Gotham Gazette

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The Edison Schools Controversy


In the latest development in the saga of who will control five of the city's worst schools, Chancellor Harold O. Levy has given parents two extra weeks to weigh information and make up their minds about whether these schools should continue under the auspices of the Board of Education or be turned over to Edison Schools, the country's largest commercial school management company. For Edison to take over, a majority of parents in each school must vote to convert to charter status.

The debate about new management for the schools became especially heated in January, when parents in two of the five schools and other Edison opponents held meetings to protest the plan, which Chancellor Levy and which most of the members of the Board of Education support. Concerns about the plan range from opposition to putting public schools in private hands to fears about teachers' job security to worries about Edison's track record.

Here's how things got to this point. Toward the end of the last school year, the then newly-installed chancellor announced that he intended to accept proposals from for-profit school management companies who thought they could successfully turn around some of the city's failing schools. Levy said he was not committing to anything; he just wanted to see what they had to offer. Fourteen such companies submitted proposals in August 2000.

In December, the Board of Education announced that it would give Edison Schools alone the opportunity to try its hand at running some of the city's worst schools. Levy touted the additional resources that Edison would bring into the schools, up to $2 million per school for new programs in reading and math and training for teachers.

The five schools Edison would run are PS 161 in Manhattan, PS 88 in the Bronx, IS 246, IS 320 and IS 111 in Brooklyn, serving about 5,000 students all together. All of them are SURR schools (schools under registration review), which means they are on the state's list of the worst of the worst schools in the state. IS 320 and IS 111 were scheduled to be closed for failing to improve despite the extra attention and resources they received as a result of becoming SURR schools. IS 111 has been on the SURR list since 1989.

Edison Schools, which runs 113 schools in 45 cities around the country, works to improve student achievement through longer school days, student uniforms, and more computers in the classrooms, but its record for success is not consistent. And most of its evidence of student improvement comes from its own assessments.

Many parents initially seemed ready to give something new a try. But, as time dragged on and information about Edison and the conversion process remained scarce, parental doubts started to surface. Groups that opposed Edison, either in principle or in practice, began to organize and voice their concerns. Now angry accusations of foul play and defensive responses are drowning out the important conversation about what is best for students.

Parents are to begin voting yes or no to Edison during the second week of March.

Jessica Sounds Off:

It is hard to believe that parents and others concerned about children stuck in these abysmal schools are fighting to maintain the status quo there. These schools have claimed to be "turning around" for years, with no convincing evidence of improvement. In the meantime, thousands of children have come and gone without even a minimally adequate education. That parents in these long-failing schools have not embraced a change only attests to flaws in the Board of Education's planning and implementation of the conversion.

The Board. has been unable to improve these schools; Edison's track record is not strong enough to offer any guarantees. If Edison and the chancellor want committed families in the new schools, they should give parents a real choice and make enrollment there voluntary.

Jessica Wolff is a public school parent and Director of Policy Development at the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, a not-for-profit coalition working to reform New York State's education finance system to ensure adequate resources and the opportunity for a sound basic education for all students in New York City. The views expressed are her own.

School Boards


 

If you're seeking confusing ballots, narrow margins of victory, and hand-counted votes,look no further than the contests for New York City's 32 community school boards. It takes weeks to get the results, and many befuddled voters don't understand how to mark their ballots.

There's at least one big difference, though, between the races for school board in New York City and the current furor in Florida: While the stakes in Florida are undeniably high, many critics say it really doesn't matter who wins New York's school boards races. The boards are virtually powerless and, whatever the lofty goals that surrounded their founding three decades ago, critics charge that they are today nothing more than an unnecessary bureaucracy, and an occasional source of corruption.

That argument got an added boost earlier this month when Celestine Miller, a former superintendent of District 29 in Queens, and five others were charged in a 123-count indictment alleging that they took bribes totaling more than $900,000 to rig bids for $6 million in computer equipment for 19 schools. It's a long way, critics say, from the rallying cries of "community empowerment" and "community control" with which the school boards began.

Supporters see it differently. School boards have been scapegoats, they say, for the failures in the educational system. Whatever their flaws, they are in some ways a more open and democratic institution than many others in New York.

COMMUNITY CONTROL

Community school boards began with the grandest of intentions, and amid the deepest of controversies. The 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision in Brown vs. Board of Ed, combined with a 1966 federal report that concluded that the system, not individual students, was to blame for their educational failure, led to demands by parents and local communities to have more direct control of their schools.

In 1967, the Ford Foundation financed "demonstration" school districts as an experiment in what was called decentralization in three areas of the city, one of which was in a part of Brooklyn called Ocean Hill-Brownsville.

