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NYC Kids PAC - Jia Lee
Jia Lee's answers questions on education governance, funding, testing and related issues.
Governance
Many New York City parents feel disenfranchised by the current system of mayoral control over public education and feel there are insufficient checks and balances. The Panel for Educational Policy (PEP) is New York City's de facto Board of Education. The PEP is responsible for the approval of contracts, the overall budget, co-locations, school closings and many of the policies of the City's Department of Education (DOE). Currently, the PEP includes a super-majority of Mayoral appointees. Would you support changes to Mayoral control to give parents more voice in decision-making and/or provide checks and balances to the current system?
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Would you support discontinuing Mayoral control of the public school system and replace it with a new system that is neither Mayoral control nor the old school board? |
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If you answered "no" to the above question, would you support working with education stakeholders to amend the existing Education Law to create more checks and balances? |
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Which of the following changes to the Panel for Education Policy (PEP) would you support? Please check as many as you like. |
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Which of the following measures to ensure that parents and community members have a say in their children's schools would you support? Please check as many as you like. |
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Do you have other proposals to provide a stronger parent voice and/or checks and balances in school governance?
In addition to the proposed measures, above, to ensure stronger parent voice and democratic decision making in our public schools, I would propose an examination of processes and practices for school communities to discuss, such as development of meeting norms and common understandings around establishing anti racist spaces. |
What is your view of how parents should be involved in educational decision-making? Please be as specific as possible.
Parents must be equal partners in decision making. The current system involves an incredibly undemocratic and frustrating situation, in which decisions have been made prior to any public forum. Time and time again, the Panel for Educational Policy has been merely a protest space. We have a top down pyramid structure that needs to be inverted. Issues at the school level need to be raised from the bottom (parents in collaboration with the school) and the role of the Department of Education should be of supporting the communities' needs. When there are issues that span a region, such as a district, parents should have clear avenues of connecting with one another at a local level where they can communicate and have the power to problem solve collectively. Again, the role of the DOE should be of support and collecting information on where patterns are emerging to draw experiences and strategies from different communities. They should not be a centralized policy enforcement agency whose purpose has been to dictate very political and privatized interests. |
Please describe your perspective on mayoral control.
Mayoral control has been a signature strategy of the privatization agenda. Centralized control is disastrous in maintaining sound public education for our communities. Simply, mayoral control must be abolished. |
Testing
Another important issue is standardized testing, test prep, and the use of test scores to evaluate schools, students, and teachers. What is your position on this matter?
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The state is working on a new school accountability system that would include additional factors in addition to test scores and graduation rates. What factors do you think this system should include?
The issue of accountability feeds into the rhetoric of a privatization agenda. The real questions is: how can we make all of our public schools places where anyone would want to send our children. Accountability based on metrics is based on a market competition system that does not apply to education. To improve schools, we must look to the school community, ask what the issues are and what ways they feel the problems could be solved. Often, the answers are in the school community. Factors that need to be included in determining how our schools are faring as a system should include:
Satisfaction of all members of the school with these factors |
Do you support the current state standards and if so, why? How would you respond to the critique that the standards are not grade appropriate, and not useful or diagnostic for English Language Learners and many students with special needs?
The current standards are not much different than the Common Core standards. There continues to be concerns about the early childhood standards which require kindergartners to be reading at a level that was once expected for first graders. Early childhood experts understand that forcing children to read before they are ready fosters disengagement. As a special education teacher of seventeen years in the NYC department of education, these standards, along with funding formulas that have decreased our ability to adequately support our students, have had a negative impact on teaching and learning. The current accountability system that is attached to the system of high stakes testing linked to these standards has meant that teachers are forced away from teaching to the student. Instead, we are forced to teach to the standards and to the tests. This is educational malpractice. Teachers and related service providers need to be able to do their jobs. The role of state standards once served as a framework for educators across a large state. Developed by educators (not under the influence of outside interests as they are now), they helped inform certain content and skills; however, the Common Core and the new standards have a decidedly different function. It has worn down the professional nature of a teachers' work and narrowed the ability for many schools to respond to the emergent curriculums that come from the students themselves. Now, it is the norm to hear that teachers have had to abandon student led inquiries because of the pressure to cover more ELA and math. This is a huge disservice to the the students and our ability to foster independent, critical thinkers. What we need is a vision that debunks the accountability rhetoric and builds on the collective expertise of educators in New York. |
Resources and equity
NYC schools have never received their fair share of funding from the state, as the CFE decision confirmed, and since 2007, schools have experienced significant cuts. Most schools are still struggling with budgets below their Fair Student funding levels, despite surpluses at the state and city levels. Class sizes have risen sharply, particularly in the early grades, where they remain at among the highest levels in more than 15 years. At the same time, the NYC Chancellor has said that her main concern is that class sizes can be too small. How would you go about guaranteeing the rights of all students and providing them with an equitable opportunity to learn, regardless of their background?
