachers or students rely on it without checking, confusion can spread further. Because of this, I believe AI should be approached with balance, not extremes. It should not be banned entirely, but it should not be normalized as a
shortcut for thinking. I appreciate New York City Public Schools' traffic light approach, which sets clear boundaries for prohibited, cautionary, and approved uses of AI. Students should be taught to use AI ethically for research, tutoring, and skill building, not to replace their own thinking. Schools should also explore meaningful uses like coding, data analysis, and research support. Teachers should receive professional development, and human oversight must remain central in areas like grading, discipline, and special education.
Clear guidance, regular review, and continued student input would help create a healthier AI culture in our schools. As the largest school district in the nation, New York City has the opportunity to set a thoughtful precedent for responsible AI use rather than a harmful one. I urge the panel to support clear, student-centered guidelines for AI implementation. Second, I would like to address fair student funding. Equity must remain at the center of school budgets. Funding formulas should continue prioritizing students with disabilities, multilingual learners, students in temporary housing, and
schools serving high concentrations of poverty. However, many students do not know what fair student funding is, even though they experience its impact every day. To students, funding looks like whether there are enough teachers in classrooms, enough counselors available, enough clubs after school, updated materials, or working technology. When resources are limited, students notice, and when investments are made, students notice that, too. Because fair student funding is a uniquely equitably-focused model, students should have more opportunities to understand its purpose, ask questions, and share
whether it is meeting the needs of their communities. The DOE should continue making budget information more transparent and accessible through student-friendly summaries, public dashboards, and school-level communication so families, students, and educators can meaningfully engage in these conversations. Across both AI policy and budgeting, the central theme is responsibility and inclusion. Students want innovation, but not at the cost of fairness. Students want resources, but distributed equitably. And students want to be included in decisions that shape their education.
Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll now hear from our next student panel member, Dahlia Diaz-Chan. Dahlia? Good evening, all. My name is Dahlia. I'm a 12th grader at the High School for Language and Diplomacy at the Washington Irving Campus, and I used to go to the High School, Richard R. Green, which is a school that's tangentially involved in some of the agenda items today. Hope everyone is well. Today, I'm going to talk broadly about the kinds of budgetary decisions happening in this meeting and how students experience some of the trickle-down of these
processes. I will also comment on our approach with responding to class size law. So, how do students experience trickle-down from budgetary decisions, and from which kinds of budgetary decisions specifically? Well, this year we've had some delays on the processing of the New York State budget. As a student, I'm not involved in that process, and I couldn't tell you how complex it is. But what I can tell you is that the budget delays affect us. The budget that is up for approval this meeting is the New York City educational budget, which is less related. However, a big component of the funds within that are allocated by the
state. This trickles down to schools being unable to know how many teachers they can hire until a certain point in time. With budget delays like this, high-quality hires do not stick around for delays in hiring cycles, decreasing not only the overall years of experience with our educators compared to those in neighboring districts, but also how many experienced school nurses, counselors, and psychologists we have. New York State, when we don't follow a timeline that is in place for a reason, this sort of trickle-down situation leads to adverse effects for our students that nobody really thinks about.
Regent scores and SAT scores are directly affected by teachers' years of experience teaching on these tests to be specific, and those are crucial to success in higher education. Now, regarding New York City Public Schools' approach with classroom size compliance, I really want us to take a gander at the resources we have available to us. So many spaces in New York City are underutilized, evident by the fact that we are proposing closures for schools that have under 100 students total I represent some students in under-enrolled schools as well. According to the Underutilized Space Memorandum from July of 2025,
my school is one of 294 buildings underutilized by at least 300 seats. Not to mention the additional 241 buildings that are underutilized by at least 150 seats. Given my experience in my school and on the PEP, this makes me pose a few questions. Number one, what decides the difference between a school that has to go through building swaps like last year with the West Side High School, and one that gets a less contentious school utilization plan? Number two, what special circumstances could possibly cause New York City public schools to forgo standard practices of mergers and co-locations in
the event of overcrowding or underutilization? And lastly, what are the equity considerations taking place in school utilization scenarios? I implore everyone to please consider these questions tonight and as we continue to go about New York State class size mandate compliance. Thank you. I want to thank our two student panel members for their excellent presentations. Again, when we listen to the student presentations, we always glean a little bit of important information out of the things they say. So I want to thank you both again for being here, and for your excellent presentation. And again, to anyone who would question what's happening in
New York City public schools, I would only reference them to look at our two student panel members and their excellent presentations. So again, thank you both for being here. Given the fact that we had such a limited amount of time between our last meeting and the meeting tonight, we're going to, if it's all right, we're going to forgo the presentation of the minutes, if there's no objection to that, and we'll move right into the business portion of the meeting. Let me just make a few comments in preparation for us moving into the business portion of the meeting. Our secretary will be calling up speakers in groups of five, and you'll have the opportunity to come up and make your presentation.
Those comments that are directed for public comment must be reserved to an item under consideration. So that means, the public comments are reserved for those items that are up for discussion or vote at today's panel meeting. There will also be a period for open comment, and those comments will happen towards the end of the meeting. The public comment period speakers will be limited to two and a half minutes. For general open comment period, the speakers will have two minutes. That time period will show up on our screen and you'll have an opportunity to reference that. Because we have a large number of speakers, and
we want to be fair and give everybody an opportunity to speak, I'm going to ask that folks please keep to those time periods. As we get close to the point that your time is about to run out, I'll give a reminder that your time is about to expire. And once your time has expired, I'd ask that you conclude your remarks at that point. At this point, we will now move to student comments. Students get the opportunity to speak first, and so I'll turn it over to our secretary to please call forward students who wish to comment. Thank you, Chair Faulkner. We're also note panel member Borrelli is present,
and panel member Izquierdo is present. For our student comments, Sharrieff Lucian- Read that one ... Oden Adler, Florence Holson-Fielding, Ariana Ahmed Misha, Dino Holson-Fielding. You can begin when you get to the microphone. Yeah. Good evening to all. My name is Sharrieff Lucian, and I'm currently a senior at the High School of Fashion Industries, and the chair for the New York Civil Liberties Teen Activist Project. It has been brought to our attention that New York City schools have released guidance on artificial intelligence, and my counterparts and I
do have concerns. It is unrealistic to put out a stack of papers guiding people on what to do with something that is at the tip of their fingers, utilized constantly. Unchecked AI use is undermining my learning as well as my peers. I find myself asking questions in class to which the reply is, "Just ask ChatGPT." And these responses are not from students, they're from teachers. Even in programs that are the first to go when funding is scarce, like art or fashion, I am told to simply ask AI for answers to my questions. Educators are so
comfortable creating exams and lesson plans using artificial intelligence, unaware of the large margin for error and how hypocritical it is to give students zeroes for using it, but they do effortlessly. The guidance document says that the use of AI in schools for surveillance is beyond the scope and also prohibited. What does that mean for me? AI surveillance is already here. In my school, AI-enhanced electronic hall passes have been implemented since last year. Since then, this
system has calculated students' times in the bathroom and outside of classrooms in general, and has accumulated them on progress reports showcasing how much class time we have missed from using the bathroom during each marking period. Students are constantly monitored and tracked down as if they are prisoners, but the argument is simply that it is just for protection and my safety. Who is feeling any safer? Because the truth is, it isn't us. This directly contributes to the school-to-prison pipeline. I urge you all to get AI surveillance out of schools, being
that you are all the ones in power. Thank you. You can begin. I'm waiting for the timer to reset. Okay. Hello, Chancellor Samuels and PEP members, and thank you for spending some time out of your busy day to listen to what I have to say. My name is Odin Adeler, and I'm a leader at the New York Civil Liberties Union Teen Activist Project. I'm 18 years old and a senior at Urban Academy Laboratory High School. I'm here to talk about my views about AI usage in schools. At my school, we do a lot of writing. Before I went to Urban Academy, I didn't feel confident about my writing skills. We were also not allowed to use AI at all to write our
papers. That's not a problem, because without AI, I could do something else. I can ask my teachers for help. I now feel much more prepared for college. In college, I'm sure there will be much to write as well, and I'll be writing, I'm sure I'll be expected to come up with ideas for myself. Fortunately, I can now put some of the many things to think about onto paper, quite well I think, without using AI. It especially helps prepare for my school's frequent class discussions, where thinking is important. Knowing how to write well also helps creatively. I'm not sure I'd be having as much fun in my playwriting class if I was using
help from ChatGPT. My classes, I'm sure, also feel much richer due to me and the others avoiding using AI to do our work, not just writing, but also for research and gathering ideas, et cetera. But unfortunately, I've heard that official guidance on artificial intelligence is being created for schools, but I'm concerned they'll guide us in schools how to use software that is not needed in the classrooms. In schools, I believe not just the final typing up of a paper, but more should all be done without AI. At school we should be taught to think for ourselves. I'm sure it's possible, as people knew how to do so
for a while before chatbots. This is why I'm glad my school's as restrictive of AI as it is, and I support that kind of AI-restrictive policy throughout the city. Instead of burning taxpayer money for AI products, which are not what we students need, the city should focus on actual human education. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening, Chancellor Samuels and Panel for Education Policy members. My name is Arianna Ahmedmisha. I'm a high school sophomore at the Institute for Collaborative Education and part of the Teen Activist Project. Today, I'm talking about the new artificial intelligence guidance. Chancellor Samuels, students are already using AI for everything, and
adults are not helping us understand how this will impact us. Students are not using critical thinking and are now becoming dependent on AI and technology, and this can be due to us not having enough resources in high school. As a New York City Public School student, I've experienced many sides of AI. On one hand, I know students feel a lot of pressure to use AI when they do not have a human tutor or need more help. At home, when I try to work on my homework or practice for the SAT, I sometimes use AI, as DOE does not help us after
school to work on our SAT, and I worry about my future. There is barely an opportunity to take preparation for SAT or ACT after school, which makes us dependent on AI tools. But relying on AI is not absolutely the solution, and I want real-life opportunity to learn and practice. On the other hand, AI can also be very harmful, as this has caused students to stop critical thinking. Personally, I've been a debater for five years, and when I started debating, AI was never used for any research or any speeches. But now, I've seen students using AI and generate
speeches in seconds, where others spend hours, minutes, even days building their ideas, voices, and their confidence. And I've also witnessed students using AI in live debate during the cross-fire section. And this not only made me sad as a debater, but also angry as a global citizen, as AI systems require massive amount of energy every single day. This contributes to environmental damage, which disproportionately affects the marginalized community in different ways. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Hello. Hello. How are you? What's your name? I'm Florence. Little bit closer to the mic. Florence. Good. What would you like to tell the panel? I would like to speak about the siting of PS 184's middle school. I may not be in middle school yet, but I have heard that the place they are thinking of worth siting to has science labs, and when I get to middle school, I would like to have something like that. Very good. Now, by this time next year, she'll be here and yelling at us and giving us
a... You wait. I've seen it happen. So, thank you. Thank you very much for coming and speaking before the Panel for Education Policy. It was really important. Thank you. The next group of speakers, Ariana Chuck, Aaron McGee, Lai, Tony, Graven Olivares, Rose Martinez. Okay. And as soon as you get arrive at the microphone, you can begin your testimony. Is this thing on? Okay. Yeah. This is Ariana Chuck- Get ready to settle ... PS 191. Yes, go ahead. Okay. Just say what you're thinking. Just say what you were thinking. I'm thankful for that my school is open, and
it's still open, and we get one more year. And we get to stay together even though... Well, me and my sister get to stay together even though she doesn't really like me that much. Oh, you're going to be in trouble. Okay. What school you go to? RSM. PS 191. What's the name of your school? 191 RSMA. Do you like going to 191? Yeah. I love it now, especially with my big sister. I visited your school. I like that school, too. What grade are you in? Sixth grade. She's in sixth grade. Okay. Great. Well, thank you very much for coming to the panel, and we're going
to listen very closely to everything you said, so I appreciate you coming out. Thank you. Just a little lower. You can begin. Good morning. My name's Lai, and I am a student from Lower Manhattan Community Middle School. I would like to thank the PEP and the chancellor for listening to our voices, and I support expanding LMC to a six and 12 school. As a student with a IEP, consistency matters. The support system we rely on takes time, trust, strong relationships to build.
At LMC, we already have them. Teachers understand our needs, and students feel included and supported. Sense of the community that we have success. Thank you. Thank you. The pink. Oh. You can begin. Okay. Hi, everyone. My name is Rose Martinez. I joined LMC this year as a seventh-grader, soon to be eighth, and already this place feels like a home to me. In LMC, we call each other family, and they always make sure to help students know that. Expanding LMC can make our diverse community bigger, and not only that, but help grow our educational
experiences, making our school an exciting environment, welcoming and open to everyone. It can also give students an opportunity to be in more leadership experiences and let students go through their high school years with the teachers they know best to guide them. LMC is known for their bonds with friends and teachers and their ability to learn with the proper teaching that helps students excel and thrive in knowledge, making it a growing community. I think everyone deserves to experience that, of not learning, but just understanding.
That's why I think we should grow. Thank you. Thank you. You can begin. Hi, my name is Aaron, and I'm a student at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School. I just applied to high school. Because I had a bad lottery number and I wasn't sure how I'd do on the SHSAT, I took the ICE, the HSPT, the SHSAT. I wrote seven essays, and I had six interviews. In the end, I had to choose between Brooklyn Tech and NESS+M and ultimately choose NESS+M. If there was an option to go to LMC for high school, I would've never had to
do so much work in order to apply and get into high school. I love everything about LMC, and it would have been my first choice. Please expand LMC. Thank you. Thank you. The next group of speakers, Noni Chelco, Chrissy Ansley, Vinnie Dong, Vivian Davies, Ezzy Orset, Sabine Holmes. Ouch. You can start as soon as you arrive at the mic. Thank you. Yeah. Hello. My name is Noni Chelco. I'm a seventh grader at LMC, otherwise known as Lower Manhattan Community Middle School. But just one year ago, I was transferring more than halfway through the year to LMC, a new
school, and I was nervous that teachers and my fellow students would pass me by, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I found new friends and became a better student, like LMC does for so many others. Not only are my friends at LMC, but so are my accomplishments. This year, I was nominated to be a part of the Middle School Leadership Council, where a few kids from each middle school come together and help middle schools throughout our district and learn about things like community and the high school admissions process. One thing I took away from learning about the high
school admissions is that it causes the students applying to have anxiety, and that anxiety shows in their grades and the way they act. I think that if our LMC middle schoolers could have the choice to stay at LMC for high school, it would not only be easier on them but benefit them. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Vivian Davies and I'm a seventh grader at LMC. Over the past two years, this school has become more than a place I just go to learn. It's my community and somewhere I feel supported every day.
My personal experiences at this school cannot have been more life-changing. As a seventh-grade rep, I see the community every day. No matter where you are, there are always people supporting you. My teachers don't just teach, they care. They push us to grow and always feel like people you can truly trust, and sometimes even feel like your own best friend. Outside the classroom, I feel the same connection through sports. As a soccer and volleyball player, I've built friendships and relationships that mean so much to me. The teamwork and support I experience every day in LMC is something I love from the bottom of my heart. Keeping LMC as a six to 12 school would make a real difference.
Staying in one community means stronger relationships, more support, and a chance to keep growing with the people who already believe in you. As more students come to LMC, including my younger brother next year, Xavier, I hope they feel the same warmth and support I did. Everyone deserves a smooth, welcoming start. Thank you to everyone who makes this community so special, and thank you for listening. Who's next? Can I start? Are you also from LMC? Yeah. Okay. Hello, everybody. I'm Toni Yee. I'm the student council president at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School. I'm here today to speak not only on behalf of LMC student body, but also for my heart.
I strongly support LMC becoming a six through 12 school because it allows a positive environment to continue supporting students as they grow. What stands out about this school is not just its academics. It's the way that our school is structured to support every student. Teachers are intentional, students are encouraged to participate. There's a clear, consistent effort to make sure no one is overlooked. Beyond this, we also must consider that stability is not a convenience. It's a condition for success. We shouldn't be forced to trade that stability for uncertainty. The data backs this up, too. LMC is one of the most diverse schools in District 2, serving students from all
backgrounds, including those with IEP and economic need. Nearly all students are prepared for the next level, and many are already earning high school credit. 100% of families report strong trust in this community. But this isn't just about numbers anymore. It's about what those numbers represent. They represent real students. Students like me who found a place where they belong, a place that believed in them, challenged them, and refused to let them fall through the cracks. That is something worth growing. Thank you so much for listening. Have a good rest of your night. Thank you. Thank you very much. And you're the president of student government? Um, hi- You didn't hear me?
Oh. Hi, my name is Chrissy Ansley, and I'm an eighth grader at LMC. I ask that LMC can be provided the opportunity to grow to a six through 12 school. Thank you for hearing our concerns about the co-location of Next Gen Tech and deciding to listen to our community. I'd like to talk to the panel tonight about what an amazing school LMC is and how great it would have been if I had the option to stay at LMC for high school. LMC has been a wonderful school for me. The teachers and staff make learning fun, as fun as middle
school can be, while also challenging me and my classmates. We have kids of all abilities and interests thriving in LMC. I just went through the high school process and would have loved to have the option to stay at LMC. I got into a specialized and screened high school and will be attending Nest + m, but to stay at LMC for high school would have definitely been appealing. Please consider growing LMC to a six through 12 school. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Sabine Holmes, and I'm a seventh grader at LMC. From the moment I walked in, LMC welcomed me and made me feel at home.
I quickly discovered that this is more than just a school. It is a close-knit, supportive community. LMC continues to support me, my peers, and my friends daily. Expanding to a six to 12 program would allow this strong community to grow, thrive, and provide our students with more opportunities. LMC is also one of the most diverse schools in District 2, serving students from many different backgrounds, including those who benefit from individualized education programs, also known as IEP services. Expanding our middle school would strengthen the support available to these students and ensure even more students have access to this strong environment
Over the past two years, LMC has helped me grow not only as a student, but also as a person. Today, I ask that you give our community the chance to continue growing and flourish for future generations. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, I'm Emory Hisle. And I'm Ezitika Borsa. And we're here to tell you about how much we love LMC. We are currently seventh graders at LMC Middle School, and our school has been life-changing. Before we tell you about how great LMC is, we want to thank Chancellor Samuels and the PEP for hearing us out and scrapping the proposal to open an AI school
in the place where LMC wants to expand. One reason why we love LMC is the community it has. It's really welcoming and close-knit. Another great thing about LMC is the opportunities it provides. No matter who you are or what you do, LMC can get you there. That is why we want to expand the community of LMC into a six through 12 school. It would let kids expand their learning in LMC and allow for a smoother flow from middle school to high school, which would benefit most students or a lot of students, including us.
Thank you for your time, and we appreciate your work. Thank you. Vinnie, you're not from LMC. It sounds like a good school. I wish I would've heard about it while I was applying. Anyways, good evening. My name's Vinnie. I'm a sophomore at Queens High School for the Sciences. I know, not LMC, but sounds like whatever. I'm here to talk about these, Omni cards. Students, you all know what these are, Omni cards. They're very flimsy. Well, way too flimsy. It looks like it's made out of paper, and the issue I have with these Omni cards are we do not have enough of these to replace it every
time it breaks, and believe me, it breaks a lot, you guys. If you're a student or you ever been or had one of these, you know them. It breaks very easily. Now, I understand that recently the panel passed a resolution that the MTA should look into the issues within its systems, and they should. Are they? Now, what assurances do we get as students that the MTA are in fact looking into these issues? Not much. But these issues, primarily, I have to say, as students, we get these. If you don't know them, we get four rides a
day. It works Monday. It works all days of the week and summer. But I'm here to say that this is not enough. As students, we don't go from home to school and school to home all day. We have other places to be, internships, other volunteering opportunities, other stuff, other places to be, and four trips is simply not enough. Additionally, the delays by the MTA, it is crazy. If you are a New York City resident, you will know the MTA is never on time. It's almost a joke at this point.
At what point do I have to start saying, "Okay, MTA, you got to do something"? I ask this PEP to work with the MTA and make sure they actually follow through on their promises. I know it's something they don't know. And I ask that the PEP make sure that they make changes. They couldn't make the simple change of getting DCT plastics. Thank you for your time, yeah. Thank you very much. Hello, this is Dina, who was in the first group, but she got a little stage fright, but she might be ready now. She wants another round? Yeah. Yes. You can do it.
Come on. Come on. What's your name? Hello. Tell him your name. Say hello. Hi, where do you go to school? I'm just curious. What's the name of your school? I go to- Can somebody hold the mics? Longone. Yeah. And what grade are you in? First grade. You're in the first grade? Wow. What's your favorite thing to do in the first grade? It's- My favorite thing in the first grade was napping back then. Hey, that's what we did back then. I like everything. What's your teacher's name? Miss Lee. And you like her, right? She's a good teacher? Okay, you had to say. Yeah.
Okay. I don't want to get you in trouble. Is there something you would like us to know? These are the members of the panel, and he's the chancellor. So is there something you would like to tell us that you want us to take back? Is there some way we can make the school better that you think would be a good idea? Anything?Is there something you like in the school that we should do a lot more of? Instead of using a lot of screens at recess, because when there's indoor recess, there's not really like- Keep going. The chancellor like what you're saying.
Keep going It's like we use screens all day, so it's not actually good for our brains. So I think with indoor recess, we could do something more fun, because you could play with a friend, you could bring toys to do it or play a Pokémon game, or you even could read. So- Yeah. That was a very good job. Yeah. And I think you gave some work to some folks. We'll follow up.
Thank you. Now, like I said, in about two months, you'll be coming back to panel and you'll be... So is- We still have more. Okay. We have some speakers. The next group of speakers, Jayden Wimbash. Yes. These grow LMC T-shirts, so I want to see where we get those. A panel member is out of order because I already put in a request. Jayden Wimbish. Matilda- He's got shirts. Oh, wow. They can call you out. Okay. So do we get shirts? Hang with ethics. Huh? Wait. Hold it, folks. Hold it, folks, because the press may be-- That might be a conflict of interest,
and we don't want to see anything in the papers. So we're right there with you, so let's continue. Yeah. Hello, I'm Jayden Wimbish from LMC. Yeah. Okay. So this is what I think about the new AI high school. Okay. At our current school, LMC, there's a problem. It's the elevators. They are very old. And also, if they come, it could do away with the elevators or mess them up. My other concerns is that it can mess up with games, like MC games
and physical education. I also want to know if this will hopefully support LMC to become a sixth to 12th-grade school. What I think about this is this will give the opportunity for people in high school to come to this school, to come to LMC. Okay. Is there anything else about the building you want to bring to our attention? You mentioned the elevators. Is there anything else? Mm-hmm. He's consulting. You know why I said that? Because I visited the school, and I agree with you with regard to the elevators. And so I want to thank you for bringing that up, because I actually commented on that, so it wasn't just me alone. The other thing I think we need to do some work
is on the HVAC system in the building. Yeah. I thought it was just me, but it was a little uncomfortable in there. So I definitely think we need to do some work in that regard. So I want to thank you for reminding me about that, because I commented also. I had the same feeling with regard to the elevators. So thank you. Thank- I'm not going to take his time. I'm not charging against the time. Go ahead. So thank you for addressing this problem at LMC. Great. Thank you. Oh. Oh, it's okay. It's okay. Oh, okay. It's okay? Okay. Hi, everyone.
My name is Matilda Murdoch, and currently, I am a seventh grader at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School. Ever since I've joined LMC in sixth grade, I felt a tremendous amount of love and joy coming from the community, and I definitely feel like as someone with an IEP, I can truly learn the way I need to learn without being judged. LMC has so much good people and teachers that are prepared in any situation, and I've made so much friends and I've made such good bonds with my teachers. And I feel like that if we
expand LMC as a high school, we can definitely grow our community, and people around New York City can feel the love and joy that the LMC family has. And yeah. So thank you. The next group of speakers, Fatima Saho, Jonathan Bilgan-Khan, Asher Singer, and CJ Mitchell. Okay. Hi, I'm Jonathan, a sixth-grade student at Lower Manhattan Community. In my opinion, the best part of LMC is the third letter, the community. To have the principal know who you are, and not because you're a
troublemaker, but because she actually cares to know the names of her students. To know the teachers above your grade level, and to know that you can talk to your teachers about problems you have in or out of school. To have the counselor respond on the day after emailing him. These are all some examples of the incredible community we have. I play on the baseball team, and my coach is the PE
teacher and also my advisor, which allows me to have bonds with him both as the teacher and as a coach. If we expand into a six through 12 school, we can bring that feeling of connection and belonging to more students during one of the hardest parts of the school journey. I would like to thank PEP, everybody listening, and I'd like to especially thank Ms. Douglas, Ms. Shea, and Mr. Critzman. Marcia. Hello, my name is Ashley, and I'm a fifth grader at MSC, Manhattan School for Children. I came here today to tell you that I'm so
happy that I get to stay in my school next year, which is the right outcome for me and all the kids who need a school. I want to thank the members of PEP for reading the millions of emails we sent you, and for listening to my community. Thank you. Have a nice day. Good evening. My name is Christopher Mitchell. I am currently a seventh-grade student. I'm impressed by LMC by several reasons. Firstly, the school employees are really nice. Our teachers make learning both enjoyable and engaging.
They utilize creative methods and offer a wide range of clubs catering to various interests. These clubs provide opportunities for students to explore new activities, acquire new skills, and build friendships beyond the classroom. Additionally, I propose that LMC considers expanding to include 6 through 12 grades. This expansion will benefit students who are unable to secure admission to their preferred schools by extending its offerings. LMC would be an excellent alternative, alleviating the stress
associated with a competitive application process. Such a change would be advantageous for other students and go farther to enhance the LMC community. Thank you. The next group of speakers, Birdie Peabody Diaz, Dia Rodriguez, Lil Maman, Leah Fragel, and Odin Adler. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. So I'm Birdie. I'm from District 15. I'm in Harbor Middle School. I'm in the sixth grade. This is a letter we wrote to our superintendent. I just want to read it here. "Dear Superintendent Alvarez, we are District 15 parents, educators, and
community members who are concerned about the impact your top-down leadership has had on our schools. Over the past four years, the spirit of support and innovation in our district has dimmed, and with it, avenues for improvement and innovation have narrowed. Of particular concern is your decision to mandate the uniform implementation of commercial curricula across our district schools, including in middle schools that are not subject to any central mandate until at least 2027.
Culturally responsive and sustaining curricula have been supplanted by your directives that all students receive the same commercial curricula in service of standardized metric success. Place-based and project-based curricula that our educators had thoughtfully developed has been replaced by commercially produced national progress and pacing guides. Despite your assurances that play would remain central to early childhood in this district, developmentally appropriate kindergartens have been dismantled in many schools. Mayor Mandani has promised to make our public school system
more democratic and responsive to communities. His decision to create City Hall's first Office of Mass Engagement is a recognition of pitfalls of the decision-making without community input. Changes to PEP and CAC structures matter little if superintendents are accountable only to central and not to the communities they serve. Under your leadership, community input and engagement is something to be managed rather than enforced and celebrated. Parents who enrolled their children in school specifically for the curriculum that was in place have come to find it completely revamped or under threat.
In several schools, these shifts have been sudden and in the middle of the year without prior warning, let alone discussion, even with school leadership teams. Parents raising concerns about the impacts of the curriculum changes to their students have been ignored. In District 15, teacher expertise has been dismissed. Town halls about these changes feature lengthy presentations from district staff and only- And time only for curated questions. The message is that under your leadership, that what families know
works for their children doesn't matter. District 15 has been a model for what is possible when the community comes together to build schools that are the best for its children. Citywide models of play-based early childhood and project-based experimental learning, our middle school diversity plan, and the participatory project that led to the development of Harbor Middle School are examples of what our community accomplished together through dialogue and collaboration prior to your arrival. We trust District 15's professional educators.