A large fracas began when the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Governing Board, comprised of nine parents and three community leaders, announced its intention to transfer 19 school employees, including 13 teachers, out of the district for allegedly sabotaging efforts at decentralization. Supporters of the employees charged the ousters were ethnically based. Amid charges of racism and anti-Semitism, the United Federation of Teachers went on strike over the issue, and its president Albert Shanker. went to jail. Eventually the teachers were reinstated, though all transferred to other districts. The State Education Department took over as the interim authority of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district.

Though conflict had marred the experiment, most believed that decentralization was a worthwhile principle, and so in February of 1969, the state legislature passed a decentralization law creating the 32 school districts in New York. Specifically, the new law empowered school boards to hire the district superintendent, as well as school administrators such as principals and assistant principals.

LOW TURNOUT, LONG WAIT VS. INCLUSIVE, INNOVATIVE

Back in the 1960s, a popular button read, "Suppose they gave an election and nobody came." With turnouts hovering nowadays at around five percent, the community school board elections come close. Elections for school board members are not even held on Election Day. They are held in May, every three years; the next one will be in 2002.

But that is not the only way they are different from standard elections. Registered voters can participate in school board elections, but so can "parent voters." Parent voters do not have to be registered. They do not even have to be United States citizens. The only requirement is that they be at least 18 years old and the parent or guardian of a child in a public school. People may vote in either the district in which they live or the district where their child attends school, but not both.

The school board elections employ a proportional voting system. When they go to the polling place, the voters rank those running for nine at-large seats in order of their preference on paper ballots, marking a 1 by their first choice, a 2 by their second and so on up to nine candidates.

According to New York State Assemblyman Steven Sanders, a Manhattan Democrat who chairs the Education Committee, the proportional voting system was designed "to prevent a majority, white or black or whatever, from controlling each and every seat on a school board."

Robert Ritchie, executive director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, says the system gives each individual voter a greater role in electing at least one board member.

The result are community boards made up of people that better reflect the diversity of New York. And, even though many complain about lack of voter involvement with school boards today, there is no shortage of candidates. A total of 25 people applied this fall to fill a single opening on School Board 8 in the Bronx.

Critics of the proportional voting system in New York City school board elections, argue that it can be complicated and confusing.

"The problem is that this system is used to elect only one group of candidates every three years," says Rodney Saunders, a member and former president of School Board 11 in the northeast Bronx. "The voting public doesn't fully understand it. and too many people at the Board of Elections don't understand it, so it takes much too long, and those counting the ballots are hard-pressed to get it right."

Further frustrating voters is the weeks it takes to get the results. Saunders says officials don't even start to count the votes until two weeks after the election and then tabulate them by hand.

CLIPPING THEIR WINGS

In the last election, which was held last year, voters may have stayed away from polls because the community boards have so little power. Under the prodding of then-Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, the New York State Legislature in 1996 redefined the responsibilities of local school boards, taking away much of their power, including the authority to name a the district superintendent.

Today, school boards no longer manage day-to-day affairs within the district or hire or promote school district employees, including principals. Instead, the local school boards set educational policy, mostly just by helping to select a superintendent for the school district. Even here they don't have the final say; the chancellor does.

The 1996 law removed much of the rationale for the boards' existence, according to Public Advocate Mark Green, who declared in a speech delivered in April that school boards should be eliminated. "The local school boards were a great idea -- in theory -- but rarely worked in practice," Green stated. "Some became patronage mills, doling out jobs and contracts to friends. Most, now stripped of their powers, are today excess weight in a bureaucracy that needs to be simplified and flattened. It's time for them to go."

DEFENDING THE BOARDS

Rodney Saunders, a strong proponent of the local boards, says he ran for school board, an unpaid position, in 1996 because, after his daughter started kindergarten, he felt he had a vested interest in working to improve the school system. He says some people run for school board after serving as a leader of a school parents' association, while others see it as a first step in entering the political arena. About 30 percent of school board members have children in the school system.

Saunders says, "School board members, as elected officials, can use the power of the parents and the press to call attention to conditions that exist within a specific school or the entire district, such as the need for additional seats or buildings because of severe overcrowding."

He believes that corruption among board members is rare, but that the community boards have been convenient scapegoats. "The press and Board of Education were always blaming school boards for failures," he complains. Now that the community boards have less power, and "we can't be blamed, it's 'the parents' fault' or the 'students' fault.'"

Even Assemblyman Steve Sanders, who was a driving force behind passage of the 1996 school reform legislation, stops short of advocating the complete elimination of school boards.

"We should not have a school system without a place in the structure for parental involvement in decision making," Sanders says. "I'm more comfortable with the way school boards are today."

