Dear New Yorker,
We hope the new school year has gotten off to a smooth start.
As always, the City Council is here to help with any education-related questions or concerns that folks have, so please feel free to reach out to us at any time. Contact information for your local Council representative can be found here .
With the 2011-2012 school year now officially in swing, we wanted share with you a copy of our first-ever NYC Council Education Report. In this report (see below), you'll find important information about some of the important work the City Council has been doing to help maintain and improve the quality of public education in our city.
If you have any questions about the initiatives described below, please feel free to contact Mathangi Subramanian in the City Council's Policy Division. She can be reached by phone at (212) 788-9194 or by email at msubramanian@council.nyc.gov .
Thank you and best wishes for a productive and enjoyable school year!
Sincerely,
Christine C. Quinn
Speaker
NYC Council
Robert Jackson
Chair, Education Committee
NYC Council
Preserving Teaching Positions and Vital Programs for our Youth
You may recall, as part of this year's budget agreement, the City Council and the United Federation of Teachers successfully negotiated with Mayor Bloomberg to save thousands of teaching jobs.
With a new round of budget projections already on the horizon, we want to assure everyone that we'll continue to fight to ensure that our schools are fully staffed. As we made clear to the Administration, laying off teachers is not a solution. The Department of Education (DOE) must look more closely at its contracts and come up with other ways to trim its budget.
Below is a quick roundup of some of the other important budget victories we scored this year:
- Public Safety - This year's budget agreement not only kept all of our fire companies open, but it also protected funding for the City's most recent class of police recruits, who were officially sworn in this summer as the newest additions to New York's Finest.
- Childcare - Substantial restorations were made to childcare and after-school programs.
- Libraries - We successfully restored $61 million in funding to the New York, Brooklyn and Queens library systems, ensuring that most, if not all, branches will remain open at least five days of week.
- Parks - Restorations to the City's Parks Department allowed public pools to remain open all summer.
- Youth Programs - The Council also provided funding number of programs and initiatives aimed at keeping our children as safe and healthy as possible, including child health clinics, obesity prevention, asthma control, and the Children Under Five Initiative, which provides mental health screenings and counseling to children five years of age or younger
We still had to make some tough decisions this year. But we were able to pass a fiscally responsible budget on time - one that protects the most vital services without mortgaging our city's future.
Thanks again to everyone who helped make these victories possible.
Ensuring Greater Transparency & Accountability in the City's School System
As part of our ongoing effort to ensure greater transparency and accountability in the City's public school system, the City Council recently passed two new laws that will shed much-needed light on the City's graduation rate and achievement gap and help us better understand the impact that schools closings are having on students.
Local Law 42 of 2011 , sponsored by Council Member Robert Jackson, requires the DOE to report the number of students discharged from middle and high school and explain the reasons for their dismissal.
As you may know, the DOE has a number of categories of students who left school before graduating, but are characterized as discharges from the school system rather than drop outs. Students who move to a location outside of the city of New York or who transfer to a private or parochial school, for instance, are considered discharges; however, there is significant controversy regarding whether students characterized as discharges by the DOE are considered drop-outs under federal law. Furthermore, some critics have charged that the DOE has overused this discharge category as a means to inflate graduation rates.
The data required by Local Law 42 will bring a level of transparency to the student discharge procedures, helping us to better determine whether the City's graduation rate is a true reflection of student success and achievement.
Local Law 43 of 2011 , sponsored by Council Member Fidler, requires the DOE to provide data on the number of students who were transferred to an alternate school as a result of school closure, including but not limited to:
- what schools they came from ;
- what schools they were transferred to;
- the types of programs they were placed in,
- the types of services they received;
- whether or not they used a credit recovery option in order to accumulate credits; and
- the impact this had on the students' grades and attendance.
This data will be broken down by borough and school district, giving us a more detailed picture of where these transfers are occurring and the impact school closings are having on students. It will also ensure greater accountability when it comes to monitoring what happens to students enrolled in schools that are closed by the DOE.
We'd like to thank our Council colleagues and Mayor Bloomberg for their vital work shepherding these bills through the Council. Special thanks as well to all of the advocates who testified at our hearing and worked with us on this legislation.
With this data, we'll be better able to work with the DOE to accurately measure graduation rates and determine whether or not closing schools and place students in higher performing schools is the most effective way to improve education.
Addressing PCB's in NYC Schools
Earlier this year, the City Council held a hearing on PCBs in public schools.
These man-made chemicals, which are found in old light fixtures inside many of our city's schools, are considered probable carcinogens by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency and are suspected of causing a number of critical health problems.
During our hearing, many parents, advocates, unions, and experts expressed their concerns that students, teachers, and other school workers were possibly being exposed to these PCBs through direct contact or inhalation.
We also heard from the Administration about its efforts to replace light fixtures containing PCBs as part of a comprehensive plan to increase energy efficiency and environmental quality in 772 public schools over the next 10 years.
While we were happy to hear that the City's plan will remove all PCB-containing lights from the City's schools and reduce major health risks associated with air pollution from dirty oil-burning boilers, we questioned the plan's timeframe, believing it to be too long.
That's why we made the removal of these PCB-containing lights one of our top priorities during our budget talks with the Mayor, and we're very pleased to report that this year's budget agreement includes a $30 million addition to the capital budget to help speed up the removal of PCB's from city schools. Funding for lighting replacement, which now totals $180.6 million for the next three years, will allow us to more quickly eliminate PCBs in city schools and complete other energy efficiency upgrades, such as boiler replacements and conversion and retrofits. Together these upgrades will help keep our students safe while reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the five boroughs.
We will also be holding a public hearing on Council Member Ignizio's Parental Notification bill ( Intro. 563 ) this fall.
There's nothing more important to parents and guardians than knowing that their children are being educated in a safe and secure environment.
Council Member Ignizio's bill would require the DOE to notify parents of any PCB contamination found during inspection or testing in a public school. The department would also have to post these results on its website.
We'll be sure to notify folks once the hearing has officially been set. In the meantime, for additional information on our efforts to address PCBs in city schools, click h