Your one-size-fits-all approach is not what District 15 children need or what our families want. We call for an end to your micromanagement of our curriculum and instruction in District 15 schools. Who's back? Hello, and thank you, the panel for education policy and Chancellor, for allowing us to speak today. Daya, Fatima, and I are sixth graders- LMC ... LMC. Our school community expressed interest in this growth to better serve our students and families. Despite these efforts, we still haven't received a fair opportunity
to present our vision and plan. LMC has already proven itself as a productive, collaborative school that delivers excellent educational outcomes. Expanding to a 6 through 12 model would build on this success. Also, a 6 through 12 environment allows students to stay familiar with faces such as coaches, teachers. This will foster teamwork, leadership, and school spirit over the multiple years. Our story demonstrates that LMC is a high-performing school dedicated to its students' achievements. By expanding to a 6 through 12 model, we could build on to this
platform, offering a comprehensive educational experience, which are vital to student engagement and community pride. One thing we love about LMC that makes us feel so welcome and at home, and even that we could be ourselves every single day. Continuing on, we hope that you consider our responses and thoughts on this act and hope to hear from you soon. Hi, everyone. My name is Leah Virtuelli, and I am a sixth-grade
student on student council at LMC. I would like to support the ability for LMC to expand to a 6 through 12 grade school. I want LMC to expand because it would make applying to high schools much easier for their students and their families because it will not only make the process of choosing schools easier, but it will also take the stress off of eighth graders during an important year of learning. Another reason why I want LMC to expand is because the community is so great. The community is not just the
students, but the teachers who put in the work to make this school so great, and I want it to be this great in high school. Also, if we opened a high school, everyone wouldn't have anxiety about making new friends and meeting new people. Also, by the time eighth graders graduate, almost three-fourths of them have high school credits. LMC is a place that supports students who need all types of learning and provides an environment that allows us to grow. I'd like to shout out Ms. Shay and Ms. Douglas for making this school an awesome
experience for me. Thank you for your time. The next set of speakers, Charlotte Lloyd, Ariana Misha, Sebastian Perez, and Lila Torres. Okay. I wanted to start off by saying why are people here saying, "Why do we have kids coming and talking about, 'Oh, they're playing at recess.'" I'm so sure that none of you guys were here in first grade talking in front of hundreds of people online and in person. Because when I was in first grade, I couldn't do this. When I was nine, I couldn't do this. This girl's eight and or even younger, and you guys are talking about why do we have them playing at recess? No, they're talking about kids being on devices all
day. So if it's not nice, please shut up because you don't know whose parent, whose uncle, whose friend, who anybody is listening and what they're going to think about that, because that's really disrespectful. Okay. So, and I was taking the state test today, like many other students, and it took me over two hours to log on. So I'm rushing to finish so I can go to lunch with my friends. Now to say what I actually planned to say. Okay. Good evening, everyone. My name is Lila Torres. I go to school in the Bronx, and I'm in sixth grade. I have a question for all of-- Most of you guys are parents in this room, right? Most of you adults. How do you feel about your kids coming home high from school? A place that they're supposed to be safe in, that that's not supposed to happen.
Picture this, your kid is walking home. You're in the living room. They pick up their head and their eyes are bloodshot, and you ask them why. They say allergies to find out that your kid is high out of their mind, and it's because they're getting high at school. They're vaping, they're smoking, they're doing crazy things, and they say it was allergies. It's not allergies, trust me. And some of you might be thinking, "Oh, she's crazy. My kid wouldn't do that." You won't believe what peer pressure does, what your kid's actually doing, what your kid's not telling you. Um- I'm not a parent, and this bothers me. How are people not noticing it? I know the teachers when they smell like an Orange Dreamcicle, they know that a kid's not carrying that in their pocket and that it's a vape, and they're not doing
anything about it. That needs to be changed. There's some shorter solution. And next, the sizes of these bathrooms in schools are insane. We have D75 students who need to get their diaper changed who are sitting on the dirty bathroom floors. I know none of the parents who here have disabled children approve of that. Okay. Or even changing for games as a cheerleader, not being able to put on your bow or going late to the game because you don't want to change in front of your coach or your peers. And last thing, okay. I got an in-school suspension, and we're sitting in a small, little, tiny room for three days without any contact with anybody else. I'm not doing my work, so I'm mad late on all of my work, and yeah, I'm doing that
now. We have the state test. Okay, really last thing, okay. I hope student members are able to vote because they're the ones getting affected by decisions. I hope you all let that sink in, what I just said. Thank you all. Have a great night. You can begin. Hello, my name is Charlotte Lloyd, and I go to LMC. Ever since I've been at LMC, I just knew this was the right choice for me. I've made so many supportive friends, and it would be amazing to carry on with so many people that have made such an important impact in my life. This year, I got the honor to join the LMC volleyball and basketball team. One, two, three, LMC, four, five, six, family. That's our chant. At LMC, everyone treats each other as family.
And I know that without our sports teams, we wouldn't have what we have now as a school. LMC strives to make our future the best it can be, and expanding it to 12th grade would carry on that legacy. Ms. Douglas, Ms. Shay, Tyrell, and Mr. Chrisman, all of the teachers would love to see the best people in us that we can be, along with supporting and carrying our social and emotional learning to another level, which now we've learned how to talk to each other in a way that wouldn't hurt one another. Thank you. Thank you. So, that concludes our student presentations, and I want to thank all the
students for coming out tonight, and great presentations. I have one question for the students at Lower Manhattan Middle School. Am I correct in summarizing that you'd like your school to be a six to 12? I don't think I hear you. Are you really excited? Okay. I agree with you. I had a chance to visit Lower Manhattan Middle School. It's a great institution, wonderful faculty. I've had a chance to talk to some of the faculty. And I think we're going to have to seriously look at making this school a six to 12 based on these kids. So thank you very much. Okay, we'll continue. Okay, we'll now move into the business portion of the meeting where we will move
into the voting items. The first item's up for consideration are budget proposals for fiscal year 2027. Will the secretary please read the resolution? The resolution up for consideration is entitled the Resolution for Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Proposals. Is there a motion to adopt the resolution from the panel? So moved. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded. We'll now move to public comment. The first set of speakers, Matthew Dunn, Harvey, Rachel Pells, Max German, Lee Dines, Martina Meyer. Hi. Regarding the budget, I'd like to highlight the fiscal hazards of spending on AI
that are inherent in the AI business model. At this stage, the opportunities for corruption and moral hazard in adopting AI tools are sky high, and the evidence for educational benefits is nonexistent. The LA superintendent's home was raided last month in an investigation about his connections to an AI marketer. The AI industry is dumping billions of dollars into lobbying school system decision-makers to adopt programs with both unclear benefits and unclear costs. Right now, these projects are being handed out for free, but the goal is to get the school system hooked on AI workflows,
harvest optimization data from our kids, and then maximally jack up prices. At this stage, it's unclear if LLMs- Can I interrupt? I'm sorry? Yeah. I don't think this is a voting item we're discussing, unless there's something in that. Is this for the budget? This is speaking to the budget, the budget allocation. Okay. All right. This is speaking as a threat to the fiscal independence of the school system, you see. It's unclear if LLMs can make enough money to match the outsized investments that have been made, but they will certainly try to remake that money by lobbying governments and government officials to spend money on AI,
even though it's not clear if it actually helps kids learn. For these reasons, spending on AI tools endangers the fiscal autonomy of the school system. A moratorium will allow the uncertainty around the real costs and viability of the technology to resolve before school funds are wasted. It will allow time for further research to be done on whether it provides any benefit at all to students. That's my statement. Thanks. My name is Harvey Lichtman, Educators Rank and File committee of the Socialist Equality Party and World Socialist Website. I've been a student, parent, and teacher of the New York City school system. New York City public schools are under attack.
Mayor Mandani, elected as a Democratic socialist, is preparing a budget that should be rejected because it seeks to close a $5.4 billion gap by delaying the state-mandated class size caps, as well as by pressing ahead even to push to postpone with school closings, truncations, relocations, co-locations, and mergers that threaten neighborhood schools across the city. Parents, teachers, students are pitted against each other at every PEP meeting. This is driven by a budget that is based on cuts to education, healthcare, jobs from the fascist Republican Trump administration with
Democratic complicity in order to transfer the wealth created by the working class to the criminal war in Iran, to bailouts and tax relief of the billionaire oligarchs dominating the actions of both capitalist parties, including Google and OpenAI. Meeting the state law class size caps would mean hiring thousands of teachers and repairing decaying buildings and investment for which ample resources exist within the city, home to Wall Street and 123 billionaires. Yet instead of challenging the economic control of the corporate and financial elite to adequately fund the schools
and other basic social services, Mandani proposes delays in the law, austerity, and abandoning his campaign pledges to prioritize schools. The UFT is not leading a fight, except in words. The real alternative for us is organizing democratic, independent, working-class power in every school neighborhood and workplace. The Educators Rank and File committee proposes the following actions. Demand no closings, co-locations, immediate implementation of the class size law, emergency hiring of teachers,
capital repairs funded by massive taxes on billionaires and Wall Street profits, a city budget controlled democratically by working people, seizures of the financial levers that enforce austerity, banks, major landlords, and speculative funds under workers' control when the ruling class refuses to fund social needs. Form democratic elected rank and file committees at every school, parents, teachers, staff, and students to coordinate sustained action independent of the DOE, PEP, and union bureaucracies. Build links with other city workers, transit, healthcare,
sanitation to prepare united actions, coordinated work stoppages- I'm sorry, speaker time has expired ... citywide mobilization. Join us on- Okay. Next speaker. Hi. My name is Rachel Pells. This is my daughter, Noemi. She's a kindergartner. This is my son, Judah. He'll be in 3K next year. Do you want to say hello? Go ahead. You can introduce yourself. Hello, my name is Noemi. Hi, very nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you for coming. And we are here to- Could you- Yeah ... a little bit closer to the mic, please?
Hello. Hello. These are my beautiful children, and we are here to speak about the budget and how the city is spending money on AI and telling us that AI is inevitable, and telling me that my children need to learn from a screen, from an iPad, from applications. They will not tell me what devices and applications my children are using. It is a secret. If it is so good for my children, why is it a secret?
Why is it private? Why are parents like me-- I am a stay-at-home mother in Park Slope. I have never been an activist before. I have never gotten involved before. I feel so strongly about this. It is starting. Gen Z is turning against AI. I'm an elder millennial. I'm turning against AI. The ground swell you will feel from parents when you tell us you are spending our money, the city's money, to give artificial intelligence to our children. My
kindergartner has been given an iPad. It came home in her backpack. Shame. Shame on every- Shame ... single DOE executive who is flying to the Google fellowship. Shame. Shame. Shame. Folks. Please come to order. I understand the questions here. I- I appreciate your comments on AI and generational. I'm a baby boomer, and I don't understand AI, so- Oh, it's okay. Keep going. A baby boomer who did not understand AI. Folks- No one understands AI. No one knows you are
experimenting on our children. That's right. You are performing experiments on my beautiful children, on- Right ... you want to take untested technology, the only science we have, we know it is harmful. It is changing the shape of their brains. They are not learning critical thinking. These are children who should be given every possible opportunity to thrive, and instead, you want to take that away from them. You want to take it away from the teachers, and we will not stand
by. Thank you. Yeah. Amen. Okay, you can begin. Hi, my name is Max German. I'm a teacher in District Nine in the Bronx. I'm a proud member of the UFT, and I'm also a member of the MORE caucus, the Movement of Rank and File Educators. I make this statement in solidarity with and out of concern for our immigrant students who are being oppressed. You are proposing all these millions of dollars to push AI in the classroom. Where is the money for our immigrant students? Where is the money for the most pressing issue in our city?I'm here to urge you to take action to defend our immigrant
students from the racist ICE attacks being made against our city by the likes of Donald Trump. Our students cannot wait anymore for action. They are tired, and they are scared. The low attendance rate in this city is a direct consequence of the fear our students and their parents face. Schools are meant to be sanctuaries. My fellow caucus members and I, we come here to say the DOE must act. We need rhetorical and material support for our students. Different schools across the city have been independently, and with the
help of more, setting up immigrants' rights committees. When will you, the DOE, and the chancellor financially support these committees doing the work that you have neglected? We demand that the DOE and chancellor stop rolling over to Trump and his thugs. Our students and their families have been kidnapped off the streets. I have students who have self-deported out of fear. How many more times will this be allowed to happen before you say enough is enough? How long before ICE enters a school? Where's the plan of action not to respond to that, but to
prevent it from happening in the first place? As of now, there's no centralized guidance from the DOE regarding ICE attacks, no public statements being made in support of students denouncing these attacks, denouncing deportations, denouncing the abductions. You must act. What are you proposing in these contracts for this budget? The state of education in this city depends on our response. There is a choice to be made. Is the DOE going to stand up and fight Donald Trump and ICE, or are you going to sit by while our students are targeted, jailed,
beaten, and deported? Thank you. Good evening. My name is Martina Meyer, and while I am an employee of the Department of Education, I am here speaking on my own behalf. I have to say this because I have been targeted for what I have said here in the past. I am very tired today. I am tired from a very challenging day of tech glitches as a fourth-grade teacher who dealt with the state testing fiasco today. I would like to be here testifying here at this meeting, but from the comfort of my own home.
The DOE has shown the capacity to do this in 2020 when we pivoted to hybrid or remote PEP meetings, and we saw much more parent and community engagement, which I've heard is important. So why is it that we are not investing in using a hybrid model for this exact discussion? Why not engage the most people possible at this very important meeting of the PEP? Speaking to this budget, it does not adequately provide for the construction needed to meet the class size law. We know it takes years between shovels to the ground and kids in the
classroom. We know that we've been given years to implement this class size law, and we know that the previous administration did not do anything toward it. What is this administration doing differently? Because I don't see-- There's not even half as many seats as we need to meet the class size law, which is a law, and we shouldn't be skirting it. These children deserved that a long time ago, and they deserve it now as well. Why are we paying more than $3 billion in debt servicing alone? Why are we paying $3 billion in charter school rent while we're at it?
And coming back to the debt, why don't we return to paying for the full cost of our budget and our capital plan with taxes rather than taking out loans? This policy allows Moody's to threaten lowering our credit rating, and that moves us closer to austerity. This budget also furthers the commitment that this DOE seems to have to ed tech encroaching on our instructional time. We don't need to outsource the expertise of learning to computers, to AI. We don't need to
pay more money to tech billionaires. We need to invest in our immigrant communities, we need to invest in our educators, and we demand school-level immigrant support teams to be invested in. What is your plan for when ICE is parked down the street? What is your plan for my student whose father was deported and we don't have a Spanish-speaking guidance counselor? Your lack of guidance and investment has led to a patchwork of policies that rely on the integrity and courage of individual principals. Speaker's time has expired. I'm aware. Thank you. It's not enough time, is it? The next-- Oh, sorry. My name is Lee Dines, and I am a proud member of the UFT and a
teacher of 100% immigrant students in District 9 in the Bronx. This budget is wholly inadequate with regards to taking care of our immigrant students, which is what I'm here to talk about. Coworkers, rank and file union members, teachers, members of the UFT, members of DC37, guidance counselors, have formed rank and file immigrant protection committees in our schools to protect our immigrant students. I have had students and their families who have been arrested and sent to Texas, and God knows what happened to them after that.
And we have also had families who have been terrorized so much by ICE and the Trump administration that they have decided to self-deport. I do not see anything in the budget that addresses this issue at all, and it is clearly a widely and deeply felt issue because teachers and union members have had to take this up on our own. This should not be our responsibility. The Department of Education should be providing for our immigrant students and families. They should be providing legal resources. They should be providing financial resources. They should be providing centralized guidance, and we are getting none of
that. Project Open Arms is wholly inadequateAnd we need professional development. We need know your rights trainings for families and for teachers. Um, and also, I think I speak for everyone here when I say you have all of these millions and millions of dollars to spend on AI. You want to build a new AI high school overnight, but you can't provide any guidance or any material support for immigrant students and our families. This is utterly ridiculous. Thank you. I see the actual students clapping in the back. Right?
Those are the people who actually know. Us teachers are the ones that actually interface with students and their families every single day. You people on the panel for educational policy do not do that. I don't know when the last time any of you all were in a classroom, if ever at all. Last week. But it's us who are directly connected to the students, to the community, and we know what they need. So I call on all of you to take it upon yourselves to actually do something about this issue, and so that it's taken off the backs of working people. And by the way, again, this is an utterly absurd platform.
This is a terrible platform for a working person to come and speak their part in it. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Ioanna Nene, Kevin Dugan, Kelly Clancy, Caliri Salas-Ramirez, and Craig Garrett. Good evening, everybody. Caliri Salas-Ramirez, president of CEC 4. We've come here several times to advocate and stress the importance of investing. Don't hold it? Okay. Investing in our students and in professional development for our teachers and not on software. It was really interesting to see, once again in our audience, the owner of
Kiddom, and the dynamics of the excitement when talking about potentially continuing to use AI in our schools between folks in the administration and this particular vendor. I think we've been very clear about the fact that our students, it is not the right time to introduce artificial intelligence platforms into our classrooms. It's developmentally inappropriate, not just for younger students, but also for older students. I want to stress, as a developmental neuroscientist, that teenagers have a
dysregulation or inability to tap into the neural circuits that control impulsivity, and they're learning how to become social beings. And one of the things that happens when you engage with AI is that you reduce the ability of children, young people, to be outside and have those critical social interactions necessary for them to become adults and engage in critical thinking and problem-solving. Every single day, an additional study is published on the negative impacts of artificial intelligence on these cognitive
processes, defining it as cognitive debt. We are affecting our children. We've seen a Democratic elected school board in Los Angeles pass a resolution that reduces screen time for students. We're also seeing Democratic school boards in Iowa move that forward. The New York Times has published several articles about the impacts of edtech on our students in terms of their development. We are looking to have
innovators, healers, leaders, problem-solvers, to have a better human-centered world. And by introducing this edtech and some of the platforms are on the contracts today, we are harming the future of our children. Thank you. Good e-- Can you hear me? Do I not-- Okay. All right. Good evening. My name is Ilona. I'm a high school teacher in the Bronx. And I'm here to speak about budget priorities. So the budget reflects what we value, and right now we're seeing millions allocated to ed tech and virtual instruction.
We've already heard from several of the student members, student speakers who spoke about the harms of AI in their schools and their classrooms, and my students will say the same. They say that it's taking away from their critical thinking, their creativity. We're a future-ready school. We were even asked by the DOE to have a AI in Education Week, where we taught kids how to incorporate AI into their learning, which is frightening because we've heard about the impact that has on the brain. But also, I want to elevate the impact that has on the environment.
My students are really concerned about the devastation that AI brings to the environment, the energy, the massive energy consumption, and water usage that comes from AI that disproportionately harms our Black and brown communities. We're investing in technology while under-investing in human supports that our students urgently need. One of those supports being immigrant supports. Um, and so clearly, we have all this money for things like AI and virtual education, including an AI program, I was looking at the separate contracts, to tutor pre-K students
online. What are pre-K students doing online? Um, it's ... Hmm. UmBut we have all this money for that, but somehow we don't have any money for legal support for immigrant support teams in our schools and for programs like Project Open Arms to be fully staffed and accessible. We're expanding investments in AI and ed tech, and at what cost? We sent a letter, an open letter to the DOE not too long ago, which had over 1,000 educators and community members sign. And our students and families, it was saying, are living in fear, and yet the
support that they need is not in place. So we're asking for some clear and immediate actions. We're asking that the DOE publicly denounce any detention removal or family separation by ICE within 24 hours. We're asking, yes. We're asking that educators and school staff be allowed to go to 26 Federal Plaza during the workday to support impacted families, and we're asking for real training so staff knows how to respond to immigration enforcement if it appears near a school. Not just that they won't be allowed in school-
All right ... but what happens if they do? Thank you. This-- Thank you. Hi there. I'm a parent of a first grader in Brooklyn. Digital technology doesn't always work as promised. A lot of people in this room and their children had a good reminder of that today. Since we're talking about the budget here, I want to remind the panel that the ed tech industry is currently propped up by speculative investors to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. Investors who are counting on the DOE's budget to deliver a return on those investments in the coming years and decades. So instead of embedding more ed tech in the core functions of our schools, as the DOE proposes in its AI guidance, let's
invest in what already works. Let's invest in the capital plan so that schools can meet the new class size targets. Let's invest in human teachers, and let's not invest another dime in ed tech. Thank you. Hi, I'm Kelly Clancy. I'm the parent of three public school kids, and I'm on the-- I'm testing. And I'm on the District 20 CEC. I'm going to talk about AI a little bit later, but tonight, I want to talk about something more broad in terms of the ed tech embedded in this budget, which is the funding that we give to i-Ready. So most of you know that there's a federal lawsuit around i-Ready right now, but
it's a citywide mandate that i-Ready is used as a screener. There are a couple of things that are hugely problematic with this. One is the fact that it's an engagement-prolonging technology, so it knowingly uses the dopamine hits that it gives kids' brains in order to get them to keep interacting with this program. So there are a number of states that are passing design codes that say that programs that knowingly use kids' brains like this are mistreating the users, and it should be banned for kids under 18. But instead, we invest hundreds of millions of dollars in propping up this program. And then I, because I'm a nerd, I read all of the research there is
about i-Ready to see if anything supported our use of it. And the fact is that there is zero research that wasn't paid by ed tech companies or by science washing that supports the use of i-Ready. A couple of weeks ago, Jared Cunningham published something that said the same thing. Thirteen million users of i-Ready, zero proof that it has an impact on learning. So my suggestion is that we take the money from i-Ready, we take the money from AI, and we invest it in what people are saying actually works. Restorative justice, programs focused on teachers, hiring
more teachers. There's a way that we can lead on the issue of ed tech by deciding that instead of investing hundreds of millions of dollars in these for-profit programs, instead, we can decide to invest in all of the teachers that are in this room that taught my kids all day and then decided to come here because they're so worried about the immigrant kids and about the fact that screens are being used. Instead of the fact that kindergartners are being handed iPads, little kids are showing up begging for having recess as a break from screens.
What we're doing is wild in terms of ed tech. We know that it's creating addictive patterns. We know that their goal is to create users, and that's why they give it to us for free, because we're not paying with money for some of these programs. We're paying with our kids' attention spans. We're paying with our kids' data. We're paying with our kids' critical thinking, and we can decide not to do that. But we have to decide it together. We should reject this budget, we should reject spending on ed tech, and we should reinvest that money in our teachers and in human-centered schools. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Graven Olivares,
Magda Napoleon, Alexis Kalyniatas, Tom Shepherd, Naquan McLean, Camilla Carmen, and Julianne Paramenter. So I just wanted to say something. I'm Magda Napoleon. Graven Olivares and myself were talking about the resiting of PS 134 and PS 184, not the budget. So... Okay. We can move you. So you can begin. Thank you. Good evening, Chair Faulkner. Good evening, Chancellor Samuels, members of the PEP. My name is Thomas Shepherd. I am a parent of a high schooler in District 8, and I think I'm just going to run from the cuff on this one
todayThe community is really clear about what it wants and what it doesn't want in a budget. And I think this system has a weird habit of leaning into the things that communities don't want, and paying no attention to the things that they do. This community is really clear that it does not want an outsized investment in AI in our schools. Yet here we are. Our communities, especially mine in the Bronx, are saying: Why don't we have auto shop? But yet we don't invest in that. Our communities are saying: Why aren't we teaching our kids literal penmanship and
phonics? And why aren't we doing that with actual teachers? Yet here we are without that. So I implore you, when we examine budgets and we do not see the things that communities are telling you that they want, to evaluate whether or not it's a good idea to actually pass that budget. So no AI or less AI, less EdTech, assessments that assess the assessments, that assess the screeners, that screen the assessments. I think communities are saying we've kind of had enough of that.
And I would also say that as a community of parents who are actively involved in the education of their children through our service on community education councils and citywide education councils, we do not invest in those structures the way that we ought to. Yet we can find $90 million that we can pull out of thin air to put video door locks on all of these buildings, but we cannot double CEC's budgets. We cannot give them the tools necessary to
interact and interface with this community. So I implore you to reject this budget, review it, and make sure that it actually does what the parents and communities want. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Naquan McLean, and I am the CEC president for District 16 in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. I am here today to speak on a couple of items regarding the budget. First, I'm going to finish where Tom left off around the CEC budget. The CEC budget has not been updated since 2019 under Richard Carranza. At that time,
we only had 12 members. We currently can have up to 14 members. If all those members receive their reimbursement, there is no money to do anything else. There's no money to do any community engagements. There's no money to buy food for the community for our long meetings. Our meetings run maybe four to five hours, depending on the topic. So I want to implore you all to really consider as budgets are moral documents, let's think about what's important to us. And if CECs are really important to us, we need to elevate them and
enhance their budgets. That's one. The second thing around register forgiveness. When we talk about and look at Fair Student Funding, I was on the task force that was commissioned by, at that time, Bill de Blasio, and City Council passed a law to look at Fair Student Funding. Yes, we have made some strides in Fair Student Funding, but I think in order to really do the work that we need to do, we need to really consider either change the way we fund schools or uplifting Fair Student Funding. We're going to see a lot of mergers, a lot of consolidations, and
potentially a lot of closures if we don't really think about how we're funding schools. I'll end here. Register forgiveness. Register forgiveness is a good thing for now. But eventually, when it goes away, districts like mine and districts like District 1 and other districts that are small and are under-enrolled, you're going to see us suffer if we don't really think about what register forgiveness means, and if schools and SLTs don't have real conversations with their parent communities around the funding sources.
So I implore you tonight to look at those things. Last but not least, I think the school construction authority is here. When we look at the capital plan, the capital plan CECs are required by New York state law to have these meetings around the capital plan. We continue to submit things on the capital plans, and some we see, some we don't. I talked to the president. I support the plan that they have now because it is what it is. But what I have asked her is, as CECs are responsible for this work, that we really engage CECs differently.
Don't just show up to our meetings to talk to us, and then you don't respond back to us. So I think that that's important. Hi. Good evening, Chancellor Samuels, Chair Faulkner, and members of the PEP. My name is Alexis Kaloyanides. I am a public school parent in District 30 in Queens. I'm also an elected member of the CEC. I'm speaking in my personal capacity. I am also an AQE Ed Warrior, and I have been advocating for Fair Student Funding across all of our schools. Not just my district, but all of our schools. So we need to ensure that this fiscal year '27 budget
invests in tried and true programs and supports that enrich and challenge our students. Things like fine arts programming, dual language programs, school libraries, and the librarians. I can't tell you the number of schools in our district that do not have librarians. Hands-on science labs, not on the screen, hands-on science labs, mental health services, restorative justice programs that keep kids in the classroom. No more of these suspensions.Supports for our immigrant and ELL
students. We are seeing this particularly hard in Queens, as my colleague who was here from the Bronx, same thing, right? We need the wraparound services and supports for the 15% of students in my district who are experiencing homelessness. The average is 12% in the city. It's 15% in my district. These are the things that improve the outcomes for our kids. And after listening to many of them speak tonight, you guys were all amazing, it is absolutely clear they do not need Silicon Valley tech bros to be experimenting on them.
We should not be investing in AI and tech programs that mine data from students, that threaten the safety of immigrants and LGBTQ students, negatively affects their mental health, and with the little ones, it prevents students from learning critical dexterity and motor skills. For anybody who has a neurodivergent child, as I do, someone who already struggles with attention deficit disorder, with executive functioning disorders, to be moving from screen to screen, app to app, it's just scrambling their little brains. Instead, we need to invest in more personnel and capital planning so we can
meet the class size mandates. We need to ensure that our students have seats in high-quality schools right in their neighborhood, and enriching after-school programs for all DOE students, all the way down to 3-K and pre-K. We should not be spending billions of our budget paying rent for charter schools that siphon students and funds from our community schools. Let's invest and expand in the resources we already have and make sure that they're working as well as they possibly can. Thank you for your time. Hi, my name is Kamala Carmen.
I'm going to speak during the contract period about specific contracts, but speaking on the budget generally, I want to say that the priority must be our students, all of whom are beautiful, and not software companies and curriculum publishers. A budget focused on students would prioritize meeting class size law. If classes were smaller, we should also be able to get rid of these ridiculous, quote-unquote, "screeners" like i-Ready, MAP, and Acadience, which we pay money for. I put screeners in quotes because these are basically just more standardized testing. Our kids are already over-tested.
A recent EdFirst study found that kids in K through eight take as many as 88 different tests for up to 222 hours. Why is New York City paying for i-Ready and MAP and Acadience when, unlike the state tests, there is no federal mandate to give these tests? The city could stop spending this money tomorrow. Speaking of the state tests, people here already alluded to the fact that there was this big glitch today. This is not the first time this has happened. If anyone here is the parent of a student in third through eighth grade, opt your child out. It is your right.
