Thank you everyone for your patience. Uh, we'll be starting now. Um, this is, uh, the panel for Educational Policy Government Affairs Committee meeting, uh, taking place on Thursday, May 15th, 2025. And now it is 10:50 AM Uh, this meeting will be held in. It is being held in person, uh, and, uh, you can join remotely and participate remotely, or speak in person if you happen to be here. And we're expecting some more people to arrive. Um, all panel and committee meetings are recorded and live streamed over the internet. All previous meetings can be accessed on the DOE website.
Please be aware that if you choose to attend this meeting, your image, voice or the image and voice of your child may appear in livestream footage or in the recording that is posted on the panel website. So, with that, uh, I welcome, uh, everyone in the, uh, zoom room. Uh, thank you for coming. Uh, and I also welcome everyone who's here, including, uh, pep members, uh, Dr. D and chair Greg Faulkner. Um, our agenda for this meeting is, is, is, is, is, is more detailed than was, uh, on the website, but it's also very flexible. Uh, this is the first meeting
of the Government Affairs Committee meeting, and the intention here is to collect input of parents, community members, uh, as, as pep members, and build a working plan for how things, uh, go forward in terms of advocating for the needs of our students, uh, for the foreseeable future. Right? We have, uh, a very short legislative session in front of us. Uh, unfortunately, uh, that has caused some, uh, significant concern for a lot of the things that we need to get done. But, uh, the work of this committee doesn't end there.
And, uh, we will continue to gather all input and formulate a parent centered plan, uh, for, for the following years. Um, so I call the meeting to order, and then essentially just bring up topics, uh, for discussion, one at a time. Uh, listen to people's, uh, opinions and, and input on those. And then ask for any other issues that might be of concern. We have people taking notes. Uh, I'm taking notes. The meeting is recorded, and hopefully we have a, a good relationship, uh, with each other.
And then working to build it with, uh, legislators and department administrators at all levels, uh, the city, state, and federal, uh, who will then hear from, from us. Thank you. So, given that there's not too many people on the call, I feel like I would benefit, and I think everyone else would benefit from knowing each other. So, if, uh, uh, I'll start for the people that are physically here, and if people then, uh, one by one can go off on Zoom, introduce themselves very briefly, and, and let us know what, what, what it is that your concerns are, what you're interested in seeing and hearing. So, uh, I'll go first.
Uh, I'm the elected, uh, CEC member from Manhattan, uh, on the pep. And, uh, I'm the chair of the Government Affairs Committee. And, uh, describe the intention of what we're trying to do here. Uh, and then I'll pass it to, uh, chair Greg Faulkner. Okay. Thank you. Chair Hassan. Uh, yeah. My name is Greg Faulkner, and I'm chair of the panel. And, um, I, I think this is really an important committee, this process that we're gonna go through. A lot of the issues that we address at the panel, um, oftentimes have, um, you know, some connection
to some legislative body or some legislative, uh, either the New York City Council, or either it's the legislature, most likely it's the legislature. And so we felt it was important to really begin to craft an agenda so that we could begin to impact those bodies that have an impact on us and have an impact on the New York City Public schools. I want to thank the committee. Um, so far they've been aggressively, um, uh, making themselves heard on a number of issues, and we want to, uh, take that even a step further. So, thank you, chair Hassan, for your work and moving this forward.
We wanna take it a step further. We wanna open it up to the broader community, um, so that we can really come, uh, uh, forward with a really strong legislative agenda and then move those items, uh, in a way. And by the way, involve the community. Because if we're gonna be successful in Albany and successful in this city council, we're gonna need to have the support of, uh, the, the entire education community. I call it the educ, particularly the educational volunteer community. We're all volunteers at the table, and there are hundreds of you out there who,
whether it is a PTA President or as a CEC member or what, or as a parent, perform volunteer services for our schools. We, we represent a strong voice that I think will be, uh, have a tremendous impact in Albany and in the city Council. Thank you. Uh, good morning. Uh, my name's, uh, darling. I'm, uh, students call me Dr. D Uh, I'm the member of, uh, panel of Education Policy. Uh, so I'm Mayor Appointee, uh, former teachers and educator. And, um, um, I'm glad that we meet.
And thanks to the committee. Thanks to the chairs, both the pep and chair of the committee. We have a great chance to update, uh, regulation channel Regulation 6 63, supporting language access. Thanks also for everybody, the committee who work on this, because this was the city work, every city, um, um, um, um, committee councils, um, CPA pap, everybody enjoy this, um, project and support it. And I would like to thank you and thank you. 'cause this is also going through the coming the committee
of, uh, intergovernmental Affairs. For those that are on Zoom, I think you'll be prompted to unmute, uh, if you could, uh, and if you're able to, please introduce yourselves. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Tara Basu. Great to be here. I'm on the policy team at Mark Levine's office. Thank you. Yes. I'll jump in. My name is Shirley Orban, and I am a, a member of the Panel for Educational Policy to the appointee of the Queensborough President's office. And I'm just want to hear what the public is concerns that they have. Good morning, everyone.
Adriana Ali, she her here for Queen's CECs. Uh, I'd like to echo my previous panel members' comments. I'm looking forward to what the public has to say and what the public is concerned about. And also, I am looking forward to working more closely with Chair Hassan as I'm the chair of the Utilization Committee, and look forward to all of the great things that we can do in Albany together. Thank you Naveed, and thank you Chair Faulkner and Dr. Darling for being there in person. Um, I look forward to the rest of this meeting. Good morning, everyone. Camille ca from the, um, I'm the appointee for the Brooklyn Borough President.
Um, glad to have this, uh, committee started. And I think that there's a lot of things to discuss now with our change in administration, um, at the presidency and all of the changes that we're gonna see to federal funding. I think it's really critical that we have these deep conversations about what our next steps are, because the state is not funding as many things as we were hoping, and the city is gonna have to pick some of that up.
Um, I think specifically related to early education, we need to baseline a lot of these necessary programs. Um, I think also we need to see some really radical changes to PSAL. Uh, there are another four students that have, um, come up that were denied access in the school year. And I think given what is happening with the Civil Action complaints, we might be seeing more
of those coming online. And so I hope that this team will think deeply about what our next steps are in terms of supporting all of our children. And then of course, there's issues with charter school accountability, mayoral control, open meetings, law, and so much so I know you have your hands full. And Naveed, I wanna thank you so much for, um, volunteering to be the chair of this committee. So thank you so much. Bye. I, um, good morning everyone. Marielle Ali here I am,
the Manhattan Borough President's pep Appointee. Thank you for the meeting. I think similar to others, um, just really here in listening mode and looking forward to finding a constructive ways to work with our city council, our state legislatures, um, on behalf of New York City Public Schools. So thank you. Hi, everyone. Good morning. Um, I'm Samantha Wilner from the United Federation of Teachers here on behalf of Christina Collins. Um, I see that she just joined. Um, so hi Tina. Um, but also here to, um, listen, um, excited
to be doing this work is, there's definitely a lot to be done. I'll go next. Um, hi, this is Alene, who I am a, um, Manhattan Borough President appointee for CEC one. I learned about, uh, the subcommittee when I attended the CCHS legislative breakfast and am working with our team to, um, just, we wanted to get learnings and see what you guys are doing to perhaps incorporate into our legislative breakfast that we would like to do later this fall. Um, and so just here to kind of understand what all the issues that are being tackled
and how to link, uh, CEC one, uh, to the ones, uh, where we can help out on, Uh, Jill Rackill, CE C3 president, just here to listen and learn. So if there's anything I can bring back to my community, uh, I can just be more informed myself. Good morning, Alice Ho, mayoral parent for education policy member. I have, uh, been on the panel a little bit, uh, less than two years now. In that time, we've seen a transition from like a post covid feel to now we can get to the nuts
and bolts of what we came into the space for, which is great. I appreciate hearing from all of you, seeing some of you in the past. Thank you for commitment to continuing this work, um, and, and look forward to, especially during an election year, um, hearing more about what our priorities as we hold the electeds accountable as to what they will bring to the table. So this is gonna be an interesting year, and I appreciate, uh, that we started this in a timely, um,
um, window. Thank you. Hi, all. Uh, yes. I'm Tina Col. Uh, I'm mentioned, I'm with director policy. I, I know that I try to attend every month. Um, and I'm also, uh, one of the, to the Board of Regens meeting. So, yes, uh, happy to be part of this group and to have conversations with themselves inform, uh, the Thank you everyone. It's, it's really nice to see a lot of familiar faces, and I'm happy to see at least one person that I haven't met yet. Uh, thank you so much for committing this time, uh,
and coming, coming to this really critical meeting because given the size of doe's budget and, and as, uh, a fraction of the city and state's budget, we really need to have, do, do more of this work to make sure the needs of our, of our children are being met. So, I, I have sort of a informal addition to the agenda. I sent it out to as many people as I could. Uh, I, I'll, I'll speak it out loud, but these are the things that were high priorities that we've, we've experienced as pep members, uh, uh, that turn into issues either at the city level
or the state level, and sometimes at the federal level, um, where we did, we didn't have, um, a unified voice, uh, or, or even any kind of real structured voice to, to convey our messages. So this, this, this work is organizing that. So I think the first and the most critical thing that's been told to us, and we've heard, and that we know is the changes to found the Foundation Aid formula, which were theoretical until a couple of weeks ago. And we see, uh, real concrete numbers in the last coup week or so, uh, and where the Foundation aid formula has been updated, uh,
and impacts our schools in a way that we potentially are losing $314 million, uh, uh, to the New York City DOE budget from the Foundation eight. Um, and, uh, I, I have more things to say about that, but I, if anyone has input on that and wants to say an anything on Foundation eight changes and what they think we should be doing, uh, please go ahead and I'll bring up my notes on this too, to follow up. Um, I don't know. Yeah, so please raise your hand if you'd like to say anything. And then, uh, our, our amazing folks at Learning Times will unmute you.
