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Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Participates in Education Town Hall
November 13, 2015
Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you. It is a pleasure to be in Jackson Heights. I appreciate the passion of this audience already, and obviously people here care, you care deeply about your community. You’re here because you want to learn more, you want to ask tough questions, you want to figure out how we continue to make this a better and better neighborhood for all. So I want to thank you for caring. There are many people who like to suggest that folks don’t get involved anymore and don’t care. You are a testament to the fact that there’s plenty of people who do care and work hard to make this city better all the time, so thank you for that.
Now, to those who voted in the last City Council election, you did well. I have to tell you, Danny Dromm is now standing leader in the City Council. I want to tell you –
[Applause]
When I was in City Council, I served on the Education Committee. Very important stuff happens there. He has been an incredibly conscientious Chair of that committee. He obviously – it’s a labor of love for him, and we can tell. He devoted his life to children, he devoted his life to teaching, and now in public service he continues that devotion through that leadership.
I have seen what he does in the community. And he is a living example of someone who believes in New York City as this great place for everyone. You’ve heard him speak Spanish first of all – anyone’s who’s heard him speak Spanish – I know native Spanish speakers who don’t speak Spanish as well as Danny Dromm. [Laughter] His love of all people, embrace of all people, the work he’s done on behalf of our immigrants, he is an exemplary public servant. Let’s thank Danny Dromm for everything he does.
[Applause]
Now, I think our Pledge of Allegiance givers didn’t get all the recognition they deserve because they kind of rushed off. Are they still here? Are they still here? They left? Or they’re here? Well, I was going to make that homework to do. That’s – okay Carmen, you were really in character. [Laughter] Well, they were wonderful. Let me thank, let me thank folks who do so much to make this school great. I want to thank Voula Wells and Joann Lyons for their service to this school. Let’s give them a big round of applause.
[Applause]
Superintendent of District 30 Phil Composto has been a part of this community for a long time.
[Applause]
And I’m going to introduce the Chancellor in just a moment when I finish. Let me do a couple of other quick introductions because we brought the entire administration here to be able to answer anything and everything on your minds. By the way, for those of you who are quick on your feet, at the end of the formal meeting all of these wonderful, powerful people are here. And if you corner them – here’s how you do it – you have to get over here in front of the door before they can get out, stop them, and ask your questions and follow up on the issues that you care about. Everyone understand what you’re doing there? Okay.
Let me tell you who’s here tonight. The man who really deserves tremendous credit for what he did to create our pre-k programs and now is playing a crucial role in creating our new mental health programs, which you’re going to hear a lot about now, Deputy Mayor Richard Buery. Thank you.
[Applause]
All right, now what I’m going to do, I’m going to call out each name, tell you who they are. I want each person to get up and wave so you can see them, I’m just going to run through them real quick.
My counsel, Maya Wiley.
[Applause]
Our Community Affairs Commissioner Marco Carrion.
[Applause]
Executive Superintendent for Family and Community Engagement Yolanda Torres.
[Applause]
The President of School Construction Authority Lorraine Grillo.
[Applause]
Queensborough Director of the Office of Pupil Transportation Frank Johnson.
[Applause]
Commissioner for the Department of Buildings Rick Chandler.
[Applause]
Queensborough Commissioner, Department of Parks, Dorothy Lewandowski.
[Applause]
The Commissioner for the Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development Vicki Bean.
[Applause]
Commissioner for the Department of Transportation Polly Trottenberg.
[Applause]
Commissioner for the Department of Environmental Protection Emily Lloyd.
[Applause]
The Commissioner of Sanitation Kathryn Garcia.
[Applause]
For anyone in this room who likes the municipal ID, the new municipal ID, here’s who you have to thank, the Commissioner for Immigrant Affairs Nisha Agarwal.
[Applause]
The Chair of the New York City Housing Authority Shola Olatoye.
[Applause]
Deputy Commissioner – wait, Michael Kelly, you’re not Shola Olatoye.
[Laughter]
You can’t do that. Let’s try this again.
[Laughter]
The General Manager of the New York City Housing Authority Michael Kelly. Now do it.
[Applause]
Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Small Business Services Greg Bishop
[Applause]
Commissioner for the Department of Homeless Services Gilbert Taylor
[Applause]
Commissioner of the Human Resources Administration Steve Banks
[Applause]
Commissioner of Consumer Affairs Julie Menin
[Applause]
Commissioner – excuse me, President of the Economic Development Corporation Maria Torres-Springer
[Applause]
The first Deputy Commissioner for the Department of Health Oxiris Barbot
[Applause]
CEO of Elmhurst Hospital Chris Constantino.
[Applause]
And now some people I think a lot of you know and really appreciate, Assistant Chief for and Borough Commander for Queens North, Diana Pizzuti, NYPD.
[Applause]
Commanding Officer of the 115th Precinct Deputy Inspector Brian Hennessy.
[Applause]
Commanding Officer of the 110th Precinct Deputy Inspector Christopher Manson
[Applause]
And Deputy Inspector and Commander of the Queens North Organized Crime Control Deputy Inspector Michael Cody.
[Applause]
And finally, we have staff here from a variety of agencies from the Department of Education, from HRA, from IDNYC, from Homeless Services, HPD, and from our Tenant Support Unit. So, you’re going to raise anything and everything tonight. If you have a specific issue, if your family needs something followed up on, those staff are here to help you too and follow up on the issue.
Now, let me say something really quick up front about education. Then, I’m going to have the Chancellor say a few words, then we’re going to open up to all of you. And I do think we have to figure out where people are asking the questions from because if they’re in the middle - we got it worked out? On the sides. I’m thinking that too, Julissa. Thank you. All elected officials got introduced before, right? Good.
Okay, first I think a lot of you know that one of my passions is pre-k. We’re very proud of what we’ve done. Let me tell you what it’s meant right here. P.S. 69 – before we came in as this administration, there were half-day pre-k programs. There are now 54 children in full-day pre-k in this school. In District 30, when we came in, 409 full-day pre-k seats. There are now 2,762 full-day pre-k seats.
[Applause]
This one’s amazing – in Danny Dromm’s council district – if this is accurate, this is troubling – when we came in 58 full-day pre-k seats? Is that accurate? Well, anyway, today, 1,466 full-day – it’s right?
[Applause]
So we are very, very proud of what we’ve done. Because the topic is education, I always say begin at the beginning. We could not change our schools without starting at the very beginning of our children’s education and getting it right. We couldn’t change our schools if some kids got that early start and others didn’t, or if the only start they got was for a few hours and not for a full day. So we said we’re going to create a new standard for the whole city – full-day pre-k every child, everywhere, a seat guaranteed. And as of this September, that became a reality. It’s now 65,000-plus kids in this city in full-day pre-k and now it is a permanent part of our school system. That’s a beginning.
But let me be clear, I could not be more proud of what everyone did to bring about this achievement. I know how much it mattered to so many parents. It is only a beginning, which is why a couple of months ago, I gave a speech and it was called Equity and Excellence. And in that speech, I laid out a vision of how we’re going to change this school system overall – the whole school system – update it, change it for the better, for the long-term. Because we have to acknowledge, for too many years, a lot of things weren’t working. Everything Danny said, I agree with entirely. We need a school system led by an educator. We need to focus on kids and not high-stakes testing. We need to run schools as schools and not corporations. All of that is necessary to make the change.
[Applause]
But that’s only the beginning. We had to get early childhood education right. By the way, we have to start working even more to reach kids from birth to three-years-old as well. There’s so much to do on the front end of the process.
What else do we have to do?
We said in the Equity and Excellence vision that we had to acknowledge the fact that literally only a third of the kids in our school system are reading on grade level by the end of third grade. And a lot of the research has shown, if a child is not reading on grade level by third grade, they’re really at a great disadvantage going forward. So we had a simple thing we said – over the next ten years, and we’re going to work to make this go very fast, but over the next ten years, we have pledged to invest what it takes to get every child in this city reading on grade level by third grade – every single child.
[Applause]
And it was – it’s not an impossibility. It’s not something that there was no evidence of how to do. But the decision wasn’t made and the investment wasn’t made. And we said we cannot be serious about fixing our schools if we don’t have our kids reading early.
So this is about being honest – and I know there’s a lot of parents in this room, as you heard, I just got finished being a public school parent myself – we have to be honest about what it will take to actually turn the school system around. We have to be honest about the investments we have to make. We cannot just talk about it and then turn away.
We are committed to equity and excellence. And we chose that phrase on purpose. We said, one, equity – we don’t accept the notion that there are quote-unquote “good schools” and quote-unquote “bad schools.” We don’t accept the notion there’s a school you wouldn’t want to send your kids to. Think about that – that’s the norm in this city for decades. Oh, that’s the school everyone wants to get into. Over there is the school – oh, I’d never send my kid there. We thought that was normal. It’s not normal. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
And when you think about excellence, we got used to the idea that we could get part way to a good education, but not to excellence. Excellence is what you need nowadays. When a lot of us were growing up, you could graduate high school and go right out and find a really good-paying job. Today, our children need more and better education to be strong in this economy, in this world of today. They have to be better prepared than we were. And that’s why excellence matters.
A lot of the discussion has been caught up in, I think, some real mistakes that were made in education policy, instead of getting back to the core question. It doesn’t matter whether you like high-stakes testing or not – I know where I stand, but that’s not the core of the issue. It doesn’t matter whether your like Common Core or not – again, I know where I stand, but that’s not the core of the issue. The core of the issue is our children need to reach a high standard for their own good, for their own futures. But you can’t reach a high standard if you’re not given the tools, the support, the investment to get there. That was the unfortunate painful reality that that wasn’t being admitted, that wasn’t being acknowledged. We wanted our kids to go farther and farther, but we weren’t willing to train our teachers properly. We weren’t willing to do early childhood education. We weren’t really willing to do the investments to make sure that they were reading on grade-level by third grade. So we’ve said let’s be honest about what it’s going to take. It’s going to take a lot, but what could be more important?
What could be more important than actually preparing the next generation so they could thrive?
I don’t want kids to just get an education and struggle to get by. I want them to thrive. That’s what every parent wants. We want to know our kids are on the right track for the long haul.
So our plan does things like this – so, every kid reading on grade level by third grade; computer science education for every child at every grade level. Why? Because that’s today, that’s the reality, that’s where the world is going.
[Applause]
We have a technology sector in this city – 300,000 people working in the tech sector in New York City right now. I bet – for our parents out here, I bet you would like to see your child be one of them one day. It’s a great, growing part of our economy with high-paying jobs. That’s what we want for our children. Right? Well, if we want them to get that, they need the kind of education that’ll get them ready. So they should get the opportunity to experience computer science throughout their entire education so they’re ready, so they have a world of choices ahead of them – not limits, positive choices.
By the way, we’ve had too many kids that took the wrong path at some point in their life. Maybe part of why they took the wrong path was they weren’t given enough positive choices. They weren’t shown that there was a future for them, that we would invest in them, that we would open that door and make it work for them. That’s what this plan is all about.
For example, we say that every child should know that they have the opportunity to go to college. College is not for everyone. We’re not trying to say it’s the only way forward. A lot of kids will come out of college, they may become artists, they may go right into the workforce – come out of high school, excuse me. They may become artists, they may go right into the workforce, they may do something else – that’s great, but they should have the right. They should be told from day one that if you want to go to college, we’re going to do everything possible to get you there. So we announced recently there’s going to be free SAT classes – excuse me, free SAT tests – thank you, Carmen – free SAT tests for every junior in our high school – every single one will get that free opportunity.
[Applause]
We announced – and this is something I’m very proud of – we announced that every high school – doesn’t matter what you think of that school, what that school was good at, bad at, what the history was – every high school will now have Advanced Placement courses so every child has access to AP courses, because that says they can succeed and they can go far.
We know that if you tell a child from the very beginning how much you value them – and I know this as a parent – I think a lot of people in this room know it from your own experience – but it’s something we need to do as a city, it’s something we need to do as a society – you tell a child from the very beginning we value you, we believe in you, we’re going to invest in you, you’re our future in every sense, but not just words, not you’re our future now run along – no, you’re our future, it’s urgent, we care about you, we are going to do the things to get you ready.
All of these plans are part of creating a very different school system.
And I have to note that that school system only works if you are part of it too. Because one of the things that was a problem in the past is parents were not always welcome. Parents weren’t always listened too. They weren’t even welcome in the building in many cases. It was hard to talk to teachers.
