Hey, everyone. Thank you for waiting for us to get started over here. Good evening. I am Eliana Lucea. My pronouns are she/her. I represent Queens CECs on the Panel for Educational Policy, and I am the chair of the Utilization Committee. Before we introduce all ourselves, I would like to quickly go over norms and behaviors for the night. Everyone that is here for tonight has a copy of those, but I'm going to just pull them up on screen also-ish. So one mic, one screen. A quick reminder that this is a live stream, so only panelists will have the ability to access
video and microphone, with the audience in listen-only mode. In-person speakers, please wait to be addressed by name so we can avoid crosstalk and have the transcript be as clear as possible. Zoom speakers, please use the raise hand feature so that you can be recognized, promoted to a panelist, and unmuted. All comments go to the committee, not to any members of the public. Please share your experience with the school utilization proposal process with us. We know that this can be a difficult and emotional conversation, so please direct your comments to the committee only. We reserve the right to limit any comments that target individual
members of the public, as that is not aligned to the goals of tonight's meeting. The public comment is limited to the agenda, so any comments must be about your experience with the school utilization proposal process. This is not the chance to speak in favor or against any of the proposals, and we reserve the right to limit those comments as this is not the appropriate venue for that conversation. Those conversations need to happen in places like the joint public hearing, et cetera. Guests in the Zoom audience who wish to speak must be recognized, so please raise
your hand. When you are recognized, please share your name and your affiliation with this process. The additional context is helpful for us and is also good for the transcript. There are no DOE presentations this evening, and there are going to be no DOE-related rebuttals. We're not here to present anything on behalf of DOE. We do not speak on behalf of DOE. The goal of this portion of the meeting is to hear from the CECs and from the community about their experiences with the SUP process generally. First, we listen, and then we respond. So committee members, this one is for us. As we proceed through each agenda item, please hold any questions
or comments until everyone has shared their experience. At the end, I'd like the committee members to share any initial thoughts that you have about what you've heard or if you've identified any commonalities or themes, as these are very helpful for us to take back. So I'm going to pull this off of the screen and put our agenda back up. Committee members, please introduce yourselves. We'll do the folks that are here in person, which is really only Shirley. And then we'll go to everyone online. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Shirley O'Bam. I sit on the Panel for Education Policy as the Queens Borough President appointee.
Let's go down in order. Do I see Gavin? Do you want to introduce yourself first? Sure. Good afternoon. Good evening. My name is Gavin Healy. I'm the IEP parent member on CEC 2. Nice to be here with all of you. Thank you. Camille? Hey, good evening, everyone. Camille Casserey, Brooklyn Borough President appointee to the PEP. Thank you all for being here, and looking forward to the conversation. Mr. Gedron? Good evening, everyone. Leon Gedron, parent leader- That's wrong. District 17. Good morning, sir. Okay. I cannot see anyone else except for Naveen.
Naveen, would you like to introduce yourself? Thank you, Chair Lucea. I'm Naveen Hassan. I'm the Manhattan CEC elected representative to the Panel for Educational Policy. Happy to be here. Oh, yes. Alice, please and thank you. Alice? Oh, maybe she turned that off. Alice, whenever you- I will promote her. Thank you. She was as a panelist, but I don't know. There we go. Thanks for the acknowledgement. I'm actually in transit, so I may go in and out. So I apologize.
But thank you all for being here. We really need to hear your input. So thank you. I'm on the PEP. We have to vote. Thanks. Thanks, Alice. Okay. I think that is all of our committee members for the time being. So where are we? Okay, we discussed the norms and the behaviors. We've done our introductions of our committee members. Can everyone in the room please introduce themselves? And we'd like to start with you. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Craig Sutskin. I'm the president of CEC 2. Michelle Casserey Wu, D2 parent. Laura Miller, D3 parent, children at Center and MSC.
Laurie Kalinowski, MSC parent, two children. And who's this? MPTA Co-VP. Oh, yes. MPTA Co-VP as well. I'm Olivia Berry. I'm an MSC and Zinder parent, and I chair the school leadership team at MSC. I'm Steve Horn, a parent of a student at MS. I'm Jean Beebe. I have a student at Hunter and a student at Central. I'm also the co-secretary in the PTA at Hunter School. The PTA associate organization is really involved then. And I don't know. I mean, Simon's in that. Okay. All right. That's all right. So I would love if we could go district by district.
I'm open to discussing whether or not people would prefer a different way of going about the conversation. I think that's fine. Yeah? All right, awesome. So we'll do District 1 first. We have the proposed residing and co-location of PS 184 Xuan Yuan and PS 143 Henrietta Szold, beginning the 2026-'27 school year. I can pull up the educational impact statement if anyone would like to see it. But in the meantime, is there anyone from CEC 1? I don't think there's anyone here, but is there anyone online from CEC 1,
that would like to share their experience with the school utilization process for this proposal? If so, please raise your hand so that we can recognize you. Nobody raised. Hassan. Hassan, please feel free. Thank you, Adriana. I know that we're not talking about the proposals one way or the other, as we did in our briefing and heard about in the joint public hearing. But in terms of the process that I saw play out in District 1 with the superintendent's office and team and all of the school administration and parents, whether they're parent leaders or school just PTA members.
It was admirable. There was a collaborative long-term process in terms of talking about the need for space at Xuan Yuan 184, and the solutions for it were community-developed. And they thankfully had a school nearby, as we've talked about a lot in the class size working group, that had capacity, and needed to use that space in a way to prevent perhaps a charter school from moving in. So there was strategy involved, too. So PS 143 was chosen as a place
to split Xuan Yuan and put the middle school grades in the significantly underutilized building. But also created an environment of collaboration around adding a dual language program at PS 143, modeled after what Xuan Yuan was already doing. So while they have Mandarin, 143 will get Spanish starting next fall if this proposal is approved. And everything I saw was very happy. Everyone was happy about it, and nobody was surprised about anything. So that's all I have to say. Great work. Great work by the district. Thank you, Panel Member Hassan. Do any other
committee members have comments that they would like to share before we move to the public for this? What? All right. Are there any members of the District 1 community who would like to share their experience with the utilization proposal process for this proposal? No hands. All right. Let's move to District 2.
The first one we will address is the proposed closure of the Urban Assembly High School for Business for Young Women at the end of this school year, the 2025-2026 school year. For this one, I can pull up the educational impact statement as well. If anyone would like to see that, just let me know, and we will start from here. If anyone from CEC 2 would like to share their experience, please go for it. Sure. So I guess I'll speak. I just want to start off by just saying I am the president of CEC 2, but I am expressing my own
opinions tonight. We have not had a discussion, but I just want to be clear on that. CEC 2 did not have much to do with the Urban Assembly closing because it's the CEC, it's not the CCHS that dealt with it more. So I don't have a lot of experience, and I don't have a lot to offer. It was a severely underused school. My understanding is that the school has, I think, total enrollment of like 80 students. So I get something had to be done. My understanding, and this is completely my understanding, is that they have spoken to each of the students. I think in terms of finding them a new home for next year, for the
current freshman, sophomore, juniors. I can't speak more to the process of how it was closed, so I don't want to express anything without knowing the full of it. Thank you. I think that's a great thing for them to do anytime that they're closing a school, is make sure that each of the students has a touch point and a place to land in. Yes. And it's a very specific student body. It's one gender or all-girls school, if that's the right way to say it. But, so these students have very specific interests and needs going into the school, so I think my understanding is they pay close attention to each of the needs of each student.
I can't confirm that that was done. This is secondhand knowledge. I just don't want to speak for others. Appreciate that. Thank you. Do we have anyone online from CEC 2 who would like to share their experience?Thank you. Also, if you would like to share what you would prefer DOD do going forward instead of what they did, I would love to hear that as well. All right, Jason, please. Yes, Jason, please. Sure. Just with respect to the closure of the Urban Assembly School of Business for young women,
we did not receive any information about that as a CEC. Superintendent Gary Beidleman, who kind of oversees that school, he came to our CEC a couple of times, in, I think, our February and March meetings to present, but he actually didn't really address anything about the closure of the Urban Assembly School other than to mention that it was proceeding, and I think based on the small enrollment of the school. So I don't think we have any real direct knowledge about how the
existing students there have been taken care of. I trust that they are being given appropriate placements either nearby, if that's what they want, or in another convenient and suitable location. But, we weren't provided with any direct information about that. Thank you. Is there anyone from the District 2 community in the audience that would like to share their experience or share things that they hope to see next time? Anyone? Maybe he doesn't understand French.
Just kidding. Sorry. Still getting to know you. No, it's all good. Okay. If at any point you have a question or would like to-- Not a question. If you have any input you would like to share, please raise your hand. Let's move on to the proposed opening and co-location of Next Gen High School and the High School of Teaching and the Lower Manhattan Community Middle School. For this one, I also have the educational impact statement that I can pull up on screen if anyone is interested. And, of course, we'll go again, CEC 2, and then we'll do online.
Sure. So this one was a lot more controversial, and CEC 2 did have several meetings about it. There was a significant number of parents from the Lower Manhattan Community School, LMC, that did testify. But again, I'm not going to get into whether I agree or disagree. I just talk about the process. What I have said is that I believe that the process was followed to the letter of the law. Mm-hmm. However, I think that most parents would agree that the rules, the law, whatever you want to call it,
was lacking. So, the way it worked was that District Planning called me up, late January, something like that, and let me know that this was happening. I let my CEC know. The messaging I got from Office of District Planning was that they had lots of communication with the LMC families. Also, they've spoken to Richard Green. I don't know who's also there as well, in that building as well. Again, that's the high school. I can't really speak to the high school. I can talk more about the LMC community. They said they had engaged them. They had had many conversations with them.
I don't know who they engaged because the reaction we got a short time later was that maybe the SLT was informed, but there really was no widespread information. And for those of you who don't know, because I know it's not everybody is from D2, the LMC community has been asking for additional space for many years to expand from a six through eight to a six through twelve. And if the Urban Assembly was closed, that would've provided an opportunity and space to make LMC a six through twelve, to at least give them the opportunity.
Instead, the Department of Education's proposal was to put this new high school in. Nothing to do with the high school. It was more about utilization of that space. And the LMC parents felt, and I think I can speak for them, that they were not given the appropriate opportunity to make a formal proposal once it was public that Urban Assembly was closing. Basically, they weren't given a chance to advocate for themselves. The parents felt that they were told about the opportunity too late. It was a done deal, or at least seems to be a done deal, to put
a new school in. And they just felt it was unfair. I think that they have valid concerns. I think that to talk about how the process should change, I think the rules behind when people are informed, who is informed, need to be changed and codified. It can't just be the SLT is informed in a meeting two months before, a month before, whatever it is, the joint hearing. With all due respect, I've been on an SLT for two years, so with all due respect to SLTs, it's a small number of parents who may or may not
communicate with the families in their school. Again, nothing against the SLT members. I know we have several of them. I've been on them. But in a school of 400 students, the communication isn't always there. I think what needs to be codified is an earlier conversation, and the conversation has to be with more than just the SLT. It has to be, whether it's a PTA meeting that is appropriately noticed within 10 days notice, whatever. Like with elections, you have to have 10 or 15 days notice or whatever it is, appropriately noticed,
and then the conversation has to happen. I think thatAll superintendents need to be involved in these conversations, especially if it's a co-located building. My sense is that the District 2 Superintendent Kelly McGuire, who knows the space very well, was not involved in the discussions of the utilization of this space. It was other superintendents. And I think that if he had been involved earlier, I think that things would have been different. Maybe we would've gone up in the same place, and that is what it is. But I think that it would've at least given a chance to these
families. I think that's what they are frustrated, and that's what they would have liked. I don't want to go on and on because I know we have other districts that we want to talk about. But that's my quick synopsis. I'm sure Council Member Healy will have comments as well on that as he serves on the council with me. Yes, please. Any of our CEC2 council members that may be online, please raise your hand if you'd like to share, even if you are in the audience. Yes, please, Gavin, please. Thank you. Yeah, I think that summary is basically accurate. As a CEC, we were not really given
any opportunity to weigh in on this proposal. Actually, Manhattan High School Superintendent Beidleman came to our CEC meeting, I think our February CEC meeting, largely because a number of us, after hearing some of the concerns from families at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School, basically reached out to him and to his boss and were very upset, and so he came. The presentations he gave to us were, I think, deeply unsatisfying in terms of the information he provided to us. We repeatedly asked him to provide us with certain information and data in written form, which
he refused to do on a number of occasions. At one point, he even told me that the chancellor had said that certain information, they were not at liberty to disclose, which I actually don't think is correct, which was also concerning. I will say that yes, the families at Lower Manhattan Community Middle School and the administration, and their district have wanted to expand the school for quite some time. In fact, at our CEC2 meeting last night, Superintendent Kelly McGuire, who was actually at one point the principal of that school, he
informed us that he made that request at least multiple times as principal and as superintendent. I think perhaps some of the issues with not granting that request related to who controls that space in terms of the superintendency. And families as well really did want to expand and had talked about it many times. I think there were some concerns that they didn't want to push out another school that they had a relationship with, but they
weren't made aware of the other school, the Urban Assembly School, being subject to closure until basically in the last couple of months. It was also concerning in respect of the engagement that there was a very well-attended PTA meeting at the Lower Manhattan Community Middle School to talk about these proposals. Office of District Planning came. Some of our state and city electeds came. But the Manhattan High School superintendent did not come. So that was concerning. I know that his proposal to
open this new high school has been in the works for actually a long time, which I found out only in the last a month or so. In terms of the siting, I don't really know. But I would say that in terms of my time on CEC2, this is my second term. This is probably the subject that I have received, I'd say the one or two top things that I've received an incredible amount of emails and phone calls, and messages about of concern. And a lot of that concern does center around the real failure of community engagement in
this case. And I think it's a failure. I don't think it's a neglectful failure. I think it's a kind of a willful failure to spring this at the last moment. And when people don't have any options, they don't have any way to really meaningfully contribute to a more constructive proposal. And so I guess those are my main points. So thank you. You mind if I take one more quick run? Yes, of course. Thank you. So just to expand a little bit on what Council Member Healy noted. The summary is too little too late, right?