I, since we don't have it, uh, uh, Camille, please go ahead. I I have my notes up too, but yeah, I can go, Um, I'm sorry, one minute. I'm just trying to navigate this phone. Um, so Navid, I think what, um, some of what we saw with the Foundation Aid formula is that in New York City, when we changed our weights and added the weight for students in temporary housing, it really made a difference. And, um, many of us were advocating for
the state to incorporate the same weight, and that did not happen. I think that there's also a call to advocate for higher weights for students with disabilities and l students to compensate for the loss of federal funding Title one that is inevitable. So the state did not get on board there. I understand that there are some concerns at the state level to making a commitment to more
funding in general, percentage wise of what the, the state gives to the city. But I think if we look nationally, there are, um, many states where the state percentage of funding far exceeds what New York is doing. Um, I think it's fair for us to ask the state to fund more money to the city, given the fact that the city gives the state so much money, and we're definitely not getting back near
what we are giving. Um, there was also conversations about revising the regional cost index, and I know that, um, some of the counties districts were able to do that outside of New York City, and it is definitely gonna make a positive district, um, positive influence in those areas. And so I think we really need to be pushing for a revision to the regional cost index for New York City.
So I'll just leave it at that. Thank you, Camille. Uh, and I, I finally got my notes up on this. We were having some discussions, uh, just informally. And this is, uh, the great, the best organization to work with on this is Advocates for Children. Uh, they've been partnering with the DOE on many things, including this advocacy work. But a couple of things that, that were sort of, uh, published when, uh, when, when the changes were made, and the budget was finalized in Albany for this, uh, coming year, is that the 22,000 census data has been swapped for the latest census data for small area income and poverty information.
Um, secondly, free and reduced launch data has been replaced with economically disadvantaged data. Uh, the third point is that the, as Camille mentioned, uh, the regional cost index, uh, is only increased in Westchester, uh, not in New York City, which, uh, seems a little bit backwards to me, uh, given the level of, uh, childhood poverty we have in, in New York City. Uh, fourth, uh, additional aid factor for English language learners has gone up by 6% from 0.5 to 0.53. Uh, fifth, there's a 2% annual increase
to a school's funding and an increased aid for low income schools. And finally, uh, changes to BOS aid and special services aid to increase funding for the Big five school districts that are not part of bos, which I don't think impacts New York City. So, given that there's some mixed messaging that we always get, uh, Albany is saying they've added money, uh, to New York City's part of, uh, the funding they get through Foundation Aid, but the city, DOE are, uh, is expecting public schools in New York City to receive 304 14 million fewer dollars.
Uh, I think one important thing that we can do during this legislative session is to create a plan. And, and this is partially hindered by the shortened calendar, but to create a legislative plan to actually change, uh, some of the laws in Albany that will add funding to make up for this gap. And this is, I think what, uh, the amazing Randy Levi was saying yesterday, uh, that, uh, that we have to try to do. And I will follow up with her. Anyone who's interested in Camille, clearly you are involved in this discussion. Uh, we should start an email chain with advocates
for children, uh, on how PEP can collaborate and getting that messaging to our legislators in Albany about things that we need legislated and passed this session to, to go to fill that gap. Anything else by anyone? Oh, Adriana, Thank you. And thank you, Camille, for raising that. Um, on the other side of that, I think it's important that we have a plan, or at least, um, an idea of what we will find to be an acceptable response if and when we do not receive a favorable response from Albany.
Uh, I think it's great to say, you know, we need to get these things done this legislative session, because we do, our, our children should not be losing a single dollar that a alone 314 million of them. Um, but you know that those statements hold no water, right? We are consistently on our heels when it comes to funding, um, which is very frustrating because to Camille's point, this is the richest city in the world. Um, and we pay into the state more than any other county does or any of the other counties do, rather. Um, so what is the, what, what is the plan for if
and when they say no and or ignore us and or give us the runaround? Do we then start advocating in the communities to begin to make change locally and force change at the state level? Thank you. I, I think that's a great, uh, comment. Adrian. I think one, one of the things we have to do once we have a legislative agenda, we need to take it right to the community and build support around that agenda so that when we go to Albany, we go not just as you know, individuals, where we go is, uh, a group that clearly represents the community. So I think once we have set with your help,
and everybody, you know, that's on this call set a group of of legislative priorities, we then have to take that out into the community and build support for it. And, uh, which I think hopefully, I, I don't think of being naive would make it more difficult if it really shows that we have, uh, built a consensus around, um, a, a important or, uh, specific legislative agenda. Um, we're gonna make it more difficult for folks to, uh, to ignore these priorities. I think that o once we've done this, then we have to, we,
those of us who are in the on CECs, those of us who are in the community, we have to then go back to our communities and our constituencies and sell this agenda and get community consensus and support around it, and then go to Albany. Uh, thanks, Adriana and I, and actually a little bit of a follow up on that. Did that, that's sort of a strategy discussion that we should be having even right now, to, to come up with a plan for the immediate future on how we communicate both to our communities. Uh, one point that came up during some of these budget discussions, including around sort of jargon, budget, jargon being somewhat, you know, opaque
and incomprehensible to regular everyday people, is that we need better understandable messaging, uh, so that parents can, uh, rally around the issues that affect, uh, all of our kids. Uh, and, uh, that's, that's something that, uh, I think advocates for Children is working on. And, uh, and other, other people in, in, in the space agreed that, that, that, that has possibly been lacking. Uh, and, and there was a sense of urgency to do that, uh, organizing work, um, in, in different communities.
And actually there would probably be some city council education committee, um, town halls, including a one that was held a couple of days ago in Brooklyn, in, in other boroughs, including Queens and Bronx that I know is coming up on the calendar. Let's work with them to, to sort of collaboratively express our concerns and, and also offer our support in a way that, uh, that shows that, uh, we're representing all of the families. Um, I see a co couple of new faces. Uh, I can actually see who's logged in now. If you would like to quickly chime in,
just introduce yourselves. I see Quan McLean, Jay Brown, and Rosa Diaz. Um, so other people in the room will know who you are. And, and so that we can also add you to our, I guess, smaller mailing list that's organizing this work. Thank you. Hi, good morning. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, we can hear you. Awesome. Thank you. Hi, good morning. My name is Rosa Diaz. I am the president of Mahata here. Good morning. Name is Quan McLean. I'm the president of CC 16 in Bed Stop Brooklyn.
I'm also the president of the Education Council Consortium. I'm glad to be in, uh, this meeting today to learn and see how we can support in the initiatives of the pep. Uh, good morning, Jay Brown, president of CEC 21 in Southern Brooklyn. Uh, thank you all for doing this. And, you know, taking these steps towards a legislative agenda. I love the idea about, uh, fostering community support. So when you go up to Albany, you're going up there with, uh, a team of folks from communities from across the, the city. I'd love my community to be part of that. Um, and also to the point about the, the RCI,
the regional cost index. Um, I know we've been talking about that. I've been talking about that at my meetings. Um, I don't been updated in, um, a few, almost we're coming up on decades now, we're talking about since that was updated. And we know the way costs have increased and they've increased everywhere. But I think we know that just from the way, um, you know, working middle class, economically disadvantaged families are the ones actually that are leaving the city in, in greater numbers. And no matter what anybody says, not millionaires, um,
we understand that the cost to live here in New York City is going up exponentially and at a much higher rate than places in other parts of the state. So, um, we definitely need that updated. Um, that would be definitely something we'd like to push for, so it can, uh, the Foundation aid formula can better represent what needs to be coming back towards New York City. Thank you. Thank you folks. And Laura, I don't think you've spoken yet. Hi, everyone. So sorry I was, um, in another meeting. Um, but so glad to be here. Thanks, um, to the committee for organizing this.
