Join me at the Class Size Matters celebration on June 12!

June 3, 2024

Dear all —

I would like to invite you to the annual Class Size Matter award dinner on Wed. June 12 to support this important organization on whose board I sit.   We will be honoring the independent parent members of the Panel for Educational Policy, the NYC school board, who have made valiant efforts to see that progressive and rational policies are enacted by the Department of Education in the face of rampant school budget cuts, cronyism, and wasteful contracts.

I only serve on two boards, Network for Public Education, which I co-founded in 2013, and Class Size Matters, because the work they do is critical to making progress in our public schools.

CSM advocates for smaller classes and in 2022, led the battle to get a law passed in the State Legislature requiring that NYC phase-in smaller classes in all grades over five years, which will result in higher quality and more equitable learning conditions in our public schools.

The Executive Director, Leonie Haimson, served on the Class Size Working Group appointed by Chancellor Banks, which developed effective proposals on how the law should be implemented, and now is working to try to ensure that these proposals are enacted in the face of resistance from Mayor Adams.

The organization also provides oversight on the spending of the NYC Department of Education, and in the past has saved city taxpayers literally hundreds of millions of dollars, by preventing wasteful and corrupt contracts.

In addition, Leonie led the battle vs. the data-grabbing behemoth called InBloom Inc., founded with $100 million from the Gates Foundation to collect the personal information of students in nine states and districts, including New York, and to make the data available to for-profit ed tech companies, without parental knowledge or consent.

Because of her efforts and those of other parents across the nation, inBloom closed its doors, and more than 100 state student privacy laws were passed, including the NY State student privacy law, Ed Law 2d. She co-founded and co-chairs the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy as a project of Class Size Matters, which has been asked to testify before Congress twice.

For years, the Coalition has advocated for the state to stop the College Board from selling student data which violates Ed Law 2d, culminating in a consent decree this past February, negotiated by State Attorney General Tish James requiring an end to this practice, and fining the College Board $750,000.

Please join me on June 12 in supporting this important organization which does such crucial work. You can purchase your tickets here. If you cannot make it to the fundraiser, please consider donating to the organization here.

Thank you, Diane Ravitch