My wife Chirlane and I remember vividly when Dante and Chiara were in middle school, the idea of parent and teacher communication was to, two nights in the year, go to a very crowded building, go to our middle school, and run from one part of the building to another to get our five-minute appointment with a teacher – and that was considered close working relationship between parent and teacher. We now have, as part of the way we run the schools, a requirement that every week teachers have time set aside to talk to parents, to email, to call, to meet, to engage parents as partners, because that’s part of the magic formula. You can’t change the schools and you can’t change the future of our kids if you leave the parents out of the process. Parents are crucial. I always say parents are the first and last teachers of our children. We are core to it, but we weren’t treated that way. Under this administration, parents are now considered absolutely crucial strategic partners in success.
So you’ll see all these changes play out and we think it’s going to make a profound impact on the future of our children.
That’s my overview. Let me say just a couple of sentences in Spanish, then I want to turn to the chancellor and then we are going to open it up to anyone and everyone. This is just three short sentences.
[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]
[Applause]
And now, now celebrating her 50th year in education, Chancellor Carmen Fariña –
[…]
Council Member Dromm: Okay, thank you, Chancellor Fariña and Mayor de Blasio, as well. And we’re going to start right now with questions. So we’re going to ask people to line up on this side of the room or this side of the room, and we’ll take questions from the audience. And the people in the middle, if you can go up that way and around, that would be most appreciated.
Mayor: I want to add a commissioner here – where’s Feniosky? I want to also introduce our Commissioner for the Department of Design and Construction, Feniosky Peña-Mora – welcome.
[Applause]
And Deputy Schools Chancellors Dorita Gibson, Phil Weinberg – welcome.
[Applause]
Council Member Dromm: Okay, good. So let me just remind folks, please be as concise as you can about your question. We don’t need speeches as much as we need questions. So I’m trusting that that will be the case here, and I think we will start on this side of the room over here. Yes.
Question: Good evening, Mayor, and everyone here. I would like to thank you for coming out to our community and on behalf of the Muslim community, thank you for the Muslim Eid holiday becoming a public school holiday.
[Applause]
My question would be – In a city as diverse and dynamic as New York City, with so many different cultures, languages, and so forth, how do you create genuine policy that fits everyone – the whole public, in all?
Mayor: You mean in terms of the schools?
Question: In general – everything. Schools – [inaudible] –
Mayor: Okay, a very simple philosophy to it, which is we look at inclusion in everything we do. A simple example – municipal IDs. Municipal ID was meant to say to everyone, regardless of where you come from, regardless of documentation status, that you’re respected and appreciated, and that opportunity is here for you as well. We do it in the way we approach all of our schools, by trying to ensure that all parents are engaged, regardless of background, regardless of language. We do it in the way with all of our agencies – we emphasize that we want to serve people, again, regardless of language. It’s a message that’s sent up and down the government – that this must be a city for everyone. And I would argue very strongly everything we’re trying to do with affordable housing is to keep this a city for everyone and a city that’s this wonderful mix that is New York City, because it will not be New York City if people cannot afford to live here. Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, over here on this side, now.
[Applause]
Question: Good evening, Mayor de Blasio. Nice to see you again. I want to first of all thank you for all of your hard work and for being here in District 30. One question that comes to my mind is the need for more schools – and, of course, District 30 being one of the most overcrowded, along with District 24. But we also have a need for high schools, and especially in the borough of Queens. But there are very real concerns that a lot of people have, putting, say, a high school on the corner – and so it’s easy for people to feel like we need it, but not in our backyard. In your years of experience, how can we and the city advocate more effectively to have these schools?
Mayor: Well, I’m going to ask Lorraine Grillo to come up and join me – the lady who builds the schools. So I don’t know about the specific thing you’re talking about – let me just do this first point, because, look, this is one of the epicenters of overcrowding in the city. We – and we know that, and we have to do a lot to fix it. So, what we’re doing now – the investments we have made – we have – for the next five years, we are putting $3, almost $3 and a half billion dollars into building new capacity all over the city. What it means for District 30 is 1,500 new seats coming. What it means for District 24 is 3,400 new seats coming. So real investments are being made in terms of addressing overcrowding. But in terms of your question on high schools and how we’re doing that, Lorraine Grillo, President of the School Construction Authority.
Lorraine Grillo, President and CEO, New York City School Construction Authority: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Isaac, I thank you for the question. As you know, sometimes it’s very difficult to site a high school. People have a fear of change. It really – I’ve had an experience over time where we had tremendous opposition for a school that we were building in a neighborhood, where there were protests and all kinds stuff. And finally we were able to convince them by working with the local community on what kind of theme will the school have, what will the school look like, how will it fit into the neighborhood? And in that way, we were able to convince these folks – and now, that community has partnered with that school, and it – they’re just thrilled with it. So, it’s a hard job, it’s very tough, and we love doing it.
Mayor: And – thank you – I would say that is the key thing: is the community making clear what it needs, what it believes will make the school will make the school a success, and we will work to match it.
Council Member Dromm: So, time for a little commercial advertisement while Lorraine is here. Thank you very much for helping us get that White Castle site over on 69th Street and 34th Avenue in this district – very much needed.
[Applause]
Thank you. And that did come about because of people telling me that that site was available, and then me getting ahold of Lorraine. So when Lorraine mentions that if you know of sites, tell us – tell the elected officials where those sites are before other people can get to them, and we can possibly get them and put them – and make them a school. Thank you, Lorraine. Over here?
Question: Good evening, Mayor. My name is [inaudible] and I’m an immigrant who lives and works in this community. I happen to be also the director of a community based organization, Parents in Action. And I want to bring the concerns that I hear from the parents who live in this community. We have an excellent charter school on 81st Street, the Renaissance, and 37th Avenue, right beside the public library. But what would be the chances of having another one, because there is a great demand in the community, and parents really are lucky to get in the lottery and get this prize. So we’re looking forward to – hopefully, that we’ll get another one for our community. Thank you.
Mayor: Thank you. So, look – we are trying to make sure that there are good options for all children, and we value every child in this school system. The vast majority of kids are in traditional public schools. But the kids in charter schools, we are here to serve as well. And we work very well with a lot of charter schools. Where – excuse me – a charter school needs space, and we think is one that is doing well and, obviously, respecting the ground rules that we think are important in terms of working with other surrounding schools and ensuring that they are engaging all types of children, including special needs kids and English Language Learners – we work with a lot of charters that meet that description, and we’re able to help them find the space they need. And then sometimes, space, like everywhere else, is a challenge for all of us. We will work with anyone. But remember – at the same time, as I said in the beginning, our job is to lift up every school. Parents, in some cases, are looking for a different option because they don’t have faith in their neighborhood school. That is not an acceptable state of affairs. That is not something that Carmen or I will accept – that is why we have a plan to entirely change this school system, so that any parent in every neighborhood can feel good about their school. Thank you.
[Applause]
Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, Department of Education: But I want to add something for the specific school – I went to visit, I know the school well, and also one of the things they requested was pre-k, which they didn’t have, and we gave them pre-k. So this is a school – this is a public charter and they’re doing a great job.
[Applause]
Mayor: Excellent, thank you. I also want to welcome – our commissioner for the Department of Youth and Community Development is here, Bill Chong. Get up and wave – there he is – thank you.
Council Member Dromm: Hey, over here.
Question: Thank you. Thank you, Your Honor, Council Member Dromm, chancellor. My name is Bill [inaudible]. Up until recently, I was a 10-year veteran of CEC 24, and I want to thank everyone for coming out – very crowded here – reminds me of one of the classrooms in our district.
[Laughter]
Here’s what I want to get to, mayor – a better cooperation between the Department of Education and the CECs, okay? That’s very important. Let me give you a quick little example. We requested years ago that the PanAm Hotel site, along with our Glendale-Cooper Avenue site, to be used as schools. Well, the Department of Education said, well, that’s not suitable for schools. Yet, they’re deemed suitable for homeless family shelters, which though they’re not in code or compliance with those issues – but they can be used for those issues and contribute to the overgrowing, overcrowding situation that we have. What I ask of you, mayor, if you want to keep mayoral control, which I am against, this needs to change and dramatically in the next couple of years, if not by next year when they vote – two years after – when they vote again. What would I ask of you, mayor, with the chancellor is streamlining the process, cooperating with the CECs, listening to them. You know what? Right now, it’s just a soapbox I stand on. And whenever they feel like it, they can kick it out from under me, you know? And that’s – no, I really don’t enjoy about the CECs – there is no parental involvement with the situation, and that’s what I would like to change – and knock out the bureaucracy in the DOE as far as getting things done quicker and more efficiently.
Mayor: Thank you. I’ll start, and I bet the chancellor wants to add. So look, first of all, I was part of the previous system. I was a community school board member, and I’m proud of that service on the community school board. And we chose Carmen Fariña as our superintendent, which was a very good choice. But, that being said, I will remind you, and we can – we’re not going to have a back-and-forth debate – you made your point, I’ll make mine – I will remind you that the previous system of governance had an immense amount of problems. Unfortunately, there was a lot of corruption – not everywhere, but plenty of places. A lot of things didn’t move. And the things that I have outlined to you tonight – how do we go from 20,000 kids in full-day pre-k to 65,000 kids in full-day pre-k? How do we double the number of kids in after-school programs at the middle school level? Right now, by the way, any parent with a child in middle school – you can have a guaranteed free seat in after school for your child. That was not the case a few years ago. But you have a right now to a seat in an after-school program for your child for free if your child’s in middle school. Those things happened very quickly, very intensely because mayoral control gave me the power to make them happen quickly. So, that’s one part of the answer. In terms of CECs, part of why I told you I was a community school board member is of course I feel kindred to CECs. We believe they bring a lot of valuable insight, a lot of valuable proposals. I feel – and the chancellor’s spent a lot of time meeting with CECs – I feel like CECs are very crucial to helping us understand what will work and not work. So, if you’re having a different experience, I want to figure out what we can do better. But I know this chancellor is committed to hearing what CECs have to say. That does not mean we’re always going to agree, right? Because you and I might disagree on mayoral control of education, we might disagree on the Pan American Hotel, which we do disagree on. But that doesn’t – we absolutely believe the voices of parents are going to tell us a lot of things we don’t see. They’re going to tell us – I think you’re right – how to streamline and speed up things, because there’s plenty of things in the Department of Education that still have to be made better. I’m very concerned, for example, and have been for years that the way we support parents of children with special needs has to be much more compassionate, much more streamlined. We’ve made some real progress towards that, but there’s more to do. That happened because parents – and I know this from my own experience before as public advocate – parents showed us what had to change, and a lot of us took up that cause, and that’s part of why the changes are happening now. So, we value CECs a lot in my view. Carmen?
Chancellor Fariña: First of all, I meet with the CEC presidents once a month on Saturdays. We purposely pick Saturdays so we would be uninterrupted – it’s an hour-and-a-half meeting. We listen to their concerns. We certainly know that one of the major decisions left to CECs is rezoning. We also now have a new head now of the parent engagement office on purpose, so that she can engage more with the CECs starting this year. As a matter of fact, I started my first one last week. We’re now being with CPAC presidents once a month. I meet with every CPAC president’s counsel around the city. Last year, I did over 40 town hall meetings at the CEC discussions. The reality is, there are – we’re ready to listen. The meeting I went to this week for the CEC in the Bronx, District 11, gave me three things to think about, two of which I was able to change within a day. But there are other things that people will say that we’re not going to go back to good old days, because they weren’t so good. So, the idea of CECs choosing their own principals – not going to happen, at least, not under us. And I want to be honest because what we know that some districts took advantage of this and everybody was related to somebody who got a job. And I think we need to be extremely honest about what was bad and what was good. And we want to somehow be in the middle of who we move forward.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, thank you. Over here –
Question: Genie [inaudible] – I’m a teacher at PS 239. And, first of all, I just have to say thank you so much for treating teachers as professionals. It’s been a long time – a career changer – and for the first time in 12 years I feel like I can truly teach the way I want to teach. So, I really appreciate that. PS 239 is Police Officer Ramon Suarez’s school, and it’s where you happened to kick off universal pre-k. It’s working out very well. So, I was just going to ask you, what is your plan, going forward, to actually improve – increase enrollment, while also handling overcrowded situations, especially in the trailers?
Mayor: I appreciate that question, but let me just say a quick thing about what you said at the beginning. I know there’s a lot of teachers here tonight. I – I was – as a public school parent, I was very troubled that teachers were not being respected. And so then, are you surprised if teachers do not feel respected, they’re not being given enough professional training opportunities, they’re not being given the foundation for success, which I think is providing early childhood education for all children? If you look at all the things we weren’t doing for education, and then if you look at the tone taken towards teachers, is it a surprise that a lot of very good, very committed, talented people decided they were no longer going to be teachers? So we were hemorrhaging talented teachers. And one of the things that Carmen has taught me over the years is there’s – nothing is going to change the school system more than recruiting and retaining the very best teachers for the long haul. So that’s why we’re doing the things we do.
