QUESTION
What are the Department of Education's views on conflicts arising from colocations of charter and public schools?
1:42:17
·
168 sec
The Department of Education (DOE) acknowledges space constraints in NYC and the legal mandates requiring them to accommodate charter schools, either by providing space in public school buildings or offering lease assistance for private spaces.
- Space in NYC is limited, making colocation of schools a challenging but necessary reality.
- State law mandates the DOE to accommodate charter schools by providing space or funding private space leases, impacting budget allocations.
- The number of charter schools requiring lease assistance has been increasing, straining DOE's financial resources.
- DOE is analyzing the impacts of colocations, including compliance issues and effects on classroom space, to address potential problems.
- DOE's analysis will be communicated to the state, highlighting the financial and spatial conflicts arising from the current law.
Shekar Krishnan
1:42:17
And on that point, my other question to talking about conflicts here, right, I'm seeing some conflicts, as I mentioned, with a 0 sum game with schools, I'm seeing conflicts with the DOE's projections of teacher hiring or retention for the future.
1:42:31
And then the need for more teachers.
1:42:34
Another conflict, obviously, which we talked about before too, is this is with charter schools and co locating of charter schools and public schools, which I'm very opposed to I think it really harms our public schools.
1:42:45
But if we need more space and you have colocation expanded co co located schools, new co located schools.
1:42:53
That's gonna run directly in conflict with the new classroom space.
1:42:56
That you need to comply with the class size mandate.
1:42:59
Seems to me that that's something whether it's in the educational impact statements or otherwise, but that should be analyzed more because I know the class size working group focused on this to say, without that analysis, there should be no more expanded collocations.
1:43:11
So I'd like to know what DOE's position is on that because that seems a real conflict and problem here.
Dan Weisberg
1:43:17
So, yeah, I mean, this is New York City.
1:43:20
Space is at a premium.
1:43:22
Sometimes I go to a to a suburban district or rural district and see they have space galore and wouldn't that be something they'd colocation they think is like a a a term from Mars.
1:43:33
But this is the situation we're in.
1:43:35
Again, it's not just charter schools.
1:43:37
It's district schools as well who share space.
1:43:40
The on the charter schools specifically, as as you know counsel member, this is driven by state law, which tells us it tell you know, it's a mandate on us that says, You either have to provide space in your school buildings or you have to pay for private space with lease assistance.
1:43:57
That number of lease assistance is increasing pretty significantly year over year.
1:44:02
So if we were to say We're not going to for any charters that come forward to ask for space, we're not gonna look for collocations, we're gonna say to them, you have to go get private space.
1:44:14
Well, that's going to be one of those 0 sum things where that number is going to go up, which leaves fewer dollars for for our school.
1:44:20
So, you know, that's that's just the reality of where the law is right now.
Emma Vadehra
1:44:24
And I would just say our team is looking at that, the exact analysis you're talking about, not just charter collocations, but for any merger or collocations, I was just checking because I was surprised here you say it.
1:44:32
So we are we are doing that.
1:44:34
We are including it where we believe there could be compliance issues.
1:44:37
We just put one a couple weeks ago for a far distant one and did raise that in the IS.
Shekar Krishnan
1:44:41
Okay.
1:44:41
And that may be also helpful to express as an agency DOE's position to the state as well because it I mean, AbbVie is coming from state law, but still, it's creating a big conflict where, again, it's raising concerns for me of unintended consequences or is there some game worth passing on the cost to schools.
1:44:57
And we can't be in that world when we're talking about a state law mandate.
1:45:01
That's a good thing that we want to have.
1:45:03
Thank you.