Okay. The other thing besides testing that we're standardizing and spending money on are these standardized curriculum products, these corporate curricula. I want to read something that I wrote as part of the campaign. A student spoke earlier about District 15 and the micromanagement there and the adoption of these spending money corporate curricula, commercial curriculum products when they're not even needed. I said, "My own children were lucky to attend school in D15 before the
unholy adoption of these commercial curriculum products. Their teacher-created curriculum had them exploring the flora, fauna, people, and geography of the surrounding neighborhoods. They went to the American Museum of Natural History a zillion times on school trips. They compared the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to the Queen's Botanic Garden, the Brooklyn Bridge to the Carroll Street Bridge. They got up close and personal with horseshoe crabs on the beach, and they spotted hawks in Prospect Park." Can you imagine that you could have New York City as this great resource for your learning, but instead, your teachers would be forced to assign you the same screen-based curriculum that some kid in
Texas is using? It's well known that commercial curriculum and textbook publishers need to please populous states like Texas because they have big buying power. And for what? So that your district can have a panopticon-like eye on what's happening in each classroom? Your time is expired. Hi. I want to thank the PEP for its advocacy to ensure these budgetary decisions match our intentional hopes for the education of all the city's children. Libraries, after-school books, social and emotional learning, sustainability, and support structures to shape and define a
lifelong love of learning. I'm trying to dilute this down, but I just have this hope that public schools can truly be public, and that there's this unfair double standard with charter schools and standards that apply to them, and the financial drain that they are putting in the city. Why are schools subject to relocation and budgetary cuts while charter schools are seemingly immune to these restrictions? Thank you so much. The next set of speakers, Whitney Toussaint, Reverend Thompson, Rashida
Brown-Harris, Tanaya Nasir Frederick, Johanna Bjorkin, Jonathan Greenberg You can begin. Good evening, Reverend Leticia. Oh, who's-- Oh, sorry. He's on. No, please. I didn't- Well, why don't you continue? Yeah, just begin your testimony. Well, can you start my time back, then? I can't hear you. Can you start my time back? I mean, I need my whole two minutes, please. You're going to get the full time. Thank you. So there you go. All right. Reverend Leticia Thompson. I am from the Bronx, District 8, where y'all at. The first thing is contract number two.
For the past, what, three, four months, we've been approving contracts for PDs. Okay, we're not discussing contracts. Which thing we doing? We are- Because I could talk about anything. It doesn't matter ... under budget 2025 budget. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. Okay. But I could talk about AI because that's budget context. Is that right? I could get into that? Okay. I have two letters for AI, and that's N, O. Okay. Folks, can I ask everybody to please come to order? Until the data shows that our- One second. I'm charging against your time Are you- It's just hard to hear you because there's a lot of background noise. It's all good. So we want to hear your testimony. Okay. Go ahead. You can continue. Okay. So my time is still running down.
Are we going to fix that or we just going to bleed it out? Just continue. You'll be given the proper- Okay ... amount of time. Cool. I have two letters for AI, and that is N, O. Until the data shows the district reading and math proficiencies at 75%, AI is a NO. Until we have ACs and elevators in all of our schools, AI is a NO. Until principals are held accountable with full transparency via the tool developed by the previous
chancellor, AI is a NO. Until all schools have updated water fountains, AI is a NO. Until we have system-wide STEAM programs, because please put the A back in, AI is a NO. Until every child can have recess outside in a state-of-the-art yard, AI is an NO. And until we really leave no child left behind, AI is an NO. Thank you.
You can begin. Hi, my name's Tanaya Nasher Frederick. I'm a researcher at CRCR, and we work with the organization Terraz in looking at early childhood education and data infrastructures pertaining to K12 education. What I have to say touches on some of the contract items on the agenda in the context of DOE's AI guidelines, it being the public-facing, what I understand about what the DOE understands about AI. I want to acknowledge that the guidelines are a work in progress and commend the DOE for taking a first step towards a risk-based framework. However, compared to CPS, LAUSD,
other school districts, New York is falling behind, and it's unfortunate that the largest school district in the US hasn't arrived at a more coherent set of standards in regard to AI deployment in schools. Hmm. And the guidelines should reflect a coherent understanding of what kind of ed tech is being used in schools that is currently or has the potential to become AI-enabled. The IRMA approval process currently reviews tools for data privacy and security. While the guidelines acknowledge that it is critical to develop an expanded capacity to evaluate products for bias, equity, and
instructional effectiveness, such terms have not been defined, and the DOE should review ongoing data collection potential for mission creep redundancies and whether a tool is fit for purpose, as well as cognitive offloading and the creation of vulnerable data sets. And the DOE has agreements that exempt many vendors from FERPA requirements, and concerned parties have no way of ascertaining whether the AI add-ons these vendors include in their products and platforms have gone through an IRMA approval process, writable in HMH being one.
How would a school official learn that a vendor has used student data in ways that violate the rules in these guidelines? Incidentally, one of the contract items on today's agenda is for Kaplan K12 Learning Services, LLC, another subsidiary of Kaplan Inc. Kaplan North America, LLC, is currently facing a class action lawsuit for a data breach that leaked the PII of over 200,000 people across the country in late 2025. Shoot, I wrote too much. Reviewing one vendor captures only one link in the chain. EdTech vendors
are a whole ecosystem. Five CECs have so far passed AI moratorium resolutions calling for a complete moratorium, a moratorium on student-facing products that involve AI. Proactive jurisdictions like Denver and LAUSD have already audited or passed resolutions to investigate the use of digital technology in their district. Okay. Thank you. Your time has expired. And you should pay attention to the parents and teachers who have devoted themselves- Thank you. Your time has expired ... these concerns have invaluable feedback to provide. You can begin. Hi, my name is Whitney Toussaint. I am the co-president of CEC 30. I'm here in my personal capacity. I'm also the policy strategist for
Parents Supporting Parents New York. I'm here to talk about the budget. Like a lot of people before me, the budget is a moral document. We definitely want to see more programs that will benefit all children, baseline and our most vulnerable children. We definitely need more funds in the Seed program, this is for students with intensive sensory needs, restorative justice programs, the mental health continuum, outreach on available early childhood education programs, because we don't need to continue to be spending money on empty pre-K centers, and immigrant family communications and outreach, and student success
leaders. That way, our youth leaders are trained to build a culture of college going and help their peers with the college administration process. Some ways that we can save money, I know someone brought up about $90 million for locks. Other things coming through, this local law passed to reimburse non-public schools for the cost of their video surveillance cameras. Now, if we spent $90 million in our schools, how much are they going to get? Even though it passed, it should not be a blank check because we need those funds in our public schools, especially for our more vulnerable districts. Additionally, charter school rent.
We pay charter school rent, and that comes from our budget. In my district alone, in District 30, $6 million was paid in charter school rent last year, and we need someone to really pay attention to how these funds are being spent in charter schools, because our schools need repair. We have other line items that this money should go to. For instance, Success Academy owns the building that they rent themselves, and their rent went up from 793,000 to over 3.4
million in a year. That's we're paying their rent. So who is watching these funds and where they're going and how this is affecting our budget? Fair Student Funding, the weights need to go up, and the state budget is still held up. But if a lot of those things pass, like the increase to the regional cost index, that means more money coming to our city. So all of these reimbursement programs for non-public schools need to be monitored, because just because we're going to get a raise doesn't mean they should get one, too. So please make sure that those funds go to our public schools. Thank you very much. Sir. Good evening, Chancellor. Good evening, panel. My name is Jonathan Greenberg.
I'm a parent of a high school student here in District 2. My six-year tenure on CEC 30 ended last June. I'm here to talk about Fair Student Funding, which I expected to be a separate item on the agenda, but I guess it's not. The Fair Student Funding formula needs major overhaul. A great first step would be to adopt the remaining recommendations of the Fair Student Funding working group. I have two examples here. One is the methods of allocating funding for schools in New York City work far too much to encourage competition and not enough to support all
students across the system. Schools that are popular or consistently at capacity have relatively stable funding, while many schools have to contend with fluctuations or decline from year to year. Of course, enrollment and funding should be tied together, but students should not suffer because their school's enrollment dipped from the previous year. This dynamic often serves to make the popular or at capacity schools even more sought after, as they can build and maintain programs and staff over time. It also incentivizes principals
to over-enroll their schools and makes meeting the class size mandates more difficult. The Fair Student Funding working group's recommendation to increase the base funding for every school is a good first step toward a better way to fund our schools. One extreme case of this dynamic is the specialized academic weight for the shortlist of specialized academic high schools. This weight is granting 25% more funding to schools offering "Supplementary instruction and assessments, including higher course credit loads and AP
courses." If these schools are truly receiving supplementary instructions, why only these schools? AP courses are taught at schools across the city that do not receive this designation. But many of those schools are limited in their capacity to increase their offerings because of limited funding. Meanwhile, the sustained extra funding that specialized academic schools receive helps to maintain their status at the expense of many other high schools in the city. Please vote against this Fair Student Funding formula. You can begin. All right. Good evening, Chancellor. Good evening, PEP.
My name is Johanna Bjorken, and I am the parent of an 11th grader and somebody who stays up way too late at night doing math when I get mad, and reading the fine print in things like the Fair Student Funding Guide and all of the school allocation memos. And I was going to write you a big, long email, but I already wrote you a bunch of big, long emails since the last time I was here, so I didn't, and that was also partly because I've written those emails for the past four years. And so for those of you who didn't receive them
before, I can send them to you. I was very happy to hear the chancellor reiterate that the Fair Student Funding formula is going to get some reform. We were promised that a year ago at this meeting, and nothing happened. It's completely broken. It's completely inadequate to work with the class size law. The Fair Student Funding formula funds per student. The primary cost as a school is the cost of teachers. The most obvious example of this is with special education. The
weight for ICT would require nine students in a class to pay for that second teacher, that you can't have nine ICT students or students with an IEP in a class of 20. It's above the 40% threshold. That means that the money to pay for that teacher is coming from other funding. It's coming from the other weights, the other funds that schools get most likely for the other needs of their students. As a result of this, the funding that has been supporting the class size law is supplementary. It's add on. It's not part of the Fair Student
Funding formula. There's no transparency in how it's being allotted, and there's no way to know what's going-- Because so much of it has been allotted for class size reduction, what happens in year two when that class is already reduced? We desperately need to center the class size, make it our new normal, and that means taking Fair Student Funding back to the drawing board and really making it work for the class size law. There's all sorts of other ways that we need to look at the Fair Student Funding formula, the
volatility of the formula, transparency, and of course, the small schools, but I've said it all before. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Natasha Bioza, and I believe Sebastian Perez. Yes, we have Sebastian here. Can we go first or do you want to go? Thank you. You can begin. Sebastian Perez. My classroom has been under substitute leadership on their- Can you bring it closer to the mic? Because I can't hear. I don't know if anybody else... Of this school year, I have-- Can I start? Yeah. Sebastian Perez. My classroom has been under substitute
leadership on their own since January 19th. Of this school year, I have been regressing because I am not being taught by my teacher, Ms. Wendy. Where is she? What happened to her? I believe my principal does not believe how difficult a change like this is for me. My parents have been advocating for my principal, Mr. Syracuse, to hire a special needs certified teacher. He is choosing to dismiss my parents' requests by explaining there isn't funds in the budget. My mother sought out on her to find evidence to show
otherwise. P596X has a budget allocating of $24 million. I am capable of learning and understanding my surroundings, and I can tell you how much time I spend in my classroom without guidance. I get underestimated because I don't speak verbally like most of you. But with lack if support I am being provided, I can surely benefit from paraprofessional, a one-on-one paraprofessional. Mr. Syracuse prides on showcasing his school as an
inclusive community, but I have not experienced that since I have been enrolled in P596X. Please help get what I know I have the rights to receive. Thank you, everybody. My name is Esther, and I appreciate you guys taking in the time to see us before. If I may speak, I also registered to speak. I would like to talk about how we are questioning our child's learning. He is under a substitute right now, and we would like for Mr. Syracuse to hire a specially certified
teacher. But when we ask for his classwork, he does not let us know if he can show it to us. We're not allowed in the classroom, and they state they need to get the classwork ready and that they need to prepare it to make sure it is completed. My question is, where is this classwork? How can we know that he is getting taught? How can we know that he is learning in school? Please help us, and I would like to also speak on the
fact that we are being shamed. Mr. Syracuse is allowing to being shamed because my child does not have busing, an appropriate busing that fits his needs. So this is why he gets to school late every morning. But with that being said, that does not explain why he cannot show us what is the work that Sebastian does when he is at school. Okay. First, I want to thank you for coming, and we want to connect you with-- Is Deputy Chancellor Fody or someone here? Okay, right behind you. You'll connect, and we'll connect you with the help right away.
So thank you for coming to the panel. Thank you. Good night. Good night. Thank you. Sure. You can begin. Good evening, members of the PEP. My name is Natasha Bujosa, and I'm an educational organizer with New Settlement Parent Action Committee in the Bronx. I'm here today to discuss fiscal year 2027 budget proposal. I want to bring to your attention a recent bill that was passed in City Hall, Intro 0327, which expands reimbursement for non-public schools, private schools. This legislation will allow private schools to receive public funding, not only for
security personnel, but now also for purchase and installation of video surveillance system. At a time where we're discussing how to allocate limited resources across our public school system, this decision raises serious concerns Every year, public schools are told there simply isn't enough funding. Requests for essential resources, updated libraries, accessible building ramps, restorative justice program, functioning computers, and even basic classroom materials are denied or delayed because budget constraints. These are not luxuries.
These are fundamental to providing a safe, equitable, and effective education for our students. So it's difficult to understand how we can justify expanding public funding to private institutions, schools that already charge tuition, while our public schools continue to go without. This is not about fairness, it's about priorities. Public dollars should first and foremost serve public school students. When funding is diverted elsewhere, it directly limits what we can provide to our communities who rely most on these
resources. If we truly are committed to equity and educational excellence, then our budgets must reflect that commitment. We cannot say we support our public schools while simultaneously reducing their access to critical funding. I urge the panel to consider the impact of these decisions and to advocate for a budget that prioritizes the needs of public school students above all else. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Hey, y'all. Rashida Brown-Harris. Y'all called my name. May I speak, Chair Faulkner? I apologize.
Yes. Yes. Thank you. Peace, panel. Rashida Brown-Harris here from New Settlement PAC, Parent Action Committee in the Bronx, representing PAC Healing Center Schools Working Group, PSPNY, and parent leaders and community members citywide. So first of all, thank y'all for removing the proposal for the new next-gen high school. Oh, no, we're on budget, but thank y'all for that. We're on budget. Da, da. As Natasha Pujols has just mentioned, the New York City Council passed the bill, the Intro 0327, and she read it. I'm going to read a bit more.
I just want to make sure folks understand that there's already currently a program that provides reimbursement to non-public schools for costs related to employing security guards. Y'all probably know that. Maybe everybody in here knows it. I didn't know it, and a whole bunch of community members and parents that I spoke to did not know that we reimburse non-public schools for employing security guards. Okay. This legislation, Intro 0327, New York City Council bill, is asking to expand, or will expand because it
got passed, will expand the program, like Natasha Pujols has just said, by providing reimbursement for the purchase of installation of video surveillance cameras. Reimbursement levels would be capped based on enrollment size, blah, blah, blah. We're just asking for more transparency, and we're hoping that y'all are really going to comb through this with a fine-tooth comb and hold them accountable and making sure, like Whitney Toussaint said, we're not just handing over a blank check. Honestly, we don't need to reimburse non-public schools for security guards or
security surveillance, period. But just wanted to bring that here for folks who don't know, can learn about it and research, because we need to contact our city council members, and we need to stay in communication with the PEP in figuring out the New York City budget. Today, how much time I got? 30 seconds. Today, April 29th, the city council held a joint committee on education and committee on public safety and oversight hearing on school safety. And New York City's preliminary budget threatens to cut restorative justice and mental health continuum and immigrant family
communications. I'm sorry. And we need to fight because we need more restorative justice, we need more mental health services in our schools, and we just need to provide safe and healing center spaces in our schools. We don't need more school safety agents. Thank you. Hello, my name is Kevin Dugan. You called my name earlier. I was out helping my children, so I'm going to take this time. I'm here to talk about the budget allocation to AI in schools. There should be zero, especially for younger students. My daughter, she goes to PS154
in Windsor Terrace. We have to fight tooth and nail to make sure that AI is not used in the school. We have to fight tooth and nail to make sure that they are not using iPads in their classes. I look at the panel right now, I can see how much you guys love screens because you're looking at them half the time. And also, I'm very concerned about the way that the budget is being used and the way that large companies have found the ways to have their apps used in the classes,
okay? The New Yorker story that detailed Theresa Pate being the head of curriculum and also being a GSV fellow. I understand that her sister, Dr. Tammy Pate, is also in charge of business development for the DOE, that she's in charge of bringing contracts for the DOE. So what is the oversight for this? Who is overseeing all of this? How are parents supposed to know where our money is going, how our children are being taught,
if we can't even get... data about how often our children are using iPads in their class. We're supposed to email some email address to get some information, and then maybe 45 days later we get the information back. This is not an open communication with parents. This is not respectful to parents who are concerned about the way that our children are being experimented upon by companies that are using brand-new technologies to teach them. This is not how the--
Teachers are concerned about being replaced by these programs. Teachers are concerned about, and I'm concerned, that my daughter's school is going to start replacing them so that she will have to talk into a microphone to some computer that's not going to ask her how her summer vacation went, or whether she's happy or sad, or if she's doing okay, or if she's feeling better after she scraped her knee. Thank you. That's it. Okay. That concludes our public comment. Speakers on this resolution. We'll now turn to panel member comments.
Before we begin with panel member comments, I'm going to ask panel members to limit your comments to two minutes. We have a lot of speakers on other topics, so it's really important that we be concise in our time. Are there any panel members who wish to comment? Panel Member Cassaratti. Thank you so much. Camille Cassaratti. I'm the Brooklyn Borough President appointee. So, under the law, this panel is tasked each year with approving the funding needed to operate the school system and support its capital plan. But the New York City Education Budget is currently being asked to
do three things that don't align. It's funding a per-pupil system through FSF, while also needing to comply with a rigid class size mandate. And at the same time, trying to maintain equity for high needs students and small schools. Without structural reform, schools are forced into difficult trade-offs. Cutting programs, shifting resources away from the students who need them most, or operating with constant budget instability. With reforms, we could move
towards predictable staffing, project equity funding, and... Oh, sorry. Protect equity funding and implement class size limits in a way that is actually sustainable. The Department of Education has taken steps. We're hiring more teachers, adding funding, phasing in implementation, and creating planning. But these are operational fixes, not structural solutions. The core issues remain. Fair Student Funding is not working as it is. Small school funding instability
is going to destroy our community schools, and class size funding needs to be separated from school budgets. So these are the issues that we're facing. We need more money from the state and the city, to provide more funding if we're going to have a school system that we really want to be strong and secure and supporting every single student. Thank you. Thank you very much, panel member. Any other panel members wish to comment? Seeing no additional hands, we'll proceed to a vote. I'll ask the secretary to please call the roll. Alicea? Yes. Altman? Abstain.
Alban? Yes. Bo-- Oh, sorry. Borelli? Yes. Cassaratti? Yes. Collins? Yes. Deinstag? Fair? Yes. Garcia? Yes. Giordano? Yes. Vice Chair Green? Yes. Hannah Jones? Yes. Hassan? Yes. Ho? Where is she? Oh, sorry. Izquierda? Jimenez? Yes. Dr. Hadwin? Yes. Ong? Yes. Parsons? Yes. Sapp? There. He's there. Just stepped back. Just in time. Yes, dear. There we go. Chair Faulkner? Yes. And then Panel Member Ho is not... We can move on. Just have the motion notes. Okay. There's 19 in favor, one abstention,
and we'll wait for Panel Member Ho. The motion carries. Motion is adopted. We'll move on to the next item, which is the five-year capital planned amendments. Secretary, please introduce the resolution. Yes, Chair Faulkner. The resolution up for consideration is entitled the Resolution to Amend the Five-Year Capital Plan. Thank you, and I believe the President of School Construction is in the audience. I'd like to invite you to the podium, President- Yeah ... Kabota. Yeah. In fact, I think I pronounced it correctly. If I didn't, I'm sorry. The floor is yours. Could everybody please come-- Can we have your attention, please? Okay, thank you. The floor is yours. Good evening. Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Nina Kubota.
I am president and CEO of the New York City School Construction Authority. Before this vote on the five-year fiscal year 2025 to '29 capital plan, I just want to take a moment to recognize the partnership that makes this work possible. The capital plan is the result of close collaboration between the SCA, New York City Public Schools, City Hall, and all of you on the panel. We are grateful for your engagement, your feedback, and your shared commitment to delivering for our students.
At a high level, this is a nearly $21 billion plan that reflects both urgency and balance. It invests almost 7 billion in creating more than 33,000 new seats to help address class size, while also dedicating nearly 8 billion to improving and modernizing existing school buildings. At the same time, we are advancing critical priorities like accessibility, electrification, and healthier, more inspiring learning environments for our students. I also want to reemphasize once again that this plan reaffirms a
strong and coordinated partnership with City Hall and New York City Public Schools to meet class size compliance requirements. This is a shared system-wide effort that aligns capital investments with operational strategies to deliver tangible results for students. We also want to thank the panel members who take the time to join us out in the field at our groundbreakings, ribbon cuttings, and school openings. Those moments are incredibly meaningful. They are the reminder that this work is real, it is tangible, and it is
making a difference in the lives of students and families. We are proud to be your partner in this work, and we look forward to continuing to deliver results together. Thank you again. Thank you very much, President Kubota, and we really appreciate that you have engaged with us. This isn't your first presentation. You've come to our committee on utilization, and we appreciate that outreach and willingness to partner with the Panel of Education Policy. So thank you very much. Public comment? Yeah. We'll move now to public comment. The first group of speakers, Jonathan Lansman,
Sharika Lucien, Sarah Schechter Ehrenberg, Lee Dines, Max German, Odin Adler. Okay. And I'll say this because when you arrive at the mic, you can begin speaking. A little bit loud. I can't hear you. Oh, that might be a mic problem. We can't hear. Think that's on? Got it? All right. There we go. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Guys, thanks. I'm here to speak in favor of the moving of the middle school from PS 184 over to the new location. I don't know if I was called up in the wrong order or not- Yeah ... but that's what I'm here for. This is a different-- The panel will consider this agenda item a little bit later. Okay. Do you mind if I move you to that section?
Yeah. I guess so. I'm going to have to leave because my kids are here, and this is taking a lot longer than we thought. I have a first grader and a third grader. So, you know- Well, you said the magic word. We're going to let you make your presentation now. Yeah. Thanks so much. Very, very briefly, because I know you guys have been here a long time- Folks, it's hard for us to hear, so we really need the public to keep the background noise down so we can hear the speakers. Very briefly, our administration is amazing, but we have class sizes of 29 and 30 kids. I'm the parent. I'm a very, very proud parent of a student who is dyslexic, and we are fortunate that we have been able to augment at
home. But other parents whom we know who also have kids who need extra attention are just struggling to get it with class sizes that big. Please approve the move, quite simply, to lower class sizes. That's all. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your presentation. I need a short version. Little bit more? All right. Thank you so much. Good evening, and thank you for the chance to speak today. My name is Sarah Schechter Ehrenberg. I- Okay. I was too close. The kids had to be right up there. I'm the Director of Vocational Employment Services- I'm going to say this again, folks. If you have conversations that you want to make, please take them outside, but it
really is affecting our ability to hear the presentations. Sorry. So if you need to have discussions, just step outside the auditorium so that we're able to hear the presentations. All right. Sorry. Is it okay? Sure. No, go ahead. All right. Thank you so much. So my name is Sarah Schechter Ehrenberg. I'm the Director of Vocational Employment Services at CIDNY, the Center for Independence of the Disabled of New York. We're a nonprofit. We support people with disabilities across New York City. I'm also a parent in New York City of a student in high school in Brooklyn and here in Manhattan. I just want to talk about capital improvements.
For more than 35 years after the ADA became law, only about one-third of New York City public schools were fully accessible. This means too many students still have to travel outside their own neighborhoods just to attend a school that meets their needs. I was here when we were talking about busing. That was epic. And we know that it's still not hitting the mark on busing, so that travel is really, really detrimental to education. It means they can miss out on building friendships, and again, the travel is there. And then inaccessible schools also affects adults. I'm a vocational counselor. I cannot recommend for my clients to look for work within the DOE because many of the buildings where they
might be assigned are not accessible. My child's school is not accessible. My child was injured in a car accident when he was in elementary school, and his school was not accessible, and luckily he could hop up the stairs with a concussion and a broken leg. And that is one of the blue ribbon schools here in New York City. Um- Parents can't attend PTA meetings. We can't come to meetings. Thank you for having this meeting an accessible school, but it limits where you can be just because of the inaccessibility of DOE buildings. Progress has been made, but five years ago, fewer than one in
five schools were fully accessible. There's only $800 million for accessibility upgrades in this capital plan. That's not enough. There's a group called the Arise Coalition. I'm asking with them for your support to add an additional 450 million more for school accessibility in the current plan, bringing the total up to 1.5 billion, much better than screens and AI. And that funding would really help actual people access education for themselves, for their families, access jobs within the DOE, and have a more inclusive environment for
everybody within this school system. Thank you. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Florence Holson-Fielding, Yaiten Chu, Courtney Johnson, Katherine Savage, Joe McGee, Lainie Haimson. I'll just speak on behalf of Florence. When we filled out the Google form, there was no way to do it without ticking the box to speak on contracts. So unfortunately, she got put in this bucket as well. She spoke earlier. I would love to use this time now if I could, because I've got to get Florence and Dina home, so that they can be at school tomorrow morning. I'm here personally to speak in favor of the resiting of
the middle school grades at Sheng Wen into the PS 134 building. Jonathan and fellow parent spoke earlier about this issue. Our school has very large class sizes, 31 in-- Thank you. In the middle school grades-- Sorry, in first grade for Dina, and we know that the only way that we can honor the class size mandate is to have more room to grow. And it just so happens that there's a school nearby that's underutilized that has the opportunity for our school to move into. I can't think of a better solution than to allow a school that's nearby,
only about three minutes walk away, for us to go to. And allow our kids to have the breathing space that they need, the ability to honor the class size mandate, and to use some of the functionality and facilities that that school has to offer. We're super excited about the opportunity to have more auditorium, more gym space, more science labs that our children can look forward to in the years to come at Sheng Wen. It's an amazing school. Our kids are getting a tremendous education, and we're so proud of what is being achieved at that school, and we
want it to continue and want our kids to get the best education possible. And I'm a pretty proud dad tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you all for your time and your service this evening. I am Dr. Courtney A. Johnson. I hold an executive leadership degree in education and focus my research on the supports available to parents of our earliest learners who receive special education services. I was raised in New York City and was educated in public schools in Southeast Queens. I graduated from the Baccalaureate School of Global Education, and I served as a New York City special education teacher.
I also served as a New York City special education administrator. I moved into Westchester to become a special education administrator supervising elementary schools, and then ended up at Age of Learning. As an account executive at Age of Learning and the parent of a child with an IEP, I am endorsing and testifying to this organization's ability to help- Sorry ... the city achieve literacy, numeracy, and family engagement goals for our students. If you could just suspend for a minute. This is on a later agenda item for contracts? Correct. And my name was called up, so I just came to speak. Oh, okay. Well, I'll be sure to move it over. I'm sorry.
Thank you. I appreciate your time. Just a minute. I'm sorry. Good evening, panel members. My name is Lainie Haimson. I'm the executive director of Class Size Matters. I urge you to vote no on the capital plan, which according to SCA officials, funds fewer than half the seats necessary to provide enough space to allow schools to comply with the class size law. The SCA also testified to the city council last month that the current plan is now being revised to better align with the law. And although I do not know if that is true, it does
show that any vote now to approve it is premature. Moreover, of those new school seats that are funded in the plan, more than half have no sites, and nearly 40% are unspecified as to district or grade level. This lack of transparency violates not just the class size law, but also Local Law 167, passed by the city council in 2018. Approving such an inherently flawed capital plan also flies in the face of a resolution passed by the PEP School
Utilization Committee on March 18th, over a month ago. This resolution calls on the DOE to produce a real class size reduction plan that would describe where the 495 schools will receive additional space that DOE says are too overcrowded at their current enrollment to lower class size to mandated levels, and to amend the capital plan accordingly. These 495 schools enroll nearly half of all students, yet the DOE has blocked this resolution from
coming to a vote of the full PEP. One has to doubt their commitment to lowering class size to the levels that all kids need and deserve and are their right under the law. Thank you for your time. You can begin. Hi, my name's Katherine Savage, and just like that other parent, I wasn't able to move on with the form without selecting something from the drop-down. But I can wait until the end. Mine's just for the open comment period. Oh. Just go- We can move you to public comment. Sorry? You for public comment for one of the school utilization proposals?