2002

Whether one is for or against community school boards, doing away with them would not be a simple task. "Just as the 1969 decentralization was by way of enactment of the state legislature, so were the huge changes of 1996 and so would any hypothetical change eliminating school boards," Sanders says. He adds that any change in school governance relating to the voting public would have to be approved, as always, by the United States Justice Department, since three of New York City's boroughs fall under the protection of the Voting Rights Act.

So, once again, a handful of dedicated souls are sure to make their way to local polling places in May 2002 to mark paper ballots for nine people seeking an office with little power and no compensation. And then they will all wait weeks to see who won.

Resources

 

School Funding


This week, Jesse Robinson, a 1999 graduate of Oberlin College, who is starting her second year as a math teacher at Junior High School 145 in the Bronx, was thinking about her friend, Amy Jones, who taught by her side last year. Jones is starting a new year as a teacher in Great Neck, Long Island.

The contrasts between what the two teachers' schools will offer students this year could not be sharper. Robinson teaches several classes a day, each with 30 sixth graders. Jones has 17 students, period. JHS 145 offers Robinson and her students a library that is tidy but almost empty of books. At the Great Neck school, Jones has access to a rich, varied, collection, including a whole shelf devoted to the latest education research.

Jones has already met with her new principal and a school reading specialist to talk about the strength and weaknesses of each of the 17 children in her room, something Robinson has never done at JHS145.

It's not that Jones didn't love teaching at JHS 145. She did. She just couldn't pass up the opportunity to teach in a district that spends more than twice as much on each child as New York City does - or to earn an extra $15,000. Jones has gone from earning $35,000 in New York to $50,000 in the suburbs.

Robinson shook her head. "The students here need what the suburban students have even more than they do," she said. "And they get so much less."

Few things are as constant in education as the gap in spending between New York City and other districts in New York State. Two years ago, the last year for which there is data, the city spent about $8,100 per child. Neighboring suburban districts in Westchester and Long Island spent on average close to $13,000, and districts around the state spent over $10,000. Great Neck spent $18,915. Year in and year out New York State assemblymen, senators, and the governor vow to put an end to the disparities. Year after year it survives.

A lawsuit brought by the Campaign For Fiscal Equity, a coalition of reformers, seeking to overturn the state's school finance system is drawing to a close. After seven years of motions, challenges and appeals, a trial in State Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the system ended in July and a ruling by Judge Leland DeGrasse is expected within the next eight weeks.

This is just one of some 70 lawsuits across the nation addressing the huge disparities separating city schools from those in the suburbs.

THE CONTEXT: SCHOOLS OPEN UNDER SIEGE, AGAIN

Despite record increases in both state and city education spending, as city schools open this week tens of thousands of students are returning to buildings that are severely overcrowded and under-supplied. Sixteen thousand students are reporting to 31 high schools that have no science labs.

Thousands of children are going back to buildings surrounded by scaffolding, erected as stopgap measures until repairs to crumbling facades can be made. Five thousand Queens high school students will be lucky if they can get into an art room because their seven high schools have one art room a piece. In District 13, none of the existing art rooms has running water.

In elementary schools throughout the city thousands of children, like the kids at PS 71 in Queens, will go a year without a single gym class or, like the children at PS 8 in upper Manhattan, they1ll spend the entire year indoors because their schools don1t have playgrounds.

If this year is like last, only 40 percent of the students citywide will pass the city's reading exam - given in grades 3,5,6, and 7 - and only 33 percent will pass the math test. And that includes kids in the best districts. In Jesse Robinson's school, 14 percent of students passed the math exam and 29 percent passed reading.

As if the City's schools weren1t beleaguered enough, a new study, released last week by a Harvard University researcher, reports that African-American students in New York City who took advantage of privately funded vouchers scored significantly better than their peers after two years in private schools. White and Hispanic students did not show any gains.

It is statistics like these that keep vouchers and privatization alive in local races and in this year's presidential campaign. If elected, Republican nominee George W. Bush will give children vouchers if the schools they attended fail to meet state standards for three years in a row.

Some economists, notably Erik A. Hanushek of the Hoover Institution argue that increasing school funding does little to improve student achievement, but inner-city public school administrators, teachers, parents and an army of researchers across the country say the evidence shows that financing makes a huge difference.

THE NATIONAL SCENE

Since 1971, there have been 70 lawsuits in 41 states against state finance systems that allow suburban districts to flourish while inner-city schools starve for funds.

Plaintiffs in these cases take advantage of a historical fact that sets education apart from all other public services: state constitutions mention education as a state responsibility. Courts have repeatedly interpreted this to mean that states must fund schools equitably.

Litigation has resulted in a wide range of reforms, according to the Consortium For Policy Research In Education The most controversial law may be the one enacted in Vermont two years ago, where wealthy residents were made to cut back on spending in their districts and high poverty schools were supplied with much more.

