Our testimony on the critical failings of DOE and SCA in planning for class size reduction

March 14, 2025

Here and below is the testimony that Michael Rance, our Research Director, gave on behalf of Class Size Matters at the preliminary budget hearing yesterday. Our testimony highlighted the many failings of DOE and the School Construction Authority in delivering a multi-year plan capable of meeting the benchmarks in the class size law, as well as specific and serious flaws in the governance structure and legal accountability on the part of the SCA.

While Cora Liu of the SCA testified at the hearing that 70,000 more school seats would be needed to comply with the class size law, there are only about 33,000 funded in the five-year capital plan and fewer than 20,000 are expected to be completed by September 2028,  the deadline in the law.  Moreover, as we pointed out in our testimony:

• Nearly half of all the new seats that are funded in the five-year plan are still unspecified as to district, subdistrict or grade level.  Under no previous administration has the SCA capital plan refused to specify where schools are planned by district and grade level. Not only is this lack of transparency unfortunate, given the need to accelerate school construction to meet the timeline in the class size law, but it also appears to violate two laws.

• First, the state class size law itself requires DOE to submit an “annual capital plan for school construction and leasing to show how many classrooms will be added in each year and in which schools and districts to achieve the class size targets”

• The lack of transparency also violates Local Law 167, passed by the Council in 2018, requiring the SCA to explain where seats are needed by district, subdistrict and grade level, as well as the demographic data and methodology they used to make these projections.  Yet Instead of becoming more transparent after this law was passed, the capital plan became even more opaque.

• We also have ongoing concerns with the School Construction Authority’s lax governance. As reported in the NY Post, the SCA Board has been comprised of only two members since August 2023, though three members are required at all times by the state law that established the SCA in 1998: “The authority shall be governed by and its powers shall be exercised by a board of trustees consisting of three members….Each appointed member shall continue in office until a successor has been appointed and qualifies.”   [More on this here.]
  
• Moreover, according to the latest report of the NY State Authorities Budget Office, the SCA Board also lacks a Governance Committee, a Finance Committee, as well as official policies for salary and compensation, time and attendance. Nor does it have a Whistleblower Protection policy. According to this Office, all of these are required by the NYS Public Authorities Law.

 

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