Um, I am the comptroller's representative on the panel for Educational policy, but my day job is actually policy. I am the senior policy analyst and strategic organizer for education in the Comptroller's office. Um, so policy is what I do, um, and my work, um, generally covers everything from c childcare and early childhood education, um, public schools, of course, and higher education with a focus on cuny. So I'm very happy to be here, um, and to be involved in whatever way, um,
our office can support the work of this committee. Thank you everyone, and, uh, great to see you. Uh, people who joined us in, Laura, don't worry, we started 20 minutes late, so you are not that, you're not that late. Um, so, uh, uh, if there's no one else that has current comments on foundation, A that is probably the biggest immediate thing that we, we will continue to work on. I, I, I think we'll use email to the people that are in this meeting as a way to continue this work. Uh, and please actually use the panel@schoolsatnyc.gov to send input that, that's, that's the one way that people
who are not in this room right now can add themselves to this mailing list. And we'll figure out a way to set up this, uh, uh, two way communication amongst the people that are trying to do this work. Um, so the next thing that I have on my list, uh, to discuss is, uh, potential changes to the open meeting law requirements so that families are better able to engage. Uh, and, uh, as, uh, many people have, uh, expressed the changes that went that in place during the pandemic were beneficial for engagement. Um, and,
and also for reaching Quorum to actually conduct a business that parents need to, for their, uh, for their, uh, families and students. Uh, and with those temporary, uh, regulations expiring things have gone back to how they were before, and we notice deficiencies. So what, I mean, I'd love to hear, I have a couple of really, uh, basic things that we can do to help, uh, business being conducted, but if anyone wants to say anything, I see Camille's hand, so please, Thank you so much, Navid. Um, um, so I, I think for the sake
of transparency and public engagement, the PEP can actually make their own changes to our bylaws by allowing for hybrid public comments. Um, I think that what we have been seeing all along post pandemic is that the attendance at in-person meetings has declined significantly, and that we definitely had more public input when we were fully remote. And in order to engage more people
and ensure that voices are heard, I think it makes sense for the PEP to take this step and amend our bylaws to include virtual public comments. Thank you. Thanks, Camil. Jill, Thanks, Naveed. Um, obviously, you know, you guys are, have the support a, as this meeting does of learning time when it comes to having, uh, your meetings be both, uh, simulcast and recorded. But I just wanna speak on behalf of CECs, and I don't know if others have any, uh, better experiences,
but we have struggled to try to maintain the hybrid format or having a Zoom option so we could increase participation for parents. Yet we have no technical support in doing so. So our meetings are a real mess where we're speaking to an essentially empty room, um, on devices near each other with feedback and muting and unmuting, and no one's trained anybody on how to use the owl. And it's just a real disservice, I think it turns people off who show up to attend because it's such a, this experience watching you guys is
so much smoother than what we do. And I don't know, uh, if learning times is a contract that the PEP approves or whatnot, but if there's any way to advocate for more technical support for CECs who have to meet in person under open meeting law to provide that hybrid option, if anything you can do to help advocate for that, uh, I think is a great service to parents. Can I just say that that's an important, and, and by the way, I'm glad that there's so many CEC um, folks here. Um, that's something we'll follow up on. If we can get more information, if you can, um,
either email us or contact us, and we'll follow up on that right away. Because if it's really a technical problem, uh, maybe that's something that we should be able to take care of right away. So, um, you know, let's, let's follow up on that and let's see how we can, and if there are other ccs that are experiencing similar problems, that's an issue that we should be able to address, um, right away. There shouldn't be at a technical bar to you being able to do the work that you're doing in your community. So please, uh, get back to us on that. Or if there are other CCCs experiencing the same kind of difficulty, please let us know
Present. Thank you. Thank you, chair Faulkner. Yes, thank you so much. I, I am also a member of the Community Education Council in district, uh, floor East Harlem. And, uh, for the past, I think year, uh, it's been very challenging during the hybrid, um, one because, you know, members, um, still do not know that we're supposed to be in person. And some of them log in, uh, virtually. While we don't have quorum in person as mandated by state law, we're supposed to have seven, uh,
members in person in order for, uh, the other member to be counted, uh, over Zoom. And this is another thing where, where training comes from that we're not getting the proper training, uh, on a, on, um, what, what on a, what do you call it, um, on a recent basis, you know? Uh, and another thing like, uh, Joe said, uh, the, the technology, the technology problem, it's, it's a real issue, uh, because the translation is not able to connect,
uh, with teams. And then we have an AA that supports us as best as they can, but they're not pro, they're not tech savvy. So it is a lot, it is frustrating for us, the members that are there. And we have to wait 15 minutes or more for the tech to be resolved for us to even do work. And then when members do not come in person, then we're not able to do a lot of voting or voting or resolutions or anything like that, just informational updates that are provided by our superintendent.
But we definitely need support. Thank you. Um, I would like to say something about, uh, communication. This is very important, um, as from the, uh, perspective of, uh, chair of com communication committee for this week three, CCC and, uh, former works for CCC 14 and CCLL. This is very important if the superintendent office support to sharing this information with the school and with the parents coordinators who can share this with the parents, because without this support, the CC have problem with, uh, access to data
because, uh, we, as a former CCC member, we don't have access to parents, um, emails or to parents, um, even to, to, to, uh, PTA, um, members, uh, emails. So would be great if, uh, somebody in each superintendent office will be responsible for sharing these communications, sharing communication and information about the meeting of CCCs and citywide cancers with the parents coordinator. And that will be shared on time with the parents to can, um,
join to the meetings and express, of course, um, concerns. And, uh, this should be, uh, uh, protocol on this, um, provided. Thank you, Nicole. Oh, so much to say on this topic, but I'll keep it really brief. Um, I'll start with the pep. I think that, to Camille's point regarding the PEP bylaws, it's really simple. Uh, we saw the number of folks that showed up, um, to voice concerns, to bring up things that were
concerning them in their district, um, when there was a virtual option, I think that that could be brought back with some kind of, um, you know, guidance around, you know, how many people can, uh, be speak from online. Because I, I do know that one of the concerns probably is being there all night. Um, we've seen it happen where when it was virtual, you know, you'll be on for a long time, but I remember back in the days when we had in-person PEP meetings, and this is under the Bloomberg years, where we had PEP meetings to four o'clock in the morning,
depending on what was the topic that was being discussed. Um, so I think that would be one step forward, um, in really showing that you are going to be the people's pep, um, opening the back up to the people. I've been to several pep meetings and have seen the number of folks that show up in, in person. Um, and it is way less than what it was pre pandemic. Um, I think, and one way to help with that, um, if you really want to engage the community is to give the community that, um, are at home with their children an opportunity to, um, voice their concerns via, uh, learning times.
