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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, on DOE Budget and Class Size Reduction
5:40:56
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3 min
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, testified about concerns regarding the implementation of class size reduction in NYC schools. She highlighted issues with overcrowding, the need for more school seats, and the importance of aligning enrollment policies with class size reduction goals.
- Expressed concern about 500 schools too overcrowded to lower class sizes
- Emphasized the need for 70,000 new seats to meet class size mandate, with less than half currently funded
- Called for a unified set of proposals and policies geared towards smaller classes, including enrollment adjustments between overcrowded and underutilized schools
- Highlighted parent demand for smaller classes based on DOE surveys and reasons for leaving public schools
Leonie Haimson
5:40:56
Good afternoon.
5:40:57
Thank you Chair Brannan and Chair Joseph for your persistence and your patience and your continued engagement in this very long day.
5:41:06
My name is Leanne Haymesen.
5:41:07
I'm the executive director of Class Size Matters.
5:41:10
We are, of course, thrilled that more than seven fifty schools will get smaller classes next year, but we continue to be concerned about all those schools that are too overcrowded to lower class size.
5:41:21
Part of the law was to require a multi year plan so that all the modalities needed would be provided to schools to lower class size, and yet the SCA testified in March that 70,000 new seats were necessary to meet the mandate in the law and less than half of those are funded.
5:41:41
Of those funded, nearly half are unspecified as to district or grade level, which according to our view is contrary to language in both the class size law and Local Law 167, which require great specificity about where schools are needed and going to be built.
5:42:00
Now many fewer seats would probably be needed if the DOE also agreed to adjust enrollment between schools, between very overcrowded schools and underutilized schools.
5:42:11
As you've heard from the panel before, very overcrowded schools have a lot of problems.
5:42:16
Not only are their classes too long, but students become disengaged and often feel like they do not matter, whereas underutilized schools could use more students not only to have a generous and sufficient budget for things like art classes.
5:42:33
Many of the schools that cannot afford art classes, it's because they're under enrolled and underutilized.
5:42:41
Now one of the other things that we're concerned about is that even if you built hundreds of new schools, which they do not plan to do, without an enrollment policy that's aligned to smaller classes, you will never get reduced class sizes at all schools, because for example, in Chair Brandon's district, there are two new schools with many empty classrooms.
5:43:02
Neither of them comply with the law, so it really needs to be a unified set of proposals and policies all geared towards smaller classes.
5:43:14
Now the DOE claims that they do not wanna do this because they are responding to parent choice and parent demand, but one of the top priorities every year on the DOE's own surveys is parents saying that they need smaller classes for their kids and there's a more recent survey that DOE did for parents who have taken their kids out of the public schools and asked them why.
5:43:37
More than 80% said class size was an important determinant in their decision.
5:43:43
So we know that parents want smaller classes.
5:43:45
We know that we need more space in those 500 schools that enroll about half of all students, and we need a significant aligned plan that provides the space and the enrollment policies at the district level to achieve that.
5:44:01
Thank you very much for your time.