[Applause]
Because if you wake up in the morning and you feel appreciated and you feel honored and you feel supported and you feel you have a chance to grow professionally and grow within the system and reach higher opportunities if that’s what you seek, you’re going to stick around. And by the way, we want you to stick around. We need you.
[Applause]
Chancellor Fariña: She’s also a math teacher, which we need a lot more of.
Mayor: We really want you to stick around.
[Laughter]
So the question of trailers – so it will take a while. We’re committed to school-by-school getting rid of trailers, but we’re not going to lie about the fact that it takes a while, because there’s real physical challenges. So right now we have a $490-million dollar – almost half-a-billion dollar – initiative over the next five years, and most of that money is focused on replacing trailers with permanent facilities. It’s going to be methodical work. And we have made some progress over time and our predecessors made some progress, but this is one that’s going to take a while. But half-a-billion dollars is real money - and that’s a good, strong start. Thank you.
[Applause]
Council Member Dromm: Okay, and then we’re going to go over here.
Question: Thank you, mayor, for coming. Thank you, Danny Dromm – how proud we are to have you as our councilman – thank you so much. Julissa Ferreras, councilwoman, thank you so much.
[Applause]
Before you came out, we were encouraged to ask you tough questions, so I’ve got one for you, okay? You have called parents strategic partners in the success of children. However, teachers like me, immigrants like me who teach fellow immigrants English, who are parents, immigrants who are parents, are concerned that the reduction in funding for adult literacy programs is sending the wrong message and is raising some doubts in some of us, your supporters. We really need you to consider this. Your honor, I have a dream, okay? I have a dream that every immigrant neighborhood in New York City will have an adult education program where immigrants can learn to speak English and defend themselves with English, not rely – not have to rely on translators. Translators are good, but they’re not necessarily empowering. And immigrants come here not to depend on anyone – to be empowered. Not to allow them to learn English and read to their children and help them with their homework and inspire their children to go to college, not to empower immigrants and allow them to become an excuse to fail in many cases is a mistake. I think your honor is proactive, and I think your honor loves immigrants and loves education. We believe in your honor – we voted for you, we campaigned for you, but we really need you to consider this – the city is made up of many millions of immigrants who are the foundation of our economy. What is your honor going to do to make our dreams a reality? What is your honor going to do to empower those strategic partners that you’re talking about to learn English and make progress?
Mayor: Okay, thank you.
[Applause]
You state the case very powerfully, and I appreciate that passion.
I’m confused on one point, because I believe in the power of adult literacy and I want Deputy Mayor Buery to talk about how we are using community schools – 140 community schools – as a place to, in fact, do just that, because we want the parents to be able to work with the children on their homework. So – the cuts you’re referring to – I’m not sure what those are – I’m just telling you, I’m literally not sure specifically what those are – and I will happily have us follow up with you, because we are committed to this, but I want to make sure you understand what we’re doing with the community schools. So, Richard, just give him the quick explanation.
Deputy Mayor Richard Buery, Strategic Policy Initiatives: So we – one of the mayor’s big initiatives – hello? Is that better? Alright? Good afternoon. Good evening, rather. One of Mayor de Blasio’s amazing new initiatives is our community school initiative. We have 130 schools around the city, which are built on the principle that schools are part of the communities, and therefore schools should be there to serve the full community. So these are schools that within them have a variety of services for neighborhoods – everything from after-school programs, the vision programs, adult education programs. And the theory that we know that children who come to school with strong families, who come to school with a strong nutrition program, who come to school with the right clothing, who come to school from stable households, are more likely to be able to succeed when they get to school. So it’s one of the many ways that we are making sure that we’re really partnering with families. One of the great things that happened this summer is that we actually knocked on the doors of 35,000 families – 35,000 families – at these community schools. And we did that to make sure that parents knew that we were starting a new day, a new partnership to work with them. So, again, I’m not familiar with the program cut that you’re describing either –
Mayor: And Carmen’s going to talk about some of what we’re doing, but the point I want to emphasize about Richard’s role and about what we’re doing with the community schools is a lot of those community schools are adding adult literacy programs for the explicit reason. not only that it is empowering and it’s everything we value, but we need those kids to succeed. And the sooner their parents learn English and can work with them on their reading and their homework, the better. So we agree very much philosophically. We’re going to get you the information – and please follow up with our team on what’s happening at the community schools. Carmen’s going to tell you more and then we’ll follow up from there. Go ahead, Carmen.
Chancellor Fariña: Alright, first of all, I just went to visit my first adult literacy program. It’s the one here in Queens, right off Tompkins Square. It’s fabulous. It runs all day long. Adults can take courses in technology, resume-writing, English, and they also have courses at night for those parents, those people who can’t go during the day. So one of the things I recommend, if any of you are interested in this, Yolanda, can I put it on – stand up – Yolanda Torres can do it. We can also – I’ll have Dorita Gibson stand up. She supervises Superintendent Mills who’s in charge of adult education. So if there are courses you want, and one of the things that really struck me when I went to this adult literacy center, that we really need to start using some of our immigrant parents to become our own translators. They already know two languages, they’re learning that. But the center was wonderful. Like I said, it wasn’t far from here. I went to one in Brooklyn as well, and I’m visiting them in every borough. So we do have them. We maybe are not advertising them enough. So we’ll – we’re happy to talk to you about that.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, thank you. Let’s go over here now.
Chancellor Fariña: And Yolanda has a list of where they are. Okay.
Question: Good evening, everyone, my name is [inaudible]. I’m a resident of Woodside, right off the border. Sorry, Council Member Dromm, kind of had to sneak in.
Council Member Dromm: We love you too, don’t worry.
Question: Thank you. Basically, I grew up in the school system, and I have been working for the school system since 1994, and I started as a science teacher and now I’m currently as a laboratory specialist. And I have two questions – one has to do with the science safety manual. How come our principals and even our science teachers are not mandated to go for their once-a-year training so that way they can be kept up to date with all the changes that are happening? And also, the other thing that also concerns me is when we have our wonderful ATRs who are floating about, being moved from school to school instead of being utilized on a permanent basis in a permanent school. So, you know, there are so many issues that we can talk about tonight, but I chose to choose these two particular topics that no one seems to be talking about. And we can’t forget that two years ago, I believe in the high school that your daughter graduated from, we had a very catastrophic situation that could’ve been highly preventable. Laboratory specialists have not been issued licenses since 2007 and that is a big shame because they’re a vital component to our school system. So, thank you.
[Applause]
Chancellor Fariña: Well, I think that is a very reasonable question, and I will look into it. And we certainly know that happened at Beacon High School, and we did review the rules, make sure they went out, but in terms of training, maybe something we need to revisit and do it quickly. So, thank you for –
Mayor: On the ATR question, look, I think there’s been real progress made, because we took a very different approach. And we realized that there were some very talented people in that ATR pool that had just been caught in the crossfire of school changes. And let’s face it – in the previous – in the previous approach, a lot of school were being closed, a lot of people were being phased out very arbitrarily, and plenty of them were very talented teachers, so I think we have done much better at getting those folks into new assignments. I don’t think we’re done yet. And I don’t think everyone is a perfect teacher, but there are certainly – I think we have shown that with a better approach, more people are getting assigned more quickly. Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, right over here.
Question: Good evening. My name is [inaudible] and I’m here with the DRUM – Desis Rising Up and Moving, an organization based in Jackson Heights, Queens –
Mayor: Say again?
Question: DRUM – Desis Rising Up and Moving. Yeah, we’re an organization based in Jackson Heights, and we work to organize South Asian communities. And our question is in relation to school security agents. So under the Giuliani mayoralship, in 1998, school security guards were put under the NYPD despite community opposition to this proposal. And now, with the recent assault at Spring Valley High School, where it is clear that cops often do not belong in education environments, would you, as a progressive mayor, be willing to consider legislation that would bring back the 5,200 SSAs under the DOE?
[Applause]
Mayor: I appreciate – I appreciate the question. As a progressive mayor, I think what we’re doing is fixing the existing system. Now, look, the previous approach didn’t work on some levels, but it did work on the level – I’m not talking about the discipline approach, where I had real differences – but in terms of achieving safer schools, there was some real progress made. And we need to keep our schools safe. Our solution, and you may have seen what we’ve put out recently – we’re changing the approach to discipline profoundly. Suspensions are down quite a bit. We think we have a much more fair approach. We also think we’ve rebalanced the equation so that the school leadership has a very different relationship with the school safety agents. I think there was too much separation in the past, and now we’ve created much more unity in the approach and much more deference to some of the needs of the school leadership and the school community. So I think, in the name of safety, keeping the school safety agents under the NYPD is right, but I think we’ve made a series of reforms that allow for a much more balanced approach. Do you want to add?
Chancellor Fariña: Yes. One of my favorite topics, among many. We have done a tremendous amount of retraining of school safety officers. Last year, for example, we hosted a celebration and we asked principals to nominate school safety agents that actually smile at you when you walk in the building, that go above and beyond in working with students. So we try to change the tone, and I will tell you that I see a difference. I actually get smiled at when I walk into a building, rather than a what-are-you-doing-here kind of look. So I think that’s important. But I do understand also the concern that people have that sometimes they act more like police officers rather than, you know, advocates for kids, and that’s something we’ve actually – are reviewing. I do meet with people at NYPD. And I think they have taken more of an open stance about having these discussions and working together. Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: And if I can just get a little something in there too, we’ve worked very closely with the administration – and, by the way, thank you, DRUM, for being here – Dromm loves DRUM, you know? Right? –
[Laughter]
– and with the leadership of Council Member Ferreras as well in the City Council to put $2.4 million into restorative practices in the system.
[Applause]
I think we – we want more and we’re not done, but I believe that the chancellor also put in over $700,000 dollars in that, bringing it over $3 million dollars, and so we’re moving in that direction of making sure that restorative practices are used in our schools, rather than having a police state. Thank you.
[Applause]
Question: Hi. My name is [inaudible]. I’m one of those hemorrhaged teachers that you were talking about before. I was a public school teacher in Queens for eight years, and I left to go teach at a private school when I – I felt just like you were saying, Mayor de Blasio, kind of restricted and unable to grow in the public school system. So I understand that one of your administration’s goals is to improve that experience. I’m also the father of a Kindergartener who is encountering the same kind of curriculum that I felt restricted by – a scripted, Pearson, ReadyGEN, Go Math Program in his school, so I’m seeing a little bit of the same thing that I was noticing when I was in the schools with him. So I was wondering if you or Chancellor Farina could speak a little more about the specific reforms that are going into making teaching a better place, or a better profession –
Mayor: I will start and I will pass to Carmen who is rarin’ to answer this question. She has strong, strong views on the question of curriculum. First of all, I’m going to do an advertisement. We want you back. Come back.
[Applause]
Unknown: [Inaudible]
Mayor: All right. That’s good.
[Applause]
Mayor: But we want you back. So, the things I think – I’m going to leave curriculum to Carmen but I want to reiterate if we are saying one, we are going to incessantly train our teachers to be better all the time and you can see in the way we have now organized the week, what a devotion there is to professional development. We’re going to give you a stronger pool of kids to work with because we’re starting with universal Pre-K. We’re going to invest in the reading specialists to bring the kids up to reading level at second and third grade. So, wherever you are along the continuum, you’re going to be dealing with kids more ready to learn, which I think – I’m not a teacher, but I think it must be more gratifying for teachers to have kids more able to learn and more confident in their learning.
We’re going to increase opportunities for teachers to work their way up in the system. We have master teachers, model teachers. We have improved the ability of our own teachers to get to those AP and Principal jobs unlike the previous administration that often preferred outsiders. We want our own teachers to go up to those because no one, no one is better ready to lead a New York City public school than someone who taught in a New York City public school.
[Applause]
So that’s a fundamental reality and what we say everyday - that we actually value it and we show it in many, many ways. Now as for curriculum.
Chancellor Farina: Well first of all, I think I definitely want you back, but you need to know that a lot of things have changed. And some of the things that have changed are that the eighty minutes on Mondays are also decided by teachers in the building. There’s a personnel committee, teachers get together and decide what they want more of or less of based on the school data. We now have, you have, the opportunity, since you’re not in the system, to shop for a school that has your philosophy.