That's one thing. I think to Jill's point around the technology in schools, and when we are trying to have our CCS meetings, we struggled in District 16 with it. Um, we had a very important meeting last month where the chancellor had to come, and people that were online really didn't hear what she said. Um, and we pride ourselves in doing the best we can do. So any help that you all can do for ccs, uh, with that technology piece, um, will be helpful. We, uh, currently when we have our meetings, we have all
of our members in person. We don't have that problem with people showing up in person. Um, we're all on our individual devices with headsets. And then if anyone come in public now, we have to find a headset or something for them so that they can participate. So we have encouraged our community to stay home and come online just because it's easier for them to participate that way. Um, we do still have folks that do come in person, and we accommodate them to the best of our ability. But on last month, when we had our meeting, we knew
that we were gonna have a high number of folks show up to our meeting because of the nature of the conversation. And it was a hot mess. Like we had smart, we, you know, we didn't have our headsets, so we tried to do it just through one Zoom camera and have other screens for people. It, it just was, it was a disaster. Um, so any help that the PEP can do towards that will be helpful. Um, and, um, you know, so that we could continue to uphold the law and, and, and be in compliance. And I think the third thing that I'll say, and,
and is really around the Open Meters law and around the transparency around SLTs. Um, there are a lot of SLTs that are not following the requirements of open meetings law. Some they're gonna say they didn't know, and some the same issue. They don't know how to do the hybrid, so they don't even have a hybrid option. Um, and some do have a hybrid option, and it's not in their bylaws, and they're doing it totally wrong. Um, I do know that the chancellor, uh, at the SLT conference a couple of weeks ago said
that she will be visiting SLTs to that may need support. Uh, but this is really definitely something that, uh, and my organization has worked on with the legislators trying to get s SLTs and CCCs to be exempt from, uh, this portion of the open meetings law where our meetings could be fully virtual. We've also, you know, tried to negotiate, because we do know that there are open, um, there are government groups that want to be able to engage in person, uh, with, uh, like City Council
and other folks that have to apply by the open meetings law. And we know that that has been a challenge, uh, when folks are fully virtual. But we have also gave suggestions, like having a certain amount of the meetings, you know, where they have to be in person and in a certain amount of meetings where they're virtual. Um, so we are really looking to the PEP to help, uh, you try to negotiate this, especially we have your 1600 schools, uh, that are supposed to have these SLT meetings. And I'm telling you, uh, more than half of them are not having them properly, uh,
because they don't know how to really manage to have these public meetings. Parents are not coming, parents are not engaged as they should be. And this should be an easy thing for us to do. So thank you again for this opportunity. Can, can I ask a question? Uh, president McLean? Absolutely. Chair Folkner. Yeah. You know, you, you've had some great suggestions and so many other CEC folks have come up with some great suggestions, and I'm just realizing that, I'm enjoying hearing from the, we don't often hear from the CEC folks in a formal way. Would it be helpful if we set up a process where we met, I don't want to throw another meeting on folks I know
who are very busy, but maybe once a month we had a round table with and just had an open thing where CC Presidents could, uh, get together with the panel. Yes. And just talk to us. Would that be something that would be helpful for you? And do you think for the other cc uh, folks? I don't wanna speak for everybody, but I think I can speak briefly for the Brooklyn ccs because we are close knitted. I think that would be helpful. One of the things that we, as the Education Council Consortium started about in 2015 was the monthly meetings with the chancellor. And I will say that every chancellor from Kania up down to,
um, chancellor Ramos, um, has kept those meetings with, with CC presidents. The CECC is not conducting 'EM as we previous did, but I, I'm grateful that they could team to meet with CC Presidents for us to voice those concerns to them. Um, but I think we would love to have the opportunity to meet with members of the PEP to have these conversations. Um, because there are definitely things that we can work on together. There's resolutions that we pass and the districts that we want the PEP to take a stance on as well. So I think that, you know, I don't wanna speak
for everybody, but I think that would be helpful, even if it's not every month, but maybe bimonthly. Uh, but I think every month would be a great opportunity for us to engage directly with the pep. We're gonna follow up on that. And I think also, as you talk about selling a legislative agenda, the the guy, you guys at the local, you're gonna be very helpful in helping us to do that. So whether we make an extension of the Government Affairs committee, the chair's looking at me, 'cause I'm gonna throw some more assignments to him, but maybe we could have it an extension of this committee, um, because there are a lot of conversations that we should be having. I mean, the whole question of, um, you know,
how we structure our panel meetings we're looking at and, and where, how we do this going forward. Um, you know, that, that those are, those are fair conversations, um, that we probably should have. Um, so, uh, we'll, we're gonna get back to you on that and we're gonna reach out and see if we can begin, um, as quickly as possible to implement some of those things. Thanks. So, so thank you everyone for your comments, and if there are any other opinions on that, I'd be love to hear it. Okay. Yes. Thanks, Navi. Um, I, I just want to echo and uplift from my fellow parent leaders, um, qua
Rosa and Jill at every level, you know, we, we actually see how we're constricted by the open meetings law as currently constituted, and, you know, and, and how it impedes us from having a fully engaged community involved in the process. So, um, at the top level, yes, if we could, if it could be, uh, amended in such a way that, um, virtual participation for public comments could again be possible, that would be amazing. We, on our CEC, we very often conflict
with PEP meetings, and we try to figure out a way sometimes to have one of our members, um, participate in the PEP meeting. But again, if they can, if we want, want to speak, and they can only be there in person, um, that's a huge impediment. Um, we also, we haven't been at this time, but we have gone through bouts where we're struggling with the in-person quorum requirement. So we can't spare someone to go to the PEP meeting and not be at our meeting. And also North should we really need to like, be sure a member that wants to participate in our meeting.
So just having that virtual option could really open things up, because a lot of times it's a timing issue. By the time we're finished with our CEC meeting, the PEP meeting may, may just really be getting going. So if we could, if we had that opportunity to comment virtually, uh, we could still fully participate in it from our CEC. Um, the CEC, we've experienced the same issues. W we've done a good job at adapting to the owl, uh, providing a good experience for our virtual attendees. But I think all of us here who, who, who, uh, contend with
that, we'll say they've had the moment where all of a sudden in the Zoom chat, the messages start coming in, we can't hear you. Um, you know, there's an echo, whatever it may be. And again, we're not professional audio visual people. So if, if there was any help that could be provided to parent leaders CECs, uh, on the technical side for our meetings, that would be amazing. And the SLP issue, um, without a, well, I know we, they can do hybrid as well, but a lot of CECs because it's at the school-based community, um,
very vocalized, they don't oftentimes have the hybrid meeting option. Um, a lot of times they're kind of restricted, their technology limitations are even more so than the CECI. I generally don't know any schools in my district SLCs that have an owl. Um, so they're really restricted in what they can do. There's a transparency problem because most s SLTs, I could say as an SLT member myself, and knowing about a lot of the SLTs in my, uh, school district community, there, there is no hybrid meetings. And then at the in-person meeting,
it's only the SLT members. And then furthermore, to make the commitment to be at that meeting in-person, um, whatever the time is that's decided once a month, there's actually a real struggle amongst a lot of schools to just get the minimum number of parents that are required for the SLT. Whereas if it was, um, if there was a little, uh, if they didn't have the in-person, uh, quorum requirement, that would not be an issue. I could tell you where there would be plenty of parents, uh, additionally signing up, you know, interested in being part of the SLC. So I just wanted to echo that kind of echoes what Rosa,
Jill, and Quan said, and we appreciate your efforts towards any of these, um, changes. Thanks, Jay. Um, so I, I, I guess this is a good one because I'm hearing a lot, a lot of things that we can actually just do without involving legislature, uh, by, uh, working at just local level and making quick changes that are necessary. Um, specifically for the legislative changes, uh, the, the one thing that that had come up a lot was sort of the in-person quorum requirements that caused business not to get conducted legally, uh,
because of, uh, parents not being able to show up in a physical location, uh, all at the same time. So that, that was the one thing that I feel like people have still been talking to me about. Whether we can have, uh, the ability to, to have quorum without everyone being in person, would, that would require a change to the open meetings law. Um, I think it would be beneficial if we couple that with the hybrid support. Uh, and, and then when we ask for things to, to be mandatory in law, the cost comes up. So we have to think about what, what, what's the best way
to advocate for this without saying that, you know, that it's gonna cost a hundred million dollars, but it might have some cost associated with it. Uh, that's often, that's something that legislator legislators ask about, like, what will this cost? And then can we even do that? Um, before I move on to the next item, I see a few new people, uh, Desi and, and Randy, if you could, uh, unmute and just say hi, introduce yourselves so we all, uh, know each other. Thank you. Hi, everyone, my name is Dust Rodriguez, CC 32 President. Nice to be here today. Hi, I am Randy Levine, policy Director
of Advocates for Children of New York. Good to see. Thanks, Randy. I was, uh, giving you a shout out earlier, so I'm so happy that you popped up on the call. Um, the next item, uh, on, on sort of the informal agenda for this that I had was things that we're working on actively, uh, with partners, including Advocates for Children, is the competitive rebidding for New York City public school school bus contracts. It's a decades long, uh, struggle to get this correct. Uh, and, and I feel like we, we were in this position around this time last year, uh, and ran into the legislative calendar,
not having enough time on it. And unfortunately, uh, because of the delayed budget, we're, we're in a similar position, but I think we can, we're much better organized. I've, I've been on many, many calls related to school busing, uh, and if, um, um, a couple of the people from that calls were aren't able to be here, I, I'll, I'll connect them to this, uh, group, uh, and, and have them contribute, uh, on our whatever, uh, email thread that we start on this topic. But, uh, very, very briefly, uh, the DOE is working with us on this. Uh, transportation advocates are working with us on this,
including pep members, CEC members, parents who have been struggling with transportation, uh, quality for decades. Um, and we need, um, employee protections to be legal, uh, so that the DOE can put up, uh, bids for other transportation providers, uh, without the threat of a labor strike on, on the, on the buses. So it's, it's a really, in my opinion, just very silly, right? Like, why, why is this such a hard thing to accomplish? Uh, and, and there's, there's, I think a call next week,
an education to the community so that they can advocate to their electeds. And, and why I bring that up is I think we can copy that model that we're building out the, the community engagement and community education, uh, uh, capacity for school bus contracts so that people who normally don't speak to their elected officials know how to and know what to say is to, to make them move on, on a thing that that should have been a long done a long time ago. And if, if, if it's effective, and I think it will be, uh, we can copy
and paste that model for all the other things that, that communities need and, and it'll result in a good, um, good way to move forward on other issues. Um, if anyone has anything they wanna say on school bus contracts, uh, happy to hear. Thanks. All right. Seeing nothing on that, uh, I will add that to our, um, email communications, uh, including the slides that we have from, from our, uh, amazing allies on that discussion. Um, the fourth item, oh, Camille, I'm so sorry, I couldn't find the below raise hand. Um, I just wanna elevate that our fellow council member,
Rema is working on a resolution on busing, so, um, hoping to see that in hard copy sooner than later. Yeah. And, and then, uh, I, I, I, I was gonna mention REMA has been the driving force in advocating for this for I think more than 10 years now. So, uh, uh, looking forward to seeing that. Thank you, Camille. I would on that maybe we should start working on, um, uh, diversity, uh, searches of, uh, transportation for schools, not only yellow buses, maybe alternative options to,
to have backup if something happened with yellow buses. And, um, well, let's think about this in the future. Thank you, Jay. Um, yeah, and I would, I would just say, obviously it's been mentioned in this meeting meeting earlier that this is an election year. Um, comptroller is a non-voting member of the pep. Um, and I know we will have a new comptroller in a few months. Um, I was actually at a function the other night and a candidate for comptroller was there, and I was talking to them specifically about their role on the pep if they were to be elected and with another, uh, person.
