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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Olympia Kazi, Parent from District 6 Manhattan
7:26:29
·
176 sec
Olympia Kazi, a parent of two elementary school children in District 6 Manhattan, testifies about the inadequacy of DOE's class size reduction efforts and the impact on students' mental health. She expresses frustration with the DOE's response to their school's application for class size reduction support, highlighting the need for more comprehensive solutions.
- Kazi's school was awarded one teacher for class size reduction, but they need 10 teachers and classrooms.
- The DOE denied their requests for enrollment caps and funding for creative alternative ideas to implement class size reduction.
- She emphasizes the mental health issues affecting elementary school students, including daily anxiety attacks.
- Kazi criticizes the DOE for what she perceives as intentional mishandling of the class size mandate implementation.
Olympia Kazi
7:26:29
Hi.
7:26:30
So thank you Chair Brennan and Chair Joseph for the possibility to testify, for the great questions you did this morning seven hours ago to DOE, and you hold them a bit accountable and I hope you're going to follow-up later.
7:26:45
So it's a little bit unfair because you put us after the kids.
7:26:49
So imagine I'm a parent.
7:26:51
Imagine me, I'm like a few thousand elementary school kids.
7:26:54
I think the high school kids did a great job.
7:26:57
So my name is Olin Piakazi.
7:26:59
You know me from other kind of advocacy, but today I'm here as the mother of a second and a fourth grader in district six Manhattan in Washington Heights PSIS 187.
7:27:10
And we were awarded one of those grants.
7:27:13
Know, we are gonna get one teacher for class size reduction.
7:27:17
Guess what?
7:27:17
We need 10 teachers and 10 classrooms.
7:27:21
DOE is making a fun of us.
7:27:24
The reason I want you to think of me as thousand parents because we are all desperate and exhausted, and I'm I'm following up to Lenny's and Denise's.
7:27:33
I am I'm a seasoned advocate too.
7:27:36
Like, we're exhausted guys.
7:27:37
They're making fun of all of us.
7:27:40
And so I want you to know what happened with our application.
7:27:43
I participated in December.
7:27:44
We are given this teacher, but we asked them for two more very meaningful things.
7:27:49
We asked them for cap and enrollment and they said no.
7:27:52
That means they don't care.
7:27:53
If you keep sending us a hundred kids while we can accommodate 60, when are we gonna meet the class size mandate?
7:28:00
The second thing they denied us is we said give us funding for staff to implement creative alternative ideas.
7:28:08
We could be doing multi session, bridge classes, collocations.
7:28:12
There
Mark Gonsalvez
7:28:13
are
Olympia Kazi
7:28:13
a lot of creative ways in which a school that runs out of space can still reduce class size.
7:28:19
They are making fun of us.
7:28:22
I am exhausted and you know I don't get exhausted easily.
7:28:25
So one thing I wanna point also, very important, the school where my kids are right now, they have so much screen time because the teachers have 29, seven, and eight year olds in their class.
7:28:39
Many of them undiagnosed, some of them will never be diagnosed, but they are distressed.
7:28:44
And so I wanna make sure that we bring again them in because the high schoolers are talking about mental health.
7:28:50
Our elementary school has kids with anxiety attacks every day.
7:28:54
And to me, like, I really I'm trying hard not to cry because it's it's ridiculous what they're doing.
7:29:01
And they're doing it frankly, I don't know.
7:29:04
It seems like on purpose.
7:29:05
Last year they kept calling this an unfunded mandate, and we know it's not an unfunded mandate.
7:29:09
This year they're still pulling our legs.
7:29:11
So I just wanted to bring this perspective here today, and I do work with Lenny, and I'm happy to give you any data you need because when you work in the trenches, you see how they f up, and it's like bad and ignorant, sorry.