Most states, however, find it difficult to alter spending radically, even after they've been ordered to by courts. One reason is that states do not control all school spending. Almost every school district in the country is an independent revenue-generating entity with the power to raise money for schools by taxing local property. States around the nation contribute only about half of what it costs to run schools. Though states use their education budgets to counterbalance disparities among districts - giving smaller shares of the state1s overall school budget to wealthy districts - districts have the power to supplement state aid with their own revenues.

Another reason that states have trouble making school funding equitable is, in a word, politics. Even though states contribute only half of schools' budgets, education is expensive. State education packages are almost always the largest item in a state's budget. As a result they come in for a lot of political attention. In New York State, education spending is 45 percent of the overall budget, and every state legislator has a stake in how the money is spent.

"It's not like energy where there may or may not be a plant in the legislator1s district. Every senator and assemblyman has a school," said State Assemblyman Steven Sanders, chair of New York Assembly's education committee.

HOW NEW YORK STATE FINANCES ITS SCHOOLS

The New York City pubic school population includes 60 percent of the state's neediest children, and the city has the highest costs of any of the state's school districts. Yet New York City gets less state aid per capita than the average per capita aid in the rest of the state.

Over the years, special commissions and a parade of state officials deplore the fact that the state's finance system under-funds New York City. Nevertheless, each year the system is still standing at the end of the legislative season.

New York allocates state aid - at least when it comes to New York City - on the basis of student enrollment. The City enrolls 1.1 million students, 37.2 percent of the state's total, and gets 35.65 percent of the state's aid.

On paper, the state vigorously denies that money is divvied up on the basis of the number of students enrolled in each district. Theoretically, each district's share is calculated using a series of formulas that give special weight to factors like student socio-economic status and district wealth.

In reality though, according to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and state education officials who testified earlier this year in the lawsuit against the state, New York State distributes aid on the basis of a longstanding political deal to hold New York City funding to 37 percent of the state's annual school budget.

"The political decisions are made first and the formulas are tacked on later," said Dr. Thomas Sobol, New York State Commissioner of Education from 1987 to 1995. "It's a reflection of stability in the balance of power [in Albany]."

Steven Sanders, the assemblyman who heads the education committee, said using enrollment to calculate aid actually boosts the city's share of state funding. "When I first became chair, New York City's overall share of state education dollars was somewhere around 33 percent or 34 percent. Enrollment is not a good definition of equity but at the very least, we thought, New York City ought to be receiving at least as much as its student enrollment."

Sanders said that after difficult negotiations, the Republican leadership in Albany has agreed to give New York City roughly a 39 percent share of each year's increase in state spending, as a way of bringing per capita spending in the city up to the state average.

But the Campaign for Fiscal Equity is not satisfied - either with the Albany deal or with the system of formulas the legislature ignores. It is calling on Judge DeGrasse to toss out the state's system entirely and to replace it with one that distributes aid on the basis of what it actually costs to educate students in a given district.

Under the system envisioned by the Campaign, the state would figure out what educational essentials were necessary for different types of students to meet the state's new learning standards. What would high poverty kids need to succeed? What about immigrant children? What about middle-income kids? Once that was determined, budget negotiators would distribute money on the basis of student need. The New York State Board of Regents endorses a similar plan in its most recent report.

There's only one problem. "Nobody knows how much it costs to educate these kids," said John Augenblick, a Denver-based expert on school finance. "What you have is 50 different ways of doing it, none of which is scientific."

Jesse Robinson looked over at the four computers in her room, which didn't work last year, and sighed. A brand-new first year teacher stuck his head In her room and introduced himself. Robinson gave him a huge smile and welcomed him with hearty and enthusiastic encouragement. She loves her job and her school, she said. But she can't tell yet whether she'll stay. The demands placed on her by low funding might just be too great.

 

The Teachers' Contract


One hundred fifty thousand New York City children do not have certified teachers because of a severe and mounting teacher shortage in the city.

The question is, is New York City losing its best teachers to high-paying suburban districts?

That's the question the United Federation of Teachers hopes to keep before the public this fall as negotiators for the union and the New York City Board of Education meet to hammer out the first new teachers' contract in five years. The current contract expires November 15. Negotiations started at the beginning of September.

The New York State Department of Education shows teacher salaries outside the city outstripping city salaries by wide margins. For example, in Senate candidate Hillary Clinton's home town, Chappaqua, the median teacher salary is $75,190, compared to $47,345 in New York City. And it's not just posh districts that pay more. The median salary in Yonkers is $67,291. In Mt. Vernon, it's $67,900.

Starting salaries all over the region dwarf New York City salaries, too. A first year teacher in Yonkers earns $40,000. New York City pays $31,900.