We went back to Pearson last year and we said, guys, this doesn’t work for us. And they helped us rewrite a lot of the ReadyGEN work to the point that it’s a lot more open-ended. We’ve invested in working with Teachers College, and the reading and writing workshop model. Many schools in this district use it as well. We have also gone back and said there is no one way to do math. Go Math! may not be the answer. From these ladies I was talking to before, they’re doing Envisioning, some people are doing TERC, so I think it’s a much more flexible system and teachers do have the right to do this. So my advice to you as a teacher, shop for a school that matches your philosophy. But there’s plenty of that in the public school system because we’re not lock step in doing something, and one of the things I think you should know is that we’re getting tremendous feedback on our Pre-K curriculum. The curriculum for Pre-K is all about joy, it’s all about play, it’s all about hands on. I go into a school, and I see sand, I see water, I say, “Oh my god, thank god I’m not a Pre-K teacher.”
But that’s what I would want for my child. That’s certainly what I want for my grandchild. So I would say, to you, things are changing, and think about coming back.
Question: Hi, my name is [inaudible]. I’m with the Make the Road Organization, and our question for you is that the recent data shows suspensions and arrests have gone down, which is good for our communities. But suspensions continue to disproportionately impact Black and Latino students. The DOE placed oversight over infractions B21. School districts like Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, and Philadelphia has already eliminated suspensions for similar infractions, acknowledging that they lead to racial disparities. Will your administration end suspensions for B21 defining authority to adjust the racial injustice in our school and discipline policies?
[Applause]
Mayor: Carmen, I’ll start, you decide what you want to add. Look, thank you for how you started because it reflects the reality of fundamental series of changes that we can see already. There’s some times when things change and it takes years and years to show, this is happening immediately. The suspensions and arrests are down right away. This was round one, we intend to continue the reforms. So I can’t give you a clear enough answer because I actually don’t know the specific item you’re referring to. Carmen might be able to do better. But the point is, we think for the first level of reform we’ve shown real results. We’re going to continue to work with a host of advocates and community leaders, parents, students, etc, to deepen those reforms.
I’ve got to be straight up about the fact that we are balancing real safety needs in the schools but we will not allow something we think is disparity. So that’s why to the previous question on the similar topic, we think finding a balance point where we know schools are safe, but discipline is fair. It’s not over utilized, it’s not used in the disparate fashion. That is the goal we’re trying to strike.
Chancellor Fariña: Well, I would certainly agree and I would also say that one of the jobs I’ve given my Deputy Chancellors and my whole leadership team, is to go visit schools that are even listed persistently dangerous or dangerous and look at those specific statistics. The other thing that we’re really zeroing in on, that in the infractions that seem to cause the most problem is called insubordination. And working with school principals, and working with the NYPD, we’re looking at what do we mean by insubordination? An insubordination is sometimes in the eyes of the beholder and we’ve got to make that more consistent. We can’t judge this child because he has his hat on backwards and this child in a different school, he has his hat on backwards, so what?
So that’s where we’re looking at it because we find that it’s in that category that we see the most disparity.
Question: You said that you were a parent of a child of a public school, and that B21, defying authority is used to target Black and Latino students for anything we define as going against the restrictive order by a staff member in the building. That means seeing the cell phone print in your pocket or if your hat is turned backward, the fact that you decide – you just resisted [inaudible] to take off your hat. [inaudible] Leave you out of school, and just put you in the school to prison pipeline, in which you more likely you will be arrested, because you didn’t want to take off your hat.
Mayor: Again, what you are calling for is a fair and equal treatment. And what you’re calling for is not using a definition as Carmen just said, like insubordination. Not using it in either a racially motivated manner or unfair inconsistent manner. We believe what we’re doing is very much in that spirit with the changes that are being made. We’re not in the exact same place as some of the other cities you named. But you can see already that these reforms are happening. The next phase, as Carmen said, is to look at the things like insubordination and ensure that things are not used against people unfairly.
We are telling our principals, we are telling our school safety agents, we want a different approach. We’re retraining our school safety agent. So in every town hall meeting people are going to come up in a democracy and demand something. You have every right to do it. I’m telling you the honest answer, we think we’re making progress. We intend to do more, we’re going to do it in phases. The message has gone out across the school system, but I want you to hear, again, sometimes I’m not going to agree with someone fully, but I think we’re going to try to get some of the same places and I hope you see the evidence of it as we go along.
Unknown: Okay, thank you, we’re going to go to the next question if you don’t mind because I gave you two. All right, thank you. Over here, thank you.
Unknown: Welcome to District 30, Mayor de Blasio. Welcome Chancellor Farina, welcome back. My name is Debra Alexander, and I’m President of our Community Education Council. I could spend my entire time tabbing the virtues of District 30, particularly under our Superintendent, and I’m so proud to be a public school parent, particularly under our Chancellor. However, as we are the second most --
[Laughter]
Mayor: It was fun while it lasted.
Question: ...as we are the second most crowded district in the city, the number one question I am asked about as a parent leader, is class size. I have a third grader and a kindergartener who are packed into their classrooms both at their contractual max. When this is on the minds of not only District 30 parents, but parents citywide, and is one of the top reasons families leave public school for charter and private options, why have we not seen as a priority, any policies geared toward overall class size reduction and can we expect any under your administration?
[Applause]
Mayor: So, again, I want you to just take in for a moment, this is not an easy subject obviously. Three and a half billion over the next five years for new capacity, on top of that another half billion for class size reduction, which essentially means removing trailers and replacing them with permanent capacity. That’s four billion dollars and it’s not enough. I’m very comfortable telling you here in public it’s not enough. I don’t have more, you know, there may be a day where I can find more, but right now I don’t have more than four billion dollars to put into that. It will mean 1,500 new seats for District 30, which by any normal measure would be a whole lot of new seats, except District 30 is so outstandingly popular.
But what we are doing on top of the pure creating of seats is we’re trying to address what happens in the classroom in a different way that achieves some of the same effect that parents are looking for. Parents want to know that their child is getting the attention they deserve. So when we say, and obviously I was a public school parent for twenty years, when we say – close to twenty years, whatever it was, it was a long time – when we say, I want lower class size, we are saying in effect, I want to make sure my child gets the attention they deserve. I want to make sure it’s a good learning environment. I want to make sure it’s conducive. I want to make sure it’s safe, etc.
One of the ways we are doing that now, I talked about the literacy effort. That’s going to be a huge investment in reading specialists. Those reading specialists are going to be able to address individual children’s needs, or small groups of children, pull them out of the classroom, or in the classroom, separately, that is going to change in second grade, in third grade, what happens in that classroom. It’s a different way of trying to achieve some of the same outcomes. And Carmen can talk about some of the other strategies. But we have clearly – we do have a physical space challenge – because even with the investments we’re talking about, as Lorraine referenced earlier, finding the places to put the new schools, getting agreement from the community, actually building them, we have a money problem and a space issue that we’re working against.
So one solution is $4 billion dollars and in your case 1,500 hundred new seats. Another solution is do more with the space we have and put more staff on it and more support on it for our teachers. Please.
Chancellor Fariña: One of the things we actually just signed off on two weeks ago is that for any Kindergarten class that’s oversized, they will either be getting a paraprofessional part-time or the teachers will be getting extra relief time so they’ll be able to work with small groups of kids if they wish to. So, we are seriously looking at it and I think the other question is also by whose definition is too small or too big? But we’re actually looking at that citywide.
Unknown: Hey, over here please.
Unknown: So, I didn’t mean to go right after Deb –
Chancellor Fariña: [inaudible] Planted it.
Question: My name is Leonie Haimson, I run an organization called Class Size Matters. As you know, Mr. Mayor, smaller classes are parents number one priority on the DOE’s own surveys and during your campaign you promised to reduce class size to much lower levels and if necessary raise the funds to do so. And to expand the school capital plan to provide the space to make this possible. Yet, no funding has been allocated towards class size reduction, class sizes are larger than ever and last year more than 350,000 students were in classes of 30 or more, an increase from the year before. School overcrowding has also worsened and it’s not just in this neighborhood, but last year citywide, the average utilization or capacity level of elementary schools was at a 104%. With more than half of all students in our city attending extremely overcrowded schools, your priorities, while terrific goals that we all support, of expanding pre-k and affordable housing are simply going to make overcrowding worse. And yet, rather than expand the capital plan, the city cut back on the funds dedicated towards school construction in the ten-year capital plan and the current capital plan according to the DOE’s own enrollment projections will create less than half the seats necessary to address future enrollment growth and alleviate current conditions. My question is this: Number one, are you still committed to reducing class size and school overcrowding, and if so, what research and strategies will you use to accomplish this goal, and when will we see progress? And I want to remind you that the city has an eight billion dollar surplus and you have the power of eminent domain, which means you can take over any building in the city and make a school out of it. And finally –
[Applause]
Mayor: Okay. Go ahead. Let her finish. Let her finish. Let her finish. Go ahead.
Question: [Inaudible] to form a commission to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the school planning process? Thank you.
Mayor: Thank you.
[Applause]
Mayor: I knew you’d be here. I commend you for that fact. I looked at our platform language before coming here. I think you’ve characterized it differently than it was written. There’s no question in the world, we want to address class size in every way we can. What I just said, though, this is a cold, hard reality, the four billion we are putting in to addressing overcrowding and to addressing class size isn’t getting us far enough. Now, you could say, I don’t – couldn’t disagree more with your interpretation of our “surplus,” that’s just not how we see it, that’s how some other people see it, that’s not how when we do a whole financial plan, we do not believe that is a fair way of characterizing it. We have a budget that is built to deal with the fact that if we have any kind of downturn in this economy that we know two simple facts and we’ve learned them the hard way. In the event of a downturn in the New York City economy, and revenues are plummeting, and aid from the federal government is cut, and aid from the state government is cut, we cannot turn to Washington for help, they will not respond. We cannot turn to Albany for help, they will not respond. I have built a budget that protects this city and protects this school system, regardless of what happens in this economy. So, to the “surplus,” the notion here is to protect our schools and all the other services we provide because in the event of something going wrong in our economy and that was not so long ago, you might all remember The Great Recession? If something goes wrong, we will only have ourselves to depend on.
In terms of the resources we have put in, we are very proud of the affordable housing plan. We believe it absolutely necessary to keep people in the city. What I disagree with you on, in terms of how you’re interpreting our plans on housing, is we’re trying to help people stay in their own neighborhoods that are being forced out of their own neighborhoods. That means the very same people who have kids in school right now, being able to stay in their neighborhoods and keep their kids in school. And that is a priority, to put the capital money into that plan so we can have that plan. To the larger question, are we always looking for other things we can do? Of course. We’re not done. But what we have established as our priorities, we believe are the effective priorities and in addition to the investment to create more classes – more seats, I should say, in addition to the investments to get kids out of trailers, the things I just talked about, what we’re trying to do make the classes work better, that we have, the reading specialists at second grade are going to be a key example of that. That’s what we can do now, we will not stop continuing – we will not, obviously, ever stop trying to address these issues. I’m not sure I want to do a commission, I’ll consider that and we’ll let you know.
Council Member Dromm: Thank you, I just – a pitch again, one of the things, Leonie, that we’ve been working on in the City Council, has been to get the Blue Book Task Force to get a real honest picture of what’s happening in the school system and I want to congratulate and thank the task force for the work that they did because I think that the – the outcomes of that task force have been great in showing us the number of where those seats are as well and what we have to do. It’s a much more honest view of how space is being used in the schools. Now, is there work to be done? In my opinion, there is, as the person who advocates for that, I will continue to advocate for that. But I want to say one other thing too because when I first became a City Council member, there was no plan to remove the portables and because of the advocacy of the Council and because of the work, together, with the School Construction Authority and the Chancellor, now there is a plan. How we find space to put those kids in the meantime, before we can get them out of the trailers, really comes down to the biggest issue of all. So, over here.
Question: Hi, my name is [inaudible] , I am a public school parent of three girls. This is for Mayor de Blasio. When you ran for mayor, you said that you were opposed to high-stakes testing and we very much appreciated that we had a public school parent as mayor. Educators have been speaking out exhaustively, for years, about their very real concerns about the – about the very deeply flawed state tests, yet your administration repeatedly states that they believe in these tests and New York City continues to be the place in this state where test scores have the greatest weight. Governor Cuomo has said that these test scores should be meaningless for children, yet they are used as a factor in middle school and high school admissions. My questions are, do you understand the real reasons for the massive opt-out last year and why is your administration's rhetoric so different from that of some of the most respected educators in the city?
[Applause]
Mayor: Well, I think there are several things I would contest there. First of all, we have moved so much away from high-stakes testing. What I said, when I was running for office, I believe fundamentally, we acknowledge that there are federal and state laws that require high-stakes testing in certain ways. We use those tests in a very, very different way than our predecessors. We don’t grade schools anymore. We have fundamentally changed the weight that is given to those tests in terms of how we promote kids, we’ve fundamentally changed how we do it in admissions. I mean, the whole across the board effort has been to reduce the emphasis in this school system on high-stakes testing.
