Q&A
Council Member Joseph questions class sizes and accessibility in Summer Rising program
1:51:45
·
138 sec
Council Member Rita C. Joseph expresses concerns about class sizes in the Summer Rising program and inquires about accessibility for students with disabilities. Representatives from the Department of Youth and Community Development and New York City Public Schools respond to her questions, providing data on classroom ratios and building accessibility.
- 38% of Summer Rising sites were fully accessible, with an additional 30% partially accessible.
- Only 4% of sites were confirmed as not accessible, with 100 buildings still being assessed.
- Council Member Joseph raised concerns about having up to 30 students in a classroom, citing the need for small group instruction during summer school.
Rita C. Joseph
1:51:45
I'm still troubled by the 30 students in the classroom for some horizon.
1:51:50
When because when I taught summer school, we had about 10, 12 kids.
1:51:55
If I had 30 now, my bags would have been packed and gone.
1:51:59
Because it's a regular school year.
1:52:01
Right?
1:52:01
So the point of summer school is to have that small group instruction.
1:52:05
When do do we have a chance to assess them?
1:52:08
When do we know if they have enough support?
1:52:09
If we have 30 kids in a classroom, one teacher?
1:52:13
No matter how amazing educators are, someone is gonna fall through the crack, and the purpose of them being their mind mandated is because they fell through the crack in the 10 month.
1:52:22
They have 6 weeks to make it up.
Daniel Guillén
1:52:23
So
Rita C. Joseph
1:52:24
I'm still a little concerned and bothered about the class size for me.
1:52:27
So maybe that's something we need to figure out.
1:52:29
How many of those school buildings were accessible to our students with disabilities?
Angela Faloye
1:52:45
Choosing accessible sites for some horizon is a top priority.
1:52:51
There are many factors that go into choosing summarizing sites, and a major factor is choosing from sites.
1:52:57
The school construction authority does not close entirely for innovation.
1:53:03
So I want to, you know, give you that context that we do have a small apple to choose from again because of renovation.
1:53:10
But again, accessibility is a top priority.
1:53:14
So in terms of numbers and percentages, fully accessible sites, we had 38%.
1:53:20
So just so you know, we had 360 summarizing sites.
1:53:24
And of those 360 summarizing sites, 38% were fully accessible, but another 30% were partially accessible.
1:53:34
So in terms of fully and partially accessible, 68% of the summarizing sites were fully or partially accessible.
Rita C. Joseph
1:53:43
And which ones were not accessible at all for students, parents, and staffs with physical disabilities?
Angela Faloye
1:53:48
So we did have in terms of not accessible 4%, but we had another 100 buildings where we were still assessing the accessibility.
1:54:00
But where we knew for sure we're not accessible 4%.