No, just for the very end. Like- Okay ... it was- Yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you. Definitely. All right. The next group of speakers, Ariana Ahmed Misha, Jean Levy, Dina Holson-Fielding, Kevin Dugan, Aixa Rodriguez. You can begin. Thank you. Hi, my name is Jean Levy, and I'm a district... Sorry. Could I have a thank you? Hi, my name is Jean Levy, and I'm a District 3 parent. On Monday, the DOE withdrew its proposal to relocate the Center School and the proposal to eliminate two middle schools at RSMA and MSC. This outcome reflects months of work by families who pointed out in countless
letters and public statements about gross process failures and clear analytical deficiencies in the proposals. I'm sorry. Withdrawing the proposals is an indicator that the city- Ms. Levy ... values family voices. Thank you, Chancellor Samuels, and a deep thank you to the members of PEP for providing this forum, as well as your insight and feedback. The motivation provided by the DOE for these middle school closures- Sorry, Ms. Levy. This is for the end of the meeting. I can- No, it's about the capital. I'm going to address the capacity budget. Okay. And relocation is a-- The motivation provided by the DOE for these middle school
closures and relocation is a lack of space in Mid-District 3, and that makes sense. DOE's class size space analysis identifies 10 District 3 schools that cannot meet 100% class size caps. Seven out of the 10 are in the Mid-District, and of these, five are elementary schools below 96th Street. Enrollment is rising, and Mid-District 3 needs more capacity. The shortage is so acute that Center even inquired about a site in District Four. There is an empty school building available right now in Mid-District 3 that Council Member Gale Brewer identified as a solution,
the former Manhattan Country School. And to that end, we're here to seek funding under the $6.1 billion allocated under capacity in the five-year capital plan. The former Manhattan Country School building can house a middle school, a D75 school, 2-K, 3-K classes, or even the District 3 offices. This is an elegant solution, and it would relieve capacity pressures in Mid-District 3. Also, if a charter school beats the DOE to that purchase, the city will be paying rent on that building anyway. We respectfully request that this very
potential spend be spent on New York City Public School students. The Manhattan Country School building is available right now. Before a charter school or a private school purchases this building and siphons students away from public schools, we urge the panel to include a budget for new capacity builds in District 3, and we ask that you advise the DOE to pursue it through a site referral process before shooting down the idea. Why say no before a site referral process has even been engaged? The sooner we get started on this, the sooner Mid-District 3 can relieve capacity constraints and allow schools to grow. Thank you.
I will comment just to say that we did take a look at that building. As soon as we realized that it was available, we did take a look at the building. There are a number of problems, but we could discuss that offline with you. Okay. But we did take a look at it. We did follow up. Thank you. Next speaker. I wasn't sure if there was someone else, because there were several names. Are we good? Okay. My name is Aixa Rodriguez, more UFT teacher, ENL teacher. There's so much to say, and I think I'm trying to put a quilt together of all the things that are literally intersectional right now when it
comes to budgets being a moral document that indicate the values of the Department of Education, and specifically, the respect towards parents that we should have. So if parents are saying that they want to know what their children are learning, then there needs to be transparency with anything that is online, anything that is AI, anything that is apps, anything that is digital needs to be very clear and accessible to parents, and it shouldn't be going through many different screens to be able to see what your child is learning. This is what has been reported to me. There is a fatigue with all of this, and when you don't have dictionaries in
your classroom as a teacher, you don't have access to actual books, you don't have a librarian to partner with pedagogically, and when you don't seem to have the resources, but somehow you get notifications that you have to subscribe to an unending amount of digital streaming things that you have to work with, with broken Google Chrome and all kinds of other mess, and having to sign in 5,000 minutes to sign in to even use your Promethean Board. We are too digital, and the pendulum needs to swing the other way. We need to respect parents who do not want to have their kids on screens.
We need to respect and listen to all neuroscientists who've been talking about the impact on it, and we need to make sure that our money is going directly into the buildings and the children. So anything that's in any type of budget that does not preserve human needs and goes for profit on the back of children needs to stop. As an ENL teacher, this has been a big problem for us because we want the kids to engage with things, and they are just, everything is AI left and right, and they're not able to write on demand by themselves. There's too reliance on those things. It is a very big problem.
Shifting funding away from things that can be immediately used, especially when technology breaks down like today. We are tired of saying, "I told you so." Kids can't even sign their signature. We warned back then, and we're warning right nowIt's a canary in the coal mine. This needs to stop. We need to make sure that we put our money where it belongs, in the classroom and in the schools directly, visibly, transparently, and not to outside organizations and corporations that are profiteering off of our children. Thank you.
The next set of speakers, Chinju Obiofuma, Matthew Dunn, Rachel Pells, Max German, Lee Dines, Martina Meyer. Thank you. I don't know. Not that's all. Okay, thank you. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Chinju Obiofuma. I'm the special education policy manager at Advocates for Children of New York, and I'm speaking today on behalf of the Arise Coalition, which I coordinate. Arise comprises parents, teachers, academics, advocates, and allies who have been working since 2008 to advocate for systemic
solutions to the challenges faced by New York City Public School students with disabilities and their families. Today, more than 35 years since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, only about a third of New York City public schools are fully accessible. When schools are inaccessible, students often have to travel long distances to receive their education and miss out on opportunities to build formative relationships with students in their own communities. Inaccessible schools also raise employment challenges for educators and staff with physical disabilities, while limiting opportunities for relatives and community members with physical disabilities, excuse me, to attend important
gatherings like PTA meetings, school plays, or even this meeting. Five years ago, the situation was much worse, with fewer than one in five schools fully accessible. So we are encouraged by the city's progress with the funding allocated to school accessibility thus far. In the 2025 to 2029 capital plan, that investment stands at $800 million. While we appreciate that funding, it is insufficient given that the New York City Public Schools itself estimated that at this level of investment, it would take ten five-year capital plans to reach full accessibility. That's 50 more years of inaccessibility and exclusion.
Conversely, $1.5 billion in sustained funding for school accessibility would cut that time in half. We are asking for your support in amending the capital plan to meet this moment by investing at least an additional $450 million, bringing the total investment in the current capital plan to $1.25 billion. While not everything, with this money, the city can make an estimated 45% of New York City public schools fully accessible by the end of the current plan and come that much closer to realizing the unmet promise of the ADA for our students, families, and communities with disabilities.
Thank you. Hi. I'd like to talk about something that is not in the capital plan, but should be. We need new buildings. The buildings need repairs. But there is also a way to add supplemental space to schools that's cheap and fast. Closing streets adjacent to schools to traffic and vehicle storage is possible under the School Streets program. I want to encourage the panel to add financing for School Streets infrastructure to the next capital plan. School Streets offer a low-cost expansion to the learning environment and save lives by removing the danger of motor vehicles
from the school drop-off and pickup area. I think a lot of parents here know what it's like in the chaotic environment of school pickup and drop-off to also have to worry about motor vehicles flying past their school on narrow sidewalks. School Streets can tie the school together with the community instead of warehousing our kids away as if the city and childhood are somehow opposed to one another. In addition to budget and administrative support and coordination with DOT, the capital plan can provide barricades, planters, play equipment, and seating to turn what is now free storage for
private motor vehicles into something actually useful, like education and play space. Thanks. Thank you. Good evening. Once again, my name is Martina Meyer, and once again, while I am an employee of the Department of Education, I am currently speaking on my own behalf. The five-year capital plan does not address the long-term needs of our schools. I work in a building that is over 100 years old. That means that the pipes inside of that building and leading up to that building are lead. There's no amount of lead that's acceptable for students to ingest.
And when the DOE performs the tests of the water, the custodial staff run the water for 30 seconds. Newsflash, none of the kids run the water for 30 seconds before they drink. So what we're doing is we're not being truthful about the content of lead in the waters. To that end, I have taken it upon myself to do some investigating with my students. So we test the water, and I send it to the Department of Environmental Protection, and invariably, we receive contradictory results to what the DOE is reporting.
So I'm really concerned that we're not taking seriously the amount of lead that's in the water. We have these great new water fountains in our school, and I'm so grateful that that was made to happen. This is a wonderful thing. We can fill up our water bottles. I recently learned that there's no filters on any of those water fountains. So again, what are we doing to the children? Why are we poisoning them with lead? Our building is well-kept by our wonderful custodial engineer, but again, it's 100 years old, so it's falling apart, and that's not unique to any of our buildings. On the second floor,
there is a poster, a beautiful poster with lots of children, and it says, "Everyone is welcome here." And the poster has children that are… standing, and some of them are sitting in wheelchairs. And it's a beautiful aspiration that I appreciate seeing every day, but it's also a very ironically cruel reality that there is no way a child in a wheelchair would be welcome on the second floor of 80% of the schools in New York City. So again, who are we serving? And how are we addressing those needs? A five-year plan requires us not to think politically, but to
think strategically, and we're well aware of the condition of the buildings in our schools. We're well aware that we are not going to meet the class size grants, and we are well aware that this five-year plan is inadequate and must be voted down. And Ms. Meyer, I want to identify- I cannot engage with the-- I just want to suggest that nobody runs the water for 30 seconds before we test it. That's all I'm saying. So hold on- Please do not run the water before you test it for lead. What I'm going to ask is that when you identify problems that put kids at risk, that you notify us immediately. I will. And you can do that through the- Send you the information. Let me just-- The panel has an email. I have an email.
If there are things like that that identify and put kids at risk, please know- The kids- Let me just finish ... when they're playing in the water. I don't want to-- Let me just finish. I'm inviting you to send that material to us so that we can follow up right away. Thank you. I'm telling you that there's 1,600 buildings in the city, and- You mentioned a specific- ... folks should test their water. You mentioned a specific building, your building. There are 50 different buildings that- Thank you ... follow this. Three? All right. The next set of speakers, Natalie Gold, Iona Nene, Kevin Dugan, Kelly Clancy, Kaliris Salas Ramirez, Molly Senak.
Can you see? Good evening. My name is Molly Senak, and I am the education and employment community organizer at Center for Independence of the Disabled, New York. At a time when we are all acutely aware of how meaningful classroom space is, as the city continues its efforts to comply with the class size mandates, there are simply not enough fully accessible schools in New York City. A fully accessible school just means that according to the building accessibility profile, all educational primary function
areas within the building, so classrooms, bathrooms, public assembly areas, are accessible. Those are the schools that score a nine or a ten on the BAP scale. Currently, less than one-third of public schools in New York City fit these criteria and are therefore considered fully physically accessible. The remaining schools are either considered partially accessible, which could mean as few as one accessible classroom or bathroom, or are considered not accessible at all.
That means that roughly 69% of New York City public schools are exclusionary to students with certain disabilities, who are then severely limited in their school choice and can be denied access to programs that are not offered in the schools they are able to attend. It should also be worth noting that the percentage of physically inaccessible schools might be even higher. A school can have no air conditioning, which can present health risks for students with certain disabilities, such as those who are immunocompromised, and they can still receive a fully accessible BAP score of a perfect ten.
And meanwhile, for the approximately 43% of New York City yellow school bus riders who have a disability, the lack of accessible schools can also mean enduring bus rides that exceed the legal time limit of 115 minutes, since there is no guarantee there will be an accessible school close to their homes. The impact of the shortage is not limited to students. It also affects the manner in which parents and family members with disabilities can participate in the education process, and it prevents people with certain disabilities from being hired at two-thirds of the public
schools in the city at a time when NYCPS is reporting significant staffing shortages. We therefore ask that you invest at least an additional $450 million for a total investment of $1.25 billion in school accessibility projects to achieve the goal of making 45% of schools fully accessible by 2030. Thank you. I'm not going to hold that. Good evening. Kaliris Salas Ramirez, or Dr. Salas if we're having difficulty saying the whole name, president of CEC 4. Just here to continue to
advocate for funding for air conditioners in common spaces. I can't tell you the amount of schools we have in District 4 or uptown in general that do not have air conditioners in common spaces, and we have multiple school buildings that are hosting Summer Rising, and a lot of the times we need to have external air conditionings in those spaces. And a lot of children are clearly in overheated classrooms. In addition to the fact that this capital plan does not include a plan for
reducing the class size mandate, I also want to highlight the concerns of the lack of accessibility in our buildings. We have a project in District 4 that has been ongoing for about five years at PS 57, where we've been trying to get an elevator, and we continue to wait. I also have multiple projects in terms of playgrounds in our district that have yet to be completed. Building 13, for example, continuously gets flooded in the basement, and mold continues to build in the basement
where the cafeteria is located, as well as different classrooms, because a project that was supposed to start three years ago has not started. And so we need to continue to invest in these common spaces, particularly where we have multiple schools. There isn't an accountability in terms of the timeline in which these projects are started, and we need to ensure the safety of our students. The last thing that I will also highlight is that one of the things that was concerning for families in District 3 was the lack of accessibility also in those buildings, and so therefore it was difficult to
engage the community in different options for children, for example, at Manhattan School for Children, because of their ability needs. And so therefore, it is absolutely critical that we continue to invest the $450 million needed to make our buildings accessible. Thank you. All right. Good evening. Ilona, high school teacher in the Bronx. I just want to point out the irony of all the investment in ed tech, and yet on the form to speak tonight, the only way you could speak was by highlighting all of the things. So while I didn't initially come to speak
about the capital plan, I'm here. I want to co-sign what everyone else said. The lack of accessibility, I work in a building that is accessible, thankfully, but we have students that have to bus one to two hours every morning, which means that they're chronically late to first period, so they're missing valuable instruction. The lead in the water, I don't think I've worked in a school building that doesn't have a sign that says there is lead in this water. The ACs, the lack of ACs in certain classrooms. And I want to say while I speak from personal experience, clearly I'm not the only one with this experience, and so these issues are
systemic. And therefore, the response can't be, "Well, let me address it in your individual school." They have to be addressed in all schools, and that's why we bring them before the panel. So, I'm going to ask that we vote down the plan, and that we ensure that our response is not school by school, but that we are really thinking about the whole system so that we're responding to all students', families', and staff's needs. Thank you. I just want to underscore two things that other people have said this evening. The first is about the lack of accessibility in our schools.
My son goes to a school that does not have an elevator. He dislocated his knee, and was on crutches for 12 weeks, and their first option was that we homeschool him for 12 weeks. They're like, "It's fine. He's smart. He can do it." And then they offered him an office by himself, which was a supply closet that was converted, and they said that they could send work down to him during the day, and teachers would come say hi during his lunch break. So we made it work for 12 weeks, but that underscored the fact that lots of families can't make it work for 12 weeks, and lots of families have systemic ability
needs. Across this city, the $450 million is the least we can do to make sure that all of our kids get access to an excellent education that they're deserved. I also want to point out that budgets like this are a moral document. And the fact that we at CEC 20, when we're asked what capital improvements to grant, it's like The Hunger Games. It's like, well, one school has raw sewage, one school has broken glass, one school has lead, one school has an auditorium that you can't use. Rank these, right? And this is not the way as a body we should make decisions. Just like this is not the way that as a body we should
make decisions where you guys sit here and you're on your phones, and then you vote 19 to 1 after you listen to all of these parents come and tell you about why they have moral concerns with the budget. And so as a deliberative body, if we are going to persist under this illusion that mayoral control gives parents and community members and teachers the time to speak, we need to think about the way that we make decisions, particularly about things like the capital plan. It's ridiculous to vote on a plan that's a fiction that does not meet the class size mandate law, and that means that it'll be
amended behind closed doors where none of us get to see it or speak about it. So you should vote it down today. You should have a new capital plan that addresses the class size mandates, that addresses accessibility, and that all of us can see, and we can talk about again. And that's how democracy works, and this is not how democracy works. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Graven Olivares, Magne Napolean, Tom Shepherd, Naquan McLean, Julianne Paramenter, and Whitney Toussaint. You can begin. Just waiting for him to adjust the microphone. So I'm going to shoot from the hip again. We are halfway through this. This is the second amendment
to the capital plan, and I have some questions. So we're talking about-- I remember a couple of years ago when I was where you are, and we talked about the Bronx getting $0 in new school construction, that I threw a fit up on that stage. Here we are a couple years later, and we're still having the same conversations about things like accessibility. We talked what, 800 million? Where that money at? Where is the accessibility that this is supposed to pay for?
We got people showing up saying they don't see it. I think that's something that needs to be addressed before we keep approving amendments to a capital plan. We talk about things like air conditioning. At the last meeting, I had a parent come to me and say, "Hey, Tom, Stevenson High School in the Bronx does not have air conditioning in the gym." I can tell you many schools in the Bronx that don't have air conditioning in the gym. It's not something that we pay for. Meanwhile, during the summer, you see just sweat-drenched kids getting ready to pass out in
gyms that are just too hot. Why we ain't paying for that?We got classroom spaces with air conditioning. We have a 5% failure rate, but we ain't paying to replace those air conditioners. We're not paying to even put filters in them. Where's the money? And I will say that the Division of School Facilities has done amazing work, but they have done amazing work doing things that the School Construction Authority is supposed to do. And at the end of the day, if we're putting up
$6-7 billion and revising it every year, then we as a community, we want to see where that money is going, right? We have schools where lead is an issue. You hear it all over the place. My time has expired, but I will just say, before you approve an amendment to a capital plan, it needs to be clear about what you're approving. And as a community, we need to see the results of that. Thank you. You can begin. Speaker can begin. Hi, good evening again. Whitney Toussaint, Co-President of CEC 30.
I'm here speaking in my personal capacity for myself, and I want to represent my co-president, Victoria Medelius. We did send a letter on April 13th about all of the schools that we need in Long Island City. If you don't know, that's one of the largest growing areas in the city, and we need school seats. We are at a school deficit. We are in so much of a deficit, we had to beg for an incubation space to open for a school that was delayed that was supposed to open in 2028. So I do want to say thank you to the School Construction Authority for giving us our incubation space and the Office of District Planning for helping us make sure that we did the right thing for the community.
And the buildings that we had to fight for, used to be Parcel C, now it's going to be a grade expansion for PSIS 384. So again, I want to thank them for that. And then also, I know I said this the last time I was here at the other PEP meeting in Queens. I'm officially going to say thank you for giving us our Horizon Middle School program in District 30. So thank you for that, because those kids needed a school. And I also want to thank you and my partners in the Office of District Planning and the School Construction Authority when we fought to get the PS 150 annex not go to Zeta Charter Schools.
It didn't, and I've heard that it's going to now be a D75 school. So, thank you. I do want to say thank you for the good things. But here we go. This quarterly report that we are supposed to see where these capital projects are in progress. Go on the SCA's website. Google SCA quarterly reports, projects in progress. That is a PDF document that is 2,100 pages. How are we supposed to navigate that? Has anybody heard of a pivot table? Can you all use Power BI to build a program so we can search it? 2,100 pages. My district starts on page 1,800.
Okay? Nobody can follow it. So we need to see what is going on with these projects. And again, this letter I wrote, because we need more school seats in Long Island City. We got 6.9 something billion in capacity. Build the schools. Use the site referral program. We have buildings out there that can be used. We've done it in District 30. Because the regional headquarters for White Castle and Woodside is now PS 398 Q. So please, let's use all of the avenues we have available to build the schools we need and make the schools we have more accessible. Ten seconds left. Bringing up East Elmhurst again, the other side of my district.
The two District 30 schools in East Elmhurst are not accessible. We had a child break his leg, and he couldn't start school until December. Please do something about accessibility. Thank you. Once again, Naquan McLean, CEC 16. This will be quick. I was looking for Kevin Moran. I don't see him, but I want to give a shout-out to Kevin Moran in the Facilities Department. Today at Boys & Girls High School, we broke ground on a field. I've been on CEC 16. This is my 14th year. And since I've been on the council, we've been fighting, and it was up until
today that we broke ground. So I thank Kevin Moran and his team for that. What I will say is, when we talk about how long I've been there, in 2016, we worked on accessibility. At that point, we only had 22% of our buildings that was accessible. Right now, we have maybe 31% of our buildings that's accessible. In 2016, we put three buildings that was supposed to get elevators. Those elevator projects just started last year. So when we really talk about accessibility, when we talk about what we need,
what I'm going to say is probably not popular to everyone, but I know that class sizes is important. But class sizes is one area that needs to be looked at. But I have gymatoriums. I have spaces that don't have air conditioners. I have, in some of my gyms, basketball hoops without the round piece that goes, you shoot the hoops through. We have a lot of things that's going on in districts, and some of these districts have the things that they need, and some don't. So when we're looking at the capital plan, we need to make sure, and that's why I keep on iterating, a relationship between CECs
and the School Construction Authority. We have that relationship with facilities. We have that relationship with the food facilities and the upgrades that they've done around our lunchrooms. We need that same relationship with School Construction Authority. My PEP members for Brooklyn know what we asked them to do or what we expect them to do on this, but I will say that it's important that you don't just show up to our meeting once a year and expect us to give you all of this input. We do these building walkswalk buildings and
write these reports, and then nothing that we request gets done, or it takes a long time to do it. I understand that it's important, and I understand that there's 1,600 schools, but we need to prioritize the schools that have been underserved for years. District 16. I want to thank the PEP and Chancellor Samuels for listening to the families in District 3 and pulling the proposals that would've been harmful to our community, closing RSMA and MSC Middle Schools and reciting Center School to an unsuitable location. It is very meaningful to us to have this time to work together and to find better solutions for all of our
communities. Thank you. In the new phase, we need to work quickly to begin a process of bilateral engagement, as there are not many months left before the next school year begins. Let's begin an engagement process, please, tonight, this month, next month. Hold on. My phone just-- If I could have a pause, sorry. The capital plan amendments that are being voted on tonight fund 33,417 new seats citywide, but zero of those seats are in District 3. As we have just seen with these harmful proposals, there is a capacity problem in District 3. In fact, there are 10 schools that the DOE identified in the
district without the capacity to fully implement the class size reduction, so this will be an ongoing issue. We need capital allocation in District 3, as we need new classrooms, especially in Mid-District. Almost none of the elementary schools in Mid-District have the capacity for full class size reduction. My elementary school student, their school has not been contacted. We haven't heard one thing, and we know that it is over capacity. Thank you, Council Member Gale Brewer, for seeing the possibility of Manhattan Country School for providing much-needed capacity in District 3.
In the next cycle of capital plan amendments, I'm asking the DOE to allocate funds for Ms. Brewer's idea for the Manhattan Country School building. Thank you. The next two speakers are Reverend Thompson and Rashida Brown Harris. Good
evening. Reverend Letitia Thompson. I stand here on behalf of CEC 8 as one of its council members, and I want to quote Fat Joe. He said, "Yesterday's price is not today's price." And SCA is missing the M, but it's not the money. It should be SCAM because, in District A, our borough Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services School, which we house for the entire borough, has no strobe lights. And yet I've asked for them since 2021.
It's for their safety because when the alarm goes off, they can't hear it, nor can their instructors and their teachers. And six years later, we'll be at the point of saying, "Oh, one of our babies was harmed. Could we have done anything?" The price went up. In District 8, we have a middle school with no schoolyard after nearly five years of breaking ground and $700,000 from a council member. The price went up. We have scaffolding in more of our schools than we have
swings and playgrounds. The price went up. We have more scaffolding from SCAM than we have projects that are completed. The price went up. And what I need to ask is why do we keep doing business with people who are not doing business? Why do we keep giving billions of dollars in contracts and think that we're actually holding anybody accountable? And why do we think that the community is going to continue to let people pontificate as politicians
and think we're going to keep sending our babies to these schools that are run down? The price just went up, y'all. No. No, I just need the date from her. LT. Okay. I'll get it later. I am reading. Oh. All right. Can y'all hear me? Thank you. I'm going to read from Wanda Yvette Balinas. She asked me to ask Nina Caputo about the process of finishing all pending projects that have been funded for more than four years with no end in sight. And she would like to extend an invitation for
Nina to attend the District 8 Community Education Council meeting. We don't want anyone but Nina present. Okay. Now, I will say in regards to the five-year plan, we need standalone schools for D75. We need standalone schools for children with autism Let's think about investing that to have standalone schools for our babies with autism. And I just want to say that y'all are putting the money where it needs-- Y'all are not putting the money where it needs to be. Y'all need to invest in facilities, expanding construction plans
to provide enough classrooms to ensure the class size law can be met. There's no accountability for the lack on investment by SCA. We need to invest in the many 100-year-old schools that are crumbling. We've heard all of this over, but I'm reiterating it. We're facing an infrastructure crisis. We need functioning libraries with staff librarians in each school. We need 100% of schools to be ADA compliant. We need zero lead pipes in our schools. And what does this five-year plan say about the DOE's commitment to reducing class
sizes? That is not a priority. What is the DOE's commitment to ensuring all students have acceptable facilities? This five-year plan does not say that. The people in Tweed and 65 Court Street, and in the district offices all have ACs. So maybe y'all should go without ACs until every single DOE classroom, common space in our public schools have ACs, and functioning HVAC up-to-date systems. Ten seconds. I don't think I'm going to get it all in.
We just got to do a little better. I know that this stuff is not easy, but we got to continue to just do what's going to best service our community with true community engagement and really figuring out what's happening on the ground. Thank you. Okay. That concludes our public comment. We'll now move to panel member comments. And again, I'll remind you to please limit your comments to two minutes. Panel member Shirley Arbon. Arbon. Good evening. Okay. Good evening, everyone. Queens Ball President Appointee. I'm just going to touch on certain aspects of, first, this is not a vote for the capital plan.
It was voted on already. This is amendment to the capital plan. They receive a little bit more money, so the original capital plan was already voted in. This is an amendment to the capital plan. I just wanted to correct that. Second, Mr. McLean touched on it. Yes, small class size is important. Yes, that is part of SCA, but there's so many other things that SCA has to cover in this capital plan, and all the testimony so far, those improvements, accessibility, mold,
lead, all of that is also included in the five-year capital plan besides new seats. They have to also do mandates, which accessibility is a mandate. Also, class size is a mandate. We have to keep in mind that they're within a budget constraint as well. Listen, I wish we had unlimited funds. The budget is not enough. The capital plan money is not enough. But we have to also understand that there's also things that SCA has to cover as well and is across the city. We could always do better, and we can always use more money.
And I know that the small class sizes is now a priority. I know in the budget, I don't know if anybody noticed, but in the budget, there's $624 million for small class sizes as well, and they plan to go up each school year for the mayor's proposed budget. So I just wanted, small classes is definitely what we need to build up our buildings as well. We need space, and we also need to improve our infrastructure and our buildings for that welcoming environment for our
students, healthy environments. Thank you, panel member. Any other panel members wish to comment? Panel member Giordano. Just want to say hello to the fellows from the Economic Club of New York who are watching online right now. Look, we got 8.5 million people in this city. We have 1,800 schools. We want more, we need more, but there's a reality. And I want to thank President Nina Kabura for all her efforts, the employees of Local 1740, the School Construction Authority employees who have done so good, so well. I firsthand have seen when the SCA has gone and looked
at buildings that were really important to a community. A 60-year-old building, that's PS 516 now. The community fought for 60 years to try and keep this building, and the SCA went in and it's a gem, a gem of a school. And I know about these stories individually in every community where the SCA has gone and taken a building that's really listened to the community. So I wanted to thank you for that, and yes, it's an amendment. It's a lot more work to do, but thank you for your efforts. Thank you for your comments, panel member. Any other panel members wish to... Yeah, Panel Member Altman. Hi, I just wanted to touch on the $2.32 billion for healthy
schools. $100 million of that is going to be supporting health and nutrition, which I think with the food inequities and the rising cost of food in New York City, that's really important to try to empower families and students in making better food choices. It's something that everyone is struggling with in the city. $150 million is to extend successful cafeteria enhancement experience programs, which I hope will also include in the future to include 408 kitchens in schools that do not have food equity at this moment or food choices. I hope that we understand that that is a huge disparity in our
schools. We talk about equality. We talk about making sure that all of our students have the same options and equity. I do believe that every school should have a baseline of the bare minimum required facilities, which should include bathrooms, gyms, and cafeteriasSo I am truly hoping that that 100 million is not just to enhance or replace or fix or upgrade existing kitchens, but is going to create 408 new facilities, new kitchens, so that every student in every school can have fresh food choices. Thank you. Thank you, panel member.
Yep, Panel Member Parsons. Renita Parsons, Bronx CEC Rep. I just want to quickly state that I have a love-hate relationship with SCA, especially in the Bronx. I believe SCA is the MTA of the DOE. Delays, delays, delays. Mm-hmm. And money, money, money. I wrote something earlier about the Bronx, and I traveled throughout all the six districts. Ms. Toussaint, I looked at that document and I extracted all the boroughs from the Bronx, and with a fine-tooth
comb, I saw projects from 2012 that are incomplete. So those of you who are stating five years, oh, no, the Bronx is going way back. Mm-hmm. Like red and black lumberjacks with the hat to match. And unfortunately, our kids and our families cannot engage in our schools. This is a beautiful facility, but in the Bronx, our parents can't even meet capacity to fill an auditorium. I've been to many CCs. We can't even fit inside. They got to find room.
They got to find space. Chancellor, I was just with you. You see, we had to do a makeshift. They didn't have an auditorium. It's crazy, and I think SCA needs to do a better job. Please stop assessing your evaluations. We need timeliness in our projects in the Bronx. Please, I know there's a lot of exterior work. Kids are asking for upgrades inside the schools, but if you're still working on the exterior, how are we going to upgrade the
inside of our schools? They're asking for tech. They're asking for bathrooms. They're asking for engagement, and we can't do any of these things if the outside masonry, the scaffolds, there's illicit activity outside of the schools after hours because there are so many scaffolds around our Bronx schools. Please, ASAP, not another five years, please upgrade the Bronx schools. Thank you. Thank you, panel member. Are there any other panel members who wish to comment?
