TESTIMONY
Johanna Bjorken, Parent in Sunset Park, on Compliance with the Class Size Law and its Financial Implications
4:19:43
·
3 min
Johanna Bjorken testifies on the urgency of complying with the class size mandate and the financial challenges it presents.
- Johanna is a parent and was part of the class size working group, emphasizing her personal stake.
- She identifies that current funding models force schools to have large classes to fund smaller ones, calling for a change.
- Johanna argues for compliance that centers on schools with space and teachers, especially those serving vulnerable students.
- She highlights the differences in compliance obstacles across neighborhoods, stressing solutions should be community-specific.
- Johanna concludes by challenging the mayor's budget, stressing the need to implement the class size law for better teacher-student relationships.
Johanna Bjorken
4:19:43
Hi there.
4:19:44
My name is Johanna Bjorkay.
4:19:47
I am I live in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and I parent a 9th grade public student student who is spinning distance from you all.
4:19:56
In the Murray Burch Tom Building.
4:19:58
I was also a member of the class size working group and co chaired its budget and finance sub committee.
4:20:02
I served on the working group of the school business manager, steeped in school based budgeting, but I am speaking today in a personal capacity.
4:20:09
Of course, the Bloomberg era policy makers who created the incentives to pack classroom just wish this law would go away, and you must hold their feet to the fire.
4:20:19
One important factor is how will the DOE support and build upon compliance.
4:20:23
The approximately 40% of classrooms that currently meet the mandate.
4:20:27
The path to broad compliance centers these schools The ones that today have the space and the teachers.
4:20:33
They enroll our most vulnerable students, but too often compliance is an accident of enrollment.
4:20:38
School funding methodology that I'm talking about fair student funding currently requires that at least some classes be large to pay for the ones that are small.
4:20:46
It requires a school to use funds they get because of its needy students to subsidize the direct teaching costs in classrooms meeting mandate even when the needy students are in other overcrowded classrooms.
4:20:58
This model has to change to make compliance universal, and as it does, Our students that are currently starved to meet costs will also benefit.
4:21:07
That is not an equity transfer, and especially not when the lease media courtile includes students where 65% of students are in poverty.
4:21:16
Our working group sub committee recommended the DOEs models do not just consider overall expense, but the ability of a wide range of schools to meet costs, and that's where equity lives.
4:21:27
How school's meat cost is something that I'm watching very carefully as this year's scarcity funding comes up to review, and I hope you will too.
4:21:35
Looking at the 30% of schools that don't have space now to comply in a city as big as ours, the obstacles to compliance different neighborhood by neighborhood.
4:21:43
Solutions towards implementation will be best when they come from and with those neighborhoods and communities, mindful to center those who have historically been most marginalized and left out of the conversation.
4:21:53
And it is clear that some superintendents are already thinking about how they're trickiest corn how about they're trickiest corners.
4:21:59
At Tuesday's pep, they were already votes on split siding overcrowded in popular schools and consolidating others.
4:22:05
Nobody loves the rezoning, but they aren't new.
4:22:08
And the class size law isn't the only thing to make them happen.
4:22:11
I've seen 5 just in my home district since my child started kindergarten.
4:22:15
But equity must stay top of mind.
4:22:17
How do the decisions about getting to compliance center our students who are most vulnerable.
4:22:22
And as we are talking about money, I have to say I am so glad that you and this house was staring down our mayor in his fake budget heart crisis.
4:22:30
As we fight to maintain the essential programs that should never have been funded with expiring stimulus dollars, we must also keep our eye on the law and make sure that we move forward to implement the historic class size law, decades of parents have fought so hard to have.
4:22:44
New York City students deserve their relationships with their teachers simply impossible in class your
UNKNOWN
4:22:49
time has expired?
Johanna Bjorken
4:22:50
We need our again, finish again.
4:22:53
We this is our new normal, and we need to get to our new normal.
UNKNOWN
4:22:58
Thank you for your testimony.