Mm-hmm. After this proposal was made, I did have actually some thoughts about creative ways that we could accommodate LMC, Next Gen. The bottom line is it's too late. If they wanted to open up this high school in the fall, I can't just come up with an idea like, "Well, we can move this school here and sort of play chess a little bit. Move the pieces around." I can't do that in, what are we, in March, right? Because it's too late. You have to have the school done. You have to have applications. So I think just to agree with Council Member Healy is it's just too little too late. It didn't give us CEC members
enough time, and the PTA meeting the impression was the fade had come light at that point. Thank you. Before we proceed- Thank you ... I would like to thank you. I would like to recognize panel member and committee member Farajii Hannah-Jones and CEC 4 President, Dr. Felice Salas-Ramirez. Thank you both for joining us. If there is anyone in the audience from, again, CEC 2 or District 2 who would like to share their experience or our folks from CCHS, I see that Kelly and
Nancy are being active in the chat, and I would like to hear from both of you if you have any information that you would like to share about your experience with this proposal or anything that you would like to share that you'd like to see DOE do next time or expand upon, something they did right that you want to see them do right again. I can't see who has their hand raised. Kelly Baer here, I'm happy to speak if you'd like. Oh. Thank you. Yes? Okay, sure. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. I'm happy to be a part of this thoughtful discussion.
My experience was really that this came together in pieces. My awareness arose in pieces, right? There was this idea that there was this high school concept, but with no site attached, and it was abstract. And then there was going to be a closing, but we didn't know where it was, right? And then it was, okay, there's a closing here, but we can't talk to the community until the community has been engaged, right? So it felt very managed. And then we learned at our, I guess, February, I want to get this right, it was the February CCHS meeting
was when Superintendent Bytelman came and sort of announced the package almost as a fait accompli, right? That it was this closure of one, opening another co-location. 26 Broadway kind of gets all announced very quickly. And again, I think that there's a lot of value here in this school, and I understand if a school has to close. My concerns have been I have yet to make contact with any families from Business for Young Women. It seems that the totality of the 26 Broadway community was not engaged with this in any kind of longer-term, thoughtful way.
At the same time, that the idea for the school, if I understand properly, that the idea for the Next Generation Technology High School at that site had been conceived way prior. I don't have an exact date, right? But this, that was shared by Superintendent Bytelman at the walkthrough that a whole bunch of us did at 26 Broadway on March 21st. It was, "Well, we've been planning to open this school at this site for a long time." And that was news, right? So things are just not really lining up. So again, back to you, and I apologize, I've joined late. I don't know exactly who's speaking. I have so many people I need to meet.
Thank you, all of you, for your work, but this idea that maybe the letter of the process was followed may have been true, but the process does seem to me wildly inadequate for meaningful community engagement for the totality of the 26 Broadway community, thoughtful dialogue about how best to use the space, other needs, and then whether this school could be sited somewhere else. So for me, it was a very disjointed and fragmented process, where I was also not given a ton of information about who else knew what, and it would've been an elaborate
reporting exercise to put a clearer picture together while also trying to be respectful of the Department of Education and take the guidance that they were giving me as someone who has a, I guess, somewhat fuzzy role in advising on this process. I hope that's helpful. I've been talking for a long time. I'm happy to answer any questions at all that might help clarify what I've shared. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. Lanie Kingston. Mm-hmm. Yes. Hi, Lanie. We're going to introduce another of our committee members who just joined us, Lanie Kingston.
Lanie, if you'd like to quickly intro yourself, and then I suppose we should probably do the same for Farajii. Sorry. My bad. That was fast. Thank you. Oh, no. There, wow. That's fine. Farajii, would you like to intro yourself before we proceed? Sorry. Hi, everyone. There we go. Hello? Very briefly, sorry. Just Kelly Baer. Can I say real quick, I'm absolutely speaking in my own capacity here, just as an individual council member. So sorry, just wanted to add that to the record. Thank you. Yes, Kelly. Thank you. Yeah. I'm sorry I'm late. I just came from CUNY, where a class was doing a presentation on class size.
It doesn't look like it's the same agenda that got sent around because I don't see class size on here unless it's somewhere below. It was the number one thing on the agenda that was sent to us. As you probably realize, I'm very concerned because we passed a resolution during our March meeting, which is more than a month ago, around the issue of class size, and yet two PEP members, PEP meetings have gone by, and the reso has not been posted. So-
Lanie? Yeah. We're going to address resolutions after. I know you can't see the whole agenda screen here, but it is down here. We're going to talk about it, and like I said when I texted you, we have a very slam jammed agenda for April. That plus timing, we're doing it in May. But we can address it when we get to the end here. Farajii, please. Hi, everyone. Farajii Hannah-Jones, CEC Rep for Brooklyn. That's it. Thank you. Is there anybody else from District 2, CEC 2, or CCHS that would like to chime in with their experience for this proposal, being the Next Gen High
School, high school teaching, and the Lower Manhattan Community School? Niners. All right. Let's move on. Wait, I have a- Yes, please. Just from observing all what I've seen or heard about this school wasn't through the Department of Education... I'm sorry, New York City Public Schools. Mm-hmm. I've seen it from its parent organization, but it was not pushed or advertised by New York City Public Schools. And if this is supposed to be a New York City Public Schools,
why was it not advertised through them, promoted through New York City Public Schools? That is where I find there's an issue with engagement, right? Is why everybody's finding out through, a parent organization instead of through Department of Education, New York City Public Schools first. Right? And all the information on that flyer, the first time I seen the flyer, wasn't by New York City Public Schools. It didn't have a New York City Public School email address.
Yeah. And at that time, see, we got conflicting facts, because at that time, on that flyer, there was no designated location for this school. It was to be determined. So it's like there's conflicting facts about the NetGen, and so the issue with engagement, right? And if this is a New York City Public School, it should've been produced and introduced by New York City Public School. Thank you. Okay. Yes. So I just... Hi, everybody. Betty Ustares, as mentioned, President of CEC The Manhattan high schools did reach out to several CECs to do
presentations on this high school. I was very explicit with them that I would not accept a presentation of a school that has yet to be approved by the PEP. And they've been pretty persistent with my community. I will also uplift that my community has consistently asked for a new high school. And Gary Lederman is a superintendent, has several schools in my district, one of which is focused on tech, Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics. And in fact, their AP is supposed to be the principal for this particular school.
But I would say that that school community is a little bit upset because they're like, "Wait, we already have a science and tech type of high school in Manhattan High School that is not being supported." And there are a lot of resources that have been put into what the potential of what this could be, that have not been poured into other Manhattan high schools that have a similar type of curricular proposal, let's say it that way. So Uptown is a little bit... And I know five and six
isn't here, but Uptown is a little bit like, "What the heck is going on? Why aren't we supporting these Manhattan high schools that have very similar curricular ideas and approaches?" Mm-hmm. In addition to the fact that we have less high school seats in Uptown than in Downtown Manhattan. And so those are some of the things that have been percolating, at least in my community. I did not draft the resolution on this particular high school because we had a couple of other things that we were focusing on. But it is something that is of concern of my district. Thank you. Okay. Let's move to the District
3 proposals. The first one we'll go through is the proposed grade frontation of PS 191, which is the Riverside School for Makers and Artists, which is also tied to the proposal that is directly underneath it. Yes, you have a hand up, Liam? We're going to move the floor to... Okay. Okay, I have a live one this time. Hello, please introduce yourself and share your connection to the District 4 to the school community. Francesca? Oh, I'm sorry. I was waiting for- Floor ... CC people, three people to speak first, because I'm just a parent.
Not just a parent. You are a parent. Thank you for coming. Yes. We'll go through the intro, and then the CEC folks, and then we will do parents and members of the community that are in the audience. But thank you for- Okay. I'm going to lower for now. Okay. So first we have the proposed grade truncation of PS 191, Riverside School for Makers and Artists, which is directly tied to the second proposal here, which is a proposed residing and co-location of MS 243, which is the Ventas School, and PS 191, Riverside School for Makers and Artists.
So if there are members of CEC 3, can we have anyone here from CEC 3 know? Online? Oh, hello. Welcome. Please introduce yourself. I am so sorry for that. No problem. I am Jonathan Stocks. I'm a CEC3 member and treasurer. Hi, Jonathan. Would you like to share your experiences with the school utilization proposal process for these two proposals? Neither. I'm just here listening. Oh, wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone in the audience from CEC 3 who would like to share? If so, please raise your hand so that you can be recognized.
And if there's not anyone from CEC 3, then we will... Oh. Pan member Hassan. Yes, please. Thank you, Chair Alicia. Listen, I've sent a lot of messages about this, and we've gotten probably 1,000-plus messages regarding this and other proposals. Similar to what we heard from the-Possibly worse than what we heard about the District 3 process. There is an issue around the timing of announcements and the timing of clear communication to the school communities
about exact plans, right, for their children. And it cannot be the case that we are a DOE that tells people, after the application window is closed, that their school is no longer going to exist, or is going to be slowly taken away, or it's going to be moved a mile and a half from its current location. These are not things that lead to trust and confidence in government and in the system. And whatever led to this cannot happen again, but it also cannot happen now. This is the precedent-setting
time. So I hope that is clearly heard by everyone around, that this is not a good way of administering a system where you want people to come. It's a good way of getting people to run away from your system. So, that's all I'll say about that, and this applies to essentially everything in District 3's proposals. Thank you, Mudib. I think Noah Orabasian has his hand up. He's on CEC3, I believe. We can open that immediately. Mm-hmm. Well, let me just see.
He's been allowed to talk. Yes. Noah, please introduce yourself and share your experiences. Hello, my name is Noah Orabasian. I'm on CEC3, and I'm a parent at MSC 323. Just want to say my experience has been very confusing. We just received guidance from FACE that anyone involved with these proposals, who happens to be on CEC and a person at the school being affected, is not allowed to talk on it or whatever it is. So that, in and of itself, at this stage in the game, is also very confusing. And so at the risk of violating whatever and making this harder for whoever,
I'm here to listen to the rest of it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that, Noah. If anyone would like to read the email out loud. Yeah. Yeah. Just read the email. Just read it out loud. Yeah. Can you read it out loud? Because we're going to go to the folks that are in the room, and then we'll go to the folks online. I believe it was sent to our president six weeks after she asked the question. So just last Saturday, the ninth of April. Let's see. All right, here we go. Yeah. So, I believe Jill, CEC president, asked this question about six weeks ago, and then asked
again when we received an email from concerned parents and did not get an answer till, yeah, this week. "Dear council members, I hope this message finds you well. I am writing to share guidance received from the DOE Ethics Office regarding participation in matters related to the A190 proposals. CEC members who are parents of children attending schools impacted by the A190 proposals must recuse themselves from any CEC-related discussions, resolutions, or votes on these matters. Members may continue to participate
as parents but cannot act in that capacity as CEC members in these instances. If you believe this applies to you, or if you have any questions, you may contact the DOE Ethics Officer directly." Mm. Yeah. So to be fair- Yes ... I think that anyone who is concerned about that should ask them to clarify what they mean by discussions by CEC members. Because if they mean discussions during a CEC regular calendar and business meeting, I can see how that would be a conflict of interest. Sure. Which is the same reason that CEC members are discouraged from being
the school liaisons at their own child's school. But if it is more than that, and the limitation is to your right to speak about something that concerns you or interests you outside of that, I'd be a little concerned about that, too. Thank you for sharing that. No. And sharing it so that we can have it in the record. Anything? I have a clarifying question. Yes. So if they wanted to do, because CEC's been passing resolutions regarding proposals, so how is they going to create and have discussions on these proposals if they are not allowed to talk about it?
Correct. I'm just, I don't, that's like, doesn't make sense is that their responsibility? Am I correct, though? I'm like- Particularly as people with lived experience- Yes, yes ... who have to sign off these proposals. So it definitely needs to be more clarified on that because they're not actually voting on the proposal, the PEP is. Right. Right. And then that's the other thing is that these proposals, we have no power in the process as CEC. We just have the power to discuss it, essentially, and without any sort of statement. But
yeah. But may I speak? You go ahead. The CEC does have the power to vote recommend for or against proposals, and right now there are three four schools impacted, PS9, MSC, 191, and Center. And Mount Vernon. But this is- So yeah. So there's a PS9 parent on CEC. And can we get a match on the third? And MSC parent on CEC. Center and 191 do not have CEC members- She loves CEC parents ... but she loves parents. The one, nine. So it's, yeah, I mean, does quorum get impacted? Like, when those members are recused, does quorum now shift to
the majority of the remaining members? Like- That's a very good question. No. It doesn't impact quorum. Because I think you're not in a quorum anymore. We can't vote on anything. No, you have quorum. If a quorum member has to recuse. Yes. That's separate from a vote. So if there are non-voting members, they still make quorum Even if they can't vote on it? Correct. Yeah, because the recusal is outside of whether or not the council can do business because they have met quorum. Mm-hmm. You might not be able to get seven people. You might not be able to get seven people to vote. To pass- Seven people might not even be able to vote, so that leaves only six people. So it's not a quorum, but six people can vote.
You'll never pass anything because you're by statute. But that might be something the DOE might want to think about before they put out these kind of results. We can definitely discuss it. And then for- Excuse me ... your point about them making the decisions. So they can choose to approve or disapprove or deny the proposal. But I think to your point, there is no, and to the point of hundreds of people who have maybe spoken before me, CECs tend to not have the teeth to make a decision because they don't have the authority. That authority lies with the panel for a state and policy. However, they should be listened to, and that information should be presented, in my opinion, to every single member of the
panel in a way that is very clear that the CEC has made either comments against, comments for, or written resolutions against or for, right? That should be extremely clear to us when a decision has been reached or not by a CEC. And that would be- Thanks, because if a CEC does have a resolution, the panel is supposed to respond to the resolution within 30 days. Yeah. By the way, I did make a statement at the last hearing. We passed our resolution March 11th, and we haven't gotten a response. CEC 1 passed the same resolution on the same proposal two weeks after that.
You might have another week to respond to CEC 1. But, that also impacts their ability to do their job. Okay. I would like to get to the folks in the room. Absolutely. And the order of proceeding in whatever order you would like to. I'm a Center parent, so I think we're second. We're on proposed reciting and co-location of 243 and truncation of 191. I can speak to that. Okay. So adding on to what's been happening in your district. When I zoom out, I think this is not the way. The process has failed, and it's failed in a way, like it's...
I've been thinking about it. It's like an Instagram account. Like when you look at the photos, it seems like everyone's having a great time, and they're going on lots of vacations. But when you zoom in, it's not really what happened. So when you look at our EIS, for example, it says that we met 20 times and there's 20 parent engagement events. That is not true. For example, a glaring one is on December 17th working group meeting when we met 191 parents. That meeting is counted twice. And the way that happened was while we were meeting, the then superintendent said, "Hey, 191 parents, stay behind.