And we were specifically then talking about school bus contracts and the need to possibly from the comp controller's office, uh, perform an audit of school bus contracts. So I'd love to see, um, once whoever the new controller is, uh, is elected and in office, and then has a feet within the PEP for, you know, be the collaboration, uh, between the comptroller's office and the pep specifically to education related issues and potential audits, first and foremost, uh, school bus contracts. Yeah. You know, that's a great suggestion.
I, you know, I don't think we've had that, so I think that would be, you know, hopefully that would be something that we can follow up on. Um, because, you know, that's the one thing I do get a lot of complaints, you know, I've heard from parents, my neighbors, uh, who have issues around bus service. So I think having that kind of an audit or, um, monitoring of the bus services and account creates an accountability. I think that would be very important. Agreed. Thank you, Rosa. Yes. Thank you. Uh, talking about transportation, uh, a couple of, um, angry parents have been raising concern with regards to the metric cards, those omni metric cards
not working, and their children having to pay outta pocket for, um, that transportation on that specific day. What, what can the PEPs do, um, to support, uh, especially high school students? Uh, we've been having a lot of kids paying out of pocket, so what can, what can you guys do? Yeah, Rosa, that's something that actually, I think I, I spoke to Chalkbeat on that we had a lot of issues with cards getting disabled for a variety of reasons. I think with that collaboration with City Council and the People Transport Office
and the MDA that's been stopped, uh, we don't need, uh, children or parents getting, uh, stopped because their legitimate transportation mechanism has been disabled for whatever reason. And, and they, they want to get to school. Uh, that, that's not something we need happening under this federal administration. Uh, other than that, um, uh, the durability of the cards, there was a concern that was raised, and we've let the, uh, MTA know that this is not really working out with this flimsy cards expect it to last a full 365 days. It's, it's not reasonable for kids to,
to, to be able to do that. So I think hopefully they'll, they'll have some solution for that the next time we get more cards. Um, other than that, I think, uh, yeah, go ahead. Na, I'm sorry to, um, intervene. But another thing is that when high school students, because we've been telling children to do this, we've been telling parents that this is something that they can do is go tell, uh, the customer service person to let them in because the MasterCard is not working. And their, uh, response has been, I don't care. You know, just, you gotta pay like everybody else. Like, there's such rudeness, you know, you know,
these are high school students, they have their IDs, theirs are not working. Why can't MTA put out a letter in every single train station if they, if it's a high school student, just to let them through? What, what is so difficult about that, you know, that maybe can, it can be a resolution that the PEP can do? Absolutely. Let's look into that. And I agree with you. This is a training that can go across government agencies to let them know that we don't need our kids getting in trouble. We want them to go to school. Uh, Lara, Hi. Um, I put this in the chat, um,
but I just wanted to, um, make sure everyone knew that, um, the comptroller has been doing an audit of school bus provision at DOE, um, for more than a year, actually. Um, that audit is now set to be released this summer. Um, unfortunately the data, um, requests that go into that audit have been very slow coming. Um, and it has, um, slowed down, uh, the release of the audit. It was originally gonna be released this spring, but we're still waiting on, um, on data from DOE,
um, to finish that up. But this is a longstanding issue, um, that's been of concern in our office. Um, again, that audit should come out this summer, and we have been working with, uh, Rema and with P****d and other parent advocates to ensure that there is parent voice, um, involved in that audit, and that we, um, center it around, um, in particular students with disabilities and their experiences, uh, with school bus transportation. Well, that's great. Um, so I, you know, um, I was just responding to the, the comment that, you know,
they, apparently folks hadn't seen it. So I guess what we'll say is it's forthcoming and, uh, you know, uh, we'll make sure that that gets widely circulated because, you know, the issue of, of bus service has been going on for the last three and a half years, um, and beyond. And so it's really important that we, um, even at this late point, um, do get some, uh, some, some, some documentation and feedback on the, uh, level of bus service in the city. Yeah, thanks everyone. And specifically on this, and Rema has been hammering this with, uh, in all of our calls, is that we don't, everyone wants this
to be better, including the DOE, and we're stuck because of a legislative problem. Uh, and then, and changing the law will help us get better bus providers in the system. Uh, uh, it should be a slam dunk if we can get this done through Albany. Um, the one thing that Rema specifically has been requesting everyone, is that we don't extend these busing contracts for five years, right? We have to do something, uh, whether it's an emergency contract extensions, or at most one, maybe two. So that's something that we, we keep in mind because if we do it for five years, we lose all of our, uh,
leverage and then we end up, uh, disserving, uh, all of our communities, including our, our disabled students who can't get to school. The one good news on this is, I saw an article I think yesterday, uh, because, because of the reduced congestion downtown, students are getting to school sooner, uh, uh, and saving I think 30 minutes a month or something. And, and then, and the morning periods are the most important ones. So at least something, something good has happened with, uh, with those changes. Um, I see a couple of new, I think one new attendee. Laney, can you introduce yourself? Let's see. Oh, I'm having trouble. We heard you, You did hear me. Okay. I'm having trouble with my iPad. Yeah.
Um, hi, I'm Laney Hamson, class Size Matters Parent Coalition for Student Privacy. I was just alerted to the fact that this meeting was happening, um, but I wanted to make a couple points. Uh, one, under the previous mayor, there was an agreement that contracts would be posted at least 30 days ahead of time, um, which no long this administration no longer adheres to. Um, and, um, there was an arrangement so that PEP members could actually see the contracts, which is important in order to be able to comprehensively vet them. So those are two things that I think could be changed in the law or in
or in practice by the DOE that are important. Um, I also wanted to point out that, um, their budget hearings that are happening on Tuesday, we're still very concerned about the capital plan. I know that many people did email their comments in to the pep about this, and yet there was never any public assessment of the comments that was posted on the website even now, um, because they're only, uh, agreeing to build half of the seats that they themselves say, are necessary to reduce class sizes to the legally mandated levels. And so the whole process of providing public comment
to pep members is dysfunctional in my view. We also had an email sent to many PEP members, over a hundred, which pep members did not say, using their, their emails addresses on the website, as well as copied to the general, um, um, email used for that. So I'm concerned that, that, that it's difficult to get the public comment to PEP members and get it in the assessment. Um, and then finally, as probably a lot of you know, that there has been a data privacy working group that's been, uh, discussing the revised, the proposed re
revisions to the chancellor's regulations on privacy. There have been a few significant improvements in the regs, but we are still extremely concerned and opposed to the regs in their current form because they essentially allow a large number of highly sensitive student data to be shared with anyone that schools or, uh, the DOE thinks would benefit kids. These are not school vendors. These are not, uh, organizations that are providing any services to DOE, but it includes, uh, kids', emails, phone numbers,
addresses their images, and many, many other very sensitive, um, information, uh, without we believe proper, um, oversight and, and, um, and really, um, um, making sure that, that that data is not misused and is not re disclosed. So we have a sign-on letter that was signed onto by I think most of the parent members of the data privacy working group, as well as several different large organizations. Uh, we're getting city council members to sign on as well now. And some of them have said they want to sign on,
and we, uh, it, it is on the agenda for the May 28th meeting. But I just wanted to express that we're very concerned about that. And one of the proposals that has been made, I know, um, by Greg, which is a good one in the abstract, is that there should be an enforcement mechanism so that penalties can be exerted when these, uh, these third parties do not use the the data appropriately. However, two points on that. Number one, it's almost, it's very difficult to make sure that once, once the data is, is out, it's not disclose or misused.
DOE already has the power to exert, uh, significant penalties on anyone who misuses student data and they have not done so. And we have continuing concerns over that lack of enforcement, including in the PowerSchool case, where thousands of kids' data was misused. Um, they still have not, they did, uh, the parents were not, uh, um, notified in the legally required amount of time that the kids, their kids' data was released and that they should sign up for free identity theft insurance. And even now, PowerSchool, um, uh,
produces 16 incredibly privacy invasive programs to our public schools, um, and, and, and ev and there is no advisory or guidance out to DOE that schools should not be using these products, even though there are now more than 23 lawsuits against PowerSchool for not abiding by the law and not ab about abiding by their contracts in terms of security protections. So we, this, this shows a larger, I think, reveals a larger problem in terms of oversight and enforcement by the DOE.