The stakes for New York City children in the outcome of the teacher talks are unusually high this time around. Some of the most serious teacher shortages, in secondary school math and science, are in areas where kids need instruction the most. Starting in June 2003, graduating seniors will be denied high school diplomas unless they pass rigorous regents exams in five subjects, including math and science.

Mayor Giuliani has already conceded that the city needs to raise teacher pay. But he wants raises tied to teacher performance, something the union adamantly opposes. Merit pay systems differ around the country, with some rewarding individual teachers for improvements in their students' test scores, and others giving raises to entire schools when scores go up. No one from the mayor's office is saying which of these Giuliani favors.

Both the mayor and Schools Chancellor Harold Levy also want major concessions from the teachers on seniority rules. Levy has said he won't leave the negotiating table until principals possess the authority to reassign and discipline incompetent teachers. "Right now, managers do not believe or have faith in the system to get rid of unable teachers," Levy said as contract talks started.

Both Levy and Giuliani understand the significance of the pay gap between city and suburban teachers, though, and with Wall Street booming, teachers are not likely to let the two men forget it.

"The city has the money," said Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers. "There are no excuses this year."

Peggy J. Farber is freelance journalist specializing in children's issues. Her reporting on conditions of NYC children has appeared in City Limits Magazine as well as on National Public Radio.

Board of Education Hosts Student Performers


In The News: (may '00)

The Board of Education hardly springs to mind when one thinks of New York City cultural institutions. But every Monday for one idyllic hour this most embattled of NY bureaucracies is transformed into the city's newest -- if most unusual -- performance venue. Since March dozens of student singers, poets, actors, dancers, and musicians -- all culled from NYC public schools -- have appeared through a new program, Arts Mondays.

This initiative is the brainchild of Harold O. Levy, currently interim schools chancellor but said to have the inside track on a permanent appointment. According to Levy, Arts Mondays "are a terrific celebration of the children of the public schools of New York City, the world capital of the arts."

While this program is designed to showcase talented students, it is also a way to motivate administrators in a very direct, personal way. Those who work at the Board of Education have few opportunities to interact with students -- their raison d'etre. Similarly, students are not a common sight at Livingston Street.

Executive Assistant to the Chancellor Jonathan Levi explained. "When we see the discipline and passion of the young performers in front of us, we marvel at their commitment and renew our own. Arts Mondays are about crystallizing for ourselves the importance of the arts in our students' educations."

In the last three years, arts education programs in City schools have grown prodigiously, thanks to Project Arts and the Center for Arts Education. Each year arts education funding has increased until now, for the 1999-2000 school year, Levy reports that "every one of the 1,100 schools in the system has a program dedicated to the arts."

Thus far Arts Mondays have presented a generous sampling of students' artistic passions. These include jazz from Bayside High School teenagers, aspiring poets from Stuyvesant High School, a musical theatre showcase and poetry recitation by, respectively, Brooklyn and Bronx elementary students and, not least, opera. This last is a known favorite of the Mayor, although he has not yet been sighted in the lunchtime crowd. No matter, the audiences for Arts Mondays are probably better off without Giuliani right in their midst, especially if there are any more programs like the very first waiting in the wings: That's when students from Talent Unlimited High School sang selections from "Working," the musical based upon a book by that famously pro-union octogenarian Studs Terkel.

Arts Mondays performances will continue at the Board of Education through the school year.

Rhonda Sounds Off:

The culture wars haven't been going so well for the Mayor lately. First there was the Brooklyn Museum mess and the City's ultimate capitulation. Then that German artist used him over at the Whitney in a most unflattering way. Now even his own home is no sanctuary.

Donna Hanover, the Mayor's wife, is about to take a turn in "The Vagina Monologues." This extraordinary feminist play by Eve Ensler celebrates women, and like the title says, their vaginas -- as well as many other parts, including hearts and minds. (I saw it a few years ago and believed then, as now, that everyone should see it, regardless of the player.)

But Ms. Hanover's most recent foray into thespianism is hardly the kind of vote-getting strategy a Republican senatorial candidate might choose for his spouse. Still, one explanation might be that this simply illustrates what a truly liberated 21st century kind of guy Donna married -- one who would never even dream of limiting her activities. Here's another theory: familiarity breeds contempt. In this case though it may well breed more, or at least more effective contempt than can be mustered by even the Mayor's less personal critics. Let's hear it for family values.

Rhonda Zangwill is a writer, editor and teacher in New York City. She does not claim to be a critic, but she knows what she likes. She has been published in various special interest and trade journals, even some that are still in existence.