I saw a hand over here first, and then I'll come back around. Yes. Panel member Alicea, I'm sorry. Good evening, everyone. Adriana Alicea, she, her, here for Queens CECs. In the past week or so, I have come to realize that DOE, NYCPS, even some of us up here, we really struggle with our EQ versus our IQ. And while this is a very numbers, numbers, numbers conversation, I do just want to excuse me, I do just want to highlight a few of the comments made by some of our leaders that we see every single month here. I'm going to just piggyback off of Mr.
McLean's comments about working together with SCA in the same form and fashion that his CEC works with facilities. To me, that's an EQ question. That's a relationship question. And I think outside of this capital plan vote for this amendment, it's very important, but we also need to start looking at the ways in which we work together when it comes to the decisions that are made after this vote. So I look forward to additional conversations about how SCA is building relationships in addition to infrastructure. Thank you. Thank you, panel member. Panel member Escoto.
Thank you. So I'd like to piggyback off of everybody. Ms. Parsons, thank you, because we have projects going back 20 years. We did not get a bump last year. We're not getting a significant bump this year. In the Bronx, we have 20% to 30% increase in District 75 students who are competing for the class size space. Let's just be clear. Before class size law, we were already violating a bunch of laws for a bunch of different students. We were already not meeting the needs of the students we already have.
We have to look at everything. We have to share the budget. The budget is the budget. We're not getting a significant amount more, and we're not getting more space. So this group is tasked with weighing the benefits of how do we give you and how do we serve everybody? Somebody said that we don't know what it's like to walk through the schools, but many of us are in schools all the time. Our PTA presidents are on our school leadership teams, work closely with our Community Education Councils, travel every borough with their Community Education Councils.
I know most of the Community Education Council members here. So with all due respect, please, we try very hard. Please show up to our engagement sessions prior to these meetings so that we can build the relationships, EQ is emotional quotient, so that we can build those relationships to be able to represent you before we get to this time and phase where the vote is already here. We hear you and we listen, but today, there's not a whole lot we can do to change. We need you to show up earlier and listen, keep telling us to make the space for you to be able to show up earlier. But also to that point, we need to do better up here because when I was
down there, I've been complaining about 33X in the Bronx and the strobe lights, and six years later, it's still on SCA's list.The teachers are hard of hearing, the students are hard of hearing, and nothing in the safety plan addresses that if the hearing staff are in a different part of the building and that class is in session with the teacher that cannot hear, there's not a plan for somebody to go get them. We have to address that before it becomes an issue. So I appreciate the one-offs, but also, let's look at all of the accessibility jobs that address safety and prioritize
those first. Because we're in a system where we represent a bunch of people, and priorities matter. So we need to show them that they matter to us, and I think that they'll show us, and they'll show up for us so that we can be better for them. Thank you. Thank you, panel member. Panel member Faradji. Uh, Hannah Jones, I'm sorry. Good evening, everyone. Faradiana Jones, CEC appointee. Just wanted to just remind everyone that our bodies are 80% water, not milk, soda, Kool-Aid. But those things that I just mentioned are typically more accessible
than clean drinking water. I remember raising this point earlier on when I became on this panel. Maybe I was raising it to the wrong administration, but I believe I'm raising it to the right administration this time. I will like to start, my sister who just raised the question about the water quality in all of our schools. This is not a case-by-case basis. All of our schools are in need of quality drinking water. So I hope food services hear that clean drinking water doesn't come from a plastic bottle. It actually comes from the spigot that are in our
classrooms. Each one of our classrooms, and I know schools, and I have a list of schools that have spigots in their classrooms where the water is actually brown, and they cannot drink it. So PTAs are always stressed to buy these plastic water filtering systems that are just not necessary. So I would like to stress with all five boroughs that we do a assessment of our clean drinking water and make sure that we put that as a priority so our children have clean drinking water. Thank you. Thank you, panel member. And get us that list today.
Today. Today. Yeah, right now. Get us that list. Okay. Yes. Panel member Collins. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be brief. But you're next. I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that, as difficult as it is to consider the class size mandate and the implementation... Also, by the way, I should introduce myself. I'm Jonathan Collins, Manhattan Borough appointee. But as I was saying, we can't lose sight of how important the class size mandate implementation is. The literature's very clear on this. One of the best ways to ensure that kids get the highest quality of instruction is to keep class sizes low.
Right? That's been one of the most consistent findings in the literature since the 1960s. We know this is pretty much true. And so this capital plan isn't perfect. This amendment isn't perfect, but it gets us in the right direction. I think the next step then is monitoring, because the issues that we've seen with implementation with SCA, this has been consistent for a long time. And the other thing that we should be looking out for is how... The plan includes seat allocation, and that's just the language, seat allocation. It doesn't specify exactly where the seats will be
allocated. So, hey, SCA has a online dashboard. Continue to monitor the processes. Hold us accountable. Hold the DOE accountable on how this is implemented. Thank you. Are there any other panel members who wish to comment? Seeing no additional hands, we'll proceed to a vote. Secretary Peace, call the roll. Panel member Alicea? Altman? Yes. Alban? Yes. Borrelli? Yes. Casseriti? Yes. Collins? Yes. Deinstag? Yes. Fair? Yes. Garcia? Giordano? Yes. Vice Chair Green? Yes. Hannah Jones? Yes. Hassan? Abstain. I was on a roll. Let me ask this.
Poe? Yes. Izquierdo? Jimenez? Yes. Dr. Adwin? Ang? Parsons? Yes. Sap? Yes. Chair Faulkner? Yes. The motion carries yays and one abstention. Thank you very much. We'll now move to the contracts, and I'll ask the secretary to present the resolution. The resolution up for consideration is entitled The Resolution to Enter into Contract Agreements for Items 1 through 30. Is there a motion to adopt the resolution? So moved. It's been moved and adopted and seconded. The resolution is now up for discussion. We'll now open the floor for public comment. The first set of speakers, Laney Hampson,
Kevin Dugan, Max German, Lee Dines, Martina Meyer, and Brian Miller Absolutely. Hello again. My name is Lainie Haimson. I'm here in my capacity as the co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy, a member of the Chancellor's Privacy Working Group, and a member of the AI Working Group. Even though we were promised to have input on the AI guidance several times, we were denied that opportunity, and the guidance is deeply flawed. I, along with many other parents, continue to have serious concerns
about the expansion of AI in our schools. Many AI products have been pushed on schools in the last few weeks, including Google Gemini, which prompts kids to ask for its help with writing or drawing pictures when they log into their school devices. Teachers are receiving emails from the vendors using their DOE email addresses promoting their AI products. This is going fast, and it's going unabated despite the claims of
DOE that they are still working on this AI guidance. They are essentially ignoring the concerns that parents and teachers, experts, community members, medical professionals are all speaking out loudly and clearly that it is time to slow down. Tonight, on the PEP agenda is a contract for something called The Age of Learning, number 22, described as providing, quote, "personalized learning
journey for kids in pre-K to second grade." While it claims that this contract contains no AI products, an optional feature includes the ability, it says, to use AI to generate recommendations based on, quote, "de-identified student assessments." I don't know how a product can make personalized recommendations to students without the vendor knowing who they are. And kids that young should not be on devices at all. There was an article a few weeks ago in JAMA saying
they were looking at CAT scans of kids' young brains, and there was a correlation between their use of devices and the deterioration of white matter in their brains. The research is very startling. It comes out every day. Kids in pre-K and second grade- Thank you. Your speaker series expired ... regardless of AI should not be on devices, period. Thank you. Good evening once again. My name is Martina Meyer, and while I am an employee of
the Department of Education, I am speaking on my own behalf right now. I would also like to speak against contract number 22, The Age of Learning. This is a teacher-facing tool, but it also has access to student personal information. It utilizes AI to summarize students' data and progress. And teachers are burdened with an unsustainable workload, including our teachers of our youngest learners. I don't begrudge my colleagues for seeking ways to meet the demands, including the use of AI, but I ask what the underlying labor issues are with this approach.
No student data should be trusted with these tech companies that have been shown time and time again to be untrustworthy and not accountable. I'm also speaking out against the UFT Teacher Center contract of $21 million over three years. It's the last contract on the list. As a proud UFT member, I like to see a healthy distance between the union and the boss. If the union stands to profit from the rollout of the curriculum mandates and the implementation of AI, how can they
possibly represent member concerns and teacher autonomy? It's a conflict of interest that the DOE should not be participating in either. I assure you, I have raised these concerns with the UFT as well. I would also like to speak out against the contracts number 24 for the entire line of Kaplan learning services. Strange how there's always money for these external contracts, but not money for reducing class sizes, paying teachers for their expertise, and posting more per session opportunities for educators.
We need all of this money that's being spent on these contracts to be invested in our schools. We need more counselors, intervention specialists, multilingual educational and emotional support. Immigrant students need legal support. We need to invest in our infrastructure. So many of these contracts are continuing the privatization of our public money. DOE has one of the highest rates of contracting out work to third parties of any city agency, and I say for shame.
For shame. Two and a half minutes is not enough to speak against the many millions of dollars being wasted in these contracts, but we need to end mayoral control and have community accountability for how this money is spent. It's our money. We decide. Well, good evening, panel members. My name is Brian Miller, and I'm very proud to be the vice president of sales for Age of Learning. We are the creators of ABC Mouse, My Math Academy, and My Reading Academy. Our mission is simple To help children everywhere build a strong foundation of academic success and a lifelong love of learning. That mission has guided everything we have done for the past 17 years. In that time, we've served 55 million
learners worldwide, earned the trust of 45 million families, and empowered over 700,000 educators in classrooms very similar to what you see right here in New York City. That foundation drives everything that we bring to schools. Our programs are curriculum first, developed by education experts, and backed by more than 30 SL line studies that do prove the impact of our products on all learners, and is designed to put teachers in control. Now, I know there are a couple of questions here on AI, I'm not immune to that. And I actually came here to address that. So first and foremost, AI is not our product. Our product is curriculum. All right?
Our AI is completely invisible to students. They see learning activities, and that's it. There's no interaction with the AI in the program. Now, for teachers, our AI is a time-saving tool. It helps them with lesson plan generation, grouping recommendations, but most importantly for the teachers, they can turn it off at any point, because again, they have complete control of everything going on in their classroom. And again, we're no strangers to this city. We are working with schools all over the place, whether it be in the Bronx, in Queens, in Brooklyn. But what I'm most proud of is the work that we've done outside the classroom. We recently partnered with District 75 and donated over 5,000 ABC Mouse books to support their students in
most need, because at the end of the day, every child in this city deserves access to great learning. And that's something that we truly believe in. Now, that same commitment is to kids is why student safety is non-negotiable for us. Our programs are all COPPA, FERPA, SOC 2, and ISO 2, IEC 2701 compliant, independently audited, and approved as an Irma vendor with New York City Public Schools. Student data has one job, and that's to help children learn. We are here today because we believe New York City students deserve equitable access to learning that works, and we are ready to partner with educators and
families to bring that to the city and make that happen. We're not just a company looking for a contract. We are your neighbors, we are partners, and we truly are committed to ensuring that every child in New York City has a strong foundation for academic success and a lifelong love of learning. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Iona Ninay, Kevin Dugan, Kelly Clancy, Kalira Salas-Ramirez, Dr. Courtney Johnson, Justin Demartin. Hi, I'm Kelly Clancy. I've talked a couple times tonight. The last time I was up here, I talked about how as a community, we need to make
decisions about how we govern ourselves, and one thing that should not be allowed is for corporate lobbyists from for-profit vendors to come here to tell us how to run our schools. Like, this is bananas. So the gentleman who just spoke is a lobbyist. The woman who's about to speak, she's a lobbyist. Like, lobbyists should not have access to this venue. Like, I don't know how else to talk about how we need to make decisions as a community that separates the finances of ed
tech companies from the way that we make decisions about our children. Just like one of the speakers before talked about how Google GSV fellows should not have Google's best interest at heart, not our students' at heart, the same goes for ed tech companies. The Kidim CEO decided to show up before, right? He was winking at all of the PEP members, and then he rolled out like he's Colin Kaepernick. What are we doing having these people here? It defies belief. These contracts should not pass. We were told that no contracts with AI in them
would pass until there was a playbook. We do not have a playbook. The other thing that I-- So it's not AI student-facing, but it is highly engagement-seeking student-facing. That shouldn't happen. It's AI teacher-facing. That should not pass. The other thing I would like to say is that there are a number of contracts that specifically exist to Trojan horse AI products through the back door without going through privacy regulations again. This is what HMH is doing, this is what Kaplan's doing, this is what a number of other places are doing. I sent an email asking, "When was the last time that HMH had to
re-go through privacy certification?" And I was told that I had to FOIA that information. That is bananas. And so we need to vote no on contracts until we know how we are getting our privacy situation under control. The fact that these are not engagement-seeking behaviors, we should not have vendors lobbying at these meetings. Like, this is not how we govern ourselves in a democracy. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Clancy. Hard to follow that up, especially since I'm going to say very similar things. It would be lovely for us to continue to assess whether these
contracts are actually beneficial. So one of the things that was difficult, even when I was sitting in your seat and much more now that I'm not, is to look at the efficacy of some of these contracts and why we're really investing the significant amount of money on these different platforms, as well as diverse kinds of professional development. Are they working in our schools? Is this what our teachers need? Is this what our teachers want? Is this what our children need and want? Are we upholding privacy laws for our students and for our teachers? And that isn't evident in the documentation
that you all have provided. I'm not sure if you guys are having those conversations. Those conversations haven't been super transparent. I do find it really disturbing that even as I walk in the door, I've gotten three business cards since I've been here from different people and different vendors, because they've identified that I am a former PEP member and that I am a CEC person. I have also gotten emails from Magic School AI to ask whether I want a presentation on my CEC. I don't understand why there are vendors that are consistently reaching
out to us for specific things when they're supposed to be going through a vetting process, a procurement process, that will protect our communities from predatory vendors and lobbyists. So I will ask you to please consider who we're engaging with and what we're engaging with. The other thing is that recently we received notification that some of our schools, the nonprofits associated with Affinity Schools, those contracts are on the chopping block. And those are organizations that do provide
significant and important professional development for our high schools in a time when we are engaging in a process of thinking about the portrait of the New York State graduate, and these folks provide professional development that is critical for our school communities. So let's think about those contracts and think about moving forward, rather than engaging in predatory contracts that could lead us to additional lawsuits and significant losses that will ultimately harm our children, not just financially, but also cognitively and as they continue to develop. Thank you.
Begin. Good evening. I'm Dr. Courtney Johnson, and I previously began speaking, discussing my research and the work that I have done across special education, the impact that I have made, and the commitment that I have made, not only to New York City, but to New York State and its students. I would like to speak to you now as a parent. I am the parent of a pre-K student in District 10 in the Bronx who receives special education itinerant teacher services, occupational therapy, speech language therapy, and there was a time where I did not believe that my daughter would be able to
speak to me. I did not believe that she would be able to read, and it broke my heart. I used many of my skills and a relationship that I learned to build with ABC Mouse and the organization that I now have recently just joined as Age of Learning because of the gains that my baby has made. My pre-K student, who started the school year unable to answer WH questions, is now reading on a first-grade level, doing math and numeracy levels on an end of kindergarten level, and she's still in pre-K.
She is very social, and she used to play alone by herself. These tools not only encourage engagement, but they encourage social skills that families are able to go in and monitor. As a parent, I am able to use the family caregiver app and see where her progress is and how I can download resources that we can use at home. So as a parent, I am speaking to you and asking for you to vote on something that will move the needle that I have been able to
witness and use in my own home with my learner who was severely delayed, and I'm seeing tremendous gains. Is AI or technology the end-all be-all for any student? Absolutely not. It requires intention, rollout. We have the infrastructure to support New York City with the staff to develop professional development sessions and services that are family-facing, teacher-facing, and community-facing. So I am asking for you to vote on something in a relationship that embodies our chancellor's vision and the city's
investment in early childhood education. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'm Dr. Justin Martin. I'm the Vice President of Customer Success at Age of Learning. So my job's simple: Make sure our programs are actually working for students, educators, and families every single day. I'm an educator, I'm a parent of twins, and I know what it looks like when a program sits unused on a shelf. I also know what it looks like when a program truly transforms not only a classroom, but also the kids in my own home. So that's the difference, what drives what I do every single day.
So I've had the privilege of working directly with teachers and administrators across not only this country, but also the world, from Sayreville, New Jersey to Montgomery, Alabama, and to Costa Rica. So these districts look nothing like each other on paper, different demographics, different resources, and different challenges. But the one thing that I see that's the same in every single classroom that I walk into is amazing teachers and students who want to learn. And we're not here to replace teachers. We're not here to
do anything like that. Our job is just to make learning a little bit more fun. So what I hear most from educators is this: that when students are using our programs, they finally have the data that they need to make decisions with the real-time dashboards that show them exactly where their students are, what they need to do next, how to group them for more effective instruction. No more guessing, no more one size fits all, and I think that's what's most powerful. But what I love most is that kids don't want to stop when they're on the programs. Our programs are designed to be genuinely engaging.
They're playing, exploring, they're building skills without even realizing that they're learning, and teachers are telling me that students want to continue on the programs. So it's that joy in the classroom, that excitement. It's not by accident, but it's by design. And it doesn't stop with teachers. Like Courtney said, families are a part of this too.Our programs provide progress updates in both English and Spanish, and a variety of other languages for every parent, regardless of background, so that they can be connected to their child's journey. And I think what's most important is we don't stop.
We want to continue with that commitment, and that commitment's here with New York City as well. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Hiam Abbas, Lauren Monaco, Camilla Carman, Durani Henderson, Reverend Thompson, Samantha Vincenty. This is just open comment, right? So am I on the right- No, actually, this is on contract. No. Let me, I'll come back. Let me bring you back. Yeah. Okay. Hi, I'm Camilla Carman. I'm here to speak about the software contracts, at least one of which has been confirmed, this one with all the lobbyists, to contain AI. As a supporter of the grassroots movement for a minimum of two-year moratorium on
AI in New York City schools, I oppose that contract for Age of Learning categorically. In addition, I would be leery of supporting the other two software contracts. Even if these contracts do not yet include AI components, what are the assurances that AI won't be added into the software once the contracts are signed? We have seen AI creep into so much of the software we use daily, whether that's something irritating, like being unable to escape from a non-human voicemail hell, or something alarming, like a bot invading our privacy to read, and summarize our texts,
a need that I believe is entirely manufactured to begin with. I'm very skeptical that Kaplan and El Tutor won't follow this industry trend and incorporate AI. I concur with the students who spoke so eloquently at the start of this meeting. We should be cautious about rushing into contracts that can fundamentally change the nature of teaching and learning. Right. This position is not, as I heard the chancellor and chief academic officer claim at a town hall, derived out of "fear." Truthfully, that characterization feels
patronizing. The students and educators who support the moratorium do so from lived experience, not speculative fear. They care too deeply about the threat to the climate that AI imposes on their futures. Beyond that, we have researchers like Jared Cooney Horvath, a neuroscientist who testified in front of Congress, who have sounded the alarm about the cognitive debt AI and screens generally are saddling our children with. Learning is about relationships and process, neither of which can be replaced by robots and software.
Let's spend our money wisely. Don't approve these contracts. And as far as play, children can play with blocks, and that's what kids in pre-K should be doing- The Legos ... not playing on an app. Or Legos. Hello. And pre-K, kids don't need to read in pre-K. I learned to read in first grade. I was able to survive and read later. Thank you. It's amazing. Woo. Good evening. Reverend Leticia Thompson. Did I already say AI is a NO? Okay, I said that already.
All right, fine. No problem. All right. So no to contract number 22, no to contract number 24. That shouldn't even be a consideration because we haven't finished our engagement process yet, right, DOE? Right. We're just in the guidance phase, right? So we shouldn't be approving the purchase of anything AI because we're not doing it yet, right? Because accountability and integrity. All right. Contract number 2 is where I want to rest. Professional development for school teachers and leaders has
been on this budget contract thing every single month. So this is the fourth month that we've had more money being thrown at school leaders. And here's what I need to say. I'm not in support of giving school leaderships, AKA principals, AKA CSA, anything else. I am in support of them learning how to manage their budgets with transparency and learning how to retain their staff, period.
Take school leadership out of this contract. Take them out the group chat. They have every resource they need, including a competent staff and parent leaders that they're supposed to be working with. Why do we continue to say that we're developing them? Aren't they already developed? Don't they already have these district leadership certificates? Let the superintendents do their job. Let the superintendents develop their principals.
Do your job and stop paying for development for our school leaders, and take all of that and invest it in the ones who actually are educating our children in the classrooms. Thank you. The next group of speakers, Rashida Brown-Harris, Natasha Biosa, Tanaya Nasser. Oh, man. I learn. I forgot I signed up for this part, but I will say that, what is it? There's Kaplan and there's Age of Learning that are contracts, right? Age of Learning, they had to pay over 100 million to the FCC four or
five years ago for renewing subscriptions that were canceled. I think I already said earlier the thing about Kaplan. What was it? But... Oh, what was it? What? Yeah, there's a data breach. They're under a class action federal lawsuit because... Yeah, tens of thousands of people across the country, particularly in Texas and Michigan, I think. Okay, file- I know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Oh, there. Okay, you can begin. Hey, I don't remember signing up for this part, but I do have something to say.
Everyone has spoken their minds and said what they needed to say, and we should listen to our community members instead of lobbyists and business folks. There are million-dollar contracts here that we can reinvest in our schools for more important things. Just please be cautious and do right by our schools and our community and our students. Thank you. Thank you, Natasha. Peace, y'all. Rashida Brown Harris here. I actually don't remember signing up for the contracts either, but
reiterating what everyone said, my folks, when they're talking about some of these contracts that make no sense and some of these contracts that are excessive in prices, but wanted to just, I guess, get a little more transparency on the contracts, like committee meetings and understanding. Maybe it's all posted on the website, but I just wanted to say it publicly how difficult it is to navigate through the site and figure out the meetings and the meeting minutes, what was discussed,
and how y'all are following up and being supported and understanding about all these contracts. I know that was always an issue with PEP. I think we're doing a little better. We definitely want to celebrate our mini wins, but knowing that this is a lot. There's a lot, and we just really want to make sure that we're not just approving a whole bunch of contracts that are more than-- Five-year contracts are ridiculous. But definitely supporting each other with understanding them all. Some of y'all understand them on the panel, some of y'all don't, and I don't think that's right either. So really trying to support y'all understanding so y'all
can support the community with understanding and just recognizing how much money all these contracts are, when every time you turn around, y'all are saying we don't have enough money for a lot of the basics that we need. Thank you. That's it. Okay, that concludes our public comment period. I'll now open the floor for panel members who wish to comment. Panel Member Hannah-Jones. Hello, everyone. Baraji Hannah-Jones, CEC appointee. Just for those parents who are concerned about these contracts, I just want to let you know, for the first time in two years, there is a contract committee. Baraji Hannah-Jones is the chair,
and I will be giving everyone all the information and communication as to what we are doing, what's being on these agendas. So we did have our first meeting. It wasn't well attended. I will take the blame for that, but I guarantee you, I will be blasting everyone to let you know when we're holding these contract committee meetings, because I want you to be able to get and delve into these things and discuss them. So just so you know, I will be the chair, and thank
you. Panel Member Hassan. Thank you, Chair Faulkner. Panel Member Nadir Hassan, Manhattan CECs. I want to recognize and thank all of the students and parents and teachers who have come out to speak about education technology. I feel like this is the correct agenda item to be talking about this because we spend, I think, a quarter of our budget dollars outsourcing work that really should be held inside the DOE with staff that is union, paid, with benefits, that keeps expertise in-house,
and develops more of it, so that we stop losing both the staff talent and also our data to outside vendors, right? So this is a very broad discussion right now. It's a broad discussion around education technology in general. I want to recognize the Los Angeles Unified School District to the resolution that they passed. I want to recognize Panel Member Altman, who brought it up yesterday, and I think that is something that we will be taking up in the next month or so, to look at all of the use of technology, its
appropriateness or not. And the determination should be made by the people that are teaching our kids, right? That are in the classroom with our kids on what is appropriate for them. There needs to be a mechanism in place for them to bring thatToo light, and also they need to be empowered to make choices about what's there. I'm not happy with the way contracts are being used to outsource our entire curriculum, when we have people who live here who speak the languages and understand the culture of New York City, who are well
enough talented to do that work themselves and share it with schools all around the city. We need to go back to the ideas around the mosaic curriculum that we had at the end of the de Blasio administration. I would like to see that work happening. I would like to see fewer devices in our K through eight schools in general. On the AI work, we need to look at the strong demands across the political spectrum on a moratorium for use of any AI technology until such time as that we have a good consensus on what parents and students actually
want. And we're hearing from across the boroughs. I want to recognize Council Member Phil Wong for coming out and supporting this. This is a real discussion that needs to be had amongst all parents and teachers and students to make sure that what's being offered to them fits them, as opposed to the desires of vendors, right? I really wish that we would do things better, and I'm going to do everything in my ability to make sure that we elevate that type of discussion. So thanks again.
Thank you. Any other panel members wish to comment? Panel Member Cassaratti? I wonder if you might engage me in a question about the ethics of item number 22, not in the content of the actual contract, but in the fact that vendors are here discussing their contract with us prior to a vote. Let me just comment on the vendors that are here. This is a public meeting, and the public is allowed to attend. Yes, I totally understand that. So, yeah. But per the DOE procurement policy and procedures,
page 15, ethics, it does say when there is doubt as to whether conduct is prohibited by Chapter 68 of the New York City Charter and Chancellor's Regulation C- Yeah, panel member, could you say it again? The lawyer needs to be able to hear to give an interpretation, so could you speak up a little? So I'm just saying that I'm questioning whether vendors coming to speak about their products prior to a vote is a conflict of interest per the procurement policy and procedures, Section
1-05. And so when in doubt, we're supposed to be seeking guidance from DOE ethics officer. Well, it's interesting. We had this conversation a year ago when a vendor came when a contract was denied, and we brought this up. We discussed this, and we said that we should not set a trend. We voted to allow a vendor to speak when the vendor's contract had been rejected, and one of the things we said is that this would set a precedent in the future that vendors will regularly attend meetings. There was a vote to disallow that vendor to
speak. That vote failed. I think you sponsored. You were part of that- Post ... post-discussion. But that was rejected. We're talking now about things that we haven't voted on yet. Yeah, but the point is that we opened the door to allow vendors to come. Now, at the same time, it's a public meeting and vendors and anyone in the public is going to have the right to speak. Now, I'm going to ask the attorney if he can give us some advice on this. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. Could you recite the section? Sure. Sorry, I just lost it. 1-05, page 15.
Yeah, I'm on that. Okay, she's looking at it. So we'll get... But they're seeking post the procurement meeting. So is that clear? It's a public meeting, and there is nothing in the rules that preclude those vendors from coming and presenting. So let's move on. Is there anyone else who wishes to speak? Panel Member Altman. A lot of parents when it comes to AI- Thank you ... is not necessarily the AI itself is being used as a tool, but the amount of time that digital technology devices and screen time are in front of our children. So I did send out to the panel yesterday, the
LA Unified School District passed a resolution just this April 21st, 2026, that says, "Using technology with intention and establishing guidelines for student screen time." I think we're having too much screen time, AI or not AI. I think it's replacing engagement and socialization. We just banned phones for the very same reason, because we saw the implications of the addiction of screens with our children to the point that the entire state banned phones from all our students
during school. But they're still allowed tablets. They're allowed computers. We're just replacing the phones with DOE screens instead. So what I would like to see with the guidance on artificial intelligence, what we're doing right now to create that rubric, to create those policies for the playbook that was coming out in June, is to truly look at the resolution that the second-largest school district just passed, limiting screen times, so that if any AI comes down the line, we know that there is
a limit to how much it can influence our students to not turn them into lifelong customers or into addicts. Thank you. Thank you, panel member. Are there any additional comments from panel members? Panel member Alicea? Thank you. Good evening again, everyone. Adriana Alicea, she/her, here for Queens CEC. Thank you, panel member Cassaratti, for bringing that question up, and thank you for the take from legal. I really appreciate that. In my personal capacity in this seat, I do not look kindly on vendors coming and speaking to us before we vote,
because I feel personally that it is undue influence upon me and my vote, and it also feels a little bit like a conflict of interest in my personal opinion. So I would not be able to fairly vote on the contract if I'm hearing from the vendor directly right before the vote. So thank you, and good night. Okay, any other panel members wish to speak? What? I don't know. Huh? Yeah. Any other panel members? Okay, we're now ready for a vote. Oh, sorry. Panel member Alicea?
Sorry. No on two, abstaining on five, abstaining on 22, 23, and 24. Okay. Thanks, Noah. Oh, one more time. Number two is no. Number five, abstain. 22, abstain. 23, abstain. 24, abstain. Thank you. Altman? Abstain on 22, abstain on 23. Yes to the rest. Alban? Yes to all except for 22, I abstain. Barile? No. Cassaratti? No to 22, yes to the rest. Collins? No for 22, yes for the rest of the items.
Dean-Stagg? Yes to all. Fair? Yes to all. Garcia? Yes to all. Giordano? Yes to all. Vice Chair Green? Yes to all. Hanna-Jones? No to 22. No to 23. No to 24. And yes to the rest. Hassan? Abstain 22, abstain 23, abstain 24, and yes to the rest. Ho? Yes to all. Izquierdo? Abstain on 22, 23, and 24. Yes to the rest. Jimenez? Abstain 22, and yes to the rest. Ardwin? Yes to all. Ang? Yes to all. Parsons? Abstain 22, abstain 24. Yes to the rest.
Saath? Yes to all. Chair Faulkner? Yes to all. Okay, we're going to move on to proposals for school utilization because it needs to be a little bit of tallying here, and it may take a little while. So, you going to read the resolution? Not yet. The resolution up for consideration is entitled the Resolution for Significant Changes in School Utilization. Okay. Is there a motion to accept the resolution? Is there a second? Moved and seconded. We'll now move to public comment. Superintendents. Oh, yes. Do we have superintendents here? Could you please come forward? Yeah, to the resolution. Yeah.
You're going to run through the resolution? Thank you. Yeah. Oh, you want to go now? No, no. Oh, okay. Yeah. And then... So, one, two. Oh. You can begin. Oh, thank you. Good evening, everyone. Thank you for this opportunity. On behalf of our District 4 community, I stand here with a proposal that we have engaged... Thank you. We've engaged our community with, starting in September. And I also want to acknowledge Superintendent Dr. Keisha McCoy, because this proposal was posted to open and co-locate a new elementary school
site of the existing District 75 school, Manhattan School for Career Development, to be called PSF 751M at the M121 building, serving students in grades K through 5 in our 121 building for the upcoming school year. I'm also proud to say that this is because a charter schoolDecreased and left one of our school buildings, so that is why we're wanting to put in D75. Some of the data we have to support
this proposal is that we have approximately District 75 elementary school seats that we need. So there is a deficit right now among Districts 4, 5, and 6 in which we need 142 seats. So this proposal will help address that. Additionally- Thank you ... with these numbers, and we all know, and I want to thank our PEP members who did come to our joint public hearing, that this new program will also reduce travel
times. So that is another thing that I know listening to the voices of the community. If approved by the Panel for Education Policy, we will be adding approximately 60 to 120 District 75 seats across 10 special class sections. We will be able to add 12 to one to one, 8 one to one, or 6 to one to one classroom settings, and that's the ratio of students to teachers to paraprofessional, depending on the enrolled student
needs. If this proposal is approved for the upcoming year, the M121 campus will have a total building enrollment of between 195 to 335, which will still maintain our building utilization rate of either 39% to 66% at the most. So we will still maintain the class size laws in effect. We also want to know that we have been partnering with D75. We love D75 and District 4 East
Harlem, and that this proposal will not impact the current or future enrollment of the existing admissions, academic offerings, or extracurricular programming at PS Again, I want to thank everyone, and I hope you will consider approving this proposal. When we had the joint public hearing on February 24th, it was well-received. And again, I want to thank all of our PEP members who joined. And I just want to say on behalf of District 4, D75, our CEC president, the
SLTs of both of schools, the principals of both schools, we are all on board as one community to support this proposal. So thank you for your time. Oh, no. I go. Okay. Oh, you go first? Thank you so much, Superintendent DeLaCruz. I'm here to speak on behalf of Superintendent Dr. Keisha McCoy, in strong support of this proposal. Could not have a more welcome and supportive relationship with this proposed co-location of District 75 and the Community School in District 4. I will share that the District 75
principal who would be supporting that school if the resolution passes, was here with six staff members. I did ask them to go home about an hour ago, and so they'll be well-rested for their children tomorrow. But they're really excited to do wonderful things for children in the community, with the support of the PEP on this vote. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Carrie Chan. I'm the superintendent of District 1. Thank you. I was waiting for that. So anyways, this is just a fun fact. I actually attended this school, so this is
very nostalgic for me. Thank you. Anywho, so tonight, I know we've heard a lot of concerns about overcrowdedness, the new class size law, and underutilized space. I'm here today to share an exciting proposal with you that will address all of those issues. In addition to that, I really want to thank you, our elected officials, our CEC 1 president, our CEC 1 members, our community members, both of our principals who are still here, and our teachers, and thank you so much for still being here
tonight. We're really excited about this proposal because we have done multiple engagements with different stakeholders. We have done tons of school leadership team meetings. Is that for me? Oh. School leadership team meetings, PTA meetings, just lots of community events to make sure that we really heard from our community. And we know that this proposal will also promote collaboration with both schools. And we definitely want to serve as a model of collaboration of a shared
campus. So I'm really, really excited to hope that all of you will approve this proposal. Thank you. Good night, members of the PEP, Chancellor Samuels, members of the community that are still here. I stand before you to talk about the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women with a very heavy heart. After 20-plus years of that school servicing and supporting young women throughout New York City and all the five boroughs, we haven't been able to sustain the enrollment over the past three
years to really justify continuing with the school. So we've had several engagements over the past three years with families, with the staff, with students, and we're submitting the proposal to close the school. Thank you. Okay. We'll now move to public comment And after tallying the votes, all contract items passed except for contract item number 22, which had eight yeses, three noes, and seven abstentions. Okay. For public comment for school utilization proposals being considered this
evening, Jonathan Lansman, Sharika Lucian, Sarah Schechter Ehrenberg, Lee Dines, Max German, Odin Adler. Okay. Florence Holson-Fielding, Yatin Chu, Katherine Savage, Joe McGee, Dina Holson-Fielding. You can begin. Good evening. Good night, members of the PEP. My name is Yatin Chu. I'm a public school parent. I'm here as a former PS 184 Strongwind School parent, and I served on the school's SLT for two terms while my child was attending the school.
She had a strong academic and dual language education there, and it's no surprise that the school has continued to attract more and more families. Even though my child is now in high school, we have fond memories of the school, and I'm here to speak for the school. And I strongly support the re-siting of Strongwind's middle school grades to the M-134 building so that, one, Strongwind's pre-K to fifth grade students at the current site will have more space
to comply with the class size law. And two, the Strongwind six to eight students will have additional room to grow and in this new building. Since M-134's utilization is at just 28%, there appears to be plenty of space for the two schools to coexist and work and share harmoniously with the common space. I urge you to approve this utilization proposal. I think it is a win-win situation for all the
District 1 families. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Katherine Savage again. It wouldn't let me continue on with the form without clicking something, so I'm just for the open comment. Okay, thank you. You can begin. There you go. Think she's looking out for speech. Just go? Okay. Good evening, everyone. My name is Graven Olivares. And hold on, let me get this. I'm sorry. I know I've been sitting here all night, but I got a little ner-- Hold on. I just want to make sure that I say everything that I need to say. Ah. Good evening, everyone. Hello.
My name is Graven Olivares, and I am the current president of CEC 1. On behalf of the families that I serve and I represent, I am here to speak on this proposal that we're proposing. And I want to be clear, it's coming from someone who lived in this community my whole life, not born, raised in this community my whole life. I was a student at PS 134 myself. I am now the president of CEC 1. I am also a member of Community Board 3, and I'm the vice president of the Gouverneur Hospital Board. So when I'm talking, I know that I'm talking because I'm talking for my community,
and I've been here forever. Every position that I am on is a volunteer position. I don't do this for money or for anything. I do this for the gratitude that this community has opened their arm to me, taught me English. I came here as a migrant, and I didn't know English, and I learned it in 134 and in PS 110 and in District 1. I am a parent of three children, raising three children in District 1 now. All that being said, for the past few months, I've done the work with my community. I've met with families. I've met with everyone, and we did surveys several times. We've been honest communications with the
parents. We've learned to our community. We have reached out to all parents. We have engaged with meetings several times with parents and listened to what our parents need and want. And one of the things that I'm most proud of is that the voices that come to me, I always listen, and that's why I'm here representing. This proposal reflects not only communication. It's collaboration with, for the first time that I've been involved in anything, I have listened to communities, heard their voices, and stood up for that.
As I want everyone to know here that I do not work for District 1. I am here to stand for families and speak the truth. I'm here to always voice the parents, and I'm here always honestly, genuine, and transparently. The voices of our family acts clearly strong that I do support this because I know that change is not easy, but I know that what we're doing, we're doing it correctly this time, not like we did when we lost PS 19. Our students deserve better. Our parents deserve-Our parents deserve to voices to be heard, because at the end of the day, everyone goes home, but we live in this district,
and we have nowhere to go. And this thing is very personal to me, because I've been on this council for several years, and I've learned my way, and I've paid my time, so I know. This work does not only end here tonight. This work is to hold-- I will be holding everyone accountable, the district, Carrie, everyone that I've worked with- Okay. Speaker, your time has expired, but I'm giving you a little extra time because of the mix up you had- Thank you ... at the beginning. But I actually allocated a few extra- I just have one more minute. The work does not end tonight. It actually starts tonight, and I just want you guys to give us an opportunity
to do this. Our district took the time, the consideration, the dedication to listen to our families, and this is a plan that we want you to approve because us, the families, have been involved. Not like in the past before. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Magda Napoleon, and I am the district leader of the part where this utilization proposal is happening. First and foremost, you don't know me, I'm a stickler for community involvement and engagement. Right?
So when my community came and said that there was a merger happening, which was the word that was being used, I hit the community. Not the superintendent's office, not CEC, but the direct families that were being impacted. What I got was that there was extreme family engagement going on with this proposal. That everyone was involved, and everyone had a say, and that this was wanted by
the community. So I stand here as a community lead, representing my community, saying that the realities that we were all talking about earlier and things that can happen, this is an easy reality to make this proposal go through and have an underutilized school help a school that's overcrowded. Thank you. You're just a leader. Okay. Over to you. The next set of speakers, Kevin Dugan, Aixa Rodriguez, Matthew Dunn,
Olive Fielding, Samantha Gomez, Adriana Bogeran. Hi there. We're definitely My name is Samantha Lynn Gomez, and I'm a teacher at Sheng Wen. As a teacher, it is my goal to reach every single student that steps into my classroom. While I can assure you I give my all year after year, it takes a lot to care for 30 students at once. To meet the needs of all my students currently, I put them in groups of six. Right? The new class sizes would reduce the number of students in my classroom closer to 20. That essentially decreases my small groups from five to three, or significantly reduces the number of students I can have in each group,
allowing for more individual attention. I would have the flexibility to decide how to arrange my groupings to best meet the needs of my students and the lesson's activity with less fear of time constraints, student personalities, and other variables that are magnified from having a large class. I could continue to list additional reasons why this would be beneficial to all parties. To be mindful of time and others who would like to speak, I would like to end with this final thought. New York City public school teachers do what we do because we genuinely care about each and every one of our students. Our students are worth overcoming every obstacle and every hardship.
When given the opportunity, we will fight to give our students the best possible outcome. Case in point, I'm standing in front of you instead of being at home with my 18-month-old because I hope that in his future he will have educators invested in his academic success willing to fight for him. New York City public school teachers are some of, if not the most resilient people. We will figure out how to teach to the best of our ability with whatever hand we are dealt, and our students will thrive. Imagine how much more amazing the outcome could be when we are set up for
success by allowing our school to expand and make smaller class sizes a reality. Thank you for your time. Hi, good evening. I'm a parent of a student in PS 184 Sheng Wen. You're going to have to move closer to the mic because we're having a hard time hearing you. I'm a parent of a student in PS 184 in Sheng Wen. I'm asking you to please approve this movement because it will be important for my child to be in a smaller classroom. She will be able to learn and will be able to experience more in this new school with the other students. So can you please consider this movement? Thank you.
Thank you. Okay. You can begin. Okay. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to speak to you about the resiting at PS 184. As a parent of a fifth grader in the school, in full transparency, I am also on the CEC 1 and part of the PS 184 SLT, but speaking in my personal capacity today. The proposed resiting of PS 184 M. Sheng Wen Middle School to the M134 building is a positive solution that supports our District 1
community. And that is, it's meeting the class size mandate, responding to funding realities, and keeping a neighborhood school building open and viable, and therefore, it should be moved forward and approvedAs discussed a number of times tonight, all public schools are legally required to meet the class size mandate in another two years, and PS 184M will not be in compliance without additional building space. And the current proposal to reset the PS 1 Gwen Middle School grades helps to keep family logistics relatively streamlined while ensuring compliance
with the law. Furthermore, residing PS 184M, PS 1 Gwen to another District 1 location will also help smaller co-located schools by bringing additional resources to the school building, and help provide additional enrichment and extracurricular opportunities that all parents desire for their children. This residing, not merger or closure or takeover, as has been explained in earlier hearings, but some in our community, so I'm just saying it here, have been misconstruing. This is a scenario of a shared
success, providing the students of PS 134 with more resources for a holistic, robust education while allowing PS 184M to be compliant. Fair Student Funding is designed to follow students, and this proposal allows more students and those resources to go towards M134. This residing is a practical, lawful, and community-preserving solution that meets the class size mandate, stabilizes a vulnerable building, and keeps public education rooted in its neighborhood. Please pass this resolution to provide an
opportunity for both PS 184 and 184 to move forward and continue to build an effective, strong public school community. Thank you. The next group of speakers, Marleny Nunez, Calira Salas Ramirez, Lyla Mejia, Rosa Leo, Justin DeMartin, Gavin Olivares. Is that okay? Hi, everyone. My name is Marleny. As a parent of- Could you wait just a second? Can we have everybody please come to order so we can hear the speakers? Yeah, go ahead. Hi, everyone. My name is Marleny. As a parent of a PS 1 Gwen student, I am in favor and support of the expansion of our school.
I feel that my child and other children would benefit from smaller class sizes. I think that the smaller class size will help the students get the support they need from the teachers if they have less kids in their class. Currently, some of the classes have 30 or more students in them, and the teachers cannot give the student the support and the time that they need. If we stay in just the current building, they cannot have more classes, and they are not able to make smaller class sizes. This will not benefit our children or the teachers.
Thank you. Greetings. My name is Lyla Mejia, and I'm the former CEC 1 President. I'm also a lifelong resident of the Lower East Side. I am here on behalf of parents from PS 134 who have not been given clear communication from their school leadership, superintendent, and especially the CEC 1. And that's exactly why there was only one parent here earlier. And I'm sure out of proposals submitted, there were probably maybe three or four parents. I am standing here texting parents from PS 134 right now,
and parents told me they had no idea that this meeting was happening tonight. No call, no outreach, nothing. So who is this process really for? Because it's not the families of 134. We are told to come here to speak tonight, but how do you fight when the people most impacted are not even in this room tonight? And let's be honest, this is not a discussion because PS 184 has already been moving their items into PS 134. This location has already been decided.
When 137 was lost to 134, I was there, and the district promised to put more resources, and those promises have been short of follow-through. We see what happens when a bigger, more resourced school moves into a smaller one. Look at ECVS and PS 19 in my community. The smaller school's space slowly disappear, not overnight, but slowly and quietly until one day it's gone. So let's call this what it is. This location is not support, it's not partnership, it's
a phase-out of PS 134. And what makes this even harder is that we heard the Chancellor say he's looking to phase out schools that have an attendance of 150 and less. 134 has an attendance of 120. So I need to ask, why are we not saying that plainly to these families? Why are we lying? And why are we dressing this up like something that it's not? PS 134 parents and children deserve honesty, they deserve respect, and they deserve to be in the room when decisions about their future are being made, and they're not here to be part of that.
I totally disagree with this plan. Yeah. He's got that one. Good evening. Dr. Arcaly Salas, President of CEC 4. Oh my God, I have really bad bags under my- Under my eyes right now. Okay. First of all, I want to say that I have the dopest superintendent in all of Manhattan, Dr. Christie De La Cruz. Sorry, I love you all, superintendents. But I do have to shout her out because she's somebody that truly engages community, and this proposal was something that we've been thinking about for over a year. In East Harlem, we have lost a significant amount of enrollment in our charter schools, because some other folks like to say and claim
enrollment declines that aren't accurate, in our charter schools, and therefore, we have regained some space. And this is one of the first where we're going to have an opportunity to co-locate a District 75 school. Unfortunately, my vice president, Lacey Jordan, who is our District 75 rep, is not here tonight. But if she were here, she'd continue to advocate for District 75 seats to continue to increase in District 4. We still have a bit of a need. In addition to ASD NEST programs and Horizon programs and AIMS programs, Chancellor Samuels heard about that from my council at our CEC
town hall. So East Harlem is in full support of this proposal. We will continue to advocate for our students with disabilities as well as our students with IEPs and special needs to continue to have seats in our district, because we have educators that truly care and are deeply invested, particularly as we continue to see, again, this need increase in our community. So again, we're totally in favor. Vote yes. We'll ride or die with our District 75 community. Thank you.
Mm-hmm. Good evening, PEP. Good evening, Chancellor Samuels. Good evening, community members that are still here. It is inching towards 11 o'clock, and it's very late. I, for the last eight years, have been the proud principal for PS We have been having this conversation for approximately half a year. Dr. Kaplanoff and I have worked together for seven years collaborating with everything from best instructional practices, analysis of assessments, and so we've grown very close over the years. This conversation has been shared respect and agreements between both of us this entire
journey. This is an opportunity for us. We have programs that we want to be able to take advantage of to robust our arts. We integrate everything with the arts, and it's limited right now with the amount of kids that we have, and our fourth and fifth graders keep asking me for the theater programs to reignite our partnership with Abrams Art Center. But there's so few kids because we're partnered also with Third Street Music. They're doing dance. They're doing music. We can also collaborate those resources to have their sixth and seventh graders be a part of this theater program and set
design to really reinvigorate all of the art disciplines at our school. I do also want to speak in directly to the multiple opportunities that we've engaged our families in, with starting with our SLT team, starting with our PTA. For months, we were engaging in these conversations with both of those committees. Superintendent Chan joined us on multiple occasions within those committees. So this has been an ongoing program that we have been talking about with all of our families. Right? We have also had two breakfasts for our families to really
get everybody around a table to discuss this, and so those two breakfasts were devoted to our 3K families through second-grade families and our third-grade families to our fifth-grade families. These conversations then went into our joint communities that we can go onto Zoom calls, and we had over 40 families that joined the PS 134 call, so they were informed. Information is empowerment, right? We also did that with the 184 community and the 134 community in a joint public hearing. So within all of those, we've had layers of different
methods of communications, and there's not one family member that was here. There was five family members that are here, and now we're inching towards 11 o'clock, and they have to get children to bed and to school tomorrow morning because we're bolstering our attendance at PS 134. We need some sleep. So they all have written statements that they left with me. I could read them for them, but I'm going to leave it with you guys to read as well. All of our families are very aware of this. All of our families have engaged in this from a grassroots effort to a larger community effort to a collaborative effort with PS 184. Thank you for your time tonight.
The next group of speakers, Elena Hugh, Magna Napoleon, Grace Mack, Gavin Healey, Janine Giraldo, David Linnington. Good evening, everyone. My name is Grace Mack, and I am parent of a fifth grader at Shamong School. Initially, I was hesitant, on the fence, to support the proposal of reciting middle school graders from the building of 137 to 134, the co-location with PS 134 because
my kids and I are emotionally attached to the current site location. Since both my older kids previously attended kindergarten to the eighth grade there, it's considered our second warm, loving community home. With any home, it's not always perfect, but we've always tried our best to work around the imperfections. The current-Cherish Street site has a lack of indoor recreational space. The small auditorium also serves as a gym for the visit
classes, and there are no dedicated lab classrooms. Each year, our school's enrollment has vastly accelerated, perhaps due to the lack of high-performing District 1 school options in the area and the benefit of offering a dual language program. The current average size is approximately 24 to 27 kids per classroom. With the mandate of capping the class size of kids, it's impossible. Given the lack of space in our current location, our school have been bursting at the seams
and have created a non-conducive learning environment for our children and the teachers. After much thoughtful considerations and displacing the emotional side, I fully support the plan of reciting the middle grade to the new location at PS 134 building because in the short and long term, our student, both the middle and the elementary schools, will reap the full benefits of having to academic growth and smaller class sizes
and more access to educational resources in each building space. In addition, I have faith that Dr. Kavanagh and Superintendent Carey will strive to make the new location as a home and as a whole community. Therefore, I strongly urge you to approve and pass the proposal of reciting the middle grade to the new location. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good evening, members of the panel. My name is Gavin Healy, long-suffering CEC 2 member, but speaking tonight on my own behalf.
I understand that the decision to close the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women was based on its declining enrollment and its small size. With just 91 students and a 38% decline in enrollment over the last five years, its closure seems to make sense. However, I don't know about Superintendent Bytelman's heavy heart at this closure, because when he came to our CEC 2 meetings two months in a row, he was certainly awfully eager to get his hands on that space for a gimmicky AI high school, more responsive to Google than to the community.
What was he talking about? A screened high school in a borough already saturated with screened, segregated high schools. We don't need another. But it's good that the proposal to close the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women was decoupled from the proposal to open a new school in its space. Placing the decision to open a new school at the same meeting contingent on a decision to close another creates the potential to pit communities against each other. ODP and the Manhattan Superintendent's office should show more respect for the communities they've been entrusted-
Yes ... to represent and serve. Finally, the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women is not the only seriously under-enrolled school Manhattan High School Superintendent Bytelman has been overseeing in his portfolio. Murray Bergtraum High School, a few blocks away on Pearl Street, has just 98 students this year, and the High School for Language and Diplomacy has 107. Meanwhile, Manhattan High School superintendent told CEC 2 that he plans to open a new high school each year for the next three to four years. I think Superintendent Bytelman needs to right the boats he's sailing before
he puts more new vessels into the water. And any plan about closing or opening new schools should be made holistically with the whole community in mind and at a system-wide level, not by any one superintendent. The space at 26 Broadway does not belong to Gary Bytelman. It- Move The space at 26 Broadway belongs to NYCPS as a whole, and ultimately it belongs to our students. Thank you. Hi, my name is Janine. I'm a parent of a fifth-grade student attending Sheng Wang School. Sheng Wang has been expanding
rapidly as years goes by. In order to comply with the state law mandate, we would need the space at PS 134. Relocating our middle school students also means we'll get more space that Sheng Wang just doesn't have. This could be new rooms for science experiments, art projects, or just quiet places for students to study. Having these spaces helps students explore their interests and learn in different ways. Our middle schoolers could also really benefit from a real gym and a proper auditorium that we just
don't have. Right now, the spaces for sports and school performances are too small for our middle schoolers. A real gym would be great for playing sports, and a real auditorium would be amazing for school plays, music concerts, and assemblies. Please move forward to pass this proposal. Thank you for listening. Mm-hmm. Hi there. My name is Dave Linnington, and I teach English Language Arts to eighth and seventh graders at PS 184, also known as Xiang Yuan, and I am here to speak in support of the proposed resiting of the middle school grade levels.
I've been with Xiang Yuan for, this is my seventh year now, and every day that I'm there, I'm always impressed by the great things that are going on there. Well, when you're part of something great, what do you want? You want to expand it to include more people, you want to make it more collaborative, and you want to serve everybody in that community better, and I think that this proposal does all those things at one time. I will say that one of the most important parts of this proposal is that it would allow us to have smaller class sizes. So my eighth grade classes are currently at 30 students, 29 students, and 28 students. And the biggest one of those is the one that actually has the most recently arrived students who are multilingual learners,
and serving them correctly is really, really important. And as others have stated tonight, the one thing that decades and decades of education research has shown us is that one of the things that has a really significant positive impact on student success is having a smaller class size. Sometimes it's not possible. In this case, fortunately, it is possible. And like I said, that's one of the really important things about this proposal. I feel that it's going to have a really positive impact on all the students, but particularly the students that we serve that are IEP students, the students that are
multilingual learners. And so for that reason, thank you for giving us this opportunity to do this great thing. Thank you very much. You can begin. Hi. Good evening or good night. It's very late. Past my bedtime. But dear panel for education policy and Mr. Chancellor, nice to meet you. I watch you on TV all the time. My name is Carrie Jones, and I am a kindergarten teacher at PS 134, and I'm excited-- Oh, thank you. I'm excited to welcome a new group of students and families to my school and to my community from PS
184. It will also be a delight to see new faces in my neighborhood where I reside on the Lower East Side. It will bring culture and happiness to the already diverse neighborhood that I currently call home. As a kindergarten teacher, I always tell my students to always welcome each other with open arms every single day. I plan to practice what I preach. This will apply to all new students and their families that will co-locate with us here at PS 134. Thank you for this opportunity to speak, and have a great night.
Hi. I'd like to begin just because I feel like we're fading. Can I do a little activity I do with my students when I feel like the energy's low? What did he say? Everybody just follow my claps. Excuse me. Excuse me. Could you just do your testimony, please? It's my time. It's my time. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Then, dear committee and community, I'd like to begin with an excerpt from a poem, "To My Shadow That Wishes to Go to School with the Children of Morning But Couldn't Fit Through the Classroom Door" by Mosab Abu Toha. My name is Noah Bennis. I am the visual arts teacher at PS 134
Henrietta Szold. At 134, the arts are wholly integrated into the core subjects, and classroom environments reflect the high-quality work that our students are engaging with. Beyond the learning environment, our students at 134 are deeply curious and expressive children. A primary function of arts education is community building, and I am interested in sharing that with 184. It would be exciting to have the hallways filled with laughter and learning from new voices joining our community. Co-locating would reinvigorate the building with opportunities for collaboration between both of our schools. With more students on site, we'd
be able to offer programming such as a media arts lab or communal darkroom in order to build pathways from elementary to middle school, and eventually to high school. These joint ventures would also provide mentorship opportunities and cultural exchange, leading to a sense of shared values amongst our students. It is my belief that schools are where strangers become neighbors. Co-locating is the only equitable action for our schools to fully thrive. We only stand to benefit from sharing our space, sharing access to resources, and sharing our learning with each other. Thank you. I yield the rest of my time.
You're all out of order. The next group of speakers, Tillman Lani, Reverend Thompson, Rashida Brown-Harris, Jeremy Kavanagh, Iwa Estrellita. Good evening. My name is Tillman Lani. I'm here on behalf of District Leader Mariama James, who has a few brief remarks.
Proposed changes to school building utilization are a normal part of the ongoing development of our education system. They're used to consolidate resources, improve school quality, or respond to shifts in student population or changes in policy, such as meeting class size reduction goals no later than 2028, as mandated by state law. The superintendent and the Office of District Planning develop these proposals by engaging with school community stakeholders. They're subject to Chancellor's Regulation A 185, which requires that the Department of Education engages with those stakeholders on
a given proposal, and that the Community Education Council votes on it before it can be brought before this panel. District Leader James' position is that the required extensive community engagement is non-negotiable. These proposals may not always present satisfying solutions to every issue, but that not only makes it more important that all stakeholders from all school communities must be given the opportunity to have their voices heard and that their input is considered. As seen with several of the Manhattan school communities who have recently engaged with similar proposals, concerns have often been raised about the possible diminishment of legally mandated services to students with
disabilities who have an individualized education plan, as well as to students who are English language learners. It is District Leader James' firm position that it would be completely unacceptable for any of these proposals to result in any diminishment or any disruption of these services that the city is legally mandated to provide to its most vulnerable students. Thank you. Good evening. Reverend Leticia Thompson. You can begin. Okay. Hi. Y'all turn the AC on. It's getting a little- Okay ... to be in here. Hello? Oh, Reverend Leticia Thompson. Y'all turn the air on and it's getting cold in here now. But, hey, SCA, we need this in
the Bronx. We need the AC in the auditoriums. Okay, so what I want to say is D75 co-locations are always a yes, right? Yes. Yes, we do those. Okay. And CECs, the last time I checked, um, do school utilization and district planning, right? Okay. We literally are the legislative bodies in each district, and we have oversight of school utilization and district planning. I am thoroughly confused every time I hear a
CEC have to beg the panel for support with school utilization and district planning. Because if we're going to share this power, if we're going to share this oversight, then I think everybody needs to fall in their respective lines about who gets to lead the charge as to what happens in our districts. The community elects the Community Education Council. And so when the community says, "We need XYZ," and the
council then elevates that voice, then the only righteous thing to do is respect that, not to come against it. And so what I see as a pattern that we probably need to work on is respecting Community Education Councils. Because we do it for free, so that's why we're still here. We do it for free because it's our children in those districts that are being impacted. So what I'm asking you, Chancellor Samuels, please, is to put some respect on our CEC names.
