The response from the School Construction Authority regarding their lax governance policies and non compliant capital plan, and our reply

March 26, 2025

Last Thursday morning, I spoke at the School Construction Authority board meeting, explaining how they have failed to fulfill their legal and ethical obligations to provide schools with the space necessary to comply with the class size law and the requirements of the Public Authorities Law. Here and below is the testimony that I shared at the meeting.

After I spoke, Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg responded dismissively to my comments, while the other board member, Peter McCree, said nothing. Though the law requires three members at all times, there have only been two since August 2023, when Larraine Grillo resigned, as the NY Post reported back in September. [More on this here.] Nor did the President of the SCA, Nina Kubota, respond.

I sent the SCA a copy of my comments afterwards, and received a reply from the SCA General Council Nadine Rivellese this morning.  Her reply is here and embedded below.

Below is our response to the General Counsel’s letter, which I sent shortly after receiving her letter.

I’ve included both the full text, and a PDF copy.

___________________________________________

March 26th, 2025

Dear Ms. Rivellese:

Thank you for your letter dated March 25, 2025, sent in response to the comments I made at the School Construction Authority board meeting on March 20, which I emailed to SCA board members later the same day.

I have some follow-up questions and concerns, first related to SCA governance issues:

• You write, “our Board of Trustees is comprised of three members.”  But then you appear to contradict that statement by saying, “We have been working closely with City Hall to ensure proper selection and vetting of our prospective third trustee member and should have an appointment to fill the current vacancy in the near future.”

If the Board has three members, please identify them. Only two are listed on the SCA website and were present at last week’s meeting.  The third member, Lorraine Grillo, resigned on Aug. 31, 2023, as reported by the NY Post last September and confirmed by your office.

That is more than 30 months ago, and one would think plenty of time for the Mayor to appoint a new member, especially as the  state law that established the SCA in 1998 requires three board members at all times: “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.”

• Please provide a link to your official policy for time and attendance, and your whistleblower policy, and/or attach the dated documents.  I also wonder why, if you have these policies already, you did not inform the NYS Authorities Budget Office of these facts, whose last two annual reports stated otherwise, including their report released in January 2025 and the other in January 2024.
• As to your salary policies, the fact that more than 50% of the SCA’s employees are governed by collective bargaining agreements does not cover all employees, and most likely omits the salaries of management, which would likely be the information most of interest in terms of ensuring good governance and why this policy is required by  the Public Authorities law.
• The fact that Governance and Finance topics go before the full board does not obviate a need for those committees, at least in the interpretation of the NYS Authorities Budget Office, which is tasked with interpreting that law.

But my greatest concerns relate to the continued lack of transparency in the capital plan.  I know of no capital plan under any other previous Mayor that was so opaque in terms of reporting where schools are funded and planned to be built.  In response to my point that nearly half of the seats funded in the February five-year plan are still unspecified as to district, subdistrict and grade level, you write:

“After the passing of the State Class Size law, we have adjusted our existing methodology to identify seat need as well as the framework of New Capacity program to support the NYCPS’ class size reduction plan. This adjustment is necessary as the class size mandate is not on a geographic area level but on individual school and class level.” 

If that is true, one would think that this would require more specificity about where schools are funded and needed, rather than less.

In fact, the state class size law does require enhanced specificity, as it says that NYC “shall prepare annual reports” including 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.”

This level of specificity is also required by Local Law 167, approved by the NYC Council in 2018, that requires the SCA to explain where seats are needed by district, subdistrict and grade level, as well as the demographic data and methodology relied upon to make these projections.

As Cora Liu of the SCA testified before the City Council on March 13, 2025 that 70,000 more school seats will be needed to comply with the class size law, please provide the information as to these seats are located by district, subdistrict and grade level, as well as the data and methodology used to determine these figures, as these laws require.

Thank you for your time and attention to these important issues.

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters
124 Waverly Pl.
New York, NY 10011
phone: 917-435-9329
[email protected]
http://www.classsizematters.org/