(Spanish version coming soon)
Dear parents and our school community:
Dear parents and our school community:
Our public schools are under attack. We ask that you join with us in a citywide
event on Thursday, March 12, either before or after school, and ask fellow
parents, students, teachers and other school staff, to form a ring around your
building to symbolically protect your school. This event is being co-sponsored
by Class Size Matters, the UFT, NYS Allies for Public Education and Alliance
for Quality Education. (Outside NYC, the
event will take place on other days,
including on March 26.)
Why are we doing this?
After cutting school funding sharply in recent years, Governor
Cuomo has threatened to hold any increase in state aid hostage to an arsenal of
damaging education proposals, which could severely threaten the quality and
local autonomy of NYC public schools. Though
he still owes NYC schools over $2 billion from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity
decision, and over $5 billion statewide, he now says he won’t increase funding
unless the Legislature approves tuition tax credits to private schools, similar
to vouchers, raising the cap on charter schools by 100 and eliminating any
regional restrictions, which could mean up to 250 more charter schools targeted
to NYC, each one guaranteed free facilities at the city expense. These proposals would divert essential funds
and space from our public schools. At
the same time, he has also said that struggling schools be put in receivership,
taken over by the state and/or turned over to private hands.
In addition, the Governor is insisting on a statewide teacher
evaluation system that takes nearly all authority out of district and principal
hands, basing 50% of a teacher’s ratings on student test scores on the highly
fallible state exams, with only 15% based on the principal’s assessment, and
the other 35% on independent evaluators, pre-selected by the state but paid for
by the district. Teachers who received
one ineffective rating in five years– based solely on the unreliable
value-added test scores –could not be granted tenure, no matter what the
principal or the Superintendent wanted, and any teacher rated ineffective two
years in a row could lose their jobs.
These proposals represent an unprecedented attempt to
centralize power over our public schools, and one that could severely damage them. The Governor’s attempt to double down on high
stakes testing is not only the opposite to what is happening elsewhere in the
country, as many states are moving away from test-based teacher evaluation
systems, realizing how unreliable they are and unrelated to real learning, but it
also contradicts his recent campaign ads when he acknowledged that "Common
Core scores" should not be used "for at least five years" and
even then, "only if our children are ready." There is more information about the
Governor’s destructive proposals on
the NYC Parent blog, including a fact
sheet you can download here.
Many charter schools are hiring buses, closing for the day,
and sending all their staff, students and parents to Albany to lobby for more
funding and to raise the charter cap. It
would be illegal for public schools to do this, and in any case, we would never
recommend subtracting important time from student learning. Instead, we ask you to join with us in the
event described on the enclosed flyer, and reach out to your school communities
to protect your school – either before school or after the school day
ends.
Yours sincerely,