Marisol Update: Prospects are Grim


In its most recent report, released March 10, a panel of national experts painted a grim picture of front line social work practice in New York City's foster care system, and warned that if the Administration for Children's Services does not raise its practice standards for field workers, impressive system reforms achieved under Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta will have "little lasting benefit."

The report is the work of the Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel, established as part of a settlement of the massive federal lawsuit against the child welfare agency, Marisol v. Giuliani, brought by Children's Rights, Inc.

Based on visits to ACS sites and private contract agencies, as well as case record reviews, interviews, and a survey of 61 private agencies, the panel confirmed what the system's harshest critics have repeatedly said:

  • Many front line workers fail to form an adequate picture of a family's strengths and weaknesses, and "often need a good deal of guidance in understanding why people behave as they do."
  • Parents, children and foster families regularly have to resort to outside resources such as children's law guardians to get information that should be forthcoming from caseworkers.
  • Caseworkers mechanically refer families to unnecessary parenting classes and treatment programs, and fail to help them with needed services such as housing subsidies.
  • Visits between foster children and their biological families are routinely restricted to the minimum required by law, that is, one hour every other week, for no reason other than a system-wide misunderstanding of state law.

"This is a critical moment in the history of New York City's child welfare system," noted Douglas Nelson, head of the special panel and president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. "Unless ACS commits itself to a new phase of reform that is focused on practice, its accomplishments will have little lasting value."

The panel also delivered harsh criticism of the City's family courts, where all child welfare cases are adjudicated. Citing pervasive delays, overwhelming caseloads, and inadequate legal representation for biological parents, the report stated that the judicial system is "frighteningly close to abdicating the court's basic responsibility to protect the rights of children and families."

Farber Sounds Off:

The Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel report is a must-read for New York City residents who care about children. It is the frankest assessment the Special Advisory panel has released. It's also the most comprehensive, based on dozens of field visits, case record reviews, a survey of 61 agencies, interviews and several focus groups.

We've built a child welfare system in New York that, in effect, does one thing -- remove children from their families when there are signs of serious trouble. The unpleasant truth is that in the current system, it really makes no difference whether front line child welfare workers are any good at helping families because despite the rhetoric, it is not the goal. They're good enough at getting children out of one household and into another, and that's really all we ask of them.

It's not clear how much influence the report's authors wield. Under the terms of the settlement in Marisol v. Giuliani, the panelists are advisors only; their recommendations are just that -- recommendations. If at the end of this year the panelists conclude that ACS has not followed their recommendations in good faith, lawyers for foster children who brought the suit can resume litigation.

Scoppetta has shown real strength in initiating and implementing the ACS Reform Plan, which has revamped the way the system evaluates agencies and rewards contracts. However, unless this work is followed by a major effort to convince front line workers that their mission goes beyond removing children to treating whole families, the system will never see first rate casework practice.

For a copy of the full report, ready for download, go to the Annie E. Casey Foundation link below and follow the links to the New York Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel.

Peggy J. Farber is freelance journalist specializing in children's issues. Her reporting on conditions of NYC children has appeared in City Limits Magazine as well as on National Public Radio.

School Vouchers


THE LOWDOWN:

After condemning the NYC public schools last April as a system that "should be blown up," Mayor Giuliani included $12 million in his budget for school vouchers. His school choice proposal sparked a nasty political battle with Chancellor Crew. The debate over vouchers continues. Advocates say that the current system is incapable of teaching kids, and that innovation is necessary. They cite other cities, like Milwaukee, where students in voucher schools have improved markedly, especially inner city kids. Naysayers foresee the death of public education. They fear that vouchers will lure students and funds out of the public school system. Taxpayer monies, they assert, should not be used to send students to private schools - especially not parochial ones. This objection was raised in Milwaukee, where an experimental voucher program sends 8,000 students to private schools; the US Supreme Court has allowed the program to continue. In New York, vouchers will be a hot early issue for the next Chancellor.

VOUCHERS CAN WORK:

"The School That Vouchers Built" - Sol Stern's vehemently pro-vouchers piece tells the success stories of four private schools in Milwaukee and Cleveland that accept voucher students. His report card: "straight A." Vouchers are the answers.

State of the City Address - The speech in which Mayor Giuliani first proposed the experimental use of vouchers in NYC schools, the impetus of an extended political battle between Mayor and Chancellor.


"I oftentimes want to go the map and cut out Milwaukee. You're causing me pure hell in New York." - Chancellor Crew at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

VOUCHERS WON'T FIX THE PROBLEM:

Emergency Campaign Against Vouchers - The United Federation of Teachers and its 140,000 members are solidly opposed to vouchers. Their largest objection is that students with vouchers may not be accepted to the school of their choice, or to any school at all. They maintain that reduction in class size will produce greater improvements in student achievement.