Now, the opt-out movement, of course I understand what people are feeling. I was a public school parent, I saw – that I had my own frustrations and my kids had their own frustrations about the test. And I would happily join with you and anyone to try and change the foundationally assumptions about high stakes testing in Albany and Washington. I don’t think – I think you’re being a little generous to Albany because Albany is part of why we have such a reliance on high-stakes testing. So, my argument would be, we should be resetting the entire equation. By the way, you notice now, as No Child Left Behind is being discussed, that suddenly there is a backing away, rightfully, from high-stakes testing. We should obviously be doing all we can to push in that direction. But here we have de-emphasized it. We have redirected so many of the previous administration’s policies away from high-stakes testing.
The opt-out movement, therefore, I feel very kindred with the motivation, I just don’t think the actual effort is without consequence. When parents opt-out, it’s voting with your feet, it’s – I can totally understand it in the context of democracy, but there’s real consequences. We need to protect the long-term health of the school system and there’s a clear, federal rule that if there is too much non-participation in tests, it can lead to reduction in federal funding. We take that very seriously, well we’ll let the chancellor speak to this too – we take that very seriously and I think the more productive thing we can do together is to try and change the underlying policies. That’s what I think will actually help us for the long haul. Chancellor.
Chancellor Fariña: Well, I think several things are happening. First of all, we have a new state commissioner who really has said this all has to be rethought. She has a task force now, she welcomed parents’ input. But I want to say also, as a teacher, as a parent, and as a grandparent, I don’t think that assessing kids is terribly wrong all the time. I think – I think test prep is wrong. I think when test prep takes the place of good teaching – good teaching should be test prep. And I’ve made it very clear to principals around the city that the only kind of test prep that I think is good is one that starts in February and is more about how long does it take to sit. This commissioner has promised and has already started putting in, less sitting time, we’re going to have less questions on these exams, we’re going to have teacher input into creating the exams. We’re also going to be getting the tests – the exams back, so we actually get to see what’s on them. One of the things that I think that has been wrong about exams is that they give them and then nobody knows what they got wrong or how they improve what they don’t know.
[Applause]
So that’s one of the things that we have asked the commissioner to do and she has agreed for, you to be able to go online and see what the test questions were and also review what your kids get wrong. But, you know, there’s never going to be a right or wrong answer on this, it’s really though – I believe strongly that one of the jobs kids have to some degree, is to go to school and be accountable for what they learn. I don’t think teachers should be graded on the results – no more than 30 percent of the test because I do think there is an assessment piece, but that’s it.
[Applause]
And we’ve said it publicly and I think we finally, we have a commissioner who’s working on this and who has agreed to work with us. So I would say stay tuned on this one. We got rid of the promotional policy, we’ve encouraged teachers also to look at different kinds of materials in their classrooms, not some that are [inaudible] sheets and fill-in-that-blanks kind of thing. So, like I said, stay tuned, we’re going to be working on this.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, thank you and we’re going go over here now.
Question: Mr. Mayor, Chancellor Fariña, thank you very much for coming, Danny, what can I say, we’re very lucky to have you.
Council Member Dromm: Thank you.
Question: My name is [inaudible] and I am one of the lucky few to have a full-time position as a New York City public school librarian. And as a librarian, I wear many hats, but first and foremost, I am a teacher and what I predominantly teach, although there are many roles I have, is research skills. And the word research appears in the Common Core state standards for English, Social Studies, and Science 80 times, yet colleges complain that our students are not ready to pursue research when they get to college and that they’re completely deficient in basic critical-inquiry skills. So, I guess I’m here to ask, why have school librarians become dispensable and is there an understanding of our value in light of the Common Core standards and if so, is there a plan to hire more of us?
[Applause]
[Laughter]
Chancellor Fariña: Well, first of all, let me tell you that as a teacher, research is one of the things that I think I was actually very good at doing in my class. I love Social Studies, I love Science and you can’t do either one of those without research. So, I believe in that. I believe it’s a skill that teachers all need to know, not just librarians. And whereas I love librarians and anything having to do with books, I was very frustrated as a superintendent, visiting schools and seeing what I call, open access libraries, where there was never a child in it. I’m not saying that’s you, I’m just saying –
Question: [Inaudible]
Chancellor Fariña: Well, that’s great, you’ll have to give me the number. So, I think one of the things that we really have to look at very carefully is where there’s libraries, are they being used all day, are they being used after school, are they being used during lunch? I went to a great school here in Queens, where the principal said, “Well, maybe I shouldn’t tell you this but my library is open through three lunch hours,” I said, “Oh my God, that’s great!” Because wouldn’t it be a great place for kids who choose not to go out, just to love reading because we’ve taught reading, particularly, too much as a skill, and not as a joy.
[Applause]
So one of the things that we put out this week – this last week, is New York Reads 365 and I’m hoping –
Question: [inaudible]
Chancellor Fariña: Okay, great.
Question: [inaudible]
Chancellor Fariña: No, but I’m just saying that in the librarian’s world, over time, because of space issues to a large degree, and then also, and again this is personal, not as chancellor, one of the things that happened, we started seeing libraries as these double – Lorraine just heard me on this – two or three room classrooms that when they became the showcase, but then nobody used them. So we need to go back to the libraries that are used and also, New York City public libraries, by the way, are used more now, than ever before, so I would say yes, but when used properly and the other people who should be in our school libraries are our parents. Going back to what that gentleman said, our parents should be using the libraries to use the technology in it, to perfect their own skills.
Council Member Dromm: Thank you, over here.
[Applause]
Question: Thank you Mayor de Blasio and administration to be here, I really appreciate that. My name is [inaudible] and I’m a volunteer for [inaudible], it’s a non-profit organization that cater for immigrants, adults and children, and the funding for that – the contract has ended. We have been on NY1 twice to raise money for just the bare operational – because we continue to have immigrants coming in to the organization. My question to you is what can you do to help this small CBO keep serving new immigrants and families and their children and meet so many individualized services and how you plan to support such organizations?
[Applause]
Mayor: Well, a couple of things. Each individual organization, there are ways they can go about applying for funding from the city or via the City Council, but that’s a specific process. I mean people have to go through that each year as part of the budget process that’s about to begin and you certainly should participate in that. We believe community based organizations bring a lot in terms of the ability to provide a service and understand the communities they are serving and do it in the language of the community, etc. So we’re actually changing a lot of the ways we provide grants to recognize that powerful role of the community based organizations. But in terms of immediate things that we can do together, Nisha Agarwal is here, so I’m going to ask her afterwards to see you and find out if there’s ways that we can work together and be of support to you. Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, let’s go over here now.
Question: Hi, my name is Pamela Stewart. I’m a mom of seven. My oldest is 24, my youngest is seven. My 24-year-old is in the Coast Guard, and then I have two in college, and then everyone else is in school – half of them are in charter schools, the other half are in public schools. The reason I’m standing before you – I had like three questions, but you’ve already answered like two of them. So, my main concern is, me being a parent with four children with IEPs, I find that we have to go to IEP meetings. And when you’re working full-time, there’s a conflict. Now, some employers, you can ask them nicely and they’ll say okay. Other employers are not as helpful, because I guess the needs of their business don’t allow them to do so. But when I look at the number of people that are in jail, and a high percentage of them have learning disabilities, that concerns me. And with what Ms. Fariña and you are saying, parents engagement is important. I feel like if we invested in our parents who have children with IEPs, to have time to go to those IEP meetings and work with their teachers, it might make a difference, especially when we spend $40, I think, a day on people to sit in jury duty and a large portion of them don’t even get selected. I think in Manhattan, it’s like 1,000 people show up a day and less than a third get selected?
Mayor: I definitely got the question and I appreciate it. First of all, I commend you. You sound like Superwoman if you did seven kids and you’ve had such success. I commend you.
[Applause]
Now, to Carmen – and a number of key members of her team are here, and we’ve talked about the issue of how we can work with special education parents better. So, what I hear you saying is, what can we do with employers to create that flexibility? Another way to think about it is, what can we do to create flexibility in ourselves to work with parents’ – schedule maybe different hours when those meetings can happen. So, Carmen, or whoever on your team – how can we accommodate those parental schedules?
Chancellor Fariña: Well, one of the things that we’ve tried to do – but, again, it’s an imperfect system yet on this issue – is to look at the 40 minutes with parents that we have extra, and to see where those 40 minutes can fit in the Tuesday school day. We’ve asked, specifically school prinicipals, that in September and October, or the opening of school will be dealt specifically with parents with IEPs and newly-arrived immigrants to this country. So, if you give me some – I don’t know who’s taking your information – a particular school you want me to look into, I’m happy to do so. But we should be able to make appointments.
Mayor: But –
Question: [inaudible]
Mayor: Yeah, I think it’s bigger than that. I’m going to be your advocate. And in looking to – the deputy chancellors, Ursulina, can we have any thought – and we don’t, we should look into it – of how on a policy basis we can create flexibility. If an employer will not allow a parent to go to a meeting, what is Plan B that we can offer that parent?
Chancellor Fariña: Plan B has consistently been that you can do a phone conference. And the phone conference is – I will put it out there again, but they can be done that way. And the other thing that has come up actually from the CECs that I’ve met with – they want to know if there’s a way to write an official letter that we create, allowing parents even to get credit for volunteering in their children’s school. That – some organizations allow their employees – particularly the banks – to do New York Cares, or Habitat for Humanity. Why can’t we do that as a way of getting more support in public schools? But phone conversations – and I will make sure that gets out more broadly.
Mayor: Okay. I’m going to do one of those mayor’s prerogative things. Ursulina's seen me do this before. So, I want us to – I think your answer is fair and just, but I think the question’s fair too. Can we take a look at whether there’s some new frontier out there of how we could create something different, because I understand how phone might work, but I could also understand why that could be challenging.
Question: [inaudible]
Mayor: Right.
Question: Benefit us in the long run – if we have less people going through the court system, we need less jurors, so we save money.
Mayor: No, I appreciate that.
Chancellor Fariña: To front load the money is what you’re saying?
Mayor: Right. Let’s follow-up and see what we think makes sense, including if there is legislative or another fix. Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, right over here.
Question: Good evening. My name is [inaudible], I’m on Bangladesh Society. Today, I [inaudible] to our Honorable Mayor [inaudible] where celebrate every year International Mother Language, February 20th. It’s our culture - we fight for our language. Internationally, they declared by UNESCO to celebrate. We have a city park [inaudible]. We want to use the February 20th, midnight, like a couple of hours, to [inaudible] to celebrate our International Mother Language Day and there is a need for something - build that one monument [inaudible].
Mayor: Do you want to start?
Council Member Dromm: Okay. So, Mr. Mayor, this is a question about the Mother Language Day, which is celebrated in Bangladesh. And, you know, their language was taken away from them. I relate to it very, very much, because as an Irish person, we were not allowed to speak Irish in my country. And the Mother Language Day celebrates the fact that Bangladeshi people are now getting back their language and reclaiming their language, but it’s international. And so what they’re looking at doing is trying to get some type of a monument, either in a city park or on a city street or in a plaza or something like that. And they’re asking for help with that.
Mayor: Well, we’re certainly – I don’t know enough about it. I don’t want to ever lie – I don’t know enough about it, but if Danny likes it, that’s encouraging, and I appreciate your advocacy, so let’s follow up with Danny’s help and see what’s possible. Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: Okay. So, over here.
Question: Good evening, Mr. de Blasio. Thank you for coming tonight. My name is Anya Martinez, and I’m in the ninth grade. My question regards technology in public schools. A recent article that I read says that even though technology has been in a couple of public schools, you know, today, they haven’t seen much of an increase in test scores. And I was just wondering about that. Like, is there any approach that you’re going to –
Mayor: Yeah, no, technology – I appreciate the question, thank you – the – technology is, as we know, sadly, been used much too little in our public schools. And as I said in the beginning, you know, when we looked at the situation in terms of what students of today actually need, we found it was far from what it should be. That’s why our new initiative is Computer Science for All. Over the next ten years, we’re going to be phasing this in. Every student – as this grows out, every student at every grade level will have computer science education blended into their entire curriculum. And obviously, in the process, we’ll be putting a lot more technology in the schools as well. So I think you’re question is the right question. Do we have enough? Are we approaching it right? The answer is no, and that’s why we’re changing it with the Computer Science for All strategy. Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: Okay. Over here now.
Question: Good evening, Mayor and Chancellor Fariña. My name is Noely Nunez. I’m Spanish teacher for the gifted middle school in District 30. First of all, I’d like to thank both of you for making teachers so very important. Over the last two years, thanks to the many changes your administration has implemented, we’ve seen a very positive change in our profession. And I think it’s witnessed by the large influx of enthusiastic teachers that are now coming back into the profession.