I want to talk a little bit with you guys." And then they count that as a second meeting. Hmm. Another way this process failed is, for example, at-- It makes it appear like from January 2025 up until now, we have been talking about where to move Center. That has not been fact true. A relocation only came up in November, December when we met 191 parents, and even then it was the then superintendent told us, "It's all preliminary." Told me there are no plans to move Center School in September. And then, as you know, we got the announcement in January.
So for me, that's a process failure. And then the DOE goes out there and says, "But you should have told your parent community what you learned." But in fact, October, November, December, they told us not to talk about those meetings. So I think that's another process failure. It's... Right? I think mixed messaging, but I think that's a little too soft to call it that. On the 191 side, when we showed up at the 191 to tour the building and talk about whatever the agenda was, our 191 parent counterparts, that was the first time they learned that they were losing sixth and eighth grade.
That was a process for them. It was shocking. We turned around and said, "What happened with your school?" And they said, "We welcomed 300 to 500 migrant students, no bilingual education. We had to use Google Translate." They were handed a sheet of paper that says, "Hola" equals hello, and they struggled. And they had been reaching out to the DOE, and that was when the DOE came to tell them they were losing sixth through eighth grade. I'm so sorry. I'm not being as articulate and linear as I would like to be, but because I wish that there were 191 parents here to tell you this story, and what I
found through this process, and I don't know where the fixes for this is, boy, do I feel privileged. Since January to now, this has been my full-time job. January, February, it was like an 80-hour a week job. Mm-hmm. I don't know how parents at 191 are expected to do this. Mm. They cannot. Yeah. And I'm just an immigrant, but an upper middle-class immigrant, and even my parents never went to meetings like this. It's a culture difference. Mm-hmm. There's a distrust in the government, and also, this doesn't exist in '80s Korea, so they didn't know this existed in '80s
McLean, Virginia. Mm-hmm. I don't know how you have a school that is 92% low income, 40% asylum-seeking, 40% living in temporary shelters, and expect those parents to come to these meetings and advocate for themselves. It's hard. And then for them to learn on that day, and I understand to this day, a lot of the parents don't really know what's happening. And I don't know how seventh grade is so important in the high school admissions process. That's when you want to get into tier one really, right? Mm-hmm. And to ask those children to go to another school to start over and
learn a new language while doing that, I think that's really not the way we want to run things. And to ask eighth-graders to go suddenly in a school that they cameI think that is not the way that we want to run things. And so even based on just that, I think the PEP should speak up and say, "That's not the way we want New York City to be." And I feel embarrassed even advocating for my school because that's a really, really big issue. And so on our end, I'm telling you, even when the
process is working, I feel like the old way legal team. We can go against the DOE on our end, but even then, where is my CEC member? The CEC liaison, we share the same liaison for 191 and Center. That liaison, the 191 parents counterparts will tell you, never went to them to tell them that they were on the chopping block. Mm-hmm. She still has not met with them. She has not reached out to them for a single meeting, does not return to any emails or letters, and we're getting the same treatment. I can show you just email sent, my sent
box, just emails, emails, emails, not a single response. It's not the way I think the best way that New York City, this system could be run. That's not the way. The only people that have actually responded to us are PEP members. PEP members have met. John Collins, Naveed, Greg, have met with us- Mm-hmm ... heard us. And, PEP member Shirley Aubin has responded to us. Camille. Pardon? Camille. And Camille. Right. Mansourati. Yet, the EIS is rife with errors, and they don't get addressed. And I understand, when we get a document from a government agency, we want
to trust and assume that it's correct, and we have been correcting it and correcting it and correcting it, and it doesn't get corrected. For example, our EIS says that it concedes we're a theater arts-based school. We're not like LaGuardia, where we put on Broadway shows. If you come see our show, an eyebrow will go up. But what we do is we use theater arts-based classes that everybody takes, and we weave it into core classes, and we use that as a tool for social, emotional, and academic needs. And we don't have any tracking. We don't have any ICT classes. All the kids learn together.
And guess what? We're the 24th highest SHSAT offers citywide. And in District 3, we're the third. We're after TAB, G&T School, and Booker T., and you know that's a sweatshop, and it's us. We produce the same results. It's a fact. Sorry, Aubin. It's a fact. Yeah. Feel free. Go back. And we send kids to LaGuardia for tech, all kind of performance art schools, and everyone feels like they're on the same leveling field. Mm-hmm. One boy, he's on the record. He was at the town hall, so I can speak about him because it was a public meeting. He went up at the town hall and said, "I repeated seventh grade." Mm-hmm. I was a little embarrassed. But he's an amazing performer, amazing
speaker, and he says, "During the test stuff, people come and ask me for help." So he feels normalized. So that's what we do, and we need a theater. We've been saying that we need a theater. The EIS concedes that there is no theater for us, and instead it would explore Lincoln Center, and District 3 has also, on three public occasions, said they would explore Juilliard, PS 452. Well, we called them this week. Never heard from the DOE. There's no exploration going on, and they don't have any theater capacity for us to use. And those letters were read on record at the hearing.
Yeah. That's shameful. Yeah. The EIS says it'll send us to a field .4 miles away for our recess. .4 miles away, that's the equivalent of eight city blocks. To get 250 kids, headcount, walk, headcount- Mm-hmm ... headcount, walk, headcount. That takes 40 minutes. Recess is 30 minutes. There's no bathroom nearby. We have been saying that so many times, and it just, does it go into a black hole? There are other errors in there. Like for example, it says, "Well, why don't you use the rooftop space?" This class is 585.
That rooftop space is 10,768 square feet. When you divide that by 585, each kid gets 18.4 square feet. That's not enough. The industry standard is about 75% square feet minimum. And right now, Center kids, and the way 191 uses their playground, which is 85 kids at a time, they get 130 square feet. That's a huge reduction in space. The EIS hasn't corrected that. And I understand we bring that up to PEP members, and PEP members have told us, "But we're just going to go with what the EIS says." Why wouldn't you?
Mm-hmm. But it contains errors, and if this is a parent engagement process, and we bring that information to the DOE, and we're not heard, I think what you're endangering is-- With 191, their damage is going to be humongous. Kids are going to drop out is what our 191 parent reps have said. Which is wild to me, that we are taking that risk. With Center School, you're going to dismantle the program, but is it the end of our life? I guess not really. The school will change
is the danger. But is that the best that we can do with our process in this city? We're telling you, you have two wildly different communities, and our result and experience is the same. I don't think that's okay. Sorry, Ally. Thank you for that. Sorry. Can I try the name of the parent list? Yes, for sure. We're going to go to our parent that's online, and then we'll come back- Thank you ... to our in-person folks. Okay. That's fine. Yes. Francesca? And I'm sorry if I said your name wrong, please correct me. We have a Francesca and a Francisca, and I think Francesca was going to speak, so she can go first. Otherwise, I'm ready.
You please. It's you. Thank you. Okay. My name is Franziska Fort Lewis, and I'm speaking on the process around both PS 191 truncation and the reciting of the Center School. And Jean has actually already said pretty much everything, and every word that she said should be counted, taken seriously. It's all the truth. It's how we all experienced it. And when I say that I'm tired, having gone to every joint public hearing and everything, the mountain of effort and
work that Jean has put into it, what I've done is minuscule. But the process, I'm going to keep this really short, was extremely flawed, and as of fall 2025, we were told we wouldn't move, and then January, all of a sudden, we were told we will move. And after that, there was zero parent engagement. We didn't get answers to the very questions that Jean was presenting, like facts. Like, "You're telling us this one thing, and it's not true. Please tell us what your answer is to that." And all of this was ignored.
And it is true that the only emails back came from the PEP. So I just think that you have these two sets of communities that were blindsided. And then especially finding out that we would displace an underserved school that requires deep and deep care felt really careless by the DOE. And I'm going to keep it there because Jean really, really brought all the sort of points home already. But I'm honestly shocked by how the process unfolded. And I cannot say that I
found it to be either effective, fair, or confidence-inspiring. So thank you. Thank you. Who would like to go next? No one today? That's okay. I'm just going to jump in for MSC because I think it dovetails with what Jean is talking about. So I'm going to let other MSC parents speak to the lack of parent engagement- Sure ... of which there was none, and what Jean said about Center School and 191 is the same as with MSC. But what I would like to focus on is actually the more recent,
this week and more recent prior weeks, which to me, I don't know if it's more troubling, but perhaps, because I think the process that has unfolded in the midst of the joint public hearings for all three schools, and in their aftermath, and in the aftermath of middle school admission offers coming out last week. And I'm sorry, I'm going to really struggle to say this without crying. What has unfolded is a pattern of lies. And I do not use that word lightly, but the dissembling from the DOE in this
process is staggering. So I will give you some examples. On April 15th, middle school offers went out. MSC received a fully enrolled class of 47 students, representing 36% students with disabilities, which tracks our student population as a whole. 30% of those students will be continuing from our existing fifth grade. MSC is a K to eight school. In a K to eight school in the Department of Education, if you are a fifth-grade student and you wish to continue to sixth grade, you are not required
to submit a middle school application. You are automatically placed in that school. We have fifth graders with severe disabilities who have been served in MSC for years, who were placed in their zone schools for middle school on April 15th. We have students who wish to continue to MSC and were given seats at MSC, but were also put on wait lists at schools they did not rank on their applications. We learned today that the DOE has sent letters to the principals of middle schools in
District 3 and asked them to call those families and tell them that MSC's middle school is definitely closing and encourage them to take those seats on the wait list. The PEP has not voted. The PEP has not voted. I don't know how to say it more strongly that the DOE in this process is seeking to end-run this body and assume decisions. Mm-hmm. We also learned in our joint public hearing on April 16th that Lafayette Academy, with whom we co-locate,
with whom we have sought desperately to retain an amicable relationship with and not allow this process to divide two school communities who serve somewhat similar student populations. We learned that that school was permitted to offer sixth-grade seats for the fall. That is a 60% increase in their sixth-grade class. That is a one-to-one replacement for our entire middle school. Can't happen if this proposal does not go forward. Decisions are being made and actions are being taken without this body's approval
that are going to directly, immediately, and irreparably harm our studentsIn particular, our 36% of students with disabilities, and in particular, the subset of those students who have mobility challenges that cannot be served in another school. And I will also say that in the focus groups the district held with our families in which they asked families to leave work early, get childcare, come to school, and talk about their vulnerable children, which they did.
They told us in that meeting that what MSC has built is unreplicable anywhere else in the district, possibly in the city, and they would like to take what they have learned from us and teach other schools to do it, even as they dismantle our school. So that is the piece of the process that I would like to talk about, and I would really invite other members of the MSC community to talk about the parent engagement and lack thereof. But before we do that, can you give me that number on your students with disabilities who have mobility issues again? I think you said 32. It's 36% of students with disabilities in our current fifth-grade class.
That represents about 15 students. Thank you. Of those that with mobility issues? Yeah. The other thing to say about that is that over and over the district, and I will say also certain members of the PEP, have assured us that those students can simply go to Lafayette or go to Community Action School, and they'll be fine, and we shouldn't worry about it. With no plan, no articulated plan for how those students would actually be served by those schools, who, again, they're great schools. I have absolute respect for them, but they have no experience serving that student population.
And now we're at the end of April. How will they be expected to build a program by September for those students? Mm-hmm. Okay. I'm not sure who raised their hand first online, but I'm pretty sure that it was Philip, who's also with us in the room. Tiffany Rodriguez is a 191 parent. Yeah. Tiffany? Tiffany. Yes. Tiffany, if you are a 191 parent, please feel free to... And I believe that Francesca LaGuardia is as well. But Tiffany, please. Hi. Can you guys hear me clearly? Yes. Yes. Okay. You may hear some kids screaming in the background. Those are my twins. Just ignore them. I promise you they're fine.
They're six years old, and they're rambunctious. But, yeah, I'd like to speak some of to what both of the ladies before me were saying. The process has been a nightmare for 191. We have been overlooked throughout this whole process and even in the EIS, if you look at it. I'm a member of the SLT. I'm also the PTA treasurer. Our PTA president and our parent coordinator went to those same workshops that Jean and some of their parents went to and were told not to tell our families. That was by the superintendent, the then superintendent.
I found out at a meeting in December, I believe it was December 17th, and that was while Center School was already touring our school and being offered bells and whistles. So it felt like we actually had no say in the matter. There was nothing mentioned to us. In October, as a matter of fact, we had a meeting. Some of our parents had a meeting with the then superintendent about leadership at our school. We had been raising concerns about our children not getting the proper academic periods. For instance, I don't know if you
guys are aware, but we get a 45-minute Wit and Wisdom ELA curriculum, which is supposed to be 90 minutes, and it is 90 minutes across every other district. But for our school, in particular, it's 45 minutes. That 45 minutes is then cut in half again for translation because we don't have a dual language school. So the 500 students that we took in share classes with the English-speaking students, and essentially, my son gets about 15 minutes per day of ELA, which is average about 300 a month, and the schools we're being compared to get
1,800 minutes per month. We take the same tests, and we're being compared. This was brought to the superintendent then, who's now the chancellor's attention, and we never heard anything back from that. The next thing we know, we're being kicked out of our school. That's how this process went. Our parents didn't have a meeting with the then superintendent who essentially made these proposals. We've had one with Dr. Higgins, and that was in January, and I believe it was January 21st. That was the first time any of our parents have heard.
A lot of our parents obviously are afraid to come to these meetings. They're afraid to speak out. They don't know their rights. They come from other countries where when you speak out against anyone in power, you suffer consequences. So I've spoken to them, and they've given me permission to speak on some of their behalfs. In the EIS, it pretty much mirrors the way that this has gone for us. There's nowhere for our children to go. The nearest school... Of course, there's about 12 schools listed on there, but with Center School moving and being crowded with class size laws, the nearest school would be about a mile or two away.
That doesn't sound like much for you guys or to anyone, but when you're an asylum-seeking parent, it can literally mean life or death. Our families have a lot of children in middle school and elementary, and they rely on their older children to pick up their younger children. Our school has been-- I don't even know how to put this into the correct words. I didn't write a speech tonight because I wanted you guys to honestly hear what this has done to us. In fact, our summer school, we've been hosting Summer Rising for the last six years. Summer Rising isn't taking place at our school
this year. We were told to still apply. However, the nearest Summer Rising location is on 90th Street for our middle schoolers. And these are children who, according to the charts, need it the mostIt was taken away from us because according to the DOE, Center School is moving in. So it feels like this is a done deal and the vote doesn't even matter at this point. That's how it's made our families feel. My son is in sixth grade. He's been in this school for seven years. I've been a parent there for seven years. My oldest son graduated from there, and he's now a senior at LaGuardia High School.