"My School Reforms Make a Difference" - Then-Chancellor Rudy Crew's op-ed in the Daily News about how reform is turning around the NYC public school system, and why vouchers are not a viable solution.

MORE BACKGROUND INFO:

An Evaluation of the New York City School Choice Scholarships Program: The First Year - Details the findings of an experiment conducted about the implementation of school choice through the use of vouchers. Findings are mixed: Children in voucher schools did only slightly better on standardized tests than their public school counterparts. Their parents reported being more content with their child's education. Seventy-five percent of families offered scholarships used them; they were of higher income-levels than those who did not. This study provides some interesting insights into the realities of vouchers.

Education Week - A thorough treatment of a variety of issues, including vouchers. A good primer on the issues and politics of vouchers, with extensive links to related articles and sites.

School Choice 1999: What's Happening in the States - Web version of the Heritage Foundation annual publication. A comprehensive site with coverage of the status and history of vouchers in NYS.

Children's Scholarship Fund - Since June1998, the Children's Scholarship Fund has over 40,000 scholarships providing up to 75% of a child's private or parochial school tuition.

 

State of the State


Governor George E. Pataki surprised New York City schools advocates with a series of education proposals in his January 2000 State of the State address aimed at expanding the State's public school teaching force. The measures put education at the center of his annual address for the first time in the five years he's been in office. New initiatives include college scholarships for 5,000 undergraduates a year who pledge to teach in designated areas, and $2,000 for teachers with temporary licenses to help them achieve permanent certification. Citing famous New Yorkers Colin Powell and Billy Joel, who, theoretically, are barred from teaching under current certification rules, the Governor also proposed creating an alternate credentialing route for people who have established themselves in other fields.

Public school advocates reacted with a mixture of enthusiasm and skepticism. Jill Chaifetz, director of Advocates for Children, said, "We think these are terrific ideas. The only thing is, just a year ago the governor vetoed a slew of proposals just like these." State Assemblyman Steven Sanders, Democrat of Manhattan, chair of the Education Committee, said, "This is the same Governor who vetoed out of existence a teacher mentoring program that had been in the budget for years. So I can't help but be a little bit skeptical of his sincerity. Maybe the latest poll results influenced him but whatever the reason, I'm pleased."

Farber Sounds Off:

The New York City public school system has a huge staffing problem ahead. Of the 75,000 teachers currently in the system, 50,000 will become eligible for retirement within the next few years. In other words, the governor's initiatives, if they are funded fully, a big if -- don't go far enough. Jill Chaifetz, director of Advocates for Children, says, "There was this huge influx of teachers sort of as part of the baby boom and now they're all hitting retirement age. The Governor's proposal is so much better than what we have now. But 5000 is only beginning to touch the shortage." Governor Pataki and the legislature are going to have to work together a lot harder to expand New York City's teaching staff, or City kids will never meet the state's tough, welcome, new academic standards.

Peggy J. Farber is freelance journalist specializing in children's issues. Her reporting on conditions of NYC children has appeared in City Limits Magazine as well as on National Public Radio.

Better Late Than Never


New York State's budget, finally passed in early August. It includes new desperately-needed statewide funding for day care for poor working families, adding $162 million dollars to the $460 million child care budget. This should translate into about 50,000 new day care slots across the state. Supply may not meet demand in NYC, though, where 40,000 children are already on the waiting list for subsidized day care. The City's low-cost day care program currently accommodates 66,000 kids. Advocates expect the waiting list to balloon as deadlines for ending parents' welfare benefits approach.

Farber Sounds Off:

Watch out in the coming months for the early effects of the new federal Adoption and Safe Families Act. The law reflects the good intentions of US legislators but it may wreak havoc with NYC families caught up in the child welfare system. The law requires states to terminate parental rights of those parents whose children have been in foster care longer than 15 months. Roughly 40,000 children are in foster care in NYC. On average they stay for over four years, in part because Family Court is so overwhelmed it can't move any faster. Turning these kids into orphans is a risky public policy.

Peggy J. Farber is freelance journalist specializing in children's issues. Her reporting on conditions of NYC children has appeared in City Limits Magazine as well as on National Public Radio.

Environmentalists See Mixed Bag in Cuomo Budget


ClimateChange

Gov. Andrew Cuomo draws a clear connection between extreme weather events like Superstorm Sandy and climate change. And he argues that the challenges posed to New York State by climate change will only grow.

But the governor’s proposed budget this year reveals an uneven focus: major investments in areas like energy efficiency and solar power are coupled with what advocates say is woefully inadequate support for core environmental programs that are on the front-line of the state’s response to climate change.

“It’s great to see that he’s [Cuomo] making that connection [to climate change],” said Dan Hendrick, vice-president for external affairs at the New York League of Conservation Voters. “But…the investments aren’t following. We’re not seeing that broader vision [in terms of] sustainability and resiliency.”