And I don't believe that simply putting that in the regs, uh, would mitigate all the potential harms and risks of these, uh, um, um, regulations. So I just wanted to, to make a short statement about that. And, and I will be forwarding the letter, um, as well as the signers so far, um, to the PEP members so that they can take a look. Um, and, um, that's all that I have to say. Thank you. Thanks, Lenny. That's a very comprehensive introduction, but, but, uh, timely and we'll add more a a couple of those things to our ongoing agenda,
possibly not everything in this meeting. Um, uh, Jay, uh, WAN had something to say, uh, and then we'll move on to the class size, uh, discussion. Thank you. Oh, I just wanted to, uh, add to Naveed, it doesn't have to be to this agenda, but, uh, school construction authority, I know it came up, is a major thing that we will need to talk about. I would love for Chair Faulkner, um, and some members of the PEP to come and walk some schools in district 16. It, it's, it's, it's really bad. It's really bad. And I couldn't make it to the, um, meeting
where you all voted on that, the, the capital plan, because I was in Albany advocating. Um, but, um, I think Jill brought this up when we met with, uh, chancellor on Monday. The, what we are seeing in our schools, it is, it, it, it really, it really shows how, you know, it makes families think the system doesn't care about them because of the nature of this, our schools. I'll leave it there 'cause, but I just wanted to add, put that on your radar. Um, but we'll love an opportunity to walk the buildings with you all. Yeah, thanks, Quan. That is something that I've been actively discussing with Jill because district three is working on a project.
Go ahead, Jill. Let me just say also, Quan, let me know when, and, uh, when, when you want me to come out, let's set up a date. And, uh, happy to come out and take a walk and take a, uh, with, with you over there. Quan, I just wanna thank you for lifting that and just take a moment to, uh, what NVE just mentioned is that CE C3, along with I think seven and 25 were approached by, uh, by the division of school leadership and face back in January, February. And we were asked to come up with a project.
This is to show off how superintendent's offices and CECs can collaborate together for the good of our communities. So we were tasked with like a very short timeframe to come up with some project that we could do together. Uh, only about a week before the SCA had come to our CEC meeting to give their annual presentation, which was opaque and dents and raise more questions than answered answers. And when our members would ask questions about projects in our district, the answer was, I can't answer that.
I don't know. Uh, that might be DSF, not us. When they put up the slides that they bring for district three, it included a slide for District 22. Um, and it was such a dissatisfying. I mean, we were all almost laughing after like, what a joke that was. We learned nothing. And you know what? We're volunteer parents. We don't understand the intricacies of what the SCA does and what the DSF does. And just referring us to B CS reports for looking to know what needs fixing is not helpful. So when we sat down to brainstorm
what a project idea might be, this bubbled to the top. So for the last two or three months, our members have been, well, some of them have been going into schools with the BC reports, walking the schools, taking photos of things that need repair. And we're going to be, uh, showing the results of this work at our CEC meeting next Tuesday, May 20th, which folks can join online. Um, there are, you know, lots of ugly photos that have been taken. And I, I think, you know, SCA has declined repeated requests
to come back and be at this meeting. Um, they only can come once a year, and they feel that they had already done their job coming in January, I wrote back and said, that's not acceptable. You didn't do parents dis service. And I CC'd all the bosses. And they wrote back and said, we are going to redo our communications to CECs, and we're waiting for the elections to be over, and we are going to, we agree it's a problem and we wanna do better. DSF is coming to our meeting. Um, you know, I'm afraid they're gonna get pretty beat up. My sense is they do the best they can
and they often do things, uh, more efficiently than the SCA does. And they are limited by, uh, custodial staff. Uh, not all positions are filled. And by lack of tradespeople and the DOE, I've heard it take six months to get a door if you need one. Um, the custodians I've met in schools seem like they're working really hard and holding things together with the duct tape and nails and doing the best they can. But our schools are crumbling. And as Quan said, it makes families think the system doesn't care about them. And if you're touring schools considering them
for kindergarten, and you're walking through a place with, you know, bathrooms that don't work and sinks that don't turn on and, and tiles coming up, versus, you know, going to a sh shiny charter school that looks good. Like if schools are to be compe like the environment you're in matters. Um, and the kids matter. So this is what I am been devoting myself to for the last few months. And, uh, maybe this can spread throughout CECs. I'm not sure if this is what the division of school leadership had in mind for a project, but this is where we landed. So thank you. Sorry to take up so much time.
No, no. I'm glad you did take the time because we've been hearing this. And so as you were talking, we've been, I've been sort of consulting with our, our, the team here at DOE so that we follow up on this and see if we can, um, uh, make, improve the way that this communication takes place. So, uh, standby. Let's also make sure that you get us your information so that we can follow up. But you're absolutely right. I'm glad that, you know, I think this has been an important forum 'cause we're hearing a lot of information that you, you know, we need to, to be aware of. And these are things that we don't need to go to Albany.
You know, we can walk down the hall in some cases and really do something to address some of these concerns. And the team here, um, at DOE has been taking notes. We're gonna follow up. So if there are other issues like that, you know, please, um, you know, let us know and please use the panel, you know, uh, communication our emails and let us know these things. You know, we get a lot of emails. I try to follow up on them, but, uh, please, you know, let us know when these things are happening so that we can, you know, uh, follow up with our team here, um, at the panel to make sure that we address some of these concerns.
Uh, Quan and, and Jill, thank you so much for your leadership and work on this. And I think this is one place where we can, again, locally find out how things are working, how things are, may not be working, and, and sort of figure out, like, do we need more budget in a specific place, DSF more staffing and accelerate that process so that problems are addressed and solved as opposed to just being pushed down the road and SCA and DSF pointing their fingers at each other, potentially. Right. We don't, that's not productive. So, thanks. Um, the next Well wait, before we move on, uh, Rema is here.
Would you like to introduce yourself? And also Kevin Rima, can you hear us? Yep, I'm here. I'm sorry I'm late. I'm in a all day conference. Can you say it again? We're just doing brief introduction so everybody in the room knows each other. You can watch the recording for everyone else, but people are arriving, uh, when they can. So thank you for coming. So my name is, and, um, I'm one of the panel members. I'm the representative for the Bronx Borough President. Kevin. Hi, my name's Kevin Prick. Uh, I'm from City Council Oversight. I'm just listening in. Thanks. Thank you. Uh, the next I, uh, item that I had on the agenda was the funding
and support for meeting the class size law requirements, which actually sort of dovetails into the SCA discussion because when we talk about the need for space and the need for potentially new buildings, uh, they, they come up again. Um, so I, I hope that we can address that. Um, the, the, the one good progress I guess we've seen is that the city is actually actively working with all the, uh, concerned parties and agencies to, to try to, uh, make sure that we are on, on track for the full implementation of the law. Um, I saw on the news
and then various press conferences, conferences that we're funding, uh, 3,700 new teachers and addressing the easy to address issues where there may be space, but there's not enough funding for staff by hiring staff. I actually got an email from, uh, the middle school that is hiring, uh, 11 new teachers, given that they had space. So it's good to see that that's happening, but we will quickly run into issues with schools that are very high demand and don't have any physical space. So no matter how many teachers they have, they don't have the classrooms. So we need to have started this discussion a long time ago in a,
in a way that comes towards solutions for 2028. Uh, and that's, that's an ongoing, uh, legislative administrative priority, uh, for the pep and for every, every school member that, that is concerned with having good class sizes. So the kids are learning. Uh, anyone have any comments on that? I know Lanny had already, uh, a added input, uh, given that she is the class size matters, uh, uh, extraordinaire, Jay? Yeah, I, I guess something I just wanted to rave, um, that is related. Uh, I, I, I was just on a hear hearing two nights ago, uh,
for a enrollment increase request for a public charter school and a co-located school in my district. Um, we actually wrote a resolution on our CEC two years ago when the same charter school, uh, requested an increase in enrollment. They have been requesting increases in enrollment every year or two, uh, going back to 2020. Um, we know that enrollment headcount data is not an exact, it's not an exact number. It's not static, so it's hard to pin it down. It fluctuates.
Um, but we know it doesn't change by 30% over the course of a few months or something like that. Um, it's really, it's, it's difficult with New York Public City schools to get an accurate number. A lot of times we're looking at last year's data, that's generally the case. Um, but it's very hard to come up with an accurate number for the charter schools. They seem to make it intentionally difficult to know the true enrollment number or anything that approximates that. Um, this particular school in question that's co-located, um, they have a number, which is right at what their cap is
with, they say their enrollment is currently the New York City. Um, the New York City Charter School Center, which supports charter schools, has it at a much higher number. Um, so e even those two charter schools, the charter school itself and the charter school center disagree on what the number is. Um, and when we wrote our resolution two years ago is it was because we had pretty clear indications that they hadn't increased their enrollment from what they had requested and were granted previously, and now they were requesting a further enrollment.