[Applause]
As you’ve stated and many of us have stated, we do have an overcrowding issue. We have a class-size issue. And one of the concerns that our District 30 has is when you do look at these new schools that you would like to build, how do you go about finding the location? How do you decide which community is the one that’s most in need for these additional seats?
Mayor: Well, I’ll just say, one of the things we found, and we talked a moment ago about this example of the former White Castle site. And in the briefing the other day, we were talking about the fact that there might be a school put on a former White Castle site, and I said that’s sacred ground, are we allowed to build on that?
[Laughter]
But the – but that actually was found by the council member working with community activists to identify the site. So one of the things I want to say – there’s – there are many ways to participate in New York City and help us do the job better. One of them is identifying sites where we can put new schools, where we can put pre-k centers. That really does help us, because we don’t have a perfect database of every available real estate site in the city. We need people to help us do it. As to how we decide what to prioritize, that $4 billion dollars I talked about, how it’s going to be utilized and what the vision is that determines that, Lorraine Grillo will explain.
President Grillo: Yes. And as a product of District 30 myself and my own children in District 30, I understand exactly what you mean in terms of overcrowding. We do demographic studies every year. Our demographers, two different organizations, do projections five and ten years out. Then we take that information and we work with HPD and others. We get housing starts. We get birth information. All of those things are compiled. And with that, we are able to look out five and ten years to see what the future will look like in these districts. Obviously it’s been very difficult to keep up, because, as you talked about earlier, finding those sites in the appropriate location, of the appropriate size, in neighborhoods where people actually want to have a school – all of those things together, very, very difficult. But as the mayor said, we work very closely with the council member. He gave us a great suggestion. We jumped on it and we were able to get that site. So anybody who has ideas, we’re willing to listen.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, we’re going to go over to this side.
Question: Hi. My name is Sabrina [inaudible]. I’m a middle school special ed teacher in District 24, I.S. 93, and I just wanted to thank you for bringing unity to teachers in DOE again. For over a decade, we have lived under a dark cloud that continued to treat us in a way that made us feel bitter and bad. Now teachers work in unity with our whole school community. As you mentioned before with the parent engagement part, I thank you for setting aside that time for the parent engagement. As a special ed teacher, and it may work out for that lady, we also do it in the morning also, because a lot of our parents have to be at work doing the day, and that 40 minutes at 2:20, so we do it in the morning time also – it’s an option. We also have PD now, which is wonderful. Every single Monday we get increased professional growth. We never had that before. We were never treated like professionals. And also, Chancellor Fariña, we thank you for increasing the funding for the Urban Advantage in the middle schools – my kids love going on their trips. I’m able to buy supplies for them. We dissected a frog. Thank you.
[Laughter]
[Applause]
Chancellor Fariña: For many of you who may not be aware of, also – the Urban Advantage I actually started when I was deputy chancellor, but one of the things also is that it was the first time that a cultural institution is able to award degrees. And getting the Museum of Natural History to be able to award degrees for teachers has started a revolution in the city, so that now Lincoln Center is in the business of awarding degrees for music teachers, and we’re looking to move more cultural institutions to become degree-awarding institutions, so we don’t just have to depend on our colleges.
Mayor: One other point I want to the – to the very – very much appreciated comments of our colleague – you know, it’s something about our society – we have always valued doctors for example. Doctors get lots and lots of continuing education throughout their career. They’re constantly getting updated on the latest approaches. They’re actually required to be updated. We value lawyers – we may not always love lawyers, but we value lawyers. Lawyers have to constantly update their legal education. We previously did not appear to value our teachers enough to say we’re going to constantly help you improve – we’re going to give you the time, we’re going to devote resources to your betterment, because that means you will be able to teach the next generation better. It will also say to teachers how much we value them and how much we want this to be their lifelong career and how much we want them to stay in our school system. We’re doing the same in other places as well. We’re doing an unprecedented training effort for our police officers, who we depend on for our safety. But before, they didn’t get regular updated training on how to be as effective as possible, how to be as safe as possible. So this is an idea in this administration about treating our workforce like professionals across the board and recognizing that is what’s going to bring out the best in them. People want not only respect, they want to be invested in so they can be as good as they can be.
Council Member Dromm: Okay. Thank you. Over here.
Question: Good evening. My name is Amanda [inaudible]. I’m a teacher at a large middle school in Corona. I teach English as new language and I’m a parent of two elementary-school kids here in Jackson Heights. And I know that you’ve spoken about the reduced focus on testing, but I want you to know that I’m really not seeing it in my daily life, at school, and with my children. My question’s really about that curriculum. Our children need a well-rounded curriculum that my colleagues on Long Island and in other parts of the state have. The kids have gym every day and a rich arts curriculum. But our public schools are not following the state mandates with regards to arts and PE instruction. President Obama said there should be no more than two percent of school time spent on testing. Yet, in this last, since school started, I’ve spent 30 percent of my time giving pre-tests and post-tests –
[Applause]
– and descriptive paragraphs and informational paragraphs and goal sheets for my seventh- and eighth-grade students – 30 in a class of ELLs in a class. My son, who’s in third grade, with 29 students in his class, complains of test prep or tests with a frequency that makes him dislike school. He has gym once a week and he has no arts classes at all this week – this year – no arts at all each week – none. My kindergartner has no free play, because the administration tells me that there’s no time for that. And at the CEC meeting this week, I was told the message was to go to the PTA and the SLT, which I can do, but I don’t feel that that’s acceptable when we do have laws that protect our children’s rights to arts education and PE instruction.
Mayor: Alright, I’m – I’m ready to start answering.
Chancellor Fariña: Me too.
Mayor: Alright. So let me separate the – the test part from the phys ed and arts education piece. So we put in $20 million dollars in the last budget for additional arts education. It is not enough. I’m – I’m looking you in the eye and saying we are not all the way to where we need to be. We have started on the path to trying to get arts education to level it should be at. I agree with you – I think arts education is profoundly valuable for drawing out a lot in children – their commitment, their energy, their creativity, etc. So we are on the path to resolving that. A much tougher situation is physical education, where we also invested a lot of money to hire a bunch of additional phys ed teachers, but the problem there is space and we continually are confounded by that problem, and we need a new set of solutions because the state law is right. We’ve been out of compliance with it for a long time – we have to get in compliance, not just because it’s the law, because it’s the right thing to do. And I – again, I’m a parent, so I know what the value of phys ed is in terms of enabling everything else a kid has to do during the day. It’s good for them on many, many levels, including their ability to learn. Honest, blunt truth – we are somewhere on the path to getting both done. We’re not where we want to be yet. Both have very challenging realities associated with them, the most important being the phys ed space reality. On the opt out, I believe you if you say you are not feeling – I shouldn’t say opt out – on testing – I believe you if you say you are not feeling the changes regarding testing. I would argue a lot of people are feeling those changes. The fact that we’re not grading schools, which I think was a very destructive effort – a misleading and destructive effort – and that put high-stakes testing on an absolute pedestal – we have closed that down entirely. We have focused on multiple ways of evaluating a school, and I think it’s sent a very different message to parents and teachers about how to think about our schools. The fact that we don’t have a single test that determines admissions to schools – there’s a separate question around the specialized schools, which I think you may know, I would like to change that by state law and not have that be based on a single test – but in the previous administration, there were all sorts of admissions dynamics based on tests – we don’t do that anymore. There’s a series of things – and we were able to get, as the Chancellor said, with our work in Albany and also, thank God, we have a new state education commissioner, we have the flexibility to not keep adding emphasis on standardized testing in terms of how we evaluate teachers. So I think there’s a number of things that have changed. On the question of test prep, I’ll let the chancellor speak about the school day and the yearly curriculum. But I just want to argue to you that in less than two years that list already shows a steady movement away from an over-reliance on high-stakes testing.
Chancellor Fariña: Well, let me be very clear about two things. Anyone who has heard me speak in the last two years – kindergarten is play. Play is work. That’s what kindergartners do. They can do other things as well – they can be introduced to phonics – but you learn by playing, the same way that pre-k is very hands-on doing. Talking is important, particularly in schools where are a lot of ELLs – how do you learn to speak English if you’re not talking all the time about what you’re doing? So, to me, I would say it’s – and I don’t mean any insult here – it’s a cop-out to say I don’t want to go complain to somewhere. You’re not going to complain. This is my recommendation – I say this to everybody – first, put it in writing, because you can control what you write a lot better than you can control what you say. A letter to the principal – you know, dear Mr. or Ms. so-and-so, I would love an opportunity to discuss what the value of kindergarten is – how do you see kindergarten? Make an appointment and go talk to someone, because I certainly evaluate schools – superintendents have heard me say this over and over again – there has to be play in kindergarten – not all day all the time, but it has to be part of it. As far as the arts are concerned, the arts are not a frill. The arts are essential. We are going to see a school like this one –
[Applause]
– where there’s a music room. [inaudible] I do not anticipate – and again, if you want to send me anonymously to your school, I will go visit it tomorrow – I have a tendency to show up when I hear comments like this. But every school should have at least a minimum of one art form, two or three if possible. All middle schools were very clearly told – what do parents look for when they look for a middle school? And you’ll find this interesting. They’re looking for enriched after-school activities, but more than anything else, they want to see a band, a theater arts – they want something that’s going to engage seventh-graders, who are the most difficult kids in the whole entire school system, to want to go to school. And you do that by having a strong arts program and a phys ed. The one thing I’ll say, if you’re working with English-language learners, that you probably also are dealing with regulations Part 154, and we’re working on that one. So I’m saying, be courageous as a parent, be respectful – I always tell parents, if they really wanted me to listen when they didn’t agree with me – a lot of people didn’t agree with me when I was a principal – put it in writing first, gives me a chance to marshal my thought, and then say, when can I meet with you? So that’s my recommendation, but don’t stay quiet, because that’s how a lot of bad things happen. Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: And, Chancellor, you got a big round of applause from Debbie [inaudible] here. She’s the arts coordinator for this school. Let’s give her a round of applause because this is a beautiful school.
[Applause]
Thank you, Debbie.
Over here.
Question: Good evening. My name is [inaudible]. I’m a parent at P.S. 148 and I was at the CEC meeting with the parent that just spoke and I had the same question, but you already answered. However, I have another question. For the after-school programs, in our school, for example, we have around 1,000 kids in our school, but the after-school program only has space for 115 children. Most of our parents work. What happens with the other children that are not able to get a space in that program? What are you planning to –
Mayor: Remind me which school is yours?
Question: P.S. 148.
Mayor: P.S. 148.
Question: Correct.
Mayor: And it goes up to fifth grade.
Question: Yes.
Mayor: So, again, I’ll start and pass to Carmen. The – look, what we have figured out how to do is at the middle-school level, and I would argue, you know, I have a thing I say to my fellow parents – I say I am a recovering middle-school parent, because it’s a very difficult time and so that is where we put our first investment. We said we were going to make that universal. So if your child is in sixth, seventh, or eighth grade, there is a after-school seat available to them for free – period – that, ideally, is going to be, if the program is right in your own school, that’s great, but if it isn’t, we still have space in nearby locations – that’s a guarantee. We do not have that universal opportunity yet at the elementary-school level, but what we’ve found is a lot of schools are able to create something that works for their parents or work with other organizations to accommodate them. So if you have a parent who cannot be accommodated in their own school at the elementary-school level, what do we advise?
Chancellor Fariña: Well, right now, I’m going to cop it out a little bit, and say I’m going to suggest you speak to the superintendent, but only because, when parents come together and want a solution to something, there’s always something you can do. I know in my former life as a principal, one of the things I did is I invited a provider – a CBO – to come into my building, because up until 6:00 o’clock, they didn’t have to pay rent – it was under my auspices. So you have to decide how much space you actually have, how many parents really want it, so I would suggest that you speak to your superintendent and see what you could do.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, thank you. Let’s go over to this side again.
Question: Hi. My name is Christina [inaudible]. I’m a parent who sends her kid to his zoned public school in District 24 – it’s P.S. 89Q – I think it’s one – maybe behind P.S. 19 as one of the most crowded schools in the city. We love the teachers, the administration, the principal – they’re all fantastic. And they also get a lot of professional development and we’re very grateful for the changes. So I’m – I’m here to talk about – to ask a question about traffic safety. Right now, you’re taking a few hits with Vision Zero in the media, and Vision Zero started here in Queens when you came here after Noshat Nahian was killed. And four children were killed in less than ten months along Northern Boulevard. Within a half-mile of my son’s school, there are over 5,000 children being dismissed at the same time from only four very overcrowded schools alongside Roosevelt Avenue. You mentioned UPK. Those numbers aren’t included, nor are the numbers in private school. It’s very hard to get data on the number of school children in a specific area, but in Queens alone, it’s over 20,000 extra kids who were added to the traffic pattern when UPK came along. So I think it’s important that Vision Zero have an education tenet to it – that you have the city the agencies – and I’ve worked with all of them, and the NYPD, and the elected officials who work right here – but I feel that the Department of Education has to be a Vision Zero partner, and need a Vision Zero czar either at the chancellor level or the district level so that you can ensure –
Mayor: Okay.
Question: – safe pick-up and drop-off of kids, safe routes to school, collecting NYPD data on the actual number of children injured, getting respect from the parents for the school safety agents, school crossing guards, and more.
Mayor: Thank you very much. So I’m going to start and I’ll pass to Polly Trottenberg. Vision Zero – look, Vision Zero, first of all, has begun – it’s less than two years old. We’ve seen, since it began, a 24-percent decrease in pedestrian deaths. So we know this combination of tools is working – a combination of lowering the speed limit, a lot more enforcement of the speed limit, and of ensuring that cars yield to pedestrians at crosswalks. NYPD has done an outstanding job at enforcement – twice as many speeding tickets since Vision Zero began, three times as many tickets for failure to yield in a crosswalk. We have the speed cameras in place. We have redesign of a number of intersections and streets – this is – and it’s just begun. So I want to argue to you that this is something that, one, is being proven, and, two, you’re going to see a lot more impact. But I think you’re – you’re raising two very powerful points that Polly and perhaps Carmen want to speak to as well. One, the educational piece – meaning, public education writ large, not just in schools. You will appreciate that – I was very proud – I went to one of the World Series games – the Friday night game, the good game at Citi Field, and – and I looked out – I think it was like the sixth inning, and I looked out and there’s this big green band suddenly comes up around the stadium on the digital display board, and it’s a Vision Zero ad. And there were Vision Zero ads on the radio and one thing or another. So we are doing a lot of the traditional public education efforts. But also, all that enforcement is public education too. So we’ve got the nice, positive messages. But also people are getting the message the NYPD is there and there will be real consequences. In terms of the schools, also, you can talk about the ways we can use the schools to amplify the message, but let Polly and Carmen speak and then if you have a quick follow-up. Go ahead, Polly.
Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, Department of Transportation: It’s good to see you – thank you for your leadership. We have talked before on Vision Zero matters. And I want to echo what the mayor said, which is we’re still starting with Vision Zero, we’ve seen some progress, we’re obviously very concerned about what we’ve seen recently, really, since Daylight Savings Time – a spate of fatalities. DOT, NYPD, Department of Education, Department of Health, TLC – we’ve all been sitting down. And in fact, one of the things we met on today was to talk about safety education. DOT currently goes into –
Question: [inaudible]
Commissioner Trottenberg: Well – well, agreed – and let me – so, DOT currently goes into about 500 schools a year, and we do that in partnership with the Department of Education. We’ve also actually started working with Lorraine and the Schools Construction Authority more closely than we had in the past, quite frankly, that as they do their school designs, we bake in the street safety designs. We need – our two agencies actually didn’t used to work together as closely – but I do think – and it’s one of the things we talked about, and I’m standing here with Carmen so I’ll mention it – we want to redouble our efforts. We have put together some good curriculum and educational pieces for kids of different ages, but I think we want to make sure we’re getting them into all the schools on a pretty regular basis. So it’s timely question.
Question: The community schools and after-school and language classes for parents, it’s also a great environment to teach the parents and caregivers safety education so that they keep their children safe, whether they’re driving or walking, and there’s room for that even in Title 1 parent-involvement money, in after-school programs, and with Yolanda – I can’t remember her title, but [inaudible].
Mayor: Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: And just to say, I spoke with the parent – the PTA president at 89 this morning, and we’re going to ask the DOT to do a traffic study there as well, because I understand there’s been some accidents there around that school. And we will also – successful in working with the principal at P.S. 7 to get some traffic-calming measures done there as a result of a DOT study. So because I learned of this this morning at P.S. 89, we’re going to work with DOT.
Question: [inaudible]
Mayor: Okay. Hey – you’ve got to do it separately – there’s been too much back-and-forth – a lot of people are waiting.
Council Member Dromm: Okay. Alright.
Mayor: Go ahead, Danny.
Council Member Dromm: Alright, we’ll go with this side.
Question: [In Spanish]
Mayor: [inaudible] Do you want a translation? Do you want a translator?
Question: Oh yea, I need to.
Mayor: She can do it all in Spanish, and then you do it all in English. I just wanted to see if she wanted to go back and forth. Okay, go ahead.
Question: [In Spanish]
Chancellor Fariña: Okay, let me translate that because I think it’s easier if I just do it. She wants to – she has friends who live in Brooklyn and they send their kids to community schools and there are very few of them in Queens. And she wants to know what the overall plan is to increase community schools particularly as they relate to Queens.
[Chancellor Farina speaks in Spanish]
And I’ll defer to the mayor but I’ll also say that we are finding community schools, this year, almost like pilot to see what’s working and what we need to improve it but our intention is, over time to expand it.
[Chancellor Farina speaks in Spanish]
Okay.
Mayor: So, just to add, so on the question of – don’t go away. [Chuckles] Okay. The community school effort, we think is going to work and we think it’s going to be worthy of being expanded but that will take time because the first 130 – 130, it’s going to take a lot to get them going. So, that being said, we’re trying to add a lot of the things that people want in community schools into the schools that exist right now, even before they become fully community schools. The perfect world we want to get to is every school is a community school but that will take quite a while.
In the meantime, for example, mental health services are a very important component of community schools. We’re about to unveil a new mental health plan. One of the things you’ll see in that is more ability for schools to access mental health services all over. We’re trying to make sure that a lot of the features you find in a community school you’ll see more and more in everyday – in any school that you go to. So, the vision will take time to play out but a lot of the pieces that you like in community schools, you will start to see more and more in all schools.
[Chancellor Farina speaks in Spanish]
Question: [inaudible]
[Chancellor Farina speaks in Spanish]
Council Member Dromm: Okay so –
Chancellor Fariña: She asked about afterschool programs in elementary schools. So, I said that’s a school by school decision rather than a universal decision.
Council Member Dromm: Okay it is 9:00 o’clock, but the mayor has graciously agreed that we’re going to have everybody who is currently on the line – raise your hand if you’re the last one on the line. Okay, there and there but we need to have you be concise and answer your questions – ask your questions as concise as possible. So, thank you Mr. Mayor for being willing to do that and to stay with us tonight.
[Applause]
Over here.
Question: Good evening, first thank you for give us this unique opportunity to ask questions. My name is [inaudible] and I am the director of YES Educational Services, it’s a company that provides services to the Department of Education for over 25 years. And we develop programs for parents, parenting skills, violence prevention, drug addiction prevention. So my – I see lately the last few years, that we’re not enough funding for mental health, for parenting skills programs. So my question is what is your vision, what is the plans regarding parenting programs, parent involvement, you already –
Mayor: Right, right.
Question: You already asked part of the question about the mental health.
Mayor: I think I would differentiate parent involvement where I think we have some very clear elements to our vision from parenting skills. I’m not enough of an expert on that to answer. Maybe someone – one of the commissioners or Carmen can speak to that but on the question of mental health, again, I will -- won’t get ahead of my wife, the First Lady, who’s going to have a series of announcements coming up in the next day. She, today, and the Department of Health, today, announced and published a study of the mental health situation in this city, that’s very sharp and very clear about how much more we have to do on mental health, including for our young people. And again, in the 130 community schools, as those are developing, all of them will have a special access to mental health care for the students, but what you’ll see in the plan as it is unveiled is we are focused on mental health starting at younger ages because we realize, if we can catch some of the challenges earlier we have more of a chance of addressing them. I can’t speak well enough to parenting skills efforts but that’s how we’re going to approach mental health.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, thank you, we’re going to go over here now.
Question: Thank you all for being here and focusing on education. [Inaudible], I’m CEC 30. You talked about using a combination of tools for really thorny problems and you’ve heard many times, class size and building schools is very important to us. Lorraine Grillo’s team has done an extraordinary time, but can you, as the mayor, bring tools that you have at your disposal to put more pressure, whether it’s to incentivize or sanction developers to have more skin in the game. We’ve got a beautiful example of P.S. 78 in the City Lights building and as we build a new city along the East River, we’re going to need to continue not only touching her team, and that $4 billion dollars, but we have to have developers who are willing to do the right thing and put some skin in the game and help us create schools.
Mayor: I agree with that. And I think we have a lot of leverage in that process, obviously especially where there’s rezoning, where the community – the council member and the larger community in each place where there’s rezoning have a lot of input and a lot of leverage specifically. But in any development we have the potential to get public needs addressed because there’s almost always some kind of negotiation over all the elements that make up the development. And we have actually found more and more developers willing to include schools for a variety of reasons - they recognize it’s important to us and it’s going to give them a better chance of getting done other things they want to get done. They also realize that it’s an amenity that a lot of people in their building want. The building right across the street from City Hall, one of the tallest residential buildings in all of Manhattan, 8 Spruce Street, has an elementary school in it – very beautiful building, people pay a lot of money to be there and the school is there, a public school is there. So that model is starting to be used more and more, so the answer is yes.
Question: I hope you can bring the CEC’s into these re-zoning meetings [inaudible].
[Chuckles]
Council Member Dromm: Thank you, we’re going to go over here now, I think.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: Good night my name is [inaudible].
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: Member of the [inaudible]
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: A justice coalition for New York.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: I’m a mother of two childs and I worry about their education.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: And I always worry about the – worry about the education and the – for them to get a better education.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: I also want to talk about community schools.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: I would like that you include more of the community in Jackson Heights about the community schools.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: We, you know, go to many politicians and try to spoke with them, but we didn’t get any good news or we didn’t get any feedback from them.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: They said that we are overcrowded.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: I don’t think this is a problem for us to have a community school.
Council Member Dromm: I think we got the idea, it’s about overcrowding in these schools and working with elected officials –
Chancellor Fariña: And wanting community schools and this is something, as the mayor has already said, is on a plan but it takes a while to get the money to do them in all places but certainly priorities will always be given for high needs district and students in schools, particularly, that have a high percentage of free lunch.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, right over here.
Question: Yes, hello, thank you Mr. Mayor for coming to Jackson Heights and Councilman. My name is [inaudible]. I’ll get right to the point. I have two children who graduated from New York City public schools and they are now attending public colleges in New York. I like public. One thing that you hear from teachers, often, I’m sure you’ve heard this, is students when they come back from school, after the summer, they have forgotten so much material because, and this is especially a problem with poor kids. You know, they do not go to camps, they don’t go to – they don’t go to – get to go to education programs, they don’t travel across country with their parents, they don’t go to Europe, which some middle class people and certainly affluent people could do. I didn’t realize how big a problem this was until I read an article in The New Yorker, a long article in The New Yorker a few years back that talked about how this – these kids fall behind year after year after year and the gap keeps increasing.
Mayor: Okay, I got it. Thank you. I’m going to turn to the Chancellor, this is something, look, we’ve begun some efforts to address this. It’s – there’s no question that for some kids this is a very big problem, for other kids, thank God, less so. So, Chancellor, you can talk about some of the things we’ve done. We are trying to figure out where we’re going with them, so I’m going to caution that that’s still a discussion in progress.
Chancellor Fariña: It’s under discussion, but our hope is that this summer, we are going to inaugurate a program called Summer in the City, where more students will be encouraged to go to school during the summer. It will not be for mandated programs, it will be for programs around STEM, so the kids get excited about technology and science. We did it last year as a pilot and it was extremely successful. So, our hope this year is starting in second grade, which is one of our targeted grades, that we will be able to offer a lot more summer programs. We’re also going to be working with cultural institutions, so stay tuned, our plan is to come out with this in the first week of January. We’re working on it now as we speak.
[Applause]
Council Member Dromm: Thank you, let’s go over here.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: Good evening, I’m a member of District – CEC District 30.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: I’m a mother of a child. I’m here two years ago.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: Thank you to Senora Farina – Ms. Farina for the – your help for the robotic program and you were my helper and I appreciate that.
Question: [In Spanish]
Translator: Basically she’s saying that she doesn’t receive the information in Spanish, so she’s looking for a –
Chancellor Fariña: We have put out all the parent information sheets, Achieve New York, in eight languages. In fact, the rest of the state is asking for our copies of these books. So, if you haven’t received – and I saw some outside I think coming in. Achieve New York City tells you everything parents need to know in eight languages, so please make sure you leave with one today.
Mayor: [inaudible]
Council Member Dromm: Okay, let’s go over here. I just want to remind everybody, please keep the question concise, please, I beg you. I don’t beg much, but please.