Thank you, sir. Actually, there are going to be two resolutions that are going to be presented in the next session and also at our utilization committee to do exactly that. One is presented by, I think, CEC. So we actually hear that, we agree, and we're going to be considering resolutions that will take exactly that into account. Yes, you can begin. Good evening, members of the Panel for Educational Policy, families, educators, and community members. My name is Christina Thomas. I am a special education teacher at PS 134.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight about this proposed co-location of PS 134 and PS 184 Shang-Yuen. The decision impacts students, families, educators, and the community. That's exactly why this proposal should be approved. I've been teaching at PS 134 for the past 12 years, and since I began my teaching career there, I've worried about low enrollment and the impact it would have on our school and its community. Each year, we have avoided school
closure or having to share the building with a charter school. A co-location will allow our school not only to stay open, but it'll allow us to expand access to quality learning, ensure that more students benefit from a strong school community, and it'll benefit our students with expanded programming, joint events, and a broader sense of community. Like someone stated earlier, our school is only using 28% of the building. Co-locating with PS 184 will meet the needs of all students. Most of the concerns that have come up are questions such as space
scheduling, school identity. They're all valid concerns, but they're all solvable. With clear planning, transparent communication, and strong leadership, the co-located schools can maintain their unique identities while operating in a shared environment. Having worked with Principal Perales for the past eight years and Superintendent Dr. Carrie Chan, I know that they're clear communicators, I know that they spend their whole day planning, and I know that they are strong leaders. And they're going to make this co-location possible, and they're going to put the
needs of our students first. This is not simply about placing two schools together. It's about creating a shared space where both schools can thrive. I'd like to ask you to approve this proposal, and I ask that you put the needs of our students and our district first. Thank you. Thank you You can begin. Good evening, everybody. Good evening, Chancellor Samuels, PEP board, and senior leadership. Appreciate your time. I want to start off with two mantras where I think we did this right and that we're onto something.
My name is Dr. Jeremy Kavanagh. I'm the principal at Shaung Wen PS 184. I've been the principal there for over seven years. But prior to that, I'm going to talk like the kids from time to time. I'm going to flex right now. Prior to being the principal here at Shaung Wen, I had the opportunity, the fortune, and the privilege to assist former chancellor, Dr. Misha Ross Porter. And during that time in District 11 in the Bronx, there were a lot of instances where we co-located, we merged, or we opened up pre-K centers under the
umbrella of access and opportunity. And again, I want to go back into we did this right and we're onto something. Here, we're positioned with a co-location split site model under the supervision and direction of a fabulous superintendent, Dr. Carrie Chan Howard. Again, through our previous experiences in the Bronx, in conjunction with our leadership in the Lower East Side, I can honestly tell you that we're onto something, and if you'll indulge me.
The transition to a split-site co-location at the PS 134 campus, we feel, is a strategic move driven by a commitment to educational equity, student wellbeing, and long-term community growth. Central to this proposal was the firm belief that our students deserve access to the same fundamental facilities as their peers, specifically a dedicated gym and an auditorium, which are not accessible in our current building. Furthermore, this expansion served as a
direct resolution to bring Shaung Wen dual language school into 100% class size compliance, ensuring that every student learns in an environment optimized for individualized attention, especially for our students with a disability and our English language learners. We wanted to look at the umbrella of fostering collaboration, diversity, and access, along with building strong leadership partnership with myself, Principal Perales, my school community, and his school community.
This is lengthy, and I know I'm running short on time, but there was a number of events, town halls, parent engagements, student engagements, teacher and faculty engagements, where we spoke about the umbrella of access and opportunity for not only 184, 134, and most importantly, our District 1 Lower East Side students and families. Thank you. Okay. So I hear y'all. And I'm not D1, so I'm not going to pretend to know everything that's happening at D1. I do want to say that I'm sorry to hear that some of the D1 parents
said that they were not properly engaged with that. And that may or may not be the case. But anytime I hear that from any parent, it breaks my heart. So I just want to say to the D1 parents that y'all should have contacted PSPNY, Parents Supporting Parents New York, because we support parents. It's in our names. The amount of people who contact PSPNY Executive Director Tanisha Grant with issues and concerns, we lose count. But we support our parents. We support, we support, we support to the best of our ability. And New Settlement PAC, Parent Action Committee, we connect with our Bronx parents,
and we support, we support, and we support to the best of our ability. So we'll see how y'all vote. Also, I want to say that I'm sad to hear about the proposed closure of the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women. Just hoping and praying there was some real support and attempt to save that school. And hope and pray that there will be some real support for the school community if the vote does go through to close that school, because we need to protect our girls. And I'm just going to say that I support the proposed opening and co-location of PS 751M at
M121, a new site of existing D75 school, Manhattan School for Career Development with PS 38 Roberto Clemente. And D4, yay. I'm always going to run up here and speak up in support for co-location for D75 schools, and our gen ed schools. The more we co-locate and unite and work together, the better we'll be able to coexist and build a mutual respect, empathy, grace for each other, and love for one another.
So let's keep the co-locating of our D75 schools going. Good job, y'all. Also, I just want to say that Superintendent Dr. Christy DeLaCruz is the best superintendent in the whole city. D4 is super grateful to have her as a superintendent, and they're just so super lucky to have her and her team. She is my inspiration. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Johanna Bjorken, Ziyun Zhu, Noah Binus, Rosalinda Rodriguez, Nia Chong, Christina Thomas, Carrie Jones, Robert Perales.
Good evening, PEP. I'm Johanna Bjorken, a high school parent. And I don't know who's going to speak after me, so I'd like to ask the room, are there any parents here from the Business School for Young Women?What you're hearing now is silence. There's been silence from these young women. Not a single one spoke at the joint public hearing. Not a single current staff member
spoke at the joint public hearing. We heard from one former staff member. Tonight, we've heard what proposals look like when there's community support and families have been engaged. They show up. There may be disagreement, but we hear from it. As a high school parent, I know what public engagement can look like and what it doesn't. Superintendent Bytelman, I'm sorry to say, was so excited about his new school, he forgot to engage the public around closing The Young Women.
I wrote about this, and the comment back was, "They had an opportunity to speak." That's not engagement. And I think that this is something that happens at the high school level, is that superintendents don't know how to engage families because they are not accountable to families. They come twice a year to CCHS, speak for 20 minutes, and the public is not allowed to ask them any questions. That's not public engagement. We don't know. I am heartbroken, as the parent of an 11th grader,
at the thought of what those girls must be going through right now, the 11th graders, who are not only right now should be thinking about what they're going to be doing for college, but now have to also think about what's happening next year. I wish I could trust that Superintendent Bytelman has engaged them, and I feel like if they had, there would be evidence here. I ask you to ask questions of this. The women deserve it. Those students deserve it. They deserve more than hearts and prayers and heavy hearts about their
future, about their high school experience. And while I know that probably this closure has to happen, we have to look at what happened here as we look at high schools in the future. Thank you. Okay. That concludes our public comment. We'll now move to panel member comments. We'll first move to the two panel members from the affected borough. Panel member Collins, and then Panel member Naveed. Who do you want to go first, panel member? Panel member Collins. So, Jonathan Collins again. Manhattan Borough appointee. I'll start with
the proposal for District 1. I'll just say really quickly that everything that I've seen and read and heard about the engagement process and just the development of that proposal has been largely impressive. Yeah. So if anything, credit to the SLT for both schools. This seems like a pretty straightforward and obvious move here. It's relocating a school about less than a third of a mile away to a facility that makes
sense, bringing in a middle school with a K through five. This is one of the more sensical proposals I've seen thus far since my time on the panel. So I'm really excited about it. And then the D4 proposal as well. I love the idea of D75 schools getting space in a school community. I think one of the biggest issues with our students with special needs is we tend to isolate them and remove them, and that reinforces the stigma. And what we want to do is destigmatize and let them know that our students with
special needs are special, but they deserve to be in a classroom where they are loved and supported, and they are made to feel like any other student in the school. So I feel very strongly about both of those proposals. The last thing I'll say really quickly is about the proposal involving Urban Assembly Girls' Empowerment School. AI has been a topic of discussion today. What we're here to talk about is Urban Assembly closing. It is a school that has been declining in enrollment. I think they currently have, according to the IS,
91 students enrolled. It's just going to be tough to have that school reverse course. I don't think closing the school means inevitably that the Next Generation school will open, but it does mean that I think that we need to make the right decision and move forward with closing Urban Assembly with the idea that those girls will be able to relocate to schools that can still serve their needs. Thank you, Panel member. Panel member Naveed Hassan. Thank you, Chair Faulkner, and thank you, Panel member Collins. I'm Naveed Hassan, Manhattan elected CEC representative on the
PEP. I want to commend all of the districts that have done some amazing engagement, the ones that are here tonight for proposal. We should see more and essentially only this type of community coming out with CECs Standing up for what they feel is right for their community. It is their job, it is their position, closer to the local community to be able to make these decisions. And then us essentially just reviewing them and making sure that the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted. For District 1, I was able to attend CEC meetings and
a community engagement session in the joint public hearing. We heard essentially unanimous support for the proposals. I want to commend the district office and the CEC for doing the work on this. And I want to uplift one thing that we haven't heard. Henrietta Szold will be adding a Spanish dual language program to their school to mirror the multilingual work that's happening at Truong Nguyen. That's something that I have been an ardent supporter of since the beginning of my time as a parent in DOE. Coming from a background of being an English ESL student in public schools myself, and my
kids are also learning English in public schools. So, I love to see that, and love to see that it'll reflect the community. It'll help integrate any more of the students that are newly arrived to the country at 134, and hope to see more collaboration like this across the city. Another thing I heard from the leadership at District 1 was that they're leaving actually extra space allocated in the building for potential growth for 134 and for sharing. So that's something that we have to look at. The Blue Book never really captures the space that's needed in schools, especially for soft
spaces. So having an extra 10, 15, 20% padding for the co-located school is something that we should just start doing as a standard practice. So I will be supporting the District 1 proposals. District 2, I had the chance to attend the joint public hearing for the discussion around the closure of the school. I had a chance to speak with some of the district leadership, and they assured me that they spoke with the school community that's closing. I trust that given that it's a very small number of students, that they will get individual counseling in terms of where they end up. Should they want to be in a single-gender school going forward, we have many
options available, including Uptown, and something that makes sense for their remainder of their high school time. If there is anything that's needed and that's something that the PEP can support on, please know that you can count on our support on that. So we'll be supporting that proposal as well for District 2. District 4, these D75 co-locations are something that we've been highly enthusiastic about in the past. I want to recognize the work of the CEC4 and the District 4 leadership team. Thank you so much for bringing this to us with essentially no dissent, and we'll be
supporting the District 4 proposal. So I hope that you vote with us. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I recognize that there are several other Manhattan panel members, and I want to give them an opportunity also. I saw panel member Marjorie Dinstadt, I saw your hand first, and then Tony Giordano. Let's finish the Manhattan round first before we go to Brooklyn. Hi. Marjorie Dinstadt. I just want everybody to know exactly 20 years ago to the date, my son was given a diagnosis of autism with no prognosis. My life ended that day, but I got up and I've been fighting.
My goal has been to have more than 75 in every community, have parents walk their kids to school. And today is also a special day. The school that my son is currently exiting because he's 22, we had his principal, his assistant principal, they were all here because we're giving them a kindergarten. Currently they have a junior high school, which I fought to have it, 75 Morton Street. Took 10 years to have that done. And today they're getting their first kindergarten class. Not class, it's a different school. I'm not affected by it.
But to see continuation, and they are a great team, let me tell you. They got us through COVID, having these kids who didn't know anything about computers, basically. They knew games, but they didn't know how to Zoom, and having to learn during COVID took a big toll on them. The staff were there. Miss Asterita is fantastic. We also had a teacher, knowing that some of the kids missed their friends. Socialization is key for autism. She took her
time to have a dance class online for them so that they can connect and keep in touch. That I got to say, I got to give it to that team. And D75, I got to say again, rock. Thank you for approving this. We're going to keep doing it. Thank you. Thank you. Panel member Giordano? Yeah, as a Manhattan resident and one of the Manhattan group, I think it's most important, I think we have a group of 70 people still to speak from the public. I would maybe propose unanimous consent for adopting these school utilizations, if allowable by the chair.
Well, I want to just make sure no panel members want to-- I'll come back to your motion. Okay. Just want to make sure that we've heard from all the panel members. I see panel member Alicea, and then panel member Hannah Jones. Sorry about that everyone. Okay. Good evening again. Adriana Alicea, she/her, here for Queen CECs. I was grateful to hear from the current CEC1 president, and I deeply appreciate the additional context that she provided during her comments. And I agree with my fellow panel members who spoke before me.The remaining proposals are a very
easy math, and see, Chancellor, you're converting all of us to math people. But with respect to the other proposals, as the Utilization Committee chair, we hosted a Utilization Committee meeting last week, and I think it was a incredible opportunity for all of us on the committee to hear from members of the community directly about the school utilization process. I think it was very clear during our meeting that we were not discussing- No ... the topics that we would at the joint public hearing, but we were going to just talk about what worked and what didn't in the process itself.
And I encourage all of our superintendents and anyone who's involved with the SUP process at all to take a look at the recording of that meeting. It's about three and a half hours long. And you can hear directly from parents and members of the community about what exactly is working and what parts are leaving them feeling either left behind or unaccounted for or completely ignored. We will be having another one of the Utilization Committee meetings around a week before the PEP meeting going forward in hopes
of establishing some more, or deeper bonds rather, with the community. Thank you. No, but it's nothing. One and a half. Where does that ... Where does he...? Yeah, but these are all going to Okay, you want me to leave it in? All right. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Hi again. Roger Hannah Jones, CEC Brooklyn appointee. Oh, I'm about to tell y'all something y'all ain't going to like. It always disheartens me that any time that we're talking about a school that's under-enrolled where there's a school that's overcrowded and they're in the same space, that somehow or another one was engaged
and the other one wasn't. That always seems to be troubling to me, especially knowing what I know and you know is that New York City is one of the most segregated schools in the country, and we're still acting as if we're doing all the right things, and we're not. Here we are talking about one school that's getting something, and the other one is not. No one knows that better than me. I went to PS 307, and there was a school in Brooklyn Bridge that's decided they wanted to rezone my district without engaging my community, and at the time, I was a PTA president.
I know what that feels like. It wasn't that those parents didn't care to come to a PEP meeting or care to come to a CEC meeting. Sometimes you got to meet, and I'm talking to superintendents, principals, and teachers alike, you got to meet those people where they are. So if that means you have to go to their church and talk, tell them what needs to happen, that's what you need to do. That's what I did. I went to their church and talked to them. I went to barber shops and talked to them. I went to tenant association meetings. You know who else did that? The Chancellor did that, too. He went to a tenant association meeting late at night
in the projects, meeting people where they are. And that's engagement. Any time I hear a school, especially for women, young women, is closing, that means that there was a breakdown somewhere. And it's not the community, it's not the students, it's not the teachers, it's the leadership. And it is the leadership that needs to be looked at. It's the leadership that needs to be changed. Nobody knows that more than me. I have the scars to show it. That's why I sit up here and almost damn near give you a sermon about your responsibilities to your community.
Any time you're co-locating and a community is singing their own praises versus a community that's not even here to speak, the ones that probably are here wasn't even here on time to sign up. That in itself is a disparity, and we owe it to those communities. And so I can't say in good conscience, knowing what I know, being who I'm married to, and the work that I've done across the country, that I can sit up here and be okay with closing a school. No school in New York City should be closed, ever.
No school. Every child, no matter what the circumstance is, whether in a high poverty index or living in the richest brownstone should be in any school where it's closed. And we have a moral responsibility to every child in the school. So any time that I see under-enrolled schools or any time I see a school that's getting something that another school that's not, especially if they are in a high poverty index or if they're mostly non-English speaking, or if they're mostly
Black and Latino, that's concerning. That's concerning. So I just want that to be put out there, but I can't say that I support closing any school or diminishing one school in order to support another. I'm sorry. I can't do that. Thank you. Yeah, Pamela Cassaratti. Thank you so much. Camille Cassaratti, Brooklyn Borough President appointee. So first off, I want to say thank you to Chancellor Samuels for restructuring tonight's vote.
Thank you to D1 and D4 for your thoughtful proposals. We have an opportunity to think differently about how we use our resources, especially through school utilization proposals that are grounded in community input, and we saw that tonight. I am disappointed that we have yet to hear from a single family member or student from the UA School of Business for Young Women.Shared collaboration is essential to strengthening what we do in support of students.
It goes without saying that families are indispensable partners in this process. Their lived experience, priorities, and trust are critical to making school utilization decisions that truly serve our students. For the LMC families, thank you for showing up and sharing your stories. This school should have been expanded when they originally brought up the proposal two years ago. But really what we need to do is rethink how we are determining space usage in
co-located buildings. When there are multiple superintendents in one building, decisions for space usage need to be about what's best for students, not which superintendent controls which spaces. If we approach this work collaboratively, we can better align space funding and programming in ways that support both equity and compliance with class size requirements. So I look forward to doing this shared work together with you all, and thank you very much.
Thank you, panel member. Any other panel members wish to offer any comments at this time? Yes, panel member. Hi. So I want to just remind ourselves that we are trying to redefine what engagement looks like. And so as a request, I would love if when we have our school utilization proposals going forward, if we could be sent the link to where we can find the minutes for the CECs and the SLTs, which are supposed to be online, so that we can review the engagement. Because I'm getting conflicting reports from one of the districts, the
proposals, that some of the community was engaged and some was not, that some people understood and knew about the joint public hearing and some did not. And the testimony in our meetings is very uneven at times due to the relationship that our leaders have with their leaders. And I want to ensure, as a panel member, that we are receiving the engagement from the entire community and not the top 10% that may not even be affected by the proposal, or that may be positively affected by the proposal, and
not considering the other community, which may be negatively impacted. And they are not looking at that because they are worried about how they are personally impacted, which is actually a conflict than to speak as a leader on a proposal that you are directly involved in. Thank you. Great. Are there any other comments? Panel member Giordano, you had a motion before? I would make a motion to pass this specific school utilizations under unanimous consent. Okay. Is there a second to the motion of unanimous consent? It's been moved and seconded that these proposals be adopted by unanimous consent.
Is there objection to unanimous consent? Point of order/information. I'm pretty sure panel member Hannah-Jones said that he was not going to vote- Well, then he's just going to get an opportunity to say he objects. That's why I asked- Sorry ... if there was an objection. Roll call. Panel member? I object. You object. Okay. So we'll proceed to a roll call. Panel member Alicea? Yes to all. Panel member Altman? Yes to all. Panel member Albin? Yes to all. Casserity? Yes to all. Dr. Collins? Yes for all. Deinstag? Fair? Garcia? Yes to all. Giordano? Yes to all. Vice Chair Green? Yes to all. Hannah-Jones? No. To all three? Okay.
Hassan? Yes to District 1, yes to District 4, and yes to District 2. Ho? Yes to all. Izquierdo? Abstain on one. Yes to the others. Abstaining on the proposed opening, what? District one. Oh, District One. Okay. Jimenez? Yes to all. Hodwin? Yes to all. Ang? Yes to all. Parsons? Yes to all. Sapp? Chair Faulkner? Yes to all. The motion carries with 18 in favor, one abstention on the proposed closure of Urban Assembly, and one no on the proposed closure of Urban Assembly. So the proposals are adopted. Thank you. We will now move to open public comment. Oh, Noah, just point of order.
Point of... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's that look like? Yeah, he voted no on- Wait. Yeah, he voted against all of them. Yeah. Yeah. My bad. He voted for all of them. Hold on a second. No, he voted yes to all. Yeah. Just... Okay, let's begin. I know some people are exiting. We'll begin the general public comment period Lee Dines, Max German, Florence Holson-Fielding, Yatin Chu, Courtney Johnson, Katherine Savage, Joe McGee. You can begin. Oh, sorry.
Yeah, let's wait till people clear. Okay, you can begin. Hello, my name is Katherine Savage, and I am a very proud parent of a sixth grader at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School. Thank you for listening to our concerns and engaging with the community over the past few weeks. LMC is a safe and supportive school with a caring principal, assistant principal, teachers, and staff. Its diversity and inclusivity lends to a nurturing environment balanced with rigorous academics. I hope that you continue to engage with the community and consider the proposal to expand LMC to a six to 12 school. Thank you.
Yes. You can begin. Good evening again. I'm Yatin Chu. I am a citywide education advocate. I spend a lot of my time helping families navigate our application processes, including one for high school. The proposal for the Next Gen Technology High School was pulled from consideration tonight. And like many of you on the panel have said, and others in the room, the 960 applicants that applied to the school from all over the city, these are students who clearly did not get the
high school offers that they had hoped. They were excited about this new school and the opportunity to pursue a STEM-based accelerated education. As they were given this opportunity, they applied, and really, they're not here. They were not part of the process. They're out there. They got a notice probably on Monday saying that this school was pulled. And these are families that are hurt by decisions
that we make here in this room. And look, there are parents with different priorities, different agendas. I sympathize with them, but I'm here to speak up for families who are not here, who are all over the city, who are probably struggling with not knowing where their student is going to go. The offers that they got clearly wasn't the ones they wanted. These are families that didn't get a great lottery number, like many of the students had alluded to earlier.
They may not have gotten a SHSAT offer, and Next Gen Technology High School would've been an appropriate and exciting opportunity for them. So I am airing their voice because they're not here. Thank you. Thank you. Go ahead. Here. You can begin. Thank you. My name is Alyssa East, and I'm a parent in District 6. And I just wanted to comment on the fact that the United States has spent over $30 billion on EdTech, and what this has
resulted in is the least cognitively capable generation. We have seen test scores drop precipitously in relation to the spending skyrocketing, and I really hope that everyone on this panel takes this into consideration. We have seen declines in college readiness. Students have completely shattered attention spans. They are academically struggling and suffering. And it is in your power to stop this, and to not listen to people like the
tech vendors who were here tonight. They shouldn't even be allowed in these spaces. They are not part of this community. It is far more important that you guys listen to and look at the independent evidence, the independent testing of these products, not what the vendors say, and not what the vendors are trying to convince everyone merits their worth, because they're pretty worthless. What is worthwhile and worth investing in is teachers and
in the resources that this community has, which are phenomenal. I feel so fortunate to be able to send my kid to school in New York City, and not, as other people have said tonight, to be experiencing curriculum that kids in other parts of the country who don't have access to resources have. And I will also say that as a parent of a special ed child, it incenses me that all of these-- Our kids are guinea pigs, especially special ed kids, and it needs to end. And I hope that you guys will support this, because EdTech has not resulted
in equity. EdTech has resulted in failures. Thank you. The next group of speakers, Jen Levy, Dina Holson-Fielding, Kevin Dugan, Aixa Rodriguez, Charlotte Pope, Matthew Dunn, Rachel Pells, Anne Hager- Sometimes ... Tiffany Rodriguez- That's who she is ... Sarah Calderon, Ollie Fielding Thank you for staying so late. My name is Jean Levy, and I'm a Center School parent. Monday was a big day for hundreds of middle school students in District 3. The DOE withdrew their proposal to relocate the Center School into the RSMA building, and also withdrew the proposal to close
the middle schools at RSMA and MSC. For the past few months, parents from the three schools wrote countless letters and attended countless public meetings, pointing out massive process failures and analytical deficiencies in the proposals. All three communities agreed that parent engagement was lacking and pro forma, not meaningful. Parents also pointed out the errors in the underlying bases for these proposals. For Center, the DOE was trying to shove a square peg in a round hole. The RSMA building lacks the facilities required to support the actual programming of Center's mixed-grade theater arts-based
academic curriculum. The proposed workarounds using off-site theaters and off-site field for recess did not cure those inadequacies, but introduced new ones, distance impracticalities, the resulting loss of instructional time, and documented lack of off-site theater availability. We look forward to working with the DOE collaboratively to develop a solution that supports progressive education and relieves over-enrolled school buildings. And when we are before you the next time under a new proposal to relocate the Center School, how will you know genuine parent engagement took place?
Because the DOE proposal will be different. Because the DOE will have processed what you have heard a million times. Center School belongs in a building with an auditorium, an adequate outdoor yard in a residential neighborhood. You will not see us here telling you about the same process failures, same analytical deficiencies about the same building. The DOE will not continue to propose stuffing Center into RSMA, which requires closing that middle school. Thank you, Chancellor Samuels. Thank you, members of PEP, and thank you Winnie Tusan, Poliris Salas-Ramas, Tanisha Grant, Niquan
McLean. Thank you to all the elementary and middle schools in Mid District 3 who supported us and honestly, genuinely thank you for this forum. Thank you. Hi. My name is Anne Hager. Yes, many of you have seen my name in your inboxes a lot lately. I'm the parent of three NYCPS students, one of which is currently a student at LMC and another grad who graduated last year. I know you've all probably heard enough from me over the past few months, but I wanted to come tonight to thank the panel and the chancellor for listening to the community concerns over the proposal to open Next Gen Tech at
26 Broadway. I also want to ask you to consider supporting the expansion of LMC. Our school is a rare example of a truly diverse, child-centered, well-rounded school that strikes that perfect balance between valuing the arts, social emotional learning, and academic rigor. As a parent and an educator, I've rarely seen school environments with the level of economic, racial, and neurodiversity that LMC is so effectively managing to meet the needs of every child that they serve. It's a truly special place. What the city and community needs more of are proven and successful
six to 12 model schools. Please support growing what works and expand LMC. I'd also like to add on a note in reference to Dr. Collins' comment about including our students with disabilities in our school communities. LMC, in addition to serving a large population of students with disabilities, almost 30% of our students have IEPs, is one of very few schools throughout the city that has chosen to add a bridge class that allows students who need a 12 to one-to-one setting the ability to get that setting, but also participate in ICT classes where that inclusion provides the least restrictive environment.
Our school is diverse. We want to be more diverse. We want to welcome more students from more boroughs. Please allow us to expand. Thank you. Hello. Thank you. My name is Charlotte Pope. I'm here with the New York Civil Liberties Union, joining students, families, educators to say we're concerned with the new AI guidance and the framing that an embrace of tech vendors is about education equity. When New York City Public Schools position AI as a remedy to the failure to meet the needs of young people, it's surrendering to a ruthless ecosystem of vendors working to
capture public funds and entangle public schools with private interests. Missing from the guidance is consideration of the long-term implications of embedding third-party commercial tech into the everyday infrastructure of teaching and learning. Relentless private pressure wants us to believe that we have no choice but to surrender to AI. Vendors co-opt messages of equity, they speak in riddles and tell us we're afraid, and they weaponize the working conditions of educators to sell their products. The public has not been provided with any clear
explanation as to how AI ed tech is an improvement over methods of teaching and learning that do not rely on the relentless harvesting of student data. We disagree where the guidance says that AI surveillance is beyond the scope. Even AI products sold as supposedly educational are gathering student information at unprecedented scale, and this is all weaponized as surveillance. We do not understand how the AI guidance can encourage people to, quote, "proceed with confidence on any AI use," while also explicitly listing out
unaddressed risks like, quote, "algorithmic bias, reinforcing inequity, rights violations, loss of privacy, developmental and mental health harms," and on and on and on. Disclose to students, families, and educators the AI systems that impact their lives today and are determining their futures. And any amended guidance must include the ability to challenge, refuse, and opt out of these systems. We'll send you our full comments. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Tiffany Rodriguez, and I'm a parent at PS 191. What a journey this has been. I think we've all earned a deep breath after this
one. Today was supposed to be a vote that would've changed and possibly erased our school. Instead, we are here in a moment of pause, and I want to acknowledge what that means to our community. It means that the voices that are rarely listened to mattered and made a difference. I want to take a moment to thank Superintendent Dr. Higgins, all of the members of the panel, Chair Faulkner, Naveed, and Jonathan for taking the time to meet with me and engage with our concerns. That willingness to listen and lead with care has not gone unnoticed, and
it gives me hope. Chancellor, I come in peace. Sincerely, thank you. Our fight was never just about time. It has always been about ensuring our students are seen, supported, and given what they need to succeed. I was never fighting for a failing school. I have been fighting for the students, for their right to learn in a school that is fully supported, strengthened, and given every opportunity to succeed in their own community. For a long time, I have shown up as a community advocate for our school, for all of our children. But today, I am here as a parent, a parent of a child who is currently below grade level, and that reality changes everything.