This was prior to the leadership, prior to the changes. We just feel like we should have been given a chance not at a phase out, but at a rebuild, considering how badly we've been failed. The EIS, I spoke with Greg, who is amazing. I can't see if he's there or not, but if he is, hello. And he even said, "I don't feel comfortable voting for something that doesn't include these Black and brown children." The EIS can't be changed. They're meeting with parents individually and even offering us places
outside of the district. I don't see how that's equitable, considering everything that led to this point, and no other solutions. 35% of our students have IEPs with a guesstimate that 60% need one. We obviously can't test them because of the language barriers. We don't know what grade level some of our students were at in the countries that they originally came from. So that was another thing where our test scores shouldn't be compared, and we shouldn't be considered a failing school if we have no idea the education level that some of our students have had.
They are making progress, but we've done this with no provisions. Our teachers received papers that said, "Hola, my name is..." Hola means hello. "Mi nombre es," and "Figure it out" is what they were told. And our teachers have been told not to speak at these meetings, although nine teachers have been very vocal. It has handicapped us from being able to properly advocate for ourselves. And I know I'm the voice that you guys continuously hear, but that's because they're
afraid. It doesn't mean that they're not advocating behind closed doors. I have tons of text messages, tons of phone calls. "Please, I don't know where my kid is going. I can't put my child on the train alone. ICE is looking for them. My child is 70 pounds. I'm afraid." The fear that our parents have is... I don't even know how to put this. What I do ask of the PEP members is to reread that EIS as if your child attends RSMA, and then tell me if you're comfortable voting for it. I don't want to take up too much time.
I just wanted to share what this has felt like for us. We have been the overlooked community, the underserved community, and the neglected, and the EIS proves that. Thank you, guys. I have a question. Can I ask a question? We're going with our Yeah. ... Adele, please
introduce yourself, and share your experience. Hi. If somebody needs to speak before me, I would like to kind of raise that up. But if you have it figured out, I can speak too. Yes, please. Feel free to share your experience with the proposal process. Okay. Thank you. I'm a parent of the DOE for 19 years. I have four daughters, and we've been in District 3 that whole time. I just want to reiterate a couple of things that Jean said, along with a couple of personal experiences. Oh, somebody's trying to call me. Hold on really quick. I'm so sorry. Okay.
We were explicitly instructed not to share or discuss the contents of working group meetings. I'm on the PTA at the Center School. I came in to a working group meeting, and I didn't really understand what I was walking into. But we were asked not to share it. But then, at the same time, we've been criticized that the administration and PTA and SLT haven't informed families about uncertain possibilities regarding potential relocations. And so, that has just
been a pretty difficult thing to be blamed for in this moment. Our Upper West Side community feels pitted against each other. I feel as though information is being passed, not from our CC3 leaders, and people that are to be advocating for us, but by hearsay from teachers that don't know that they're telling the next community that they are going to be affected. For example, a PS9 teacher told a Center School teacher,
"Oh, it's going to be sad to see you go." And they didn't know what they were talking about, and it's because they had been in a meeting saying this before Center School was informed. And the same thing when we were at a meeting on December 17th and touring IS191, not knowing that we were the ones that were informing them that that school could be truncated. It was heartbreaking. It's been very heartbreaking for the Upper West Side community to be pitted against each other like this.
The Center School is a prose model school. It's fifth through eighth grade learning in all classes. Jean mentioned no ICT classes. All the children are in classes, mixed grades together.The Center School was moved in 2016 and told it would never be moved again. It was a lateral move on the Upper West Side, the same neighborhood with the same post office, the same library, Central Park Writers' Workshop, American Museum of Natural History, they are used as classrooms. The Center School is meant to be a place where it's a community, and the
children, fifth graders can go out to lunch, and they can reach seven eateries without crossing one street. And the cafeteria, and the playground, and the clubs upstairs all at the same time, and bounce between them during lunch and recess. So this proposal has gaping holes in it. It's dismantling the program overnight of Move to the School. We will be losing space. We have less square footage at IS 191,
and when we addressed it, we were told that we would be given space from PS 191. And we don't want to be those people that move in and take space away from an elementary school that's being told that their program's going to grow and become robust. And then if so, when the school does grow and become robust, that means that we are moved again eventually. In a focus group, two weeks ago, Center School parents, we were asked to sit in groups based on only three concerns that we
had raised up. And, we went in hopeful. We thought that we would be given information. Like, "We heard your concerns, we read your emails, we found solutions." And it was not that. It felt like an exercise to tell parents, mostly mothers, that they were emotional and that it felt like we were being dragged along again. We were told that any words that we had used prior to the meeting that we are in right now, like
in any meeting, public comment periods, that none of that was recorded and that we needed to tell them, emails that we had sent, that we needed to sit in this meeting and kind of tell our concerns based around only these three different concerns in the EIS. And asking us to come up with the solutions, basically. And none of those solutions have come to fruition. The park doesn't even have a
license right now to have construction because it's so delayed in Riverside Park. Juilliard, like Jing mentioned, Juilliard and 452 said that the DOE had not reached out to them. And then, just transportation, which we understand that everybody is trying to get places in the city, and we're schlepping all over the city. But, as mentioned before, when you apply to a middle school and you're in the middle of a middle school, which is four years for The Center School, and you have your fifth grader going to The Center School, that's
a long schlep from a train station to the river, basically. So, in some instances, transportation, when families haven't been told and it's rushed, and it could be changing as soon as next year, and people are scrambling. So anyway, thank you for listening. Thank you, Ally, for sharing that. We're going to go to somebody else who's in the room. Yes. What's this? Thank you. My name is Karen Hartzell. I'm a parent at MSC, also a member of the SLT.
And, as Olivia said, maybe talk a bit of-- I have a little speech, but I'll just paraphrase from it, and then also wanted to talk about community engagement. And I think the first time we sort of broadly heard about this proposal for our school was in mid-December, and we had an SLT meeting where, at the time, Superintendent Samuels joined and was talking about what he quoted as scenarios, not proposals, but scenarios, and this was at the beginning of the meeting. And so this was talking about the
phase-out of MSC. We did invite the MSC community to join via Zoom, so they could listen in. But then by the end of the meeting, he said, "We can have the proposal by early January." So, it seemed like this was already a decision that had been made. And I would say in terms of, once the proposals came out- Karen, just quickly. Mm-hmm. He also told people in that meeting that they should apply to middle school as though there was no proposal. Exactly. And this meeting took place two days before the middle school process application closed. It was a Wednesday.
Friday was when they closed. And then I would also note that earlier this week, we had a CEC3 meeting where several members of CEC noted that this was the most amount of parent engagement they have seen during this proposal process. But I would say that parent engagement is not just having meeting after meeting of parents and students, talking in two-minute increments to public officials with no actual dialogue happening.So I think this has been a very
heartbreaking process as well as an inspiring process because there is so much, I would say engagement from the various communities, supporting their schools. So I've been very inspired and hopeful from that. And I would also say that at the joint public hearing, there were a number of Lafayette teachers who spoke in support of their school, which was great. But I've worked in city and federal government. I know how rare it is to publicly criticize your employer. So MSC teachers cannot really speak freely about this, nor
can the principal. And especially when teachers have been told that they should all go on the job market, not just the middle school teachers. And then the latter, because I just saw somebody press go up. So Dr. Higgins, who is our acting superintendent for District 3, at one of the SLT meetings that he joined, said that all teachers should go on the job market because as you know, with teachers, they have different levels of seniority. And people can lose jobs, and you could be working there for a long time, but if someone has higher seniority, then you will
be cut. Yeah. To just clarify that a little bit, with K to eight faculty, and the discussion came up because the question was, if there are teachers teaching in the sixth to eighth grades, but perhaps you have a teacher who's K to six certified, if that teacher has seniority over, say, a kindergarten teacher, if the middle school were to truncate, that sixth-grade social studies teacher might find themselves in a kindergarten classroom, and the kindergarten teacher might find themselves without a job at MSC. And so we asked Dr. Higgins when teachers would be informed of their seniority so that they
would understand the possibilities for themselves, and he said that he couldn't answer that question, but he would advise all faculty to be on the job market. This was in March. And when we said, "Just to be clear, you're telling all faculty across all nine grade bands to look for another job," he said, "That's correct." So, after all these meetings, what I've felt is that this proposal is a misguided attempt to solve a space issue in our building, the Joan of Arc building, that will benefit one school at the expense of another. And we lose what will be District 3's first authorized K to eight IB
school. We're on track to be that next year. Chancellor Samuels supported this, and also a small, progressive, and inclusive middle school option. And also, we harm the MSC Elementary School in the process, despite what the DOE claims. The EIS projects no new seats or spaces for MSC, even though during that December SLT meeting, now Chancellor Samuels said we would have room to grow and thrive, our elementary school. And as we said, every teacher has been told to go on the market. I feel like there's been veiled threats to our enrichment spaces and
service provision rooms. So this will not support our elementary school and also harms the students who ought to benefit from a progressive and its inclusive model. So I've watched this surreal process happening in the city I love, in the school I love, what feels like unilateral decision-making, no staff and community input, and an inequitable middle school process, and real harm done to real people. So I feel, like Olivia said, these DOE proposals will cause irreparable harm to
children and families and also land in the middle school years, which are often the most challenging and vulnerable. Thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, that's a lot of hands up. Okay. Phillip Lee fix. No, that's not you. No, that's not me. Phillip, okay. That's me. Hello, Phillip. Hi. Thanks for giving me an opportunity to speak here. I'm an MSC parent. I have a daughter in first grade, and my wife is a member of the PTA board. I'm going to take my time here because I know there's a lot of people that want to
speak, but there's just a lot to be said. First, in response to the parent member from the PTA at PS 191, I am so sorry for your experience, and the experience of the families at your school. It is mind-blowing to me that in the wealthiest, or what I assume to be one of the wealthiest districts in the city, your community is being so overlooked and treated so poorly with so little respect and so little care. It's tragic. I want to speak specifically about process because I know that's what this
meeting is about from the parent perspective at MSC. And I know that there's parent representatives at the meeting in person who have been just devoting tremendous amount of time and energy to this process or what I think lack of process to this kind of bulldozing that is happeningUm, and they've devoted more time and more thought than I have had the ability to do.
But just from an ordinary parent of a first grader, this news broke sometime in January that they were closing the middle school, and that there would be meetings and a chance for us to share our thoughts. It quickly became apparent that those were not constructive meetings by any means. They were not looking for input. And when I say they, I mean the representatives of the district who were hosting those meetings. They were hearing complaints and hearing thoughts and giving us room to share
emotions and trying to kind of allow space for that to happen. There was no intention, and I have no regret saying that. There was absolutely no intention by the district to change the proposal in any way based on feedback from families. That is not process. That is the antithesis of process. If you are engaging and listening to input, then you make change, and you go back, and
you listen for input, and you make change, and you go back, and you go back and forth until you have a plan that has consensus and that tries to meet the needs of as many people in the room as possible. No, he's unmuted. He's talking. I can hear him here. Hold on. One second, Philip. We're trying to figure out why we can't hear you. It's the network people. I know, but... You want to reenter? Yeah, it's online. Adriana, we can hear him online. Thank you. Yeah. We just can't see him in here. Wait. Maybe now. Try now, Hope.
Yeah. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. Where did I break up? Oh, very deep problem. 30 seconds ago. Yeah, the last little bit that we heard is how DOE is obviously not being intentional. Right. Okay. So this, to me, seems like the antithesis of process. A process requires a plan to be heard, feedback to be given, changes to be made based on that feedback, a new plan to come forward, more feedback, more process. More
listening, more changing, more adapting. This has not been that at all. This has been, "Here is the plan. Tell us your feelings. Okay, the plan is the same. Here is the plan at the next meeting," the same plan, unchanged, unadapted. "Tell us your feelings. Okay, thank you for your feelings." Next meeting, same exact plan, unchanged, unadapted. That's not process. If you're not making any changes, if you're not making any accommodations, if you're not listening to any input and you're just
continuing to propose the same exact proposal that you proposed at the beginning, it's not a process. It is just a presentation. So it's a sham. It's a circus. And as a parent involved in that, it feels like an insult. As a parent of privilege, it feels like an insult. As a parent who can have his mother here to put his kids to bed while he's listening to a meeting that he never knew existed, but somebody sent him a link to,
it's an insult. I don't know what this meeting is for. I got a link to a meeting. I don't know what the purpose of the meeting is. That's not process. For sure, this is a little bit outside of DOE's process. I just want to flag that. We are having this meeting as the utilization committee of the Panel for Educational Policy, quite simply because myself and the committee members felt that we needed additional opportunities to hear about the ways in which this process needs to be fixed, adapted, augmented, all of those things-
Right ... as we're creating it. Yes. Okay. Thank you. You're on the money. We're following you. Thank you for clarifying that. The point being, there have been meetings after meetings, and I'm a parent who can engage only to a certain extent in those meetings. I can't follow all of the steps, all of the emails, all of the information that the PTA members, who have been dedicated to this, as somebody else said, for 80 hours a week, are processing. I don't have
that capability. And so for me, I'm just told, "Here's a meeting. Show up, say your piece." What's the point? There's never felt, at any moment, like there has been any purpose for my voice other than a rubber stamp on or a check in the box of a calendar-scheduled meeting that the DOE is holdingWe have to hold this meeting because it's in the paperwork that the city gave us. This is the paperwork. We have X, Y, Z
meetings that need to be held. Check, we held the meeting. Check, we held the meeting. Check, we held the meeting. Does it matter what the parents said? Not really. We held the meeting. Now we can get to the vote. But from what Olivia said earlier, we don't even need the vote. We're going to go ahead and tell the middle school principals to go forward and admit students as if the proposal has already been approved. So we don't even need the vote. We don't even need the checks. It's a sham. There's zero process
and there's zero engagement. And it seems like there's zero end process and zero engagement for the most vulnerable members of our district. Like the families at 191 and the families specifically at MSC with children with disabilities, mobility issues. I want to speak specifically about those families who I know and love, who have been given no guidance at all on how to proceed to accommodate their children
in fall, the fall of this year. Where are those children going to go to school? The district has done nothing to set up any method of communication, any method of assistance to find those children equitable seats at a school where the children can learn and be part of a community. Not a thing. How is that possible? It is abhorrent. It is mind-blowing. That's all I've got to say. Thank you for sharing with us. We'll go back to somebody in the room who'd like to share next.