So what, what we're faced with, and this is anecdotal, I've been in the school, it looks lovely when you go into the space that the charter school has. Um, obviously we're not doing a headcount when we're there. The classrooms look very small in terms of, uh, student size. They have a lot of extra rooms that are not classrooms to help support their students, but the public school side is being choked for space. Our CEC used to have our office in that public school. We had to move to an upper floor inaccessible to the public, uh, in a glorified closet. And then following that, we had
to just ultimately find a new space because the school needed space, which was understandable. Um, but, you know, trying to meet the requirements of the class size law, which is great. We love the class size law, uh, but having faith constantly taken away when we're really questioning whether or not the enrollment is increasing or they're just asking for more quote headcount to have more space for the same amount of students on the charter school side, is just making it more difficult for schools to figure out the logistics
of getting the smaller class sizes to fit in the limited space that seems to be disappearing due to the co-located charter school. Yeah, thanks, Jay. That is something that I, I was discussing last night at a charter school hearing with the authorized where the Success Academy was here, uh, on the call. Um, and, and I wanna take up with, uh, office of Charter Schools, the charter school's office at the DOE that conducts some of these calls because, uh, success was reducing their enrollment in a building, uh, by 900 seats. And at every one of these meetings in the beginning, the script says that we will have another following meeting
to talk about space distribution. This came up in Brooklyn just very recently. So, uh, I, I, I, as a PEP member, and I, and I'm assuming all, uh, district, uh, CCCs would like to know how that works, right? While we're trying to reduce class sizes in those buildings, while we might need cluster space and enrichment space, are the charter school floors just hoarding empty rooms? Because if you're reducing your enrollment by 900 seats, that's dozens of rooms. Uh, when and what is the process? And I would, I would love to know to, to reallocate things like that. This is something that's critical, um, when we have, uh,
uh, over utilization to, to, to be able to sort of, uh, in an agile fashion re uh, consider reallocation. So, uh, Tina, Uh, yeah, and I just wanted to reiterate that I na I was also in a meeting last night where the issue of, uh, success taking over additional space in a building, uh, came up. And so this is a issue that we're, we're looking at is it, uh, applies to class size implementation. It's, uh, initial we had spoken about and advocated around before.
If folks, uh, know of cases like that, of, uh, charter school space, potentially available in a building that's needed for class size space, uh, that would be great to, to share at these meetings, uh, or through whatever other channels you have with, with us, because that's something we're definitely trying to listen to school communities around and get those resolved. And, and just in general, in terms of the rollout of the class size hiring and other aspects of the class size plan, um, again, Sam
and I and, and other folks, uh, are here at these meetings or through other channels if you want to, uh, if you have any questions that are coming up or, or things that just seem, seem off, uh, we had some confusion about whether both new teachers and open market teachers could be hired for class size roles. And the answer was yes, but some folks were thought the answer was no, that it was only new teachers. So, um, things like that, if they're bubbling around, never hesitate to give us a heads up, uh, about it.
Thanks, Tina. Laura? Uh, yeah, um, thanks for those comments, Tina, and for addressing this. Um, some of the panel members may remember that we have asked at least a couple of times in past briefings about the impact that charter school co-locations have on the ability of co-located public schools, um, to meet the class size, um, targets. And, um, when we've asked this question in those briefings, we've been told that
this is really a very minor consideration. Um, and that there are not a lot of situations across the city, um, where charter school space, underutilized charter school space could be, um, used to help schools meet the class size mandate. Um, I think it would be great for the panel. And so we have never gotten really a direct answer to this question. Um, and it would be great, um, to really get the data from DOE in terms of where there are charter schools, um, that may be underutilized and that are taking space away from either co-located
schools or even other schools in the district, perhaps, um, that need space to meet the class size mandate. Um, I've, I've tried in those meetings to get an answer to that question and, um, we haven't, um, had a chance to see that data. So that would be, that would be great. Thanks, Lara. And, uh, I'm, I'm reading, uh, that there was a recent lawsuit against the Hellenic Classical Charter School, uh, that acts actually very helpful for New York City public schools to aggressively work on school, uh, reallocation for our public schools. So I will share that information and,
and a follow up to this, but, uh, Quan, So I'll, you know, I think District 16 is in a different, um, you know, area regarding the class sizes. We don't have issues regarding space in district 16. Um, but I think one of the things that we have said for years, and I think we passed a resolution a couple of months ago that we read into the record, is that we have a ton of space, right? And we rather give that space to other New York City public schools or D 75 schools,
or really figure out how we can help our surrounding districts with their class size needs. Um, but no one is really having these real conversations about class sizes. And I think one of the reasons is because I guess they feel District 16 doesn't have that problem, so no one's talking to us, but we could actually help out with our neighboring districts. Uh, we are surrounded by 1314, uh, 2317. Um, and we could, we should be in conversation about how do we use the access space in some of our buildings
for other New York City public schools. I know that in, in previous years, uh, there were districts that lent their buildings to other districts, um, lent their, so that you had a di you had a district 20 school maybe sitting in district 21, right? Um, there, there are different ways, but once again, the system is not using the people on the ground to have these conversations. I think these conversations will be helpful. Yeah. Thanks, Quan. That's fair. Also, let me point out, we have, uh, uh, Adrian and Luciana chairs our school utilization committee. So these are some topics that we'll bring to
that committee for follow up. And let me also put in a plug that all of our panel committees are open to non-panel members. So if any of you have a particular interest area or an expertise, please let us know. You can definitely join any one of our committees. We can send those out. If there's a particular committee that interests you or a particular topic area, you know, we would, you know, definitely wanna have your input. Um, so we want to expand as a way of increasing communication. We want to expand the panel committees, uh, so there's not just panel members, but we have other folks on those committees as well.
And bringing information just like was just, uh, presented to us, to the committee, so we can spend time, uh, following up on those questions. Yeah. And also on this topic, Quan, and obviously Adriana knows this, that we need to bring in to this discussion, cross district collaboration with the space management and district planning so that the sharing amongst public schools across districts is happening in a way that that makes sense for the communities. Laura, Um, yeah, following up on what, um, Quan added, um, I think another thing, um, that it could be, um, important
for this committee to focus on with regard to class size is equity. Um, you may remember in the fair student funding briefing, I had asked DOE, um, to provide a breakdown of the schools that are going to be receiving, um, the funding next year for reducing class size and the 3,700 teachers. Um, a breakdown, um, in terms of which of those schools are Title one or, you know, it could, they could use ENI or whatever measure of poverty. Um, I, I don't think we've gotten that data yet,
but I think, um, keeping in mind, um, the need to prioritize, um, schools with, um, low income students, um, and, and other programs, um, that serve students with disabilities and so forth in this conversation around reducing class size. And just to understand how that, um, those priorities are coming into play when decisions are being made about who gets funding to reduce class size. Thanks, Laura. Um, and oh, Lenny,
Yeah, I was off the call 'cause I had another call, um, that intervened, but, you know, we don't know who got the, the funds and we don't know why. And I have been reached out to by several schools that did not get funding even though they applied and they were never told why. So I think it's important if you can get some kind of explanation or promise out of the DOE to reach out to those schools and explain why they did not get the funding. Many of them did have the space, many of them are have higher, um, higher, you know, need levels, um,
including students in poverty than some of the other schools that, that we believe did get the funding. Anyway, it was a process which has not been fully explained, and it's very important for schools to know, especially if they want to reapply the following year, what they did wrong. Um, as I mentioned, um, there still is no capital plan and there is still no proposal made by DOE on how they're gonna provide the space for, uh, the 500 schools at least, which they themselves say,
do not have space for smaller classes. And which in our analysis, that list of 500 enrolls nearly half of all, uh, non-district 75 students. And so this has been an ongoing concern from us from the beginning. We do not believe that DOE is following the law because they never submitted a five-year plan or even a multi-year plan, which is required by law, um, on which, and, and, and they never produced information about which schools, um, that do not currently meet the caps, how they will meet the caps in the future, as is well known,
principals of schools that did not have the space at their current enrollment were told they cannot ask for lower enrollment. One of the, uh, recommendations of the class size working group, which I sat on along with, um, Lara and Navid, I think you were on that one as well, uh, as well as other other people on the pep, I believe, was that, um, when they're nearby schools, and one of them is very under-enrolled at the same grade level, and the other one is very overcrowded, uh,
it would be useful for many reasons, including allowing the overcrowded school to lower class size to allow admissions and enrollment to be adjusted between schools. Not that any student would ever be forced out of their existing schools, but in terms of entering class enrollment over time, which would allow this, it would not only benefit overcrowded schools by allowing smaller classes and also kids to eat lunch at more reasonable times and be able to access the gym, um, at mandated periods, et cetera, et cetera. But also the underutilized schools, which often lack the budget necessary to provide, uh,
a full, um, array of programs and services because their enrollment is so low, they simply can't afford that. And yet DOE has has managed to obstruct and deny and refuse to do this, um, to this day and claim that they are, you know, they are catering to parent choice, which I don't believe is exactly, um, true because parents often do want their kids in smaller classes. And the recent survey that was put out of former parents who left the public school system in New York City found
that more than 80% of them said class size was a factor in their decision to leave the public school system. Um, so we, we are, we continue to be concerned about that as well as really none of the recommendations of the class size working group when it came to producing, creating the space for overcrowded schools and accelerating the rate of school construction, um, have been implemented by DOE even now. And what they seem to be relying on instead is claiming ex exemptions for all overcrowded
and over enrolled schools for the indefinite future with no time period attached to ever complying actually, now those exemptions have to be agreed to by the UFT and the CSA, but still, there's no way we're gonna reach full compliance in years four and five, even if DOE got their act together now, because of course, it takes many years to create more space for, um, whether it's building schools are even adjusting, uh, enrollment with entering classes. So this remains a, a very big concern. I don't know what else you've, uh, you said about class size or other people said, because I was on a call,
but, um, those are some of our major concerns on this issue at this point. Thank you, Lenny. Yeah, and we had brought up some of those issues and, and definitely are, uh, very interested in making sure that as a pep members, this work goes forward, uh, in compliance with the law. Um, and I'm so excited to see so many people here. We have one, uh, new person who joined. If you could introduce yourself, uh, Emma, Emma Ra, just a quick, uh, uh, intro so we know who who you are, and you can watch the recording to see who else was in this meeting. Thank you. Okay. Maybe, maybe no longer on the call.