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How would you ensure that children are provided with a well-rounded education, including art, music, science, and physical education, and how would you fund this?
Currently, most schools are unable to adhere to the basic standards for arts and physical education as outlined by the state. Schools need to be able to return to the funding formula prior to Fair Student Funding. Schools once received separate allocation of funding for staffing because of contractual salary steps. This ensured that there was enough funding for the staff necessary to fulfill those mandated positions, services and programs. The other funding line was for building operations and materials. Schools should be able to have a process for identifying the basic needs and requirements for programming, develop with transparency the necessary budget and then be given the amount needed. One of the DOE's single largest expenditure is on special education lawsuits. Outside consultants and contractors also take up a large percentage of the budget. Because budgeting decisions are centralized, there is gross inefficiency and wasteful spending. Understanding that school communities can identify their own needs eliminates the likelihood of special education compliance and other building operation issues. An audit is needed but it takes the department of education much too long to release its internal budgeting- this needs to change and greater transparency, I suspect, will reveal that the money is there but it is misspent. In addition, organizing school communities to demand the CFE funding is absolutely necessary and dire. |
How would you go about developing and supporting measures to attract and retain experienced and high-quality teachers?
Joel Klein, under Bloomberg, eliminated this funding formula as part of a lean production model. The current Fair Student Funding formula does not account for teachers contractual salary steps and thereby disincentivizes or makes it impossible to retain more experienced staff. A leadership academy principal once boasted to me that she should get two new teachers for the cost of the one experienced teacher. The funding formula, as I stated above, needs to return to one that respects our contract and salary steps based on experience. Studies have shown conclusively that, besides, small class sizes, teacher experience is a major in-school factor that impacts student outcomes. Teachers in the Absent Teacher Reserve are overwhelmingly mid to late career educators who've fallen victim to the current lean production system of funding. They are the first to get squeezed out of schools where student numbers are falling (due to the inaccurate use of test based accountability) and they are the first to get targeted by administrators pressured to adhere to extremely tight budgets. If we are to maintain an experienced and high quality teaching force, we must get to the root of the problem and that is the current accountability system under the privatization agenda. |
Our schools have become increasingly segregated over time. How would you address the goal of increasing diversity in NYC public schools? Please be specific.
In district one, where I teach, our community education council worked with people who have done extensive research and programming in North Carolina around Controlled Choice models. The premise of this model is that ALL schools are where we want to send our students to. https://cecdistrictone.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/michael-alves-diversity-conscious-choice-based-student-assignments.pdf The resistance to this program must be addressed, however. The reality is that we are in a highly competitive school placement system that needs to be completely shaken. Schools are inequitably funded and systemically under resourced. The focus of schools, based on a high pressure climate impacts the ability for schools to focus on student accountability/compliance rather than on student engagement. The answers to desegregation are rooted in a history of systemic and institutionalized racism and inequity that need to be brought to the forefront, confronted as a community and only then, can we truly work to dismantle segregation. |
Estimates are that as many as 40 percent of special needs students in NYC are not receiving their mandated services. How would you ensure that all students with disabilities receive their services promptly?
As a special education teacher, I can attest to the increasing stories by colleagues who are confronted with overwhelming caseloads, as well as, lack of funding because of Fair Student Funding. Again, the answers can be resolved by returning to school based decision making. Schools can identify their own special education needs. Because we have little ability to advocate for necessary funding to acquire the necessary related service providers, based on the current formula, some schools have resorted to changing mandates in order to stay in compliance. This is unacceptable and schools should not be forced to do this. Instead, funding should be based on the needs in the school instead of funds being spent on the numerous special education lawsuits! |
Any other comments on resources and/or equity?
