Testimony of UFT Vice President for Elementary Schools Karen Alford before the New York City Council Committee on Education
Good afternoon and thank you, Chairman Dromm and members of the Education Committee for this opportunity to present testimony today. My name is Karen Alford, and I am Vice President of Elementary Education for the United Federation of Teachers. It is a privilege to come before you today on behalf of New York City’s public school educators and the 1.1 million students we serve.
For more than 55 years, the UFT has fought to strengthen our school communities and improve outcomes for children, particularly those who face the greatest challenges. Thanks to willing partners such as Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina, we are reversing the effects of years of neglect and mismanagement under the last administration.
This includes the work being done in the city’s 94 Renewal schools that are now receiving the supports they have long asked for and needed. Those supports include adding important staff such as guidance counselors, establishing more academic interventions and bringing in additional services such as for students’ health and mental health. Each school is developing an action plan in partnership with the DOE and the UFT to build partnerships with community organizations and increase the amount of instructional time. Assessments of each school are being conducted to provide data as well as to guide planning and instruction, and teachers at the schools are receiving more coaching, mentoring and professional development around the DOE’s new Capacity Framework.
The idea behind all of these supports and services is simple: We are working to address the needs of students in a holistic manner, addressing the obstacles that stand in the way of learning both in and outside the classroom.
At Boy and Girls High School in Bedford Stuyvesant, for example, the comprehensive renewal plan includes the expansion of social services as well as a lengthening of the school day and establishment of additional programming on Saturdays. College-readiness programs are allowing students to take college-level classes, and a CTE program is giving students the opportunity to learn a trade. The school is already seeing better attendance, and 75 percent of its seniors are on track to either graduate or earn their GEDs later this spring.
Automotive High School in Williamsburg is another school where hard work and determination are making a difference. This school had struggled with high rates of violent incidents and suspensions, but the rates of both have dropped dramatically. Attendance is also up, and graduation rates are starting to rise. Teachers and administrators at the school want to help students even more and are pushing for additional programs and services, from vision and dental health programs to substance abuse and mental health services. Many students at Automotive are also working towards certification in the school’s automotive training program, putting them on track to gain both skills and credentials that will help them get jobs once they graduate.
Automotive and other schools such as Richmond Hill High School in Queens are also benefiting from coaches brought in to work with teachers to enhance the schools’ writing and literacy programs. Teachers at both Automotive and Richmond Hill say this work has produced meaningful change by helping them to better pinpoint each student’s particular weaknesses in that area and to build strategies for addressing these problems. The result is that students are learning to both think and write about more complex topics.
At another school, PS 284 in Brooklyn, teachers have taken it upon themselves to bring in more services and supports — including dance, karate and photography — to help their students grow in confidence and ability. These teachers have also brought in professional musicians who volunteer their time to help the students. And they are using extended time to provide additional academic supports to students.
It is also important to note that our new contract gives Renewal schools more tools for success, including dedicated time for parent engagement and professional development time for teachers. New teacher leadership positions, created under this contract, are also being established at many of the schools as one more way for teachers to enhance their skills by working closely with colleagues.
The Renewal schools were identified as such by the State Department of Education. Priority status was given to schools considered among the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools statewide. Schools also made the list through consideration of other factors, such as low four-year graduation rates. Under the Renewal plan, the schools have three years to set clear goals and improve outcomes for their students, and they will be held accountable for doing so.
Our members know all too well the major challenges that some of our children face. Some students come through our doors without a proper coat or school supplies. Teachers are usually able to make a quick collection among themselves to address these kinds of problems.
But it becomes more complicated when a child isn't eating regularly or hasn’t seen a doctor. It is hard for children to focus on reading or math when they are homeless and don’t know where they will be sleeping that night. It is difficult for students to pay attention to a science lesson when they are ill with an undiagnosed medical condition. Some students are in the grips of a major trauma at home — divorce, a death in the family or worse. Others have literally just arrived in this country and come to school knowing nothing about the language or culture.