Um, Randy, you already went. So the final item that I had for today's, uh, uh, hopefully very productive meeting has, is related to supports for our newest New Yorkers and Families Seeking Asylum. This is, uh, an agenda item that is very personal for me because I've been doing a lot of this work, uh, for the community, for schools, uh, now at this point, uh, working with the DOE Open Arms Office. And I would just love to recognize the Chancellor and the DOE having stood up, um, to a lot of the bullying that's coming to our immigrant community from, uh,
other parts of the government and especially the federal government, uh, and, um, just, uh, know that this is ongoing work. We are really struggling with the hostility, uh, towards New York City, uh, from other parts of the country, uh, not really, you know, emphasizing that we are the economic engine for this country and the, and the state, uh, and, and our immigrants do a lot of the work that nobody else wants to do, uh, and their children deserve all of the things that we give to our American citizen children's, and everybody who is a resident
of the United States is protected by the US Constitution. So I will continue to advocate strongly on that. Uh, and, uh, thank, uh, a lot of people who have been supporting, uh, and, and the entire pep that unanimously passed a resolution, uh, to protect all students', uh, safety, uh, in and, and hopefully extending that to around schools with intergovernmental, uh, work. Uh, if anyone has anything, uh, that they would like to suggest as a legislative priority or an administrative priority, uh, happy to hear on that. Thank you. Oh, thank you for great job.
Um, you do for immigrants and families who are looking for accommodation in New York public Schools. Thank you, nave. This is great work. Um, I would like to add, uh, as a, a parent of, uh, ELL students, uh, that, uh, from the practice that we should, uh, talk with the, uh, state about, uh, uh, supporting materials and, um, and, um, maybe, uh, changing, uh, process of, uh, identification of English and English learners to be definitely identified
as a English, English learners, not just, uh, be too simple, you know, and then students have a problem in second, third grade and they get expensive. IAP programs because it was wrong identification at the beginning. And I think we should ask, um, maybe for, uh, something like, um, uh, standardized test for students, not the, not necessarily, uh, depend on the, uh, uh, school, um, uh, which the students are, uh, applying, because sometimes, uh, there is, um, uh, you know,
uh, it's going too easy to sometimes the, the community, you know, try to avoid, uh, English language learners to not group a lot of students, to not open the bilingual programs. So, and there's many reason why, uh, this may be protocol, this, this test should be, you know, um, be, uh, made by somebody who is independent from the current school where the students apply. And also, maybe we should use some, uh, right now, uh, AI to provide some, um, uh, this process to be done by,
um, the, by digitally, by, um, we use these resources to give a outcome immediately to be independent and, and right, and, uh, and also, uh, ask, um, state, uh, department to provide more materials, spend more money for identification, for information for parents, why home language, uh, is important and why we should not afraid to show our home language in the, um, um, uh,
enrollment process to our kids, to the schools, because this is always support our students. Thank you. Thanks, Dr. D. And, and, and I guess another thing I wanna highlight is in doing the works related to welcoming people to the city, we, we throw sort of into stark relief, all of the, uh, the anci, not ancillary, but the wraparound, uh, issues that all of our families face, especially with temporary housing. So a lot of the work on this has been trying to improve the circumstances for families living in temporary housing and, and,
and housing has become a giant issue, uh, in general affordability, uh, to, to make sure our schools remain sustainable with enrollment, uh, not, uh, for local residents as well as people who have newly arrived to the city. Uh, and, and that, that is a, is a very big topic of the current election and something that, that we, we need more support on just having, uh, sustainable, affordable housing for families to continue to live in the city. Um, issues specifically related to people who may not speak English yet, students is just, one thing
that came up that comes to my mind that might is a legislative change, is identifying students in early childhood, especially when they're in schools as English language learners. This is a longstanding issue. Uh, we only do that screening in kindergarten because that is what state law mandates, but we have kids coming in three K and pre-K and, and they don't benefit from this support services, uh, legally the schools definitely try to provide them, but, but they don't get the funding for, uh, being, uh, non-English speaking at home and, and being, uh, formally recognized as English language learner.
So we should, we could definitely ask for a legislative change on that and, and get that, uh, formalized. Um, anyone else? All right. Oh, uh, a couple of new attendees, uh, TED Leather. Yeah, we're doing brief intros so people, we all know each other and, and can collaborate, uh, going forward. Thank you. You want me to say something? Yeah, just a quick intro. We, uh, your, Uh, no, nothing. I served on CCHS for, uh, four years, and I'm intimately involved in trying to determine not just college readiness of our graduates,
but actually how they do after they have left our system. There seems to be very little, uh, interest in granular data on that regard. Hi, can I, I don't know if you trailed off or whether that's our technology, but I couldn't hear you. Can you, can you repeat? Yeah, yeah. Uh, I'll, I was on CCHS for, uh, four years, and one of the projects that I've been working on is getting data on how our graduates do after they leave high school. In other words, we can say that students are college ready and off they go.
But, uh, 40% of students who enroll in CUNY or or four year colleges don't get a degree. So perhaps there would be, you know, data that would we, that would show how our students do, do they graduate, et cetera. Thank you, Ted. Um, and this is the end of sort of my agenda. We've already heard a couple of things, uh, that were not on the topic, and I'll add that to, uh, after I review the notes to, to any summary for the meeting. Um, this is, I mean, I'm so happy. This is what I feel every pep meeting should be like, right?
We're discussing substantive issues, uh, that affect, uh, our communities and our children and, and hopefully coming up with next steps for each of them and, and other ones, but more importantly, building this capacity amongst each other as, as, uh, to share the load. This is, this is a lot of heavy lift, uh, to do this work and, and to bring the, the message to our communities that, that we're listening and we're doing things and we need you to help us. So, um, with that said, I'll give it to Greg and then we'll See. Just wanna thank you chair for, um,
you know, organizing this. This has been great. Um, and more to come, we need to do more of this because I think we've, I'm looking at the DOE team that's here, and they've got copious notes. Um, you know, so, uh, and I think you're, you're being heard, and, uh, some of these things, we, I think we oughta been doing this sooner because we've got a lot of great suggestions and areas that we need to, to follow up. Uh, we're working on perfecting the panel committees, so be patient with us as we work through how we can make this, you know, uh, more perfect and,
and what we need to do to improve, um, the communication and the connection between, um, the various groups, uh, within the doe, particularly the volunteer groups. Um, as part of the volunteer community, I think sometimes we find our resident silos. We have the CECs, we have the school leadership teams, we have the, the panel, and we have all these different groups that oftentimes it doesn't feel like we're, we're communicating. So if this begins that process where we begin to break some of that down, and we see ourselves as all headed to one mission, and that is to improve the school system,
and that, you know, we may have little differences or areas where you may see a different approach, but ultimately, if we keep focused on the, on the goal, which is to, to improve the educational outcomes for all of the children in New York City. And even though sometimes, you know, we may have different things, we see it a different way, or we may or we may have gotten to the, the place we're at through different ways of appointments. So some of us come on the panel, we are appointed by the mayor, some are borough president of appointees, that we begin to diminish those divisions and,
and really focus on the idea that we're all here for one purpose. So I'm excited about this and we'll be following up with you on, um, on the outcomes and the results of this meeting. And we're gonna do more of this at the end, you know, let us know, also give us feedback on how we can improve and do better. So, thank you. I wanna thank the committee members, thank the panel members who are online, uh, for coming out, and I think this is a great first start, a first step in making this, uh, process better. So, uh, if no one has any, oh, Ted, any comments to close?
No, no, I don't. I'll close out. No. Alright. So thank you everyone again for taking the time. Uh, uh, I will get back to everyone in this meeting with, uh, what we discussed, uh, shortly. It might take a couple of weeks, but hopefully we'll follow up with what our next meeting is. And I feel like there's a lot of work that needs to be done and, and sort of distributing the work amongst us and, and, and keeping each other accountable. So, thanks again. This concludes, uh, this committee meeting of the Government Affairs Committee, uh, on May 15th, 2025.
Uh, have a great day. Thank.