School facilities
Overcrowding is a chronic and ever-worsening problem in NYC schools. The city has underinvested in school facilities, resulting in most students attending schools in overcrowded and/or substandard conditions. Thousands of children each year are placed on waiting lists for their zoned elementary schools. Expanded Pre-K, eliminating trailers, reducing class size, and implementing community schools with wrap-around services require even more space. The Mayor's plan to create hundreds of thousands of new market-rate and affordable housing will likely contribute to even more overcrowding. And yet the current capital plan does not have enough new seats to keep up with future enrollment growth, not to mention reducing class size.
Do you support any of the following measures? Please check all that apply. |
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Do you have any other proposals to address schools overcrowding?
Charter Schools and Privatization
Charter schools now take more than $2 billion from the DOE's budget and an increasing amount of space in our public schools. NYC is the only district in the state that must give prioritize charter schools, by providing space to all new and expanding charters in public school buildings or pay for their rent in private space. There are also serious questions about whether charter schools are complying with the law when it comes to providing due process to students before they are suspend students, obey public meetings law, and enroll and retain their fair share of high needs students.
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There is also much concern about the lack of transparency and number of contracts awarded to vendors, including those with a history of corruption, abuse and/or mismanagement. The PEP has never voted down a DOE contract, no matter how questionable, and a large number are considered and approved retroactively.
How would you address this issue? And other comments on charters and/or privatization?
The PEP, the city government and the DOE should not have mayoral control and full rights to enter into any contracts. The DOEs role should be to conduct a needs assessment through the network of districts and schools. Based on those needs assessments, a system of problem solving and delivery of services should be collaborated on at the district/school level. There needs to be a complete halt to all new/proposed charter schools, and systems for oversight and transparency need to be in place. |
Campaign and ethics reform
Many parents are concerned about the extent of corruption in Albany and the influence of large donors and special interests.
Which of the following measures to decrease the influence of private interests would you support? |
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Student Privacy
In 2014, as part of the budget, NY passed a student privacy law that required the hiring of a Chief Privacy Officer and the creation of a Parent Bill of Privacy Rights, with parent and stakeholder input. Yet none of this has occurred, and the law has not been enforced- despite a legal deadline of July 2014. At the same time, the state is collecting more and more personal student data in a state longitudinal database, while failing to create a Data Stakeholder Advisory Panel, despite promising the federal government that this would occur by 2011.
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Open-ended questions
Please summarize your record in the area of public education as an individual, advocate or policymaker.
As a public school teacher, I have worked with other parents and teachers, at the grassroots level to organize informational and strategizing forums. We acknowledge that much of what has rolled out has been do to the lack of information, feelings of division and fear that have taken over many of our school communities. It has been my goal to help develop localized networks of empowerment through information gathering, organizing of communities to combat authoritative administrators, high stakes testing, school closures/colocations, etc. As a teacher, we formed a caucus within our union (which has gone along with many of the policies that have led us to where we are today), and have connected with teacher groups such as NYCORE and Teachers Unite. I have also been a parent member of Change the Stakes and NYCOPTOUT, as well as, organizing at the school level in various districts across the city. In 2015, I testified before the U.S. Health Education Labor and Pensions committee on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, testing and accountability. I spoke out against the privatization strategies and crippling underfunding. I will continue to organize for a more democratic system in our city and state. |
Please describe the ways in which you have demonstrated responsiveness to parental or community concerns
As stated, I've worked alongside parents to fight against high stakes standardized testing, colocations, school closures and in advocating for greater democracy. I have spoken out at community education council and panel for educational policy meetings. |
What would be your top educational priorities if elected as Lt. Governor?
The role of the Lt. Governor is to preside over the senate. I will work to bring constituents to the space to make transparent the influences that take hold of each of our elected officials. Private corporate interests have in educational policy and there is no reason our elected officials should be paid to convey those interests over the interests of their constituents who live and send their children to the schools they represent. The top educational priorities, to this end will involve democratizing our senate and to repeal the reign of horrific educational policies under Cuomo. |
Is there anything else you would like to share?
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Would you agree for a member of our group to interview you in person, if we have follow up questions? |
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Thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions.