DOE latest class size “plan” no plan at all

For immediate release: May 8, 2024
Contact:  Leonie Haimson, 917-435-9329; [email protected]

 

Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, said, “It is evident from the new document posted by the DOE today that they have no intention of ever complying with the state  class size law.  They have had nearly two years to plan for class size reduction since the law was passed in June 2022, and yet they have utterly failed to create even the rudiments of a real five- year plan. “

“Any plan worth its salt must provide information on what actual, effective steps will be taken next year and over the following three years to meet the mandates in the law.  Any plan worth the paper it is printed on must project how many classes will be reduced each year, using which levers, and with what results. This document fails on every account, ” she added.

In this latest iteration, the DOE makes not a single commitment to create more space by building more schools, and in fact their new proposed five-year school capital plan would cut the funding for new school construction by over $2 billion compared to the existing five year plan.  It would allocate only $4 billion towards this end, while the SCA has testified before the City Council that the actual cost of compliance with the law is more than $22 billion, at least five times that amount.

The cost would be far less if the DOE adopted any of the other practical proposals for creating new space recommended by the Class Size Working Group, including adjusting enrollment between nearby schools, or moving some 3K and PreK programs to neighborhood Community Based organizations.  While the DOE  writes that, ” In SY 2024-25, Principals will not be required to limit student enrollment in order to meet these targets,”  in reality principals were clearly instructed in a December 2023 memo that they were not ALLOWED to ask for lower enrollments in order to lower class size.

While the DOE claims that taking such steps to limit enrollment at overcrowded schools “would limit family and student choices for their educational opportunities and … and could cause attrition from NYCPS”, actually parents leave NYC schools for private schools or those in the suburbs all the time for the smaller classes those schools provide, as Johanna Garcia pointed out,  co-chair of the Class Size Working Group.

She added, “Moreover, plans that reduce class size, including at overcrowded schools, while encouraging increased enrollment at underutilized schools would enhance the quality of education at NYCPS, by ensuring that every public school student reaps the benefits of learning in smaller classes, while providing more adequate budgets to underutilized schools, so that their students could be provided with the programs and services they need and deserve.”.”

The DOE also falsely claims in the document that the substantial increase in C4E and Foundation funding from the state “has been essential to the progress in reducing class sizes in the last several years as the funding percentage has increased.”  Actually, as their own class size reporting makes clear, average class sizes increased citywide at most schools over the last two years, at the same time as the state added nearly $1 billion in Foundation Aid.

The sole commitment made by DOE to doing anything to lower class size now or in the future is to allocate $137 million for additional staffing at some targeted schools, though they fail to specify which schools will be targeted, how many there will be, how many teachers will be hired as a result, and what the result will be in terms of class size. A quick estimate shows that when fringe cost is taken into account, that  amount would allow for the hiring of only 1350 additional teachers, out of the 10,000 to 12,000 they project will be needed to comply with the law.  The longer they wait in hiring additional teachers, of course, the more difficult it will become to ensure their quality and certification.

An even larger question is how this new funding would align with the Mayor’s Executive budget, released just a couple of weeks ago, which calls for a teacher hiring freeze combined with vacancy reductions, adding up to about $100 million in savings.  Nor is it clear how it aligns with the city’s Financial Plan, which projects an additional shrinkage of the teaching force by 900 full-time teachers next year.   Finally, it is entirely unclear what the impact of this hiring is likely to be, given further cuts to school budgets through their Fair Student Funding allocations, based on enrollment decline.

According to the IBO, for the last two years, the City used $160 million of federal stimulus fund to “hold harmless” school budgets, which funded 1,778 pedagogical positions both years. Yet next year, the DOE has announced they intend to end the practice of holding school budgets harmless, which could easily undo any positive impact created by these 1350 additional teachers.

###