TESTIMONY
Tanisha Grant, Executive Director of Parents Supporting Parents New York, on the Educational Impacts of Large Class Sizes and Insufficient Administration
4:10:33
·
3 min
Tanisha Grant discusses the detriment large class sizes and insufficient administration have on students' education, using her son's negative educational experience at Eagle Academy in Harlem as an example.
- Grant shares her personal experience with her son being placed in an online college class without adequate support, leading to his failure in the class.
- She criticizes the lack of communication between the school and parents, and the absence of individualized attention due to large class sizes and insufficient school staff.
- Grant advocates for fully funded public schools with smaller class sizes to enable high-quality, culturally responsive education.
- She highlights the importance of a partnership between school administrators and parents in the educational process.
Tanisha Grant
4:10:33
Hello.
4:10:33
My name is Tanisha Grant, and I am the executive director of parents support in parents New York.
4:10:41
Today, I speak to you as parent of a 11th grade student.
4:10:50
Mhmm.
4:10:51
I have been a parent advocate for 10 years plus.
4:10:54
I wanna talk about what it looks like when there are classes.
4:10:58
When there are large classes or small classes with not enough administration, my son goes to Eagle Academy in Harlem.
4:11:10
This camera thing is really messy with me.
4:11:12
I'm not understanding what's going on.
4:11:15
Okay.
4:11:15
My son goes to Eagle Academy in Harlem.
4:11:17
He has been a student at Eagle Academy since 6th grade.
4:11:20
He's now in 11th grade.
4:11:21
For the last 2 years, I have been avid in a Eagle Academy for more communication with parent.
4:11:27
This year, because my son is a good student, Eagle Academy took it gone themselves to put my son in an online college class.
4:11:35
There was not there was just a teacher in a class, but the professor was online.
4:11:40
6 months later, I found out my study got f in this class.
4:11:44
There was no communication to me.
4:11:47
Even when it was parent teacher conference, I had to reach out to the school.
4:11:51
I never talked to the teacher that was overseeing this class.
4:11:54
This college class.
4:11:57
When I converted to school, they acknowledged I was right, but implied that they are trying to uplift my son.
4:12:04
Chair.
4:12:05
I ask you.
4:12:08
If that's if if my son has a f or his transcript, How was they trying to uplift him?
4:12:15
Mind you, my son has 4 regions passed and is on his way to a 5th to get a regent diploma.
4:12:23
I feel that if there was more administrators in the school and lower class size, maybe this would not have happened.
4:12:30
If my son was receiving the individual attention, maybe the teacher would have reached out.
4:12:37
It's a shame that Department of Education has parents believe in that smaller class sizes is a bad thing because of the lack of resources.
4:12:44
The truth is, all of our public schools should be fully funded with small class sizes, so each child can get the education the high quality, full funded, social responses, education each of our children deserve.
4:12:59
The education that parents like me, I have been fighting for.
4:13:04
I want everybody to understand that it is because of the parents that we even have something called culturally responsive education.
4:13:10
And no one talks about that.
4:13:14
All teachers should be great teachers to our children.
4:13:17
All school administrators should have a partnership with parent.
4:13:21
This isn't happening in our schools, especially in Huddl.
4:13:25
I felt so helpless today when my son's principal told me that he was trying to uplift my son.
4:13:32
Who is already a a major student.
4:13:35
It is not living a child up when you allow them to fail.
4:13:40
And not get in touch with their family.
4:13:42
We need small class sizes, and we need administrators, we need principals, that are not gonna put our children on the path to fail.
4:13:52
As a parent, I will fight this act to get off of my son's transcript and I will continue to fight that world class sizes are implemented.
4:14:01
Thank you for having this hearing, and thank you for listening to my customers.