I have so many thoughts. I want to speak a little bit about some of the same buzzwords I'm hearing across different districts. Too little too late. Inadequate process. Timing of announcements. There have been fear plays all over. It's a flawed process, and it's on the backs of our children, our 191 students, our adult population, and that we keep saying vulnerable students, but at MSC, they're not vulnerable. They exist as children and equals amongst their peers.
But outside of MSC, those students will be given a spot in a fully accessible building. But that does not mean equitable education. It's not what we have been doing at MSC since 2004. And there's a New York Times article, and I just cried my eyes out reading it yesterday. But in 2004, MSC introduced its first truly integrated classroom where a child with, I believe it was cerebral palsy, was introduced to the classroom and
existed as an equal and a non-vulnerable student in MSC. Moving a child to another school, maybe in our building or maybe at 191, which is the only other fully accessible building, will not provide that same education. And in essence, they would become vulnerable at that point in time. Parent engagement has been an afterthought with the DOE. It's, "Oh, you're asking for something. We'll let you think you've been heard, and then we're going to use your information against you
and throw it back out at you." What the DOE has banked on is that we are completely disengaged from this process, but we're not. We're thousands of letters written to the district and district leaders. We're hundreds of parents who are showing up to these meetings, and we're not stupid. We know how to research. We know that the IES is completely fabricated information based on a narrative they'd like to paint, but it's not true.
We have countered their arguments time and time again, and they move on to the next line in the goal post, because they keep moving it. At first it's class size, then it's school-wide performance, then it's inequity around shared space. Every time we speak on it or ask questions, we get told, "We can't answer that." How is it engagement if we're the only ones doing the talking, but they're not really receiving that information and providing proper feedback? At the end of
the day, we have a lot of students who have no place to go. And I'm sorry, but a school in our building, a co-located schoolCannot implement practices in four months what it has taken over two decades for MSC to provide these children. It's not equitable. It's not fair. We go back to 2021, and it's on record that Lafayette wanted an expansion. So is this all just a process to get their expansion? Good for them. We all want space.
But if it comes down to the fact that this is about shared space and wanting more space, real engagement is sitting all the schools down, talking through our concerns, our needs, our wants, and seeing how we can all negotiate. A negotiation means everybody's a little happier. Sometimes we're also a little upset, but either way, we all get to keep our schools. That's the goalpost we need to see through the DoE. Too little, too late, inadequate process, timing of announcements. Again, this is not a process that the DoE should be proud of.
It's certainly shameful at best, and we're really angry, we're really upset, and again, it's on the backs of our children. Thank you for sharing that. And being angry and being upset is very powerful. Thank you. Francesca? Hi. Welcome. I'm a Center School parent. I'm a parent of an eighth grader, and I'm also a parent of a fourth grader who applied and was accepted this year, too. First, I wanted to say thank you all for being here tonight because it's an extra
meeting, and that's a lot, and we've all been also, I think, in your face a lot, and I really appreciate it. But I also wanted to start with this idea that I heard that in another district, the DoE had found other places for the students to go. Even students in very particular circumstances who might have really particular concerns that they're thinking about. And of course, that's wonderful, and it makes complete sense that if you
are closing something, you find another place for those students to go that works for those students and what they actually need. And just last night, I was in a conversation with a 191 parent who was saying that she had been told that they were going to try to find other places, and that when she tried to contact the person that she was supposed to contact in order to get some kind of consideration, the contact information didn't work.
She's been trying and trying, and she hasn't been able to get them. And the same thing has happened to fifth graders at Center School. I know of at least one parent who was told that because all of these decisions were made after, it would be impossible for them to enter the lottery to try to get into another school that would work for them. That she had been told that they would try to make an effort to kind of open the application or let her try to get into a school that would work for her and her kid. And that
she had called and called and called and called the phone number that they had given her, and nobody has called her back. The first most blatant issue in my mind is the idea that this can come about with no warning. I'm also a fourth-grade parent, and so we get emails from the DoE all the time. At no point did we get any email to be told that the school that my daughter was applying for might not be in the place where we thought it was.
At no point did fifth-grade parents, who still had the opportunity to apply out to other places, get told that they might have to apply out until a few days, I think, after. Maybe a few days before the admission cycle completely closed. I think after that. That is by itself a huge failure, a huge problem, and it causes inequity. But then I also would like to highlight some of what other people have been saying or elevate what
some of what other people are saying about this question of engagement and process. When we come to kind of what is actual engagement and why is that language even there, that there's supposed to be parent engagement. And there's a couple of reasons why you might want parent engagement. One is we're parents in the city. We are very affected by these decisions, and so it's good to give us the chance to say, "This will be impossible for me," or, "This is what I need if you're going to do this to me," so that you could try to respond to it.
And we know the DoE hasn't done that because of all of the things that I was just talking about in terms of parents not finding out until it's too late for them to try to move to a different school. The other reason is because we know that parents know, in large part, what's working for their children, and what's working at the schools that they're at, and why they went to those schools. And if you're going to decide to move a school somewhere elseThat it could be helpful to get information from the parents and the teachers in order to know what
needs to be there to get that school working somewhere else. We've been told over and over again that we had engagement. Now, I never heard word one of this until, again, December or January. We've been told that we had engagement, but if there was anything like the kind of engagement that would actually be getting input from parents so that this can be done well, then the EIS would not have promised us fewer rooms than we have now.
If there was anything like actually trying to figure out what would work in this school, then we wouldn't still be being promised less space than we have now, especially when one of the main reasons that was presented as why we had to move was that there wasn't enough space where we were. For us. Sometimes they said for us, sometimes they said for nine. There were a lot of very emotional statements by DOE saying that the amount of space that we have now is absolutely inadequate, and yet what they are offering to move us to
is actually less space. On top of this, over the course of... I heard about this December or January. Since then, the reasons that DOE has given for this move have changed over and over again. At points, it was that PS9 needs to expand. At points it was that Center School doesn't have enough space. At times, it turned into suddenly just an idea that small schools can't work, and so we need to rethink everything about small schools. But with the reasons constantly
changing, the whole idea of process and having a hearing where you give the opportunity for parents to give meaningful input into what's going on and whether it will work and whether they need other options or whether they need something else to happen, that can't happen because the reasons keep changing, so we don't know what we're supposed to be responding to. Their responses changed over and over again. At times, we were told that they know there's not enough space, but they're going to get us space in the park or they're going to get us space at another school, which
again, as Jean already mentioned, we know now they haven't tried to get us that space at the other school. But then other times they came back and said, "Oh, no, actually there is enough space." The EIS very clearly acknowledges that there's not enough space there. In any case, if the responses are changing and the reasons are changing, again, the entire idea of us having the ability to respond to what they're saying goes out the window. We just can't do it because they're not saying anything.
They're just constantly bouncing to some other justification. That's not actual process. At times, representatives of DOE referred to notes that they insisted existed. We were never allowed to see them. At times, DOE changed the measurements of what was going to be offered. The same rooms were suddenly measured differently. We were not allowed to look at those measurements. We were not allowed to do measurements. My son was involved in a project
trying to film students who wanted to speak out about what they love about their school and why they didn't want to move, and a parent who was kind of overseeing the process because he knows how permits work and he knows how to film things and things like this, was called by lawyers for the DOE and told that DOE policy does not allow filming near school property, which first of all is untrue.
There is no policy that says you can't film near school property. As long as you're not blocking it, as long as you're not getting people who don't want to be in the film, it should be fine. But on top of that, the way that this interaction happened, this parent, he wasn't given a copy of the letter that was read over the phone. He wasn't given the copy of any policy, of course, because the policy didn't exist. He had this recited to him from an attorney. Now, I have a law degree. I'm not a practicing attorney.
I'm an academic. My husband is a practicing attorney. I will tell you from our shared experience, when a lawyer is above board about something, they give you a copy of it in writing. That is base legal process. There is always a copy in writing. When somebody tells you something over the phone and they are not willing to provide you with a hard copy of anything, that is never above board. That is an effort to intimidate,
and it was an effort to intimidate parents trying to speak out and students trying to speak outSo as far as the question of process, and I understand that you want to look towards what can we do differently in the future. I want to note for the record, it is hard to think about procedurally what can be done differently in the future when you are confronting some outright lies about what efforts are being made,
and when you are confronting what appears to be really not aboveboard behavior in terms of the way that parents and students are being approached, or being held out of the conversation, or that they're trying to keep them out of the conversation. Thank you for sharing. I do not want to comment now, but thank you. Who would like to share next in the room? I could share. Okay. If that's okay. Please introduce yourself. Our members online have missed the last
couple of room introductions. Sure. I'm Laura Miller, D3 parent, children at the Center School and MSC, and on the Executive Board at MSC. I think what we're asking for is very basic, right? We want the ability to make informed decisions. We believe in the sanctity of student and parents' rights to participate in a process and a full admission cycle. And coming off of Francesca, um, and discussions about what should be done in the future, I'd also like to look back. There was a residing in our district.
Mott Hall 2 moved at the beginning of this school year. Around this time, not last year, but the year before that, that parent community received a letter from the superintendent about the move. They were given one year, four months, and 17 days. There was specific language about the timeline will ensure that schools and families have plenty of time to prepare for these changes. Also, in terms of the timing of the EIS, by issuing these proposals early in the school year for a fall PEP vote, families will have the
information they need about their options for that '25, '26 admission cycle. We have precedent, so it's even more concerning and disturbing that the district has treated families in D3 in a certain manner, and those rights were not afforded to 191, Center School, or MSC. Thank you, Laura. Michelle Leitner online. Again, I apologize if I mispronounced your name. Oh no, that was fine. Thank you so much. Wow. First of all, I just want to thank you all for holding this meeting.
I think that this is probably the first time in my experience with this whole situation that I have felt, and this is something coming across a screen, not even sitting face-to-face in the room with you, that there is a genuine desire to understand, to respond, and to act with good intention in response to our needs, in response to our children. And I just want to thank you so much for that. I'm happy that we're doing more. What's that? I said I'm happy to, and I wish that we were doing it more.
Me too. Just full disclosure, I am a teacher. I am been teaching for over 25 years. I'm a Montessori teacher. Prior to teaching, I was in community engagement and activism and education, with nonprofits. So giving people's voice in the communities that they are directly impacted by, and empowering them is a core value in my life. And so it's one of the things that actually drew me towards MSC because of what the school is about and what they have built over so many years.
And which makes it so heartbreaking to see the complete lack of engagement in the appropriate use of that word in what's been happening in this process. The process has felt much more like management of a decision that has already been made. And in meetings where we have been sitting down, as my fellow parents have shared, taking off work, figuring out ways to care for our children so that we could voice these concerns, what feels like the 11th hour,
where the consequences are just so dire for the most vulnerable parts of our community that my children have come to love, that we have come to love. And then to have shared these things and then have them weaponized against us, I can't even begin to tell you what the betrayal that feels like. And it feels like it's about managing the outcome of a decision that has already been made,
rather thanEngaging us as stakeholders. These are our children in a community, in a school that has been known and has always had such a responsive approach in everything that we do. It's just a reversal. I struggle with words to express how difficult that is and the saddest part is that there are, from what we keep hearing, as others have shared, the reasons keep changing and from test scores to enrollment and the most recent iteration, which seems to be landing on space.
Now, of all the things to have to solve as New Yorkers, I think we're all very familiar with having to navigate space and having to make the most of it. And if anything that we would have most understanding for is how can we maximize our space and serve the children that we are entrusted with. Everyone involved, the teachers, the parent associations, the principals all had the capacity to come up with good solutions that should've been heard and considered
by the DOE. We were never given that opportunity at all. And at a moment, which is actually extremely upsetting to have to even share this, but at a moment when we were trying to share about our school with our elected officials who were on a tour, as we were showing the different parts of our community, we were told that we have these service rooms and extracurricular spaces, and we have a choice. We can choose between these four rooms and our middle school. Keep the middle school, lose your rooms.
Keep your rooms, lose your middle school. On the tour. I don't even know how to describe that. First of all, it feels like extortion. Second, where is the process in that? So if we decided on the tour in that moment, "Okay, sure. Here are four rooms. Hands off my middle school." Or if we said, "No, we're not going to let go of the rooms." Where is the decision-making process for these families? Those four rooms are an OT room, a PT room, a speech room, and an art room. This whole discussion regarding Lafayette is that they have not enough space to
provide the services for their children. We have a higher population of children with disabilities and a larger student body, and the solution is to remove our service rooms. That is the solution? It's certainly not a solution that we generated or that we came together with the other co-location bodies to come together with some kind of understanding. There is such creative potential for how we could solve these problems together. Obviously, with the missions of our schools, we desire to provide the best possible services and the best possible care and the best possible learning to
them. Why not give us the opportunity in process to generate those kind of solutions? And I think because the answer is, it has already been decided. There is no need to hear or generate solutions or have actual engagement because it is a done deal. I can't tell you how powerless that feels. We're kind of sold the dream of public education. It's access for everyone. It's local responsiveness to people, each community's needs. I even look at the structure that governs the school.
It's a school leadership team. It's teachers, parents, and the principal. All those bodies are supposed to come together to lead the school, and that has been the opposite of this experience. It has felt like the DOE, while it is a monstrous body, having to administer governance over probably the largest population of students in the country, I could be wrong, but I think that's pretty accurate. It feels that they are serving themselves in terms of their institution
and what's easiest for them, perhaps the squeakiest wheel getting the oil or the one that's most advantageous for the particular people who are in office at that time, and not at all about the actual stakeholders in the schools and the children who are most impacted by this. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful that you are listening to us because I don't understand how we, as the parents of these children, could be so powerless. As we get closer to this, I keep asking,
where are our protections? How can we have no voice in this decision in our public school? Where are our advocates? Where are the people? Where are the processes, the systems, the institutions that can prevent this kind of a process from moving forward? And that expression, all roads lead to Rome, well, all roads lead to PEP There you go. And if I was in the room, literally, the way I'm feeling right now, I would literally get on my knees and beg you, please, please act on our behalf. Because they are not listening to us,
and they're not letting us solve the problems that most deeply affect our children. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Greg, yes, you'd like to share. I'm going to note that our norms and behaviors say that our committee members are going to save comments and questions for the end. But as the chair of the panel, please. Yeah. Adriana, thank you. I actually had intended not to say anything, just to listen. But a couple of times, people have mentioned that they feel like it was a done deal or that decision's been made. And I felt as chair, I needed to reassure people that is not the case. You're talking to the people who are going to make the decision,
and I don't want you to believe that we would put on some kind of a fake show and that the decision was already cooked in. It is not. And I just felt as chair of the panel, I needed to say that. Thank you, Adriana. Thank you, Chair Faulkner. I will also reiterate that. As you guys all, my seven-year-old is home hanging out with his dad and my dad, and I would, as much as I love them, this is where we all belong. Thank you for our panel members that are here and online that will be voting on this. And I can assure you all the decision has not been made because not each and every one of our votes has been counted yet.