It makes this work more urgent, more personal, and more important than I can fully put into words. This moment, this pause, has to be more than just time. It has to be an opportunity to truly reimagine our school with intention, to put in place a strong, thoughtful plan for our entire school community to ensure the support and leadership are there so that our school doesn't just pause but moves forward in a real and lasting way. Because what our community and our students need is not a temporary pause that brings us back here again next
year, but a second chance that feels like a true new beginning. I am hopeful, and I am ready to work together, and I believe deeply in what our school can become. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Sarah, an LMC parent and SLT member. Over 1,940 of our community members across all five boroughs and every ZIP code have already rallied in support of LMC and expanding our school. Thank you for hearing their voices. We truly appreciate your thoughtfulness on these recent
initiatives. I want LMC to expand because the data support it. Families consistently prefer 6-12 schools over standalone middle schools. Demand for these models is significantly higher across the city. The demand for NICE is 19 and a half times. NES+M is 17.7 times. Clinton is 13.3 times. School of Future is 11.3 times higher than their local 6-8 schools. Top 6-12 schools see two to three times higher demand than
top 6-8 schools in the same districts. Families want 6-12 and will stay in our New York City public schools with the option. 6-12 schools are also stronger academically and socioemotionally for kids. Fewer transitions increase achievement and decrease dropout rates. They expand access to advanced courses and support social, emotional, and cognitive growth. I implore you to look at the data. We have a 6-8 school that serves all students, has rigorous options for our youth, embeds the arts
and sports and STEM, and will keep our families in the system. You have a gifted principal, talented teachers who I believe will stay until or possibly after retirement age, strong nonprofit partnerships, and engaged parents. Why not build on that? LMC looks forward to working with you all and expects that we can talk about the actual needs with actual data. We hope to see decisions being made not based on a superintendent seeing kids playing Roblox in their school, but on true community
engagement. Thank you, and we look forward to working with you more. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Max Miller, Ariana Chuck, Max German, Lee Dines, Martina Meyer, Brian Miller, Amy London, Natalie Gold, Iona Nene, Kevin Dugan, and Kelly Clancy. Hi there. My name again is Martina, and I'm speaking on my own behalf. I'm really tired. It's exhausting to be here this late. I get up at 5:45 a.m. And again, I would love to be testifying from the comfort of my own home. I have a long trip home, and many of you up there are getting driven home
by city cars that we pay for, but we don't get that same privilege. So I ask again, why are we not using a hybrid model? Why not engage the most people possible at the PEP? I'm here on behalf of educators, students, and families who reject AI, whether student or teacher-facingCorporate generative AI has no place in our schools. As part of the AI Moratorium Coalition, we have expressed concerns about the cognitive discharge, the environmental impact of AI, the racism and sexism embedded in the programming, and the de-skilling of educational
professions. As educators, we know what works for our schools and our students. The DOE will bend over backwards to avoid fulfilling the class size law requirements or to censor teachers with curriculum mandates or test prep sprint initiatives from the chancellor that involve mandated i-Ready minutes. I-Ready is unproven and untrustworthy. Why are we mandating that children spend a specific number of minutes on an unproven program that sells our students' data? We have incredible educator-generated resources that are being thrown away for
corporate boxed scripted curriculum, and that is sad. The AI guidelines that were released last month are unclear, they lack teeth, and are contradictory. Our concerns are being dismissed condescendingly as fear when it is clear that the scientific research about AI supports our call for a moratorium. The chief academic officer routinely dismisses the lived experience of educators and families, and it is disrespectful. The 45-day feedback period is completely inadequate and began right when spring break started. This is disingenuous engagement once again. The burden is on the DOE to prove that AI is needed,
helpful, accurate, and safe. Is the DOE willing to retract- Speaker's time has expired Yes, but there's so much more to say. You can join us at the panel no masons. Next week. You can begin. Hi. Max Miller, Center in MSC Parent. Today, I am here to share appreciation for the withdrawal of the D3 proposals. Thank you, Chancellor Samuels and D3 leadership for recognizing our pleas for real engagement, and with it, the opportunity for solutions that ensure the best outcomes for all students. Thank you, PEP
members, for listening, asking questions, and advocating, and thank you for the support we received from our own CB7, CECs 1 and 4, PSPNY, and other parent organizations and politicians, especially Council Member Gail Brewer for acknowledging that the M342 building is inadequate for the success of Center School's curriculum and for bringing real solutions to the table. The Manhattan Country School building could be Center's forever home and could support additional NYCPS
priorities like D75, early childhood, 2, 3, and 4K programs. The amendment tonight allocates over $6 billion for new capacity and seats. This seems like a feasible solution that could be beneficial on multiple fronts. And thank you for the activism of our united school communities. This has been a painful process. The D3 community is not going anywhere, and I am hopeful that all our schools can heal together and rebuild trust with the DOE as we take the steps necessary to find solutions that benefit the most while doing as
little harm as possible. Providing this time also allows the ongoing discussion surrounding class size law to play out. I support the mayor, chancellor, and elected officials in pushing for funding from Albany to make implementation feasible. I am also hopeful that the activism that led to the withdrawal of all of these proposals is honored going forward as a commitment to meeting student needs and protecting systemically excluded populations and intentionally smaller, progressive, inclusive K through 8 and community schools. Thank you.
Hi, friends. Nice to be up here again. I'm Dr. Kelly Clancy. I have a couple of things I also want to say about the so-called AI guidance. The first thing is that the truth is that the guidance is a scam. It allows any student pre-K to 12 to be required to use AI in any classroom for any reason. There's no way to know which AI products are approved. I've asked. I was told to file a FOIA request. The second thing that we know is that the products are racist. The way they're being targeted and rolled out is also racist. The DOE pretends they're tools for equity, but what we know is Urban Assembly schools are being given AI chatbots for college counselors, and that's not what's
happening in rich white schools. These products are racist. The next thing we know is that neuroscientists and cognitive scientists and developmental psychologists who are not known for their flair for the dramatic are publishing articles that talk about things like cognitive offloading, cognitive stunting, cognitive debt, cognitive foreclosure, cognitive atrophy, cognitive surrender, cognitive flatlining to describe the impact that AI has on the child and adolescent brain, and that's within the past six months. The scientific community is telling
you that this is on fire, and we are about to sacrifice the brains of 800,000 kids in this school to edtech companies, and there's no reason why. And the reality is that this has been an anti-democratic process from the beginning. Five CECs, including mine, asked for consultation before the guidance was released. Everybody ignored us. At the D20 town hall on March 30th, the chancellor said he would meet with all five of those CECs. That hasn't happened. And what I can tell you is that under the system of mayoral control, there is zero incentive for listening to parents.
Parental engagement is not democratic governance. As long as CECs have no power, Google will have a greater sway over what happens in New York City than parents, teachers, or community leaders that have spent longer than an intercontinental flight here tonight to tell you that we do not want edtech in our classrooms. The AI guidance is bad. We should not have AI in schools. We need a moratorium. Thank you. Good night Hi, I'm Natalie. I'm a Center School parent. I want to thank Chancellor Samuels, Superintendent Higgins, the members of the PEP, D3 leadership for withdrawing the proposals
for Center, RSMA, CAS, and MSC. I would also like to thank the members of the PEP who provided a forum for the families of the affected schools. I want to thank CEC4 and CEC1 for their support, and CBC-- CB7. I also want to thank every family educator, staff member, and student in District 3 who joined together to advocate with and for each other. Our children have participated, watched, and learned invaluable lessons. They've learned the value of respectful and relentless
advocacy, not only on behalf of themselves, but more importantly, on behalf of their neighbors. We are overjoyed that RSMA has had their proposal of truncation pulled, and we will continue to advocate for their schools, students, and families to receive the DOE's engagement and support so they have the legitimate opportunity to grow and flourish. We are also grateful to Council Member Gail Brewer for acknowledging in her press advisory that the RSMA building is not an adequate relocation
site for Center. The Center has asked for time so that we could partner with the DOE in order to find an appropriate building that works for its mixed-grade, community-based, integrated educational model. Thank you for giving us that time. None of us want to repeat these past few months again. We look forward to working with you. We look forward to two-way engagement, and to using creative solutions to find a new home for Center. We look forward to a new solution. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Blier Salas-Ramirez, Tekle Ekrich,
Leah Freedman, Lyla Mejia, Courtney Johnson, Justin DeMartin, Bridget Kessler, Hiam Abbas, Grovan Olivares, Rose Martinez. I'm Tekle Ekrich, a D3 parent. I come before you this evening with a heartfelt thank you for pulling the proposals on the D3 middle schools. To all the members of the PEP, with a special thanks to Chairman Faulkner, and members Hassan, Collins, Cassaratti, Izquierdo, Alicea, Hannah Jones, and all the members of the PEP for your time and thoughtful engagement. We know this wasn't easy. To the CECs of District 4, 30, and CB7,
especially Ms. Whitney Toussaint and Tanisha Grant, and Parents Supporting Parents, Dr. Salas, thank you for the courage in standing up for New York City children and for what's right. To the families of P.S. 191 Manhattan School for Children Community Action School, thank you for standing in solidarity with us, especially Tiffany Rodriguez and Mike Robles for their tireless advocacy on behalf of their children. To City Council Member Gail Brewer for your tireless work and your creative plan to find a permanent home for the Center School. Thank you to NYCPS, D3 leadership, and Chancellor
Samuels for hearing our voices and having the wisdom and humility to pull these proposals. And finally, thank you to the parents and community members of the Center School, to the students, families, staff, and alum, to Principal John O'Reilly for having the courage to speak up on behalf of his community, even under relentless pressure. To Jin, Jill, Max, David, Josh, Julianne, the San Germanos, Isabelle, the Natalies, all the CS parents, too many to name, who gave their blood, sweat, and tears over these last eight
months. We are forever indebted to you. And thank you to Elaine Schwartz for having the vision to create a school worth fighting for. Going forward, let's move ahead with Council Member Brewer's courageous plan to purchase a former Manhattan country school and turn it into a permanent home for the Center School. It could house Center and leave room for 2K3K facility to give our good neighbors an early education seats. Let's move forward in a way that harnesses the brilliant energy of our families and educators. Please engage us. Let's find collaborative solutions that work for all families and all communities going forward.
Thank you very much. Okay. Wow, it's been a long night. Okay. Yeah. Just watching the entire scene is remarkable. I like to say this to kids a lot. I like to say to them, "You see all of these adults here on stage? They've done such great things. And the people behind us and all the stuff they did, they've done great things. We got now, but you got next, and we expect you to do some brilliant things, transform the world." So, in that respect, good evening, everyone. My name is Everett Stembridge, and I don't have on my reading
glasses. Okay. And, I work at Washington Irving Campus. That's an all-women school at one time. In the course of reviewing historical school records, I was reminded of early education experience of Whoopi Goldberg, one of our most accomplished former students. She has spoken publicly about her struggle in school due to dyslexia at a time when those challenges were not fully understood or supported. Her story reflects a broader reality many students with potential are not always
recognizedIn the moment. The opportunity. This presents an opportunity for the Department of Education to acknowledge both growth and resilience. I would like to propose consideration of an honorary recognition along with a scholarship initiative supporting students who face early academic challenges but demonstrate long-term potential. This is a chance to align our history with our mission, ensuring that students who struggled early are still seen, supported, and given pathways to
succeed. Thank you. Are you ready? All right. Can I go? All right. Good evening. My name's Leah Freedman, and I am a teacher at Center School. I want to thank the members of the PEP and Chairman Faulkner for your time and your energy, and I really want to thank everyone who is still here tonight for your inspiring passion and commitment. Every time I've been to a PEP meeting, I feel like it's broadened my view of New York school system as a whole. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. I want to really express my thanks for pulling these proposals. I know that you were under pressure, and it took courage to pause the machine that was set in motion. I am coming to you with the hope that in the weeks
to come, we can see a process that reflects meaningful engagement and collaboration and doesn't result in the same flawed and unpopular proposals coming before this body in just a few short months. We hope to see the DOE engage stakeholders across the whole district, and we don't believe that these conversations should be siloed off. We are committed to being a part of group model building, where we participate in conversations with representatives from Community Action School, Manhattan School for Children, RSMA, schools in the IS 44 Anderson Complex, and more. We look forward to exploring multiple
new scenarios, not marching towards foregone conclusions. We have questions. Specifically, we want to know where the 1,000 empty middle school seats in D3 are and where the empty spaces are. We know there's more of them than we've been led to believe, and we only need 250 of them. We want to see a comprehensive space usage report. We've been asking for this since November. These data belong to us, the families and taxpayers, not to a select group of administrators or bureaucrats. We know our elementary school neighbors would eagerly like to see the DOE identify, and if necessary, renovate a suitable space for us, and we look forward to organizing together.
We can only get these answers if our whole district comes together and is not pitted against one another. We want to continue the coalition-building that was born out of necessity in this process. Thank you for partnering with us as we move forward. We look forward to the real engagement and collaboration that can now begin. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Books. It should be obvious, but it's not. We need our children reading books in school. And a lot of tech marketing has clouded that, but I haven't heard any talk tonight about
books. Why aren't we buying books? It's pretty simple and pretty straightforward, and it's an obvious answer to the problems that everybody has been identifying tonight. My name is Bridget Kessler, and I'm a parent of three elementary school children in Brooklyn in D22. I'm also currently the president of Community Education Council 22 here in my personal capacity. I want to make three points tonight. I have a lot to say, but three points.
One, the process regarding the AI guidance and basically rollout of AI under our noses and without parent consent and without our consultation has been deeply flawed. As CEC president, I tried to engage and was ignored and rebuffed. The guidance itself, when it came out, this was before the guidance. But I didn't get to engage. I said, "I want to engage before the guidance." My council members were
interested. The guidance came out as deeply flawed. My community's really upset. They haven't been engaged. And last but not least, bright line rules. As all parents know, bright line rules get followed. Other rules get ignored. The guidelines are totally unclear and all over the place. Nobody's going to follow them. Thanks. Can I go? Yes. Okay. Thank you. My name's Hyam Abbas. I'm a parent to a fifth grader and a 10th grader. Thank you, PEP, for reading thousands of letters and listening. Thank you, Chancellor Samuels and the district, for doing the right
thing. The process that led to proposals for truncation and recitation of the three middle schools in D3 was a failed one, and process matters because we know systems are historically set up to push people into manufacturing urgency and accepting collateral damage. The fact that almost all families found out after the middle school application closed is unjust and inequitable. In these times, social safety nets are being taken away daily and not equally, leaving us in chaos. To then witness the DOE put families in chaos and deep stress because of a lack of clear,
timely, and transparent communication is deeply troubling. Now more than ever, we need extra support and care from the DOE for all families, especially those who are more vulnerable. And I would like students in my community in the Bronx to have the school-like center as an option. Preserving its curriculum and replicating should be the priority, not dismantling it. I hear the chancellor when he stresses the need for adequate resources and access for all students. What happens, though, is that great plans and intentions are set up for failure when community isn't engaged genuinely.
Community showing up to give two-minute testimonies can't be the extent of engagement.I have privilege that I can be here today. I have childcare, and it's after my workday. Many don't have that. Others can't be recorded, and some have been ignored for so long that they just don't think that their words matter. There's several people at the CEC3 meeting last week who, when were pushed to take a no stance, said, "Nobody would be for their own truncation." I find this lens so problematic. It assumes that communities are not open to change. But as a healthcare provider for adults and children, I can tell you that
if patients are engaged and families participate in the goals, they're almost always ready to collaborate. So again, process matters. Quality of engagement matters. Thank you very much. Your time has expired. Transparency matters. Thank you. The next set of- By the way, good morning, everyone. The next set of speakers, Magna Napoleon, Mike Robles, Grace Mack, Wendy Sasser, Tom Shepherd, Jennifer Ansley, Ezzy Tekiebe, Lauren Monaco, and Gavin Haley. Good evening, panel, again. I ran out of time on
April 15th, so I figured I'm going to pick it up right now, and this time I'm going to loosely rock with my notes. You wouldn't want to wait till next week? Nope. So tonight, I want to talk about democratic school governance. So I was sitting here tonight, and I am heartened by the community showing up night after night and month after month and year after year to make their views and concerns and positions known. But then I'm disheartened when we are talking about budgets, the Fair
Student Funding formula, the capital plan and contracts, how we tend to ignore that. And I'm also disheartened that these conversations have gotten reduced to parent engagement, when to be clear, parent engagement and school governance, two very different things. Mayoral control and democratic school governance are two different things. As a community, right now, we trying to figure out what all that means, right? What is the DOE doing to
uplift parents in actual decision-making? What are we doing to ensure that our community, citywide education councils who are written into state law, what are we doing to uplift them in actual decision-making? What are we doing to give them the resources necessary? I don't know. Perhaps we can start with actually weighting their evaluations of superintendents. But I think for right now, because I'm running out of time again, we need clarity, and we need clarity from this system, we need clarity from
Mayor Mamdani, and we need clarity from the state. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Jennifer Ansley. I have an eighth grader at LMC and have served on the SLT for the last three years. First off, I'd like to thank all of the members of PEP, as well as the Chancellor, for hearing our community's call for community engagement. I'd also like to thank the politicians and community board members that helped us. Our biggest grievance regarding the Next Gen tech proposal was always how rushed the process seemed
and how unheard our community's concerns and wants felt. I also understand this issue was nuanced and multilayered. At times, it felt like we were yelling into the abyss of the DOE processes, attending and participating in community meetings, writing letters, requesting meetings. But we feel heard, and we deeply appreciate you all for that. Most importantly, to demonstrate to our children, who are long gone and hopefully asleep by now, that civic action is important and can indeed effect change.
Next, I'd like to acknowledge that we, as a community, understand that this is only the first step in a long process to grow LMC from 6-8 to a 6-12 school. We are excited for you all to hear more about how our school serves all types of learners in an inclusive, supportive environment. We are excited for you to learn about our talent-- I'm sorry. We are excited for you to learn about our rich arts programs. We are excited for you to hear about our talented administrators,
teachers, and staff that already have a successful model that somehow offer both rigor and support in an environment that is specifically tailored to support all children, not just a chosen few. Thank you again for listening. Thank you. Good evening. I want to thank Chair Faulkner for being responsive to the community I also want to thank panel member Aliceea for thoughtfully providing space for a utilization committee meeting where community members could raise their concerns. And I also want to thank panel members who participated in either
the joint public hearing or that utilization committee meeting or other aspects of the engagement process, including panel member Aubin, panel member Cassaratti, panel member Dr. Collins, panel member Hannah Jones, panel member Hassan. I apologize if I'm forgetting anyone, but it's kind of late. And I also want to thank Assembly Member Grace Lee and City Council Member Chris Marte for stepping in when the DOE's engagement process really failed us. They're the people we turn to when FACE is not there for us. They're the people we turn to when the Manhattan High School superintendent stonewalls us. So I'm grateful that they're there.
I appreciate that the chancellor finally stepped in to pull some of these utilization proposals off the agenda. And, specifically for this proposal in District 2, this is a proposal that brought a lot of people together, but not in necessarily a positive way. Folks concerned about the negative impact of AI came out, alarmed about a plan that seemed more about Superintendent Bittelman's tech FOMO than about student need. Parents from Lower Manhattan Community Middle School came out, seeking a plan that would be more responsive to the community. And many of us concerned about racial and socioeconomic segregation in our schools
came out, appalled that Superintendent Bittelman was pushing another screened school in our community despite recommendations for a moratorium on them. Appalled that Superintendent Bittelman was more responsive to audiences at South by Southwest in Austin or at a Google conference in San Diego than to actual students and families in New York. I want to believe when the chancellor talks about mayoral accountability, but I judge accountability not by the words of the chancellor, but by the actions of people working for him, people like our superintendents. Superintendent Bittelman lost the trust of a lot of people in our community, myself
included, and trust once lost is not easily regained. Thank you. Thank you. The next set of speakers, Naquan McClain, Camilla Carmen, Julianne Paramenter, Elena Davis, Jayden Wimbish, Duran Henderson, Tillman Laney, Whitney Toussant, Reverend Thompson, Fatima Soho, Rashida Brown-Harris, Jeremy Kevinoff, Jimmy Amadeo, Michael Walsh, Tanaya Nasir Frederick, Nikki Holtzman, Iua Starita, Everett Stembridge, Johanna Bjorken,
Dia Rodriguez, Lil Mamen, Noah Benes, Rosalinda Rodriguez, Nia Chong, Tina Johan, Robert Perales, Odin Adler, Ariana Misha. Here last time. Thanks, everybody. Once again, thank you. Echoing Gavin's words, thank you to the chancellor and thank you especially to Chair Faulkner for putting the pause on the Next Gen proposal. I, in particular, was very heartened to hear Chairman Faulkner's
words and recognizing that we have created a system where privileged people with access have one school system and Black and Hispanic students have another in high school. And I really, especially looking into, as somebody who's budget-minded, who understands that really the educational experience of students in small schools needs to be centered, that those students have just a right to prove their ability, their aptitude, their promise, and realize all of their promise.
As somebody who's done that in the eighth grade, that's what we should be leaning into and especially in high schools. And it's an uphill climb because what's happened really is this scarcity narrative where people truly believe that the only schools that are good are screened schools, where they believe that the complications of the application process means that in order to find out what a good school is, you ask your neighbor, and all of the implicit bias that goes into that. And I'm sure I'm over time, the clock's not running,
so I'll just leave it there. But again, thank you. Thank you. Next. Good evening. Reverend Leticia Thompson. AI is a NO. I hear you. The price went up on the SCAM. Please stop funding PDs for principals and trust your superintendents to do the work. Districts are more than data. And finally, I'm feeling a little nostalgic, and I want to thank you for making D3 a Spike Lee joint. You did the right thing I like your... You can begin. Thanks. I'll be quick. Whitney Toussaint, CEC 30 Co-President
here in my personal capacity. I'm also the proud member of Parent Supported Parents. I just want to say thank you for pulling the D3 proposals. I'm glad you all heard from the families in the district. They are looking forward to working with you all to find continued solution, because pulling these proposals was just the beginning. So thank you for starting that engagement over again. And I would like to say, and I want to elevate what the young woman said before me, and I'm saying young because I'm being polite. She's grown. However, there is a separate school system for more privileged people than our Black and brown students here in the city, and the reason why is because people are ignoring history. People are acting like parents and taxpayers did not happen in the
'60s, and we had Southern elected officials praising those 10,000 white parents from Queens that marched to City Hall because they were against integration. That happened here in this city, and people are acting like it didn't happen. I didn't want to use my comments on that. I wanted to thank you all for, again, doing what you had to do for my district in District 30, especially for our Horizon Middle School. I'm going to say thank you for that, because that was two years of advocating, and now I'm bringing it back to the other side of my district in East Elmhurst. We had a traffic fatality, Baron Errol Palomino. He was struck and killed by a motorist.
He went to PS 127. The school around the corner is PS 329. That school has been told four years to reimagine their space. They've lost so much. Now, I think there's a proposal for them to walk around the corner to a library in East Elmhurst. People speed through that neighborhood all the time to get to LaGuardia. Why do we now have these babies going outside of their school to go to get what they need? Please, let's look at these site referrals and build more seats in East
Elmhurst. I don't care who I have to talk to, elected officials. If you don't know me, you will, because I run up on all of them in District 30. You all even know me here. So please, let's do what we have to do and stop having this have-and-have-not system in New York City public schools, because I'm not going to pretend like stuff doesn't happen, because it does. We have parent leaders that are backed by the Manhattan Institute, parent leaders who were named in a report called Billionaire-Backed Bigots, and they were, during the prior chancellor, during David Banks' administration, able to get
multiple meetings under their different groups, and I foiled it. I have it. And for some reason, the rest of my FOIL request- Ms. Toussaint, you know your time's expired, right? And yeah, I know it did, and I appreciate you letting me take my time, Chair Faulkner. Thank you for that. And again, I spent a lot of my time thanking you all for my district. I know you're all tired. I'm tired, too. Thank you. Thank you. The last. By tuning into the various CEC, PEP, and joint public hearings, it's clear education is political and ignites the primal. And I'm clear on the importance of the accuracy and precision of language, because
there's disagreement as to what constitutes family engagement. Each side thinks about it differently. No wonder we're often at odds. These differing thoughts become differing beliefs, and beliefs inform decisions. Decisions lead to actions with consequences. These differences also inform expectations, which unmet lead to consequential feelings. Though even I may wish to weed feelings out of this discourse, there's
a reason nature instilled in us a panoply of feelings. Anger, for one, signals that a boundary needs to be established or that one has been crossed. It seems we need some boundaries, a robust family bill of rights that clearly defines and codifies what constitutes family engagement. And to the doubters, notice the patterns of practice that may hinder your endeavors tomorrow. No one is immune, and success is
highly inconvenient. And I'm grateful that proposals regarding RSMA, the Center School, MSC, and the NextGen High School were withdrawn. Going forth with a mutual idea of family engagement, what wonders might materialize as we collectively work toward a solution? Everyone listening deeply, speaking truthfully, thinking creatively, and acting courageously. Chancellor Samuels, Superintendent Higgins, and members of
the PEP, thank you for acting courageously in pulling these proposals. Let's proceed justly across all districts and enjoy the consequences- Okay. Your time has expired ... of a successful process through meaningful engagement. Thank you. Yeah. All right. Peace and blessings, you all. Again, Rasheeda Brown-Harris. My pronouns are she/her/hers. I'm a parent leader with New Settlement PAC, Parent Action Committee, and PSPNY, and I'm a Healing Center Schools advocate and restorative justice transformative justice
supporter. Chancellor Samuels, thank you for removing the proposal for the new Gen High Schools. We don't want it, we don't need it, and it has zero community engagement. So thank you for removing itOff the table to vote tonight. Thank you for removing the proposals for the middle schools in District 3. And thank you for voting yes to the D75 co-location in D4. Yay. I'm super sad for the closures, not proposed anymore. Super sad for the closure of the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women, and I do wonder
what supports we actually give the school community as DOE, as PEP, and as New York City to support the school community when their schools close. I wanted to reiterate that today, well, yesterday, on Wednesday, April 29th, New York City City Council had a joint Committee on Education and Committee on Public Safety oversight hearing on school safety. Once again, unfortunately, New York City's preliminary budget threatens cuts to restorative justice, mental health continuum, and immigrant family
communications and outreach initiatives. We need the PEP to sit up and take notice of this. We need the PEP to understand what's happening and how we, you, the PEP, essentially our New York City School Board, is paying close attention to this and working with the City Council and working with the community. Lastly, I want to ask, where's Joe Borelli? Okay. Joe Borelli is our PEP member who we're still waiting for an apology- Time has expired ... use a derogatory term against Bad Bunny's halftime
show. Thank you. Next time we're going to have the Joe Borelli- Yep. Next, May 6th. Thank you, Chair Faulkner. There are three more. Natasha Bujosa, Esther Videri, and Anne Hager. And that wraps up open comment. Yes. You can begin when you're at the microphone. Good evening. I also come bearing a lot of gratitude. As you might have heard at the PEP Utilization Committee meeting, District 4 learned about the District 3 proposal sometime
in November and started engaging the community. District 3 is our neighbor, literally on the opposite side of Fifth Avenue. And we worked a lot in terms of trying to figure out what solutions were. One thing that really impressed me is that for the first time in a long time, school communities came together to advocate for the same thing, and they worked as a collective, which is what we should strive for. And so it was hard to see that in a transition, we just had some gaps in communication. And so I'm hoping that now that we have this new vision and we're
stabilizing in a new era of administration, we have the ability to engage in authentic and transformative parent engagement so that we can move our communities forward. Because at the end of the day, we're only here to fight for our kids to get what they deserve. And what they deserve is a holistic education. And one thing that I promise you is that as a medical educator, I do not use a dashboard for students to learn anatomy or how to do surgeries. They actually have cadavers and things that they engage with. Which means that I'm not using AI
to train doctors. It also means that we probably shouldn't be using AI or dashboards to teach kids because we have this amazing thing that are human beings that are able to create relationships to help students learn and build their capacity. So we continue to advocate for an AI moratorium. And so the same care and authenticity and humanity that we showed all of our communities, we can show it in the decision-making that we make moving forward to support restorative justice, human-centered schools, and
authentic pedagogical practices. Thank you. Speaker can begin. Hi. Once again, my name is Natasha Bujosa with New Cinnamon PAC, and I would like to yield my time to the great, amazing Tanisha Grant. Hey, everybody. My name is Tanisha Grant, and I am the executive director of Parents Support and Parents New York. I am also the mother of three and the grandmother of four, and some of my grandchildren go to school in District 3. So I'm a hard critic, as y'all know, but I also give credit when credit is due.
So Chancellor Samuels, we really, really want to thank you for pulling these proposals tonight. When it comes to District 3 and the truncation of RSMA and the moving of Center School, we have worked diligently with the parents and the community to buy time. So now that we have done that, we would like to ask that RSMA is given the resources and the support to thrive before we come back next year and try to do it again.
So we will be looking forward to continuing to work with the Department of Education and the PEP, and you know people I like, to make sure that our Black and brown children aren't moved from their school home when there's so much else going on. Also, I want to say, while people was nice, I'm not going to be. Gail Brewer, you need to support all of the schools in your district. All of the schools in your district. The same way you want to go hard for the Center School, you also have
to go hard for RSMA, and we look forward to getting some more things done. Thank you, and good night. So that has concluded our public comment, and I know normally at this time we move to panel member comments. I'm going to ask, based on the lateness of the hour, if panel members would be willing to forgo their comments, and we will have them next week. We're going to meet next week on the first week in May, May 6th. We'll be meeting at the Francis Lewis High School. So
since there is no other business before the panel, again, thank the panel members and thank everyone for coming out tonight. This meeting is adjourned