Testimony of Randi Weingarten before the NYC Council Education Committee on the Five-Year Capital Plan: March 12, 2007

Mar 12, 2007 1:42 PM

Good morning, my name is Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), representing more than 100,000 employees who work in more than 1,200 school buildings in New York City. I want to thank the City Council for allowing me to testify on the Five-Year Capital Plan and the administration’s proposed amendment.

 The governor is proposing an increase in aid to New York City schools of $3.2 billion over four years. This funding is desperately needed. But I ask whether our school buildings will be able to support the policy initiatives to be funded with large amounts of new aid. Do we have enough classrooms and other educational spaces? Are our buildings safe and secure? The capital plan and the current amendment don’t provide full answers to these questions.

This is an ambitious capital plan at $13.1 billion, the largest five-year capital investment in our schools. The Department of Education asserts that this plan will fund sufficient new seats to eliminate overcrowding and to reduce class size to 20 in grades K through 3. This capital plan will also fund critical repairs to existing school buildings. The UFT’s members experience daily the impacts of large class sizes and other issues in school buildings that are overcrowded and lack sufficient support spaces.

This plan will NOT fund reduced class sizes in grades 4 through 12 nor will it fund non-critical building needs. Let’s explore the impacts of not funding these items.

Smaller Class Size. The court decisions in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit acknowledged the importance of school buildings on educational results in New York City. The Court of Appeals specifically cited the need for smaller class sizes and the need to restore specialized rooms, such as science labs, if every student is to receive a “sound basic education.” Smaller class sizes should be mandated in all grades. The positive results on educational achievement from smaller class sizes have been documented and acknowledged. We are supporting legislation in Albany requiring that a portion of any additional state aid be dedicated to lower class size in all grades to no more than 105 percent of the statewide average. Our students deserve the same opportunities as the rest of the students statewide.

Educational achievement increases in smaller classes:

• Smaller class sizes will ensure that teachers can address the needs of struggling students and that all students can get attention and none get lost. This is particularly important in the high schools where it is urgent to create the right learning environment so students don’t drop out.

• Smaller class sizes will reduce the number of students in a building making the school safer and more orderly.

• There are too many high schools in this city with utilization rates reported by the DOE as above 125%. And substandard spaces in many buildings have been converted to educational spaces. In reality the utilization rates would be even higher if these space conversions were not counted.

We need to get all of our school buildings back to a “normal condition” with students and staff occupying only appropriate spaces.

If the Legislature mandates smaller class sizes, will New York City be ready? After almost 10 years of state funding New York City has not fully implemented class sizes of 20 in grades K through 3. This capital plan states that one of its goals is to achieve this fully. That is welcome news. The plan proposes new seats in 20 community school districts and in all the boroughs except for Manhattan at the high school level. Clearly the DOE would not be ready to implement smaller classes in grades 4 through 12 citywide.

I urge you call for the DOE to evaluate what would be needed to achieve smaller class sizes in all grades. Enrollment figures citywide have begun to shrink from a high in 2000. The projection is that enrollment will continue to decline through 2014. If these DOE projections are correct, there should be a number of opportunities to reduce class size in some neighborhoods. Where are schools with some breathing room — are they in areas with high percentages of high-need students? We need to begin to identify now where there are opportunities to expand smaller class sizes. And how fast can the DOE effectively utilize all of its space to develop a “universal smaller class size” program. I’m certain that some new construction will be needed but I believe that the DOE should work on a plan now to start this important initiative. If funding becomes available for this program, it will be a disgrace if a number of years elapse before our students enjoy the benefits of smaller class size. That’s why planning has to start immediately.

Career/Vocational Ed Models. Improving the graduation rate is one of our highest priorities. Students who do not finish high school routinely have fewer options and studies have shown the economic impact in persistently lower wages. CTE has been successful in nurturing many students who may otherwise have dropped out. Graduation rates have been high in these programs because students experience the direct connection between school and their futures.

Replicating the Co-op Tech model is one of the goals in the DOE capital plan. The UFT supports that goal. This program is funded at $11.4 million — a sum that is woefully inadequate to build the facilities needed to develop Co-op Techs throughout the city. Multiples of this sum are needed. In fact, several multiples of $11.4 million will be needed to create one new voc ed facility at the same level of sophistication of Co-op Tech on East 96th Street in Manhattan.