Thank you. Whoever's next in the room, please feel free. Steve. I am Steve Martin, a parent of a kindergartner at MSC. Again, originally I was just to listen. I didn't plan on speaking, but I'm hearing a lot of things for the first time here. People have mentioned that it takes so much effort to understand what's going on here, and the things I've been learning here is no way to put together by myself. I've been handling the emails and conversations. There's so much that's happening. Michelle mentioned the portal rooms. Those are rooms that my son uses all the time, almost every day in school.
To hear that a decision could be made to pull those away, we spent so much time trying to find the right school for him. Looking at private school, public schools, everything. Land at MSC, we were so relieved to get him a spot there. To now hear that I shouldn't have a sense of relief because it could be taken away at any moment is heartbreaking, really. The other part I'm hearing as far as just been able to think about the consequences all the way through, thinking about the comment about teachers being informed now they should be on a job. I don't know what the job market is for teachers. I can't imagine it's very good. But to know now
that the people that are responsible for watching after our kids, that they're saints to start with, but now they have to spend their time between watching our kids, educating them, helping them grow, and also looking out for themselves to find a job for next year. That's just a division in their mind that they're not going to have their whole heart in educating our kids, which is so important. And so it's just hard to hear that as a parent that that's what they're going through right now. Thank you for sharing that. And I hope that they aren't closing any of those rooms because those portal rooms are rooms that should be protected in general. Rachel. Good evening, everybody. Thank you for taking the time.
My name's Olivier Bagley. I'm a speaker for a parent of an MSC student, my daughter. And this proposal for dismantling MSC's unique, inclusive model that serves a high percentage of students with disabilities. Ending the middle school would force the students, many of whom rely on the established relationships and routines, to start over elsewhere, putting their progress and well-being at risk, my daughter being one of them. I'm greatly frustrated by the DOE's shifting justification for this plan,
which have included everything from space considerations to enrollment to test scores, and none of these explanations seem consistent or convincing. The DOE's own data proves that these points false. Lower enrollment numbers are similar to those of the district as a whole, and not a reflection of our school's value or demand of our programs. The purpose itself has lacked transparency and genuine engagement, and the outreach to families feels preordained with
little opportunity for meaningful input or dialogue. Our concerns have not been adequately addressed and our questions remain unanswered. We call on you to vote against this proposal at the upcoming April 29th meeting and leave MSC alone. I do want to add that our neighborhood school, MS 256, needing space should not be an excuse to displace and disrupt other children. That's not how this works as a society or as adults. And I want to thank you guys again for your time, and have a good night. Thank you for sharing with us.
Do we have anybody else in the room that would like to speak for yeses? And I would love to provide a historical context here. So disclaimer. You all know that I sat on the path before all of you, actually, and was part of the process when Kamara came on as superintendent. I also live on the east side of Fifth Avenue, hence I'm a District 4 parent. But if I lived on the west side of Fifth Avenue, I would be a District 3 parent.And a lot of these schools are part of my school community, so I've
chosen a progressive school for my child, where I used to come to my school. I have lots of connections with Manhattan School for Children, and I shared this at one of the hearings when Central Park East 1 was dealing with abusive principal, MSC had already been for two years dealing with awful leadership that resulted in turnover in teachers and children not getting the services that they needed. And we were able to win within two years. MSC was still struggling, and it wasn't until Kamara became
superintendent that I was able to push him enough to change leadership at Manhattan School for Children. And we met a lot to be able to do that. When Kamara became superintendent of District 3, his first move was to close Westside Collaborative, which was also a school that was supporting newcomers, because of low enrollment, and merge it with Lafayette. That has been his baby project. And I will mention it in this space because I do think that Lafayette is getting
some special treatment here in that particular building. It was the first school that he pitched as introducing the IB program in middle school, et cetera. And so in that moment, we voted in favor of that merger, because of the lack of enrollment of Westside Collaborative. But I will also state on the record, that was a hit for my community of progressive schools because that was a standalone progressive middle school in District 3 that also had the small school model.
And so it was a very difficult vote. I will also say on the record that it is very difficult for me to watch the lack of representation of Manhattan on the PEP and the lack of engagement with these school communities because, and I will say it, what happened at 125 and West Prep, which also was a very difficult vote to go through. And unfortunately at that moment, David Banks really wanted that to happen, and Naveed put everything in line so that his
school would win. It is really hard for me to think about that schools that are being relocated are going to get what they need in order to support their instructional models. And so I think that that's a big concern for the center community. All that to say that there's precedent over that. The last thing, because you brought up the Harlem proposals. For the Harlem proposals, there was not just one year, there were years of engagement for the Harlem schools. And I think you all had already been on the PEP at that
point, and I had come off. There were years of conversations of what would happen with the Harlem schools because the Harlem schools were desperately underserved. Mm-hmm. And the goal was for Mott Hall, that was a really popular standalone middle school, to come into Harlem. However, I also spoke on record at that meeting about the lack of engagement for the Harlem schools. Mm-hmm. And so I found out about this proposal as a parent that's part of this community in November, because, again, parents at Center were parents that used to go to CPE or were
connected to the school still in some capacity. And at first, I only heard about Center, and I was like, "Oh, well, okay. Let's figure out how this is going to fall in." Again, knowing Kamara the way that I know Kamara, I know it's not just going to be one school. I know it's going to be more coming down the pipe. At the time, it was pitched as this is a conversation. It was not pitched as this was going to come up for a vote in the spring. And in true transparency, I was asked, when I started asking questions about what's going down, I was told at that moment, "We'll bring you into the conversations because you
can typically help with these negotiations." I, and again, transparency, have reached out to a lot of you to have these conversations, and we have not had the opportunity to sit down and talk about this, so I'm going to put it all out there in this moment. Mm. Because a lot of you don't have that historical context, and have not heard these asks. I am really concerned about the prioritization for schools like PS 9 and Lafayette in terms of "lack of space" when Kamara is going up to Albany and saying he needs two more years to implement
the class size bill, understanding the harm that is being done to these school communities. And we are talking about desperately marginalized students- Mm ... that are in dire need. Mm. Students with disabilities. Students that started, Adams, I know he's going to speak, but his child has Down syndrome. How many schools do we know in our school communities that support children with Down syndrome in an inclusive model? Mm. There are children that I've sent to Manhattan School for Children that have feeding tubes. Not just wheelchairs, not just like- It's a level of care ... it's a-- Yes. And we know.
Yeah. The DOE does not even provide the food bags for these parents. Right. And so the fact that we have a school that's able to do that, and if you look at the trends of enrollments in Manhattan School for Children, they want to truncate the middle school because that's where so-called they have lower enrollment. But those were the grades that needed to be rebuilt because of the failing leadership that they had. That have been had. Exactly. And so the fact that they're not being given that time when they know they failed the school community for almost eight
years, to me, it's just unacceptable. And again, I love and respect Kamara, but-We had a lot of these conversations very early on. For 191, again, the one school in this district that received a significant number of newcomers, a school that will be receiving CSI funding. That means the school, yes, has been deemed as "a failing school," but for the next three to five years, they will be getting money and comprehensive support to rebuild their community. So why are we not giving that school community an opportunity?
We went as far, in District 4, to even suggest a reciting of center to our district. Now, I will say- If you want ... we need a significant engagement process in that as well. But that was something that we were willing to put on the table to alleviate some of the tension, and alleviate and give the school community, and I'm going to, again, say it straight up, not just with the lack of engagement, but there was harm caused in this process to all schools. There's no
trust whatsoever. With the EI, I wouldn't even start with EI at this. This is a deeply flawed process, and we have an opportunity to engage in it in a deeply meaningful way, and I am so disappointed. One, the transition between the Manhattan Borough President appointees didn't happen in time, and so Jonathan is just catching up. And Jonathan is a pre-K parent, and I love him, but he's still so new. And so we're trying to catch him up.
And two, for as much as I appreciate Nabi being part of this conversation, it's really difficult to trust him when he has not been authentic in particular the decisions that he's made that do not reflect the values. Now, he has explicitly stated on record and to me that he will be voting no on all of these proposals, and I'm hoping that he's engaging in deeply meaningful conversations with other PEP members so that you all can understand what the consequences are if we approve these proposals.
And again, I know it's going to be hard, and I know you're going to have to do all the things, and it's Kamara, and we like Kamara, but as somebody that has been attending meetings, probably for the last 12 years for CEC 3, for District 3, and engage with these school communities in a deeply meaningful way, we can wait one year. And that is what our resolution reflects, and it also provides very specific suggestions as to what can happen within the next year. And this is why CDC 1 was also willing to raise voice.
And the last thing that I will say is, it has been so sad to also see the fact that CEC 3 has not stood up for their own community, meeting after meeting. Folks showing up, asking to say something. And women, Black women on CEC 3, have not been given the space to voice what's going on. And yes, there are a couple of parents that will be impacted, but some of the ways that some folks have been showing up, it is definitely not in the best interest of the students that will be
hurt. And I'm just going to leave it there because I was getting ready to jump out my seat. Mm-hmm. And I will finish with that because I was the one that connected them with legal representation. So if this goes through, I really hope you all sue like m***********s. Mm-hmm. But I'm not monitored by the FCC or SCUSD. We get on about three seconds away there. Sophia, please. Thank you, Benson. Hello? Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. So I'm not going to rehash what everybody else has said. I think that so many things have already been said better than I can say them. But I really wanted to speak and double down on the point of the
process failure here, and the failure to name appropriately what this proposal is, which is the truncation, I'm an MSC parent, sorry, of MSC 6 through 8th grades and an expansion of Lafayette Academy into the space currently occupied- Hold on one second. We can't hear you on our end. Can you hear me now? Yeah. One second. We're going to raise the volume. Okay. That's what he's speaking on. Can you try again? Yes. Let me check my audio settings. Is that better? That's better. Yes. Okay. All right. So I am an MSC parent. I'm not going to rehash what everyone else has already stated so wonderfully tonight, and so forcefully.
But I do want to really push on the point of the process failure here, which was the failure to name appropriately as well what this proposal is. The proposal is not a truncation of MSC 6 through 8th grades. It is a truncation of MSC 6 through 8th grades in order to facilitate the expansion of Lafayette Academy into the space currently occupied by MSC's middle schoolers. I think these euphemisms and this intentional vagueness about the specificities of the proposals, its goals, and its actual impact are major process failures,
and they are causing harm. To close and displace an entire middle school in order to allow other children to occupy the space currently being used by the kids who go there and who have built that school is-A violation of their rights. It is a violation of IDEA rights. It's a violation of the rights especially of the disabled kids at MSC. My daughter is one of them. I think that's something that was missing as well from the EIS, was the fact that MSC is located in a space that is accessible by transit
with elevators. So it's not just the building itself and the accessibility of the building itself, it's also getting there. The DOE is currently embroiled in a lot of legal trouble for failing to provide busing to disabled students. My daughter was one of them. She had paperwork in place. She got one day of busing. She never got another day of busing for an entire school year, and we gave up on busing that year at a different school that we had to leave in District 3. It was not accessible for us. She has a bleeding
disorder. She recently had a bleed into one of her joints and we needed the elevator. We needed to be able to hop a bus from the train station to get down to the school and have that really short walk. These are considerations that the DOE have not taken into account when they put this proposal forward, and it shows their gross negligence towards these students, their disregard and their carelessness towards these students and their lives. So who would be impacted right now by this? Between the fourth to eighth-grade classes, that's 244
children. And I think that when you look at those numbers and you see that's including the ungraded elementary and middle school classes. 244 children, 77 of those children have documented disabilities. That does not include all of the children who have disabilities at MSC. 53 of those children are English language learners, 59 of those children are homeless, 155 of those children are deemed economically advantaged, which I just want to point out is also a number based on the federal poverty limit, and it's a severe
undercount of the number of children at MSC, like my own daughter, who are categorized by the city that they live in as extremely and very low income based on the local area median income and the cost of living. So what's at stake for them? The disruption of their education, loss of their supportive environment, loss of accessible school buildings and transit, increased travel time, which for children with disabilities and for all children is a major disruption and can take a toll on their mental health. Loss of District 3, potentially. We were explicitly told that
places would be found for us outside of the district and in my own search for a school, the school that I found is in Tribeca. That is the next closest approximation we could find to MSC with its accessibility for my daughter. They would lose the relationships that they have built, and it has damaged their relationship with the schools around them. It has damaged their relationship with the education system. In saying that it's damaged the relationship with the education system, it's damaged their relationship with the community that they live in and
the city that they live in because New York City public schools for the kids who go there is their primary point of access to the city that they live in. That is their world. So when that school system turns around and says, "We don't want you in this space that you've built. We want someone else there in your place, and we don't really care where you end up, and we're not really going to offer you much help," which they have not, "to make sure that there is an adequate replacement for you," it says they're not wanted in their city, that they don't belong here. That is a huge message to send to kids,
especially some of the most vulnerable kids in our society. So I just wanted to bring that number in between those fourth to eighth grades classes who would be the most impacted in the next two years. That's 244 young lives, not even counting the kids who were coming in from outside of MSC, who got places this year in the sixth-grade class, who would also face a major disruption to the school that they had planned to attend. I think that their mental health matters. I think their physical health matters. The accessibility and the failure to take all of this into account was a
major process failure. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Do you have anyone else in the room to share for District 3 proposals? Yes, please. Okay. So, I just want to say that I'm going to limit my comments to the process. Okay. Because I have a lot of feelings and thoughts about the specifics and a lot about what people have said about the school proposals, but I was under the impression that this is not the venue for that. Just process. Okay. Just process. Yes. Okay. So a few things.
