Not-so-hot news from Class Size Matters; and how you can help

July 31, 2019

I hope you are having a relaxing summer. Unfortunately, the last few weeks haven’t been much fun for Class Size Matters. We recently discovered that we lost over $7000, including the donations to our annual fundraiser in June, because NYCharities, our online processor, appears to have collapsed, as reported by Fox News. I am also quoted in this article about our losses.

NY Charities is a well-known organization used by many non-profits, large and small; but it turns out they actually lost their nonprofit status in Aug. 2018 for failing to file three years of financial reports, with the IRS quietly posting this revocation on their website in Nov. 2018. Yet neither the IRS nor the Charities Bureau of the NY AG office told anyone about it. I only learned about it from a reporter a few weeks ago.

I have filed complaints with the Charities Bureau which now says they are investigating the situation, but meanwhile, Shino Tanikawa, a NYC parent leader, offered to put up a GoFundMe for us. It’s here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/we-need-small-class-sizes-in-our-schools

We operate on a shoestring budget and $7000 is a lot of money for us. Please give if you can.

2. Also, in the last few weeks, we have been served with two subpoenas, one from the Attorney General office in regards the NYSER lawsuit, for which we agreed to be a plaintiff along with many organizations who are suing the state for more equitable education funding. The AG subpoena is unusually onerous, as reported by the media here and here, and demands twelve years of our communications and findings related to school funding and classroom conditions.

I was also served with a subpoena by Success Academy charter schools, for a lawsuit in which a parent of a special needs child is suing Success for mistreating and pushing out her child. In 2017, we provided this parent advice and helped her find an attorney; I expect to be deposed in the case as well. Thankfully, Laura D. Barbieri of Advocates for Justice is serving as our pro bono attorney in regards the Attorney General and Success Academy subpoenas.

3. Finally, on Monday was the second and final meeting of the School Siting Task Force, created by the City Council last year via Local Law No. 168. When I learned in February that the Task Force held their first meeting privately, I urged the DOE and the Council to open these meetings to the public, but got nowhere fast. After the NY Committee for Open Government wrote an advisory letter saying that the task force was subject to Open Meetings law, AND the NYC Comptroller wrote a letter to DOE urging them to comply, AND City Limits ran an article about the controversy, the DOE finally conceded, saying they would allow the public to attend future meetings, though they said they weren’t legally required to do so.

Then more than six months went by before the Task Force met again. Monday’s meeting, which was announced as its last, consisted primarily of officials at the School Construction Authority showing an unreadable power point, consisting of a list of over 7000 city-owned vacant sites, with nearly all of them ruled out by the SCA and only two that will be considered as potential locations for schools. When I asked if the public could get a copy of the list of vacant city-owned sites, the Deputy Mayor’s representative, Liz Hoffman, said no.

My account of how the rest of the meeting went is here; including some of the questions asked by parents and reporters who attended; the Daily News and Wall St. Journal also ran articles about the meeting. I am quoted in both; the way this Task Force operated provides more evidence about how the city shuts out the public, rather than working collaboratively with parents and other community members to help solve the ongoing school overcrowding crisis.

Today, the Task Force is supposed to provide a report about its work to the City Council; even though several Task Force members told me Monday they hadn’t yet seen a copy of it themselves. I will let you know if and when the Council decides to release the report to the public. Meanwhile, I have already FOILed for the list of vacant city-owned sites, which I believe the DOE is legally required to provide, and will let you know their response.

But please do contribute to CSM if you can, or else the losses we suffered will hurt our ability to advocate for smaller classes, an end to school overcrowding, more transparency and parent involvement in education decision-making – – as well as stronger student privacy.

Thanks for your support, Leonie