By Jeremy Walsh
The city Department of Education heard more skepticism of its plans for using the state Contracts for Excellence funding it is slated to get at the start of the 2008-2009 school year at a second round of public hearings last week. The meetings, held in all five boroughs, followed the release of an updated plan after contentious public sessions in June.
Contracts for Excellence funds were first budgeted during the previous school year, when the advocate group Campaign for Fiscal Equity won a 13-year-long lawsuit against the state. The suit claimed that the city's 1.1 million children were being denied their constitutional rights to an equal education because city schools were underfunded.
Of the $386 million going to the city's schools in the upcoming school year, $242 million will be discretionary allocations, $76 million will be targeted allocations, $30 million will go to maintenance of effort and $37 million will go to district-wide initiatives.
The largest chunk of the discretionary spending — $84 million — will go toward reducing class size, but this announcement brought criticism from a number elected officials and teachers at last week's hearing held at IS 230 in Jackson Heights.
They warned that the city DOE's current five-year capital plan has no specific strategies for class-size reduction for grades four through 12.
“There is little central accountability or oversight,” warned City Councilman David Weprin (D-Hollis), chair of the Finance Committee, noting he wanted to see more specific details on the DOE's strategies.
Weprin also criticized the DOE for allocating Contracts for Excellence funds to cover the Leadership Academy and other teacher and quality initiatives.
“This is money that is not going to the school and it is misleading to include it as part of the school allocation,” he said.
City Councilwoman Melinda Katz (D-Forest Hills) also warned about a “disconnect between reducing class size and the capital plan.”
She also urged the DOE to address overcrowding on a neighborhood basis, rather than district-wide.
Daisy Avitia, a project director with the New York Immigration Coalition, criticized the DOE for not providing specific numbers of new teachers for English-language learner students.
“The first year of CFE, we took it as hit and miss,” she said. “We expected more from your team this year.”
Sal Emmanuel, a special education counselor at Jamaica High School, also criticized the transfer of budgetary power from school leadership teams to school principals.
Community Board 10 member David Quintana noted that Class Size Matters, an advocacy group, has urged the state to reject the DOE's Contracts for Excellence proposal and warned that little progress had been made since last year in reducing class size.
“In Queens, we continue to have the largest class sizes in early grades of any borough,” he said.
Reach reporter Jeremy Walsh by e-mail at jwalsh@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