I've been aware of this, as a PS9 parent for years of whatnot, of being told of the situation. But in terms of the situation being like we're behind on meeting class size goals. Mm-hmm. As a CC member, I had heard or when I started at CC, I had heard from other people on CC and off CC who went to working group meetings
throughout the fall and I think the summer. I think like September, October. A variety of things that happened there. I subsequently saw a slide in the past month or two- That I was told by the superintendent's office, that was shown at those meetings that said, "What's said here, stays here. What's learned here, leaves here." And unless they lied to me, which is quite possible. So that is my understanding of what happened in terms of... And I interpret that as it's a gray area, it's ambiguous, but that like, basically, and I was told the reason they did that was because
they didn't want certain stats just like plastered around for things like, if they're trying to basically increase enrollment at 10 under-enrolled schools, and they've decided one or two should be changed, they don't want like to plaster it around, that it's like these schools are struggling. They want to increase enrollment. That's what I was told. Mm-hmm. And that's what I was told the logic behind the like, "Don't talk about the details of what is said here because we're talking about tough issues." But that the sentiment was like, make sure the general
gist is shared. Okay. At the October 21st CEC meeting, I've watched the recording several times, and I wrote down some notes the other day. There were several people from Center School at that meeting, at least, one parent and a teacher. And they asked Kamar and Eric, and Caitlin from ODP, "Can you guarantee us that we will not be moved for the next school year?" And I was asking ODP, like, "How does this whole process work?"
So there's a lot of discussion about it. And to respond, there was a lot of, "That would be difficult. It's a really short timeframe. That would be really difficult for your school. There's no current plan to move it. We are open to ideas. Please come to us with ideas." They said they had had a lot of ideas that they've been tossing around, but nothing concrete. I asked them, "Can you just share that list with us of the ideas?" They said, "Well, we don't really have a list." So it's a little confusing since they said they had been brainstorming for
months about ideas. But here are some quotes from Kamar. "I'm not going to sit here and make any guarantees." Another quote, "I'm not going to be backed into a corner to give guarantees or anything like that." Another quote, "I cannot guarantee anything." Another quote, "When I see opportunities that benefit the district as a whole, it's my job to pursue those options." And those are all in response to direct questions of will we be moved next year. So I just want to state that because I feel like I've heard a lot
about how no one from the Center community... That may be completely insufficient. I'm not saying insufficient, but I just want to put like the context that I'm aware of on the table, that this was not a behind-closed... This was a public meeting, so and so the recording's on the website. Okay. I have a few other things, then I'll wrap up. Da, da, da, doo. There was talk of Dutch Avenue, but like in the December CEC meeting, Kamar showed slides of these scenarios and said, I don't have the quotes here, but according to my
memory, "I'm very excited about these. I've given the schools everything they want." Again, I'm not going to litigate the veracity or truthfulness of this, and that I'm moving forward, and the slide said, I just checked the other day, yeah, no recording. Slide said something like, "Next step, proposals." So that was in December. And- So you said that was in December? December, yeah. Yeah. And then I think at the November meeting, there were different scenarios that were on the slides. Were you at the meeting, the November meeting? What is that? Because I don't remember you being there. The which one? The working group meeting in November. I don't remember you being there. No, this is- I was there ... the public CEC meeting in November.
Okay. Yeah. I believe, I'm 99% sure. I didn't check the recording, but I believe I can pull the slide deck later and confirm. There were different scenarios, I believe. But it might've been the October meeting. But in any case- It was not the October meeting. Not the October meeting. Okay, got it. I'll check. But okay. So, and the other thing I just wanted to state about this process and for the context that I'm aware, during the summer and fall, when Kamar and Mariella would do their reports, they would show these stats of like, where are the lowest performing and the highest performing schools, and this
and that. And I would look around and I was completely and utterly baffled that we were looking at stats like 19% proficient, and this and that, and that I'd be looking around at other members, I'm like, "Oh, this is the CEC meeting. Like, someone's going to get up and start screaming and protesting," because like I don't know what's going on here. These are like baffling stats. Mm-hmm. And he'd be like, "And I'm done with my presentation." And I'm like, "Wait, what?" Like, these stats are insane. I didn't even know... It was crazy. Like, if my child were at
any school like that, I would not send my child to a school like that. So in this process, once this process started, I felt like, "Oh!"They have been thinking about- I'm so sorry, are you talking about 191 still? I'm talking about schools that have a 19% proficiency rate. And maybe it is because the district and the DOE has failed them. So- But I don't think anyone can say there's no problem there. Everyone is in agreement there is a problem. Sorry, which school on the agenda are you talking about?
He was saying that as a CEC member, information has been brought to him in the form of these presentations, right by Kamari. And shared with the public. Right, shared with the public- Yeah ... at these meetings. And if I'm tracking and following you, the presentations at one month were one set of presentation, one set of information of potential proposal. At the next meeting- Yeah ... different information was presented, making it difficult for CEC members themselves to follow and track what's happening. Well, no, also saying like in the summer, even before the proposal- I don't think that was the question
... just the fact that that order- I think what he said, why are parents sending children to these schools where there's a 19% proficiency? I think that's what the question is. Right. It means that there's an outrage. I've heard a lot of outrage tonight about these problems. Is this the first time you're hearing this outrage? No, but what I'm saying is that like- What I think you're saying is that 191 has a super high student- I'm sorry, can you repeat the question again? Sure. Yeah. You can listen to the recording. You talked many people tonight. Yeah. Don't do that. Don't do that. So my point was, and maybe I'll get memed, and
it'll sink. But the point is, in terms of this process, I'm like, oh, people are thinking about these things. Mm-hmm. And maybe these are the wrong solutions. Maybe these are the absolute wrong solutions. But just to clarify about the process, I was confused that no one was jumping up and down saying, "We have to help." And then this process started, and it was like, okay. And then I talked to people, and
what has been explained to me is, these are decisions to help improve the education of children, not to displace. And I understand that they may be making the wrong decisions. But, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So I just want to be clear, in regards to the process, you're saying information was shared. That's what you're saying. It's just that it was no reaction to the data that was given at that public CEC. That's what you're saying? Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah. I'll tell you two things. One, I don't know. The last part I was sort of discombobulated about, and I'm just really
scared of getting memed and whatnot. Getting into a meme. So I'm a little stressed about that. No worries. The point about the October thing was just, it was clear to everyone there that these were hard problems that needed to be figured out. Low performance scores, buildings that were over-utilized, and so on and so forth. People were asking for guarantees. Back in October, that center, parents were asking, "Can you guarantee we won't be moved?" They were told,
basically, "That would be really hard. It's a really short timeframe. It would be difficult for you. But I'm not going to make any guarantees." And that's all I'm saying. And maybe that was not the right thing. Maybe it was too vague. Maybe it was too ambiguous. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate that. And I understand being memed. So. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, he referenced and spoke at a meeting that he was not at, that I actually have personal knowledge of. Okay. We're not going to- And you're not going to do that ... discuss this board because it's not productive in this space. We can discuss that off-line, but we're not going to do
that here because it's also almost 9:00. I want to respect everyone's time, and I would like all the folks who have their hands raised to be able to be heard. I am going to ask that we limit it to the people who we have on screen now, because it is almost 9:00. So Christina? Hello, can everyone hear me? Yes. Yes. Great. Hi, I'm Christina Fabricant, a parent and member of the SLT at MSC. And I'm so glad you were able to hear from so many parents in our community tonight. I wanted to highlight
some aspects of the process that I don't know that we've spent enough time talking about, but I'll be very brief. I wanted to spend my time talking about the EIS itself. Since this whole process was very new to all of us, we were ready to really engage with this document. And then once we received the document, it was really surprising to see that large sections of it, substantial sections that had actual information, were identical from the EIS for MSC and the
EIS for 191. And it really showed a lack of thought about the differences in these proposals in these communitiesBeyond that, the EIS was riddled with errors. There was information specifically provided to the district beforehand that was not accurately included in the original document, requiring an amendment. And beyond that, every version that's been distributed has new errors that we have the burden of having to fact-check and go back and change.
Some of these errors include the percentage of enrollment change from year to year, which was initially inaccurate, had to be changed, and still does not reflect that our enrollment has had a positive increase in recent years. It's referring to data that is directly post-COVID, where our enrollment matches the enrollment of the district as a whole in terms of decrease. Other errors that we've had to amend and change, the EIS claims that because of our enrollment numbers,
our middle school students are not getting an adequate amount of ELA and math classes. They are getting exactly what the district has asked us to deliver, and that has not been explained. The data on which that statement was based has never been explained to us clearly. There was a new amendment that said that Lafayette is an IB school. They, just like MSC, are in the process of IB certification, and so that had to be changed. And so I just wanted to make sure the record reflected that beyond the many issues you've already heard about with
parent engagement and timing with this process, working with this document has been really eye-opening in terms of how much attention we've had to pay to keep on top of trying to make sure that this document, which seems very important, is actually reflecting an accurate situation. Beyond that, at a CEC meeting, a representative from the Office of District Planning specifically told us that we shouldn't expect the EIS to be accurate,
which was incredibly confusing, and really just lent less faith in this process to the parent community. Thank you so much. I know it's a long night, but we really do appreciate your time. Thank you for sharing with us. Do we have anybody else in the room that wants to share? No. All right. Let's just get through our online participants. I believe that Abby is next. Can you promote Leon to a panelist? He's one of our community members. Can you promote Leon to a panelist? Hi, can you all hear me?
Yes. Great. Hi. I am Abby Bukobalnis. I am a parent at MSC of a kindergartener and a second grader. I'm also the PTA co-president. I'm home alone tonight with my three kids. And so I was just going to say it'll be a miracle if you don't hear from them, but one of them is crying already, so I'm going to be as quick as I can be. I haven't been as vocal in this process as I might have been. And part of the reason is because my kids are young, and part of the reason is because
my kids are not among those most vulnerable to the proposed changes at MSC. At the same time, my co-president, Jessica Weiss, who has been very vocal throughout this process and extremely involved, is not available right now. And I want to quickly share that I attended a couple of meetings with her and with UFT representatives and principals from the various involved schools in the fall. And those meetings, which could have been part of the constructive process that would have helped us get to a better outcome right now, were not productive, and they were not clear.
So in one of the meetings, we were given pieces of paper with tables of numbers on them that were enrollment numbers, and we were put in small groups and told, "Well, what would you do?" And when I asked, because I am sort of like type A and eager to please, and I said, "What's the assignment here? What am I trying to do?" And I got no additional clarity. In a subsequent meeting, we were presented with three scenarios by the district. Two were immediately discarded as not feasible. And the third, which is sort of the
scenario we're in right now, was presented as the only viable option. It was made extremely clear in that meeting in late fall, I'm sorry, I don't have the exact date, that it was not a proposal. It was a scenario. The phrase that was mentioned before, something about "Take the learning with you" or whatever, yeah, that was used. My interpretation and the interpretation of many people in the room was that there was nothing to be extremely alarmed about at that point in time because it was very clearly a scenario and not
a proposal. It should not impact what people were planning to do for middle school. I personally felt insulted when the district then came out and said that PTA representatives had been informed about this, and it was our fault and our responsibility if we had not brought that back to the community.Because I do. I am as involved in the school as I am because I believe in the school, and I believe in the community, and I believe it is my responsibility as a person who has a flexible job and who has
that privilege of being able to be on the PTA. I see it as my responsibility to be a liaison between the things that I learn and my community. What I will say from tonight is I'm so sorry for what folks have been through. It's really upsetting to hear about these experiences at other schools, particularly at 191. It's horrifying. I will also say that perhaps if the district had tapped into the talents of District 3 families, all of the good ideas, all of the good
intentions, and all of the commitment to children that I have heard tonight, we would have 10 viable, creative scenarios that people felt better about that could have become actionable proposals. And if you want parent engagement, then you should want parent talent and parent ideas. And there are some really committed people in the room tonight, online and physically there, who could have done a lot better than what we're actually working with now. There's my two-year-old. I'm going to end that there. And thank you all for your time. Thank you. I feel like we're out of order, and Mr. Pinckney has been waiting a long time.
So we're going to jump down to Adam Pinckney. Hello, and thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. My name is, as you said, Adams Pinckney. I'm a proud parent of a fifth grader at Manhattan School for Children, and I would like to say, trying to keep this focused on the guidelines that you outlined at the beginning, quite emphatic and quite clear to say that this has been hugely impactful as a process to me as a parent, to my family,
and directly to my son. So as a process, we've heard a lot of people talk about engagement versus advocacy, versus listening and versus hearing in many different forums. So I'm not going to go into all of that. I will say the process has left my family in a state of turmoil. The process has failed in terms of giving us support and guidance. And the irony of this is after having spent since kindergarten at what is clearly an exemplary and expert
school at caring for children, what I find now when I participate in these processes is I am reduced to a category that is called most vulnerable. I cannot begin to describe to you all, and I ask you for parents, members of the PEP, what that feels like and how painful that is. Even more prescient because of the experience that my son has had, the support, the hope, and the life that the community at MSC has
enveloped him in. I sometimes will describe him to a person, a stranger, which all of you are strangers to me. Forgive me that I have not reached out more to the PEP. That my son is a unique learner. He has an IEP, and he needs support. I will share just a couple of things briefly. One is, for example, sometimes he just needs a little bit more time. Sometimes he needs repetition. Sometimes he needs an environment that is not noisy, which is very hard to come by in our city's public schools. But this community has worked
in ways that has allowed him to forge his way. They call him the mayor of the school because he likes to shake people's hands and say hi. He has some language delays, and so he learned early that this was a way that he could initiate a connection with a person. We didn't teach him that. He learned that, and he learned it because the school created the space for him to learn it. And now,
when I participate in this processI feel completely let down. We don't know where to go next year. We did a lot of homework and a lot of research to find this place in the first years of his school, starting at kindergarten. And it was like a dream when we started there, but it was a dream that came true. This process has left us back where we were then, in the cold. I will add one more thing, if I may. Please. The superintendent reached out. I beg your pardon. Interim acting Superintendent Dr.