Safe School Buildings. Our teachers provide regular feedback on building conditions. Deteriorated buildings affect teaching and learning. In the early 1990s, portions of too many schools were closed because rooms were unoccupiable. Hazards including pest infestation, exposed live electrical wiring and leaking pipes, blocked emergency exits, damaged asbestos-containing materials, fire hazards, cracked stairs and broken banisters and non-functioning lavatories were so bad that the UFT was forced to file a lawsuit against the Board of Education, the city and other city and state agencies in 1993. Part of the settlement required annual inspections of the school buildings and regular reporting to the UFT on violations and the progress being made to remove the violations. The repair methods at the time were piecemeal and did not address the under-lying causes of the problems. I want to be clear that that grim picture is not uniformly the story today. The School Construction Authority does a much better job of monitoring and correcting problems, so these are the exceptions, not the rule. But with so many older and aging school buildings in New York, health and safety and the state of the physical plant is an ongoing problem

One problem that can only be solved by capital budget appropriations and that our members constantly and rightfully harp on are the chronic lack of designated changing areas in what is designated as barrier-free “regular education” buildings for special education children who may be normative mentally but are physically incapable of using school toilets. These children need to be changed and the paraprofessionals who offer diapering and toilet assistance are forced to use make-shift facilities such as desks shoved together or a dirty gym mat or the floor. Diapering students in this manner is insulting to the child, especially to a pre-teen or a teenager, is unsanitary and offers the potential for physical injury to the student as well as the staff members.  Existing bathrooms even with handicap stalls are not big enough to accommodate a wheelchair-bound student and paras or other staff who must transfer the student to and from the wheelchair. These “regular education” buildings that were never designed for such activities and they need to be retrofitted now.

Another problem we hear about on a regular basis and that requires a real funding shot in the arm to fix is water infiltration. Water leaking through the building exterior results in a multitude of deteriorating conditions such as crumbling plaster and paint, rotting wooden floors and window frames, and moldy classrooms.  This results in damage to plaster and paint increasing the potential exposure to airborne lead or asbestos.  Microbial growth in building materials can reach unhealthy levels even after just two weeks of water leaks.  These conditions result in elevated airborne allergenic dust, which when inhaled can trigger asthma attacks and allergic reactions. Lead based paint dust has been shown to cause learning disability in children and asbestos dust is a known human carcinogen.

So, there is still much work to be done. Our teachers and UFT staff regularly report on problems at school buildings, some of them serious. Adequate levels of capital investment must regularly be made to our schools.

We support the planned investment of $3 billion in the Capital Improvement Plan in the buildings and are pleased that the increase for work on the exteriors has increased by approximately $500 million. While we support this increased investment, we remain concerned with the much larger identified need. Equally troubling is the DOE’s statement that non-critical CIP projects will be deferred; some of these are quality of life and enhance instruction but other conditions will suffer additional deterioration over time that may compromise the buildings.

$13 billion is an enormous sum. In a system with as many school buildings as New York City, there is always need for more funds. An investment of $13 billion does not accomplish everything that is needed. The DOE must make the appropriate level of investment in its existing infrastructure to preserve the space it now has.

Transparency and Accountability. These hearings are important to allow the public to gain some insight into a complex capital program but we are all limited in our understanding of this program. We are dependent on the DOE to develop and make public the information. Sadly, there is not sufficient transparency in the capital plan and inadequate reporting available to the public. Few people can plow through the 640-page document; I doubt that anyone will have all of his or her questions answered even with unlimited time to analyze all 640 pages. Just a few questions we couldn’t answer as we reviewed the amendment:

• There are lists of CIP projects that have been deferred; will these projects be in the next capital plan or will they disappear?

•The amendment states that there have been construction cost increases which have necessitated some re-bidding. Has that re-bidding occurred? What are the results and the impacts on the capital plan?

•The plan funds almost $300 million for science labs and the narrative states that “… many high schools and middle schools have severely deteriorated and outmoded science labs which others lack labs altogether. The table identifying schools in this program lists one middle school and one elementary school; the rest are high schools. Is this really a high school science lab program? If so, what is the plan for the middle schools?

 Additional funding from the governor will have accountability strings attached. The DOE and the SCA need to develop transparent reporting on the capital plan, including benchmarks for accountability and regularly reporting on their progress to meet these benchmarks. The amendment provides a partial analysis only. Expanding the narrative to provide more information will be helpful. A real financial analysis and ongoing project report are badly needed. There must be more transparency so the public can feel confident that progress is steadily being made toward school buildings that meet the needs of all students.