There is virtually uniform agreement among environmentalists that funding for the state Department of Environmental Conservation must be increased. The agency has lost approximately 800 staff members since 2008. Yet the governor’s proposed $1 billion DEC budget includes funding for only one new staff person.

The agency’s mission is fundamentally tied to slowing down the forces contributing to climate change.

“DEC needs to be a central part of the state’s climate change strategy and planning,” said Richard Schrader, the state legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Despite its limited resources, the agency is doing “a very good job in its clean air and overall climate analysis.”

The DEC’s Office of Climate Change is “aggressively” working on policies that will lower the state’s carbon emissions and New York State participates in the multi-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a carbon-trading program, noted DEC Commissioner Joseph Martens during a January legislative hearing on the budget.

The agency monitors and enforces state and federal air quality standards – a responsibility that includes regulating the level of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, generated by new power plants.

Furthermore, the DEC is one of the state’s first responders to the impacts of climate change. The agency tracks the condition of the state’s coastal and inland water bodies, and its forests, which are slowly being altered by the increased carbon levels in the atmosphere. The DEC is also spearheading efforts to cope with the entry of invasive species into the state, which has been exacerbated by climate change.

“It is a vitally important agency,” said Katherine Nadeau, policy director at Environmental Advocates, an Albany-based watchdog group. “[But], they’re dying by a thousand cuts.”

Re-investing in DEC staff is necessary, argued Laura Haight, a senior environmental associate with the New York Public Interest Group, “to protect New Yorkers and respond to...ever-increasing natural and manmade disasters.”

The agency is down to 2,700 full-time employees throughout the state, about 77 percent of the workforce employed by the DEC before the recession began in 2007.

 “These are very substantial reductions,” said state Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, D.-Manhattan. “Oversight has diminished…I believe there is less enforcement activity [of environmental regulations].”

The agency’s ability to do its job – from monitoring and reducing air pollution to inspecting sewage treatment plants to plugging abandoned gas wells – has been questioned repeatedly by environmental groups and state legislators during the past few years.

And in the context of a changing climate, these functions take on added weight. The agency notes, for example, that air pollution not only harms human health, but also can “damage all the elements of the ecosystem.”

Kavanagh and Environmental Advocates stress that they believe DEC employees have made an enormous effort to continue the agency’s mandate, but Kavanagh adds, “something has to give…they’re trying to act efficiently [but] important objectives suffer.”

An analysis of state data reported in September by Environmental Advocates found that New York’s “formal enforcement” of provisions related to the federal Clean Air, Clean Water and Resource Conservation and Recovery Acts had “decreased by nearly 25 percent between 2009 and 2012.” The study also found that inspections of polluting facilities overall dropped by 35 percent during the same period.

The DEC assailed the report, saying it “distorts key facts, omits others, and outright ignores this administration’s strong environmental record.”

Katherine Nadeau of Environmental Advocates told the Gotham Gazette that “we are 100 percent solid in our data – it’s all public.”

The DEC has taken steps to manage enforcement in new ways with less manpower, including the establishment of a program that allows environmental offenders to avoid penalties if they self-report violations.

Kavanagh, who leads the newly formed New York State Caucus of Environmental Legislators, said there is significant interest in getting more resources to the DEC.

“We are early in the budget process. This is going to be an ongoing conversation,” he said. “We know there are people on the other side of this who would prefer less [environmental] enforcement.”

A fight is also being waged over the “modest” increase proposed by the governor to the state’s Environmental Protection Fund. The EPF is supported by the Real Estate Transfer Tax and underwrites a wide array of environmental and sustainability projects throughout the state.

The $4 million included in this year’s budget would bring the EPF to $157 million.

A coalition of more than 100 environmental organizations have asked the state legislature to increase the EPF to $200 million, and maintain the EPF’s current share of proceeds from the Real Estate Transfer Tax.

“Additional funding will position New York to address the critical issues,” the groups said in a Feb. 6 letter to lawmakers, “empowering our municipalities to become more resilient and reduce risk from storm impacts.”

Assemblyman Robert Sweeney, a Long Island Democrat who chairs that body’s Environmental Conservation committee, said the legislature is looking closely at ideas for revenue, including a surcharge on plastic water bottles, which would “support a stronger EPF.” He said that it was a “tougher sell to single out one agency” – the DEC – for increased funding even though the agency has suffered arguably disproportionate staffing cuts.

A sense of urgency about EPF funding crosses party lines.

“We need to get that [EPF] figure way above,” said state Senate Environmental Conservation committee chair, Mark Grisanti, R.-Buffalo. “I’m shooting for $200 million.”

Photo credit: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 



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