Higgins reached out through the principal in our school to invite families, again, that they call most vulnerable to a working session in which they would speak to us about IEP compliance. It was almost like being read our rights. We haven't done anything wrong. If that's the process of support, then this process is so far off the rails, you can't even see the rails anymore. Forgive me. I'm sorry. I just want to emphasize that missing from all of this has been the strengths of the community
and a genuine engagement. Not all needs and not all problems are equal. I ask that you consider all of this well. Thank you. Thank you for sharing with us. Jill? Hi. I don't know where to start here. I've been in this process for a very long time, since it started October 9th, when Kamar Samuels came to my SLT meeting and stated matter of factly with no uncertain terms, there are no plans to move the Center School. And I've sent you guys all that
video, I believe. If you want me to send it again, I'm happy to. But, two weeks after that, I was the one Jonathan is talking about, who went to that CEC meeting and asked again, "Are there any plans to move Center School this year?" And as Jonathan said, it was incredibly vague. There were no answers except it would be very difficult. And he said, "We haven't started even brainstorming. We have to start with ideas." And from two weeks prior to that, he had said there are no
plans to move the Center School. So then two weeks later when he said, "We still haven't brainstormed. There are no plans, no brainstorms, no ideas," there is no way that we could have taken from that, that then you're going to be moving, right? Two weeks before he said, "You're not moving." Then he said, "There are no plans, no proposals, no anything." So I just wanted to clarify that because without knowing that he had told us two weeks before there are no plans to move the school, I think that that is a bit out of context.
I actually wanted just to come on here to tell you guys how much I appreciate this, because we've been begging for this type of interaction, and I know everybody has said that. And I had some other things I wanted to talk about, but truthfully, after hearing the previous speaker, and I can't believe the little thought that is being put into the children here. The adults have fought and there's been so much animosity, but no one is talking about what is happening to these kids. And, what we just heard is extremely hard to
hear. And this is what families are going through. Not just families that have these extreme, terrible situations. This has taken toll on families throughout this, hundreds of families. And, when we went-- I was at the December 17th meeting when Kamar came and said, "Here are the scenarios. Still no plan to move Center School. But you guys should tour this school." Do you know that was the first time that 191 had ever heard of Center School?
And I find that to be a huge failure on the DOE, because if they want to start having true integration, every single child at 191 should have been entered into the Center School lottery if they wanted to attend that school. So to put Center into that building to fix those problems that the DOE created, I think that's very shortsighted. Anyway, that's kind of it. Honestly, I'm so done with it. I've been doing this now since October 9th, trying to sleuth
around with my partner there, Jean, trying to find what everyone has done.We've had no advocates on our side, Center, MSC, 191, even CAS prior to getting off the chopping block. Our CEC reps did nothing to advocate on our behalf. The only thing that we have heard throughout this entire process is, "It is a done deal." It is a done deal. That is all we keep hearing. It's incredibly frustrating. I'm going to leave it at that, you guys.
Thank you so, so much, and please think about all of the kids when you are thinking about this. Please make a difference. Please don't follow the historic votes of the PEP. Thank you. Thank you. We have three more speakers for this district, then we have District Four's proposal, and then- We're good. District 91. We're good. We are, baby. We are. Mother, damn. We are good. Okay. Kristen? Hi,
everyone. I just heard that we didn't do anything to advocate on behalf of my liaison school, so I would like to speak to that. Hi, Kristen. We're going to limit the comments only to the committee- Only to the- If you would like to share- Process. Yes, the process. Oh. And please address your comments to the committee. Okay. Thank you. So I am one of the co-presidents of CEC 3. I am also the liaison to Center School and And I've been the liaison for 191 for the last three years. During that time, these proposals did not come up until
the beginning of this year. And I found out about them the same time as the parent representatives of 191 in working group meetings that I attended. The first working group meeting I attended was last January, where the superintendent got up in front of parent leaders and principals of schools across all over District 3 and talked about challenges that the district is facing. Not only with class size law, but from the beginning, has talked about a multitude
of driving forces behind these, like financial considerations and enrollment trends. And in the working group meetings that I've attended since then, has gone into detail about performance issues at schools, enrollment trends, these financial concerns, and also the class size law. So those rationales really haven't shifted over that time. During this process, in October, I attended the SLT meeting on October 9th, where Kamarr Samuels came and spoke to the Center School
about the need to move the school from the building because of overcrowding. I encourage the PEP to ask Center School for the entirety of the video of that meeting, and not just view one clip taken from it. Because the message that I heard in that meeting was that the building is overcrowded, and Center School is going to have to move. They are having working group meetings, and these issues were going to be discussed. I reached out that night to one of the SLT members at Center School
to talk about it. And I messaged her about what the A190 process is, and I set up a coffee with her and Jill Caruso. I think it was the next day or later that week. I talked to them about the process. I talked to them that it seemed very likely that Center School was going to have to move. They expressed that Center School would not want to have to move, that they had had to move from another building years ago from PS 199 to the nine building. They would not have to move.
I did advocate for them very fiercely, and dove into data about every possible building in the district that might have space. I talked to teacher leaders there about it, and I showed them where to look up that data in the Blue Book. I encouraged Center School parents to come to our October 21st CEC meeting to ask Office of District Planning directly questions about this process and what the timeline for the move would be.
And they came, and they asked them, and what was said is on video on our website. At the working group meetings that I attended, I spoke with the Center School principal and their staff, and with the parents attending there. I think I can understand why what's learned here, leaves here-- What is discussed here, stays here. What is learned here, leaves here, could've been somewhat confusing. But I didn't take it as that what was discussed in
this meeting was not supposed to leave. I took it as it was supposed to be shared with the rest of the communityAnd because that was my understanding when the superintendent gave working group meeting updates during our public CEC meetings in his slides, I made sure to repost those slides on our CEC website, and then I took the working group meeting updates from his slides and reposted them on a CEC working group meeting updates page on our website publicly.
So that was my attempt to try and disseminate what was happening in those working group meetings to the rest of the community as well. I really feel like this process has become extremely hostile to the point where there are members of our community that don't feel comfortable sharing their voice. And there are some that I have had direct conversations with who have told me they don't feel comfortable coming to our meetings, and they don't feel comfortable speaking out. Particularly at PS 191, where from the discussions that I've
had with families, there are some in the elementary school who really do support the truncation of the middle school. And at SLT meetings I attended, the principal expressed support for that truncation proposal as well. In the time that I've gone as a liaison to 191, at first, I saw that the PTA there had somewhat fallen apart, and I got to know the new PTA president when she came on and tried to support her in building parent leadership there.
I noticed that they didn't have a Title I PAC. I talked to her about that. I reached out to Jimmy Brown and asked if she could support them as well, their legislative breakfast. I also realized that they were not aware of budget situations with the school, and I explained to them how to read a budget for the school and how SLTs are supposed to work, and tried to support them in building up their SLT. Almost every time I came to the school for a meeting to meet with the principal, there was somebody from district leadership who was already there. And one time when I went, the former schools
chancellor was there. My understanding that there was a member of the office who was there all of the time, and I know recently Charles DeBerry has been there. So every time I visited as a CEC liaison, see a large amount of district support for the school. My understanding was they provided additional training for teachers, and at one point, almost all of their middle school teachers quit. And so they had a staffing issue. So I did observe attempts to support this school on a district level over my time as a CEC
liaison, and I did try to support the parent leadership there as their CEC liaison as well. I understand there are really strong feelings about these proposals. And I understand why parents are very upset. I also got to see during the working group meetings what the rationale is behind them. And I also dove into the data on what building and facilities are available in District 3. My understanding is over a year ago, the principal of Center School had toured the
Manhattan Country School as an option. PS 165 is a potential option. There were some other options that were discussed quite a while ago that were rejected back in time. I'm understanding now that maybe they're reopening or reconsidering Manhattan School for Country or asking about the Brandeis building as well. I know they asked about this. I have asked about all of these buildings and spaces in the past and have been told they're not viable. And I have been in meetings and outreach where
Center School community has asked Dr. Higgins directly and the Office of District Planning, and my understanding was that these buildings are not an option. If something changes with that, I don't know. But to hear that people say that there hasn't been engagement or there hasn't been advocacy on behalf of their schools, I think simply isn't true. And I understand this is very hard, and sometimes people have to say things that others don't want to hear.
But I think as a CEC, we are all members of your community. We're your neighbors. Our kids go to school with your kids, and we really do care about this and care about parent advocacy and engagement as well. Thanks. Thank you for sharing. I see the comment in the chat about folks who have raised their hand. I apologize. That is my bad. We have a permit. We have to leave. We'll be out of here in nine minutes. Right. So I do apologize for that. I think I'm going to organize another one of these
because I'm going to ask the committee that we table our resolution part of the conversation, and we can just meet again and discuss that. I don't think we have anything else. Yes, four. Three and four is A-okay. We're good. If we have any committee members that would like to share theirTakeaways, their initial thoughts. Please feel free to do so. We have nine minutes for that. And I would like to thank everyone who's here with us, it's been about three hours and 20 minutes, and everyone who's with us online. Thank you for coming. Thank you for joining. And committee members, if you'd like to speak, please feel free to unmute
yourselves. Okay, I'm going to say something. Yes, Shirley, please. So usually the process, we want communication, accountability, transparency. That is very clear. It seemed like breakdown in communication. Also, language empathy is lacking at times. That's what I'm hearing as well. But I also see, and heard, and spoke to other parents, that we want true engagement. True engagement, it has to be a safe environment. And we need to hear all sides. Even if they don't agree with
our views, they should be able to feel free to speak without attack. They're not the ones making the proposal, they're just sharing their views. Right? If we're going to attack anybody, and I'm not saying to do it, it's the Department of Education because they're making the proposal. They're trying to engage the community, and they want to hear all views. Good, bad, ugly, indifferent, they want to hear it. So we have to create those safe environments that people should not be afraid to speak up. Then that is not true engagement either. It has to be a safe environment where all voices is
okay. So I feel a little bothered because you're like, "I'm going to get meed." That shouldn't be. Yeah. That should not be at all. All voices. And so could you imagine students, if parents feel, families, adults are feeling, how about students? Voicing when they see the adults acting that way to one another, let alone to children. So we have to keep that mindful as well, and part of the process, and to come up how to make safe... We just got to put each other in each other's shoes. Because we don't want to be the one under attack.
Again, parents aren't the ones who are making the proposal. It is to be able to be free to communicate how they feel, or what they see, or their truth of the events. Whether you disagree or not, it should be okay. It should be okay. Even before this space, I've noticed and heard that that's what's going on. But I do really appreciate everybody voicing because we need to know and you got to keep in mind, we have to put everybody in consideration. That's what makes it a little
difficult, and that's why we want to hear all the voices. We have to look at all the children and how they impact the system as well. But that's all I'm going to say for now because we have resolutions. We've dealt two already. We have more coming up about this process because it is very clear me that we make sure everyone is engaged and is able to have access and participate in engagement. Thank you, panel member Alvin. Panel member Hannah Jones, is your here, please? I'm taking two minutes, so I'm putting the timer on.
He means it. Because I'm going to go into my preacher's mode. It doesn't make sense. Give me two minutes then you got to get out of here. First off, I want to tell every parent, parent leader, how proud I am of you. I really tried to hold it together today- Mm-hmm ... because mine was on the brink of tears as well. Mm-hmm. I know what you're going through. I've been there. I have also been on the other side of not being engaged, the parent. And I just want to tell you that we are standing here with you. Nothing has been decided yet. And bet you me, you are not
by yourself. I've heard every voice, every quiver, and I just want to let you all know that I stand in solidarity with you. Even though you're all Manhattan, we're on the other side of the bridge, we also go through the same thing. When I say that New York City has the most segregated schools in the country, that means New York City. Mm-hmm. It doesn't mean any of the five boroughs. It means all of us. So we are all in this together. Reema, one of my panel members, Reema, said something very important. She says there's a difference between children who have special needs
and children who have disabilities, because one is funded and the other one is not. Right? Now, I have had my run-ins with Kamara, and I respect him a great deal. And, although I love the man, we have come to disagreements that probably have almost landed us with blows. And being the leader that he is, regardless of any disagreements, and even at times voting against some of his policies and decision-makings, we have had extraordinary outcomes.
This may be one of those times where we have to vote against him to bring about those extraordinary outcomes. It doesn't mean that after this, he shouldn't no longer be the chancellor. It just means that this is part of the growing process that is going to allow us all- 7 seconds ... to grow. So with that being said, thank you all for speaking. I appreciate you all. And also, parent leaders should never be ostracized or heldUm, away from being
advocates for their children and other children in other communities. Mm-hmm. And I talked about this today with the deputy chancellor. I told her that this should be the first priority in everything you do in terms of how are parent leaders and how they speak up. They should never be seen as adversaries- Mm ... in their school districts. And I won't get into mayoral control, but this is one reason why our CECs and our parent leaders need to have the community governance that they deserve. You shouldn't have to wait until a PEP vote, right? The buck really should stop with the parent
community in governing what they want for their schools. So I'm done. We've taken his mic. Okay. If any of our Zoom members online would like to share, please unmute yourself because I cannot see very much of what's happening there at all. Yes, good evening, everyone. Leon Gittrain, PTA president for P.S. MS 394 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I want to start off by thanking everybody a part of tonight. Even the parents. I hop off of what Mr. Hannah Jones just said.
A lot of the testimony I heard tonight kind of brought tears to my eyes, too, and I took it personally because I know all too well the disconnect with engagement. It unfortunately happened to my school in 394. There wasn't enough parent engagement with the proposal to close us or phase us out, and the narrative that was brought to the PEP was honestly not the truth. It didn't reflect what the community wanted. It was said that
the CBLA is what the community wanted. There was no pushback, and when the first PEP meeting happened December 18, 2024, we had a large turnout of parents come and speak out against that narrative, and unfortunately, we still was voted for phase out. But I'm happy to see these meetings going on because I think change needs to come. It really does. It's unfortunate what happened to our school, but I'm still here to fight for. I think there's a real disconnect
with community engagement, parent engagement, school engagement, and I'm very, very happy of what I'm seeing. I think, Adriana, I think you do wonderful work, and I think you're really, really opening the envelope to what really needs to be done and what really needs to be changed. I also think Mr. Hannah Jones, I listen to a lot of things you say at these PEP meetings, and you be hitting the nail right on the head. So I thank everybody tonight. I think we're moving in the right direction. There's a lot of work that still needs to be done, but I think the train
is rolling. Thank you, Mr. Gittrain. I appreciate your comments, especially about what's been a few years ago. I'm going to call it on the meeting tonight because we've got to get out of here. Committee members, you can share info or anything you'd like us to take back for the committee report at the PEP meeting. Please just email me if you have anything you would like for us to include, and thank you all