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Q&A
Timeline and details of school funding allocation for class size reduction
1:25:20
·
169 sec
Council Member Rita Joseph inquires about the timeline for teacher allocation and the details of funding for schools. DOE representatives explain the process, including the early announcement to facilitate hiring during the open market period.
- Funding allocation to be included in initial school budgets
- Early announcement allows schools to start hiring before budget release
- Funding covers teachers, assistant principals, room conversions, and other necessary expenses
- Schools required to present holistic plans for meeting class size mandates
Rita Joseph
1:25:20
Able to share the list of schools and how much funding the schools received.
1:25:26
And is their annual class size plan only include number of teachers that school needs to hire, or does it include other necessary expenses to meet the class size?
Emma Vadehra
1:25:36
Yes.
1:25:37
We can definitely provide you with the number of teachers and funding that schools did receive, because as I said, it's not just teachers.
1:25:45
And funding was available not just to hire teachers, but for things like assistant principals, for things like room conversions, for supporting current teachers to teach additional periods, all of those were other ways.
1:25:57
We tried to reflect what we've heard over a couple of years in terms of the different ways schools want to meet class size within their current context without cutting programming for anything else.
1:26:08
And so all of those were funding
Flavia Puello-Perdomo
1:26:10
available.
Rita Joseph
1:26:10
What's the timeline for the allocation for for teachers to the schools?
Emma Vadehra
1:26:16
Funding funding itself will go out with initial school budgets, which you know will be late this month as it always is.
1:26:25
But the reason we preannounced it was so during open market, teachers could start to see what's available, principals could start to hire so that we could post all those positions externally even though schools don't have their budgets yet.
1:26:39
So while budgets will come out in the regular cycle, schools are able to make moves before then because we announced it earlier.
Rita Joseph
1:26:46
And and those hirings are also assistant principals and and support staff that they will need.
Melissa Aviles-Ramos
1:26:52
Absolutely.
1:26:53
Any so I just wanna double down on a couple of things.
1:26:56
When we say a plan, the school actually needed to present a holistic plan for how they were going to meet the class size.
1:27:02
So, if you're hiring an additional 16 teachers, you are going to need an assistant principal who is going to support those teachers.
1:27:09
We want to make sure that professional development is at the center of teacher support.
1:27:14
We also know that in some cases, conversion, right?
1:27:17
There's some nice offices that can house children for classrooms, and so that was also part of the plan.
1:27:26
Extended day, if we needed to put on ninth period or other programs.
1:27:31
We wanted to make sure that the impact was not felt at the school budget level because they needed to meet this mandate, and so when we say the plan, we meant a holistic plan that really, really captured all of the steps that would ensure the school can meet the mandate.
1:27:46
What it was not going to do was to allow a school that said, Wouldn't it be cool if I had an extra assistant principal?
1:27:52
I already have four.
1:27:53
And we were not going to turn around and say, here's the extra money to do that.
1:27:57
It's not a wish list if it's not for you to comply with class size mandate.
1:28:02
We felt very comfortable in the decisions that we made because they were in collaboration, close collaboration with the UFT and the CSI.