Our teachers support children with these problems every day in our city. But Renewal schools often have a higher concentration of children facing severe challenges. That's where the holistic approach comes in. Now, with the mayor’s commitment to work with these schools and his strong $150 million investment for additional programs and services, teachers in Renewal schools are beginning to receive the support necessary to properly help their students. For the first time in a decade, we have both a plan to actually turn around struggling schools and partners at City Hall and the Department of Education who understand these schools’ needs and are committed to meeting them.
The transformative work underway at Renewal schools stands in stark contrast to the approach proposed by our governor. You have no doubt read many headlines over the last few months about the governor's attacks on educators and public schools. Parents and educators across our city and the entire state have understandably been outraged by these destructive attacks and the sense that the governor has abandoned our state’s historic commitment to public education.
In the same way that the governor has failed to accept responsibility for underfunding schools and botching the implementation of the Common Core standards, he has also abdicated his responsibility to properly support struggling schools. No wonder his poll numbers are dropping.
The governor has attempted to distract voters from his mistakes and mismanagement by pushing a series of discredited proposals that would hurt, not help, children. One of those failed proposals is to put schools into so-called 'receivership,' which is really just a fancy way of saying state control. The governor's plan is essentially to strip away local control and turn a school over either to an outside entity of his choosing or to the state itself.
The history of state takeovers of schools is a history of failure. In Roosevelt, Long Island, an experiment in state control of the district led to complaints about basic issues such as a lack of books and sloppy record-keeping. Even with an influx of millions of dollars, the district ran a huge deficit. After 18 years of state control in Newark, a report said schools in that city still had huge dropout rates and that test scores that remained "abysmally low." And in Indianapolis, fights over money led to the water being shut off in some school buildings and to a threat by one independent operator to pull out unless it was paid an additional $2.4 million.
Privatization of essential public services often means less public oversight and more problems. New Yorkers have experienced this firsthand. Debacles such as with Pearson and CityTime have been expensive reminders that the drive for profits often conflicts with the needs of our students and communities.
Turning over our schools to private companies or organizations would be exactly the wrong way to go. Collaborative models of school turnaround are the far better solution. That is why the UFT strongly supports the Council's resolution.
The governor's presentation of himself as wanting to roll up his sleeves to help schools is disingenuous. He showed no interest in providing schools with the supports they needed while Michael Bloomberg was mayor, and he has made no real effort to comply with the court-ordered Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement by providing schools the billions of dollars in state aid that they are owed and need.
In reality, this is just another case of our governor playing politics with our schools. Many believe he is motivated by the big campaign contributions he has received from people who want more public money directed to privately-run schools. And, that has made many people angry.
The growing number of New Yorkers outraged by the governor's receivership proposal goes beyond parents and educators. More than 50 members of the state Assembly expressed their opposition to the governor’s agenda in a letter to him just this week, stating, "This proposal would wrest struggling schools away from local control and subject them to oversight by outside individuals or organizations, thereby interfering with the reforms municipalities are already implementing at the local level to strengthen schools and boost classroom achievement."
UFT members have dedicated their careers to helping children learn and grow. We have often had to do more with less as our schools have struggled with shrinking budgets and a lack of support. The problems have been particularly acute at our struggling schools. But thanks to a mayor and a chancellor who understand that the real solutions for these schools lie in collaborative effort, we are finally seeing progress.
Proper funding, more social services, smaller class sizes and teacher supports. These are the kinds of proven solutions that make a difference. Our communities demand locally-driven solutions that address the unique needs of their students and schools, not top-down power grabs that would undermine the chance for meaningful change.
State takeovers have been tried, and they have failed. The governor’s proposal for state receivership would harm our schools and take us backward at a time when we are moving forward. We cannot afford to let Governor Cuomo sabotage the good work being done. His political agenda has no place in our schools.