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‘Follow the C4E money,’ Farkas tells Council
Oct 29, 2009 3:59 PM
New York City schools’ Contract for Excellence (C4E), an outgrowth of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity’s 13-year lawsuit to improve school funding, “needs to be monitored carefully to ensure the critical funds deliver the desired results for our children,” UFT Vice President Richard Farkas told the City Council Education Committee on Oct. 13.
Given its murky reporting mechanisms, Farkas said, it is hard to confirm whether or not the city Department of Education used Albany funding as the state intended — including for smaller classes. “What’s needed is a transparent accountability system and strict monitoring,” he said.
And while the program’s structure as outlined by the State Education Department is clear, the UFT vice president for middle schools said it was “only with the DOE’s cooperation and compliance that the State Education Department and the oversight bodies can have the data to accurately assess contract performance.”
The city’s retrofitting of the state’s funding formula into its Fair Student Funding process makes it difficult to track C4E money and confirm whether it targets schools with the greatest need, Farkas said. Do the added dollars go to supplement (and not supplant) existing school-level funding? Is the smaller class-size mandate followed?
Richard Farkas
The UFT would require the DOE to “report not only on the amount of C4E money being allocated to each school and the category of C4E program that it will be spent on, but also the specific changes each school will make with these funds,” Farkas said.
Criticizing the DOE for failing to lessen classroom overcrowding, Farkas cited UFT data showing class sizes growing in 48 percent of schools that received C4E funding. “In other words, schools getting these state funds were just about as likely to increase class size as to decrease it,” Farkas said.
Among other UFT recommendations for the DOE:
- Open financial information to public scrutiny and input, as the law requires, especially after a review by the Campaign for Fiscal Equity uncovered numerous funding irregularities; and
- Abandon “voluntary principal compliance with discretionary C4E funds and take on the role of ensuring that each school is spending its C4E funds appropriately.”
Farkas also announced that the union was pressing Albany to change C4E class-size reduction requirements from citywide averages (which mask deviations) to either classroom caps or averages for each grade in each school.
Go here to read Farkas’ full remarks.
