Testimony of UFT before the Joint Hearing of the NYC Council Education and Budget Committees on the Five-Year Capital Plan May 15, 2007
May 15, 2007 4:36 PM
Thanks to the resolution of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, substantially greater funding is coming to the schools. Now the question is whether our school buildings can support the policy initiatives, including the requirement for smaller class sizes, that the new aid is slated to fund. Are there enough classrooms and other educational spaces? Are our buildings safe and secure? Are schools going to meeting students’ career and technical needs as well as academic needs?
At $13.1 billion, this is an ambitious capital plan, and the largest five-year capital investment in our schools. The city DOE says this plan will fund sufficient new seats to eliminate overcrowding and reduce class size to 20 in grades K through 3. This capital plan is also supposed to fund critical repairs to existing school buildings.
This plan is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. It will not fund reduced class sizes in grades 4 through 12 nor will it fund non-critical building needs. Given the state’s insistence that there be meaningful class-size reductions systemwide, and that meeting that mandate will be judged by the state education commissioner, this five year plan must be mindful that construction has to be planned and budgeted with an eye to shrinking class sizes in all grades. We believe the present plan does not do that, nor does it pay sufficient attention to school safety. It also fails to anticipate that career and technical education — programs that themselves can lead to higher graduation rates and greater employment opportunities after graduation — require funding for infrastructure changes in schools that can turn CTE from a good idea into an education miracle.
Here are three areas — small class size, CTE supports and school safety — where adequate levels of capital investment regularly made to our schools will show all the difference.
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.” That can’t happen unless smaller class sizes are mandated in all grades. We know the positive results on educational achievement from smaller class sizes. They’ve been documented and acknowledged. Your committees have heard repeated testimony as to the benefits of small class sizes on learning, on teaching quality, on school safety, as well as the negative impacts of overcrowding. You’ve heard it from parents, community groups, students, and education policy analysts and even from the UFT in testimony as recently as March 12. I need not repeat the arguments here.
What needs examining is what it will take for the city to be ready for the now-mandated smaller class sizes. That’s a large unknown given that after some 10 years of state funding the city still hasn’t fully implemented class sizes of 20 in grades K through 3. This capital plan does say one of its goals is completing the job of shrinking class sizes in grades K through 3 by proposing new seats in 20 community school districts and in all the boroughs except Manhattan at the high school level. Given that, how is DOE not 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 shrank from their high in 2000, and are projected 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 there schools with some breathing room? Are they in areas with high percentages of high-needs students? We need to identify now areas where we can achieve smaller class sizes. And how fast can the DOE effectively utilize all of its space to develop a “universal smaller class size” program? Of course new construction will be needed, but the DOE should work on a plan utilizing existing facilities now.
Career/Vocational Educational Models. Improving the graduation rate is one of our highest priorities. Students who do not finish high school routinely have fewer life chances, and studies have shown the negative economic impacts from a lifetime of receiving lower wages. CTE nurtures students who may otherwise drop out. Graduation rates are high in these programs because students experience the direct connection between school and their futures. Meanwhile, CTE is a great path to workforce development and job opportunity, something we must all be focused on.
For example, replicating East 96th Street’s Co-op Tech model in each of the boroughs is a goal of the DOE capital plan, and the UFT supports that goal. But funding the program at just $11.4 million is woefully inadequate for building more Co-op Techs throughout the city. Multiples of this sum will be needed just to create one new voc ed facility at the level of Co-op Tech.
Safe School Buildings. Our teachers provide regular feedback on building conditions, because deteriorated buildings affect teaching and learning. In the early 1990s, hazards such as pest infestation, exposed live electrical wiring and leaking pipes, blocked emergency exits, damaged asbestos-containing materials, fire hazards, cracked stairs, broken banisters and non-functioning lavatories were common. Portions of too many schools were closed because rooms could not be occupied. Conditions were so bad the UFT filed a 1993 lawsuit against the BOE, the city and other city and state agencies. Part of the settlement required annual building inspections and regular reporting to the UFT on violations and the progress being made to remove the violations.
I want to be clear that this grim picture is not today’s. The School Construction Authority does a 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 rightfully harp on is 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. 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. It is also unsanitary and offers the potential for physical injury to the student as well as the staff members. Existing bathrooms—even those with handicap stalls—are too small 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 were never designed for such activities. They need to be retrofitted now.
Another problem is water infiltration. Water leaking through the building exterior results in crumbling plaster and paint, rotting wooden floors and window frames and moldy classrooms. Damage to plaster and paint increases the potential for exposure to airborne lead or asbestos. Microbial growth in building materials can reach unhealthy levels even after just two weeks of water leaks, resulting in elevated airborne allergenic dust, which when inhaled can trigger asthma attacks and allergic reactions. Lead-based paint dust causes learning disability in children and asbestos dust is a human carcinogen.
We support the planned investment of $3 billion in the Capital Improvement Plan and are pleased that the increase for work on the exteriors has increased by some $500 million. While we support this increased investment, we remain concerned with the much larger identified need. Equally troubling is the DOE plan to defer non-critical CIP projects. Some of these are quality of life and enhance instruction but other conditions will suffer additional deterioration over time that may compromise the buildings.
$13.1 billion is an enormous sum. In a system with so many school buildings, there is always need for more funds, and even this multi-billion dollar figure does not accomplish everything. The DOE must make the appropriate level of investment in its existing infrastructure to preserve the space it now has.
Once making that investment, the DOE must do it in a way that is transparent, so accountability is assured. These council hearings allow the public to gain 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 time enough to analyze the compendious document. Just a few questions we couldn’t answer as we reviewed it.
· 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, while 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?
State funding of course comes with 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.
Again, we urge the city to take advantage of the expertise the UFT brings to any effort to rebuild the schools. My members are in the schools every day, experiencing the difficulties of teaching and working with oversized classes in school buildings that are overcrowded and lack sufficient support spaces. They are first-hand experts on what the schools need, and we look forward to working together on making the built environment for education the best it can be.
Thank you.