[Laughter]
The mayor’s been grateful with his time. Let’s give him a round of applause again – and the chancellor.
[Applause]
Question: Hello, Mayor, Chancellor, Councilman, my name is [inaudible]. I’m a Local 891 member, custodian engineer, of New York City. We currently have 238 vacant schools in the system. And we have 348 current listed – certified listed custodians available to fill those positions. I’m wondering to you mayor, Mr. Mayor, what is the delay in hiring these custodians to place in these schools? This list was certified in August of 2014.
Mayor: So we have been meeting with the union and trying to figure out what we think is the best way to improve custodial services for the long haul. So we’re in regular touch with the union. In fact, I’ll be meeting with the union leadership myself soon. I don’t know the details about the lists and how they work. I don’t want to – to talk to you about something I don’t understand personally well enough, but I can say, as someone who lived in the public schools myself through my children and as a member of a school board and on the Education Committee of the City Council, etc., I value very much the work you do, and I know what it means to the entire school community. So we’ll follow up with you and make sure we get you an answer on what’s going on with the list. But I can certainly say, in terms of how we’re trying to improve the work going forward, that’s something we’re talking to your union membership about. Thank you.
Chancellor Fariña: And also, we have already placed 25 off the list over the last two months, and we anticipate moving forward.
Council Member Dromm: Okay. Thank you. Over here.
Question: Hi, good evening. My name is Diana Sanchez. I’ve grown up in this community since I first started school. I’m – my parents are Colombian. I was born here. My children and I have been part of District 30 for as long as I can remember. The two things that – that I worry about right now is that the children in – I have currently a daughter in fourth grade. She’s in the dual language program. She was getting – receiving music last year, but it was a tug-of-war between the teachers and the – and –
Council Member Dromm: Diana, cut to the quick.
Mayor: What’s the question?
Question: How can we get participation where the – the students are getting music this year and every year? And also for the high-schoolers, how can we not have, at the end of the day, where they’re – where the students want to wind down, that they don’t get their core curriculum in – during the afternoon – they should be getting a skill instead.
Council Member Dromm: Alright, so – alright – two questions. Music and core curriculum in the afternoon – you want to see more infusion of core curriculum standards in after-school programs.
Chancellor Fariña: Well, I think, first of all, when you look at the scheduling of a school day, you can’t have half the teachers not working from 1:00 to 3:00. So you’ve got to really look at how many students in a high school, and how it gets spread out is a matter of efficiency and how you use everybody. As far as music, one of the things that we’re stressing – in fact, we put out grants for it – it’s called Arts Matters – where we have asked elementary schools and middle schools to apply together to have one art form. So if an elementary school has a strong music program like this school has that there would be at least one feeder middle school that carries on the same program. The same thing – that if an elementary school has a strong dance program, that there be a feeder middle school that has a strong dance program. Keep in mind that we had a lot of schools with no arts two years ago. So we’re building that up from scratch almost, but our hope is to have certainly arts in every single school, and in the good schools, meaning, you know, the will of everybody in that building, that we have more than one art form.
Council Member Dromm: Okay. Over here – and keep it quick.
Question: Thank you for coming to the greatest borough in New York City.
Council Member Dromm: Alright.
[Applause]
Question: I just want to say that as we look at the question of violence that we see that numbers are going down. I’m coming from a target area where there’s 340 days with no shootings in our target area. Previously, there was like 17 people killed in that target area.
[Applause]
So I want to thank you for supporting the New York City Crisis Management System and helping us build it. And I also want to make a charge to you that when you stand up and talk about the reduction of violence that you talk about the anti-violence workers who are out there on the frontline day in and day out, taking guns out of young people’s hands, going into the schools and working with some of the most challenged young people on a day-in and day-out basis. We want to also work with your office to do a town hall meeting solely with young people so that we can talk to those who are being affected by a lot of policies and procedures, a lot of the young people who are hopeless in our city. And then I also want to ask you that you work with us in getting inside of Rikers Island, because if we have 340 days with no shootings in our target area, then we can have days inside of Rikers Island with no violence and we’ve had it. We went inside of Rikers Island on a pilot last year and had a successful summer. And I presented a proposal and the commissioner and his staff said that it’s in the mayor’s office and the mayor has not granted it to move forward. So I’m here asking you to help us push that proposal forward so we can work as a strong partner with you in reducing the violence.
Mayor: Thank you. Thank you. Well, first of all, I commend you for the good work and I appreciate everyone who’s done this work.
[Applause]
And, first of all, I take your – I take your suggestion to heart. I have talked a lot about how this city – and we’ve got – look, we’ve got a long way to go. Let me say at the very beginning. We are – we’ve got to keep working every day to become safer and safer and safer. But compared to 20, 25 years go, it’s pretty extraordinary history. And give absolutely the credit to the men and women of the NYPD and different leaders along the way who did different things, but I also say a lot of that story is – it’s anti-violence programs, it’s tenant patrols, it’s block associations, neighborhood patrols all contribute. There’s a grassroots piece that was very important in that history as well. So I appreciate your point because I – I have said in a lot of places but I need to keep saying it, I need to say it more strongly, because it is the grassroots piece that add so much to making a community safe. In terms of what we could do at Rikers Island, I didn’t know that proposal was there, but I’ll make sure our folks look at it again, and we want to find ways to work with you. And I definitely want to find ways to get the voices of young people to be heard at City Hall, so I’ll talk to you further about how to do that. Thank you very much.
[Applause]
Council Member Dromm: Thank you. Next, please.
[Applause]
Council Member Dromm: Yes. Next, over here.
Question: Hi. That was a tough act to follow. Okay, I’m going to try. On the new school reports, the biggest circle is trust. And regarding the state tests, the test rules forbid teachers from reading the state tests – that alone seems disturbing, that educators can’t even look at the very tests they are administering to their own students. So I’m wondering if teachers and principals are under constraints in terms of sharing their very real concerns about these high-stakes tests with parents?
Chancellor Fariña: Well, I think one of the things that you’re going to see under this new commissioner is actually some changes in that. We’re talking on a regular basis about when the test is seen. It cannot be seen until they take the test, but similar type of test, the types of questions are actually going to be now vetted by teachers. So I think that’s a big step in the right direction. But certainly send me more opinions because I talk to the commissioner on a regular basis.
Council Member Dromm: Okay. Thank you. Next, please. Over on this side. Yup.
Question: Hello, my name is [inaudible]. I’m a parent association president at [inaudible] charter school. I’m also part of the board of trustees. So I know how our school makes quote-unquote “a dollar out of 15 cents.” Charter schools get less money than the regular public schools, and I’m wondering, because I’m going to say the curse word – the double curse word – Common Core, we’re trying to keep everything on track. In a couple of years, I hear that you’re trying to make all the Common Core testing on computers. Our school is a small school and we don’t have a lot of the funding for the technologies that some of the other schools have. How – what are you going to do to help us be able to afford to be able to have iPads, computers for all the kids to do the tests on the computer?
Mayor: Okay, I don’t – the notion of doing the tests on the computer is a new one on me, so you speak to it.
Chancellor Fariña: Well, over – over time, all schools that will take the tests will get the computers.
Mayor: This city or state vision?
Chancellor Fariña: This is the city vision based on the state mandates. State mandates that all testing will be done online.
Mayor: How do we help schools [inaudible]?
Chancellor Fariña: It’s going to – we have a plan to do it over time. You’re not going to – no one’s going to be forced to do this until all the computers are in the schools.
Question: [inaudible]
Chancellor Fariña: Well, that’s going to be our job to figure out.
Mayor: But wait a minute, I just want to make sure you heard that, because your question’s a very good one. She said no one’s going to have to do it on computers until they have the computers.
Chancellor Fariña: Until they have them.
Mayor: So, in other words, it’s a phase-in that you are not going to be penalized. Until you have a computer, you’ll continue to do the tests the way they were done before. Am I hearing that right, Carmen?
Council Member Dromm: Mhmm.
Chancellor Fariña: That’s right. Correct.
Mayor: But in the meantime, there is a plan to try and consistently get more technology out to all of our schools.
Council Member Dromm: Okay. Next, please.
Question: Good evening, Mr. Mayor. Welcome to world’s most diverse neighborhood, Jackson Heights. [inaudible]. My question was – actually I was one of the first volunteer [inaudible] –
Mayor: Wait a minute, I just have to say – I have to say – hold on – this late in a town hall meeting, a guy with that much energy, give him a round of applause.
[Applause]
Question: Well, I – I was doing a volunteer when you was [inaudible] in the polls, Mr. Mayor. I knew you were a good person. I know you’re doing a good job. So doing that, I want to present to him my union button – it says here – [inaudible] – but before, I say my question. My question was two-part. One is for our commissioner and one is for you. I’m not going to say nothing council member because I see him all the time. So, question is, you know, I’m from Bangladesh, what we’ll like to do is I’m very passionate where I am from, and we are very close community, we are the fastest-growing in New York City. So what we would to do is the first-ever Bangladesh Parade in Manhattan, on 5th Avenue, Madison, and we want, you know, you help us and tell me who I’m going to chase out, number one.
Mayor: Marco Carrion – where’s Marco?
Question: Are you willing to be a first grand marshal of Bangladesh Parade in 5th Avenue in Madison, March 26, 2016?
Mayor: So the person I want you to follow up with is Marco Carrion – where is he? He’s way back there. Okay, you can’t go, Marco. See this gentleman here? Marco, put your hand up. Okay, you’ll find each other after – keep going.
Question: Alright, thank you.
Mayor: That’s it?
Question: The other is – Ms. Fariña, are you going to try and help out halal food in the school district in New York City?
Chancellor Fariña: We’re actually looking into that. We are looking into – yes, halal food – in the – in the lunch time. Yeah. We are looking into it.
Council Member Dromm: And or a viable vegetarian option as well. Yup.
Alright, next, please.
Mayor: We’re working on it, brother. Thank you. Thank you very, very much.
[Applause]
Question: Hi, my name is Kate [inaudible]. I am the director of youth and family services at Sunnyside Community Services. We work in District 24 as well as District 30. I do want to thank – I’ll start with Council Member Dromm, thank you for being a great partner to us. Mayor – Mr. Mayor, we’ve been very glad to be a part of the expansion of SONIC programming. We have a SONIC program actually at the Boulevard Family Center – formerly the Pan-American Hotel. And we are also a – we also offer a full-day UPK program that used to be half-day. So thank you very much. I do want to echo something you’ve heard tonight, something we hear from parents all the time, the need for more after-school programming for elementary-aged youth. And I do want to ask if it is possible to add more funding to COMPASS program and to – COMPASS programming – elementary after-school programming – and Beacon programming as well? Beacons are doing a lot to address the need for after-school programming for elementary and middle-school-aged youth.
Council Member Dromm: Thank you.
Mayor: So let me just say, this is – this is one of the things that – when I hear you say it, it’s very appealing to say, yeah, we’re going to do that. The problem we’re going to have – you’ve heard this very evening a series of very powerful suggestions – after-school for elementary school, summer programs, obviously what we need to do around class size, etc. Just, the honest answer is we’ve got a very intense set of competing needs. We have to make a series of choices. We obviously prioritize pre-k. We prioritized after-school for the middle-school level. We’re going to keep – we prioritized the $20 million for arts education – we have to do more there, more on phys ed. So there will be a series of choices in the next budget where we think we’ll make the most strategic impact, but I have certainly registered and I will bring into the budget process the question of whether we can get to more on the elementary level. Thank you.
Council Member Dromm: Thank you, and – Chancellor? Okay. And our last question, I believe – am I right? Yes – let’s say – yeah, alright! –
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Question: Hi, my name is [inaudible]. I’m a long-time Jackson Heights resident. And I’m also the mother of a nine-year-old who has a severe form of dyslexia. And I find in terms of special education in the public schools, we’re not serving these children well enough. Dyslexia occurs in about 15 to 20 percent of all people and this goes back to what you were saying earlier about getting children to read. Children are not being identified early enough and this is a really big issue and I’m telling you a lot of these kids, especially from poorer communities, who are not identified and don’t have the kind of support that some more affluent parents are able to give, are failing and this is part of the reason why you’re seeing so many kids dropping out of high school. And going on with this particular issue, if you want to get your child the education that they do need, it’s an arduous process and I think you’re familiar with everything that parents have to go through to get their child into a school that is going to give them, really, the special education in the small funded, special education school. It’s very expensive, so most parents can’t afford it and so what they end up doing, a lot of times, is having to go through a big long legal process that is extremely expensive and for many parents, they can’t even do it. So, I guess my question is, how are we going to fix this problem, how are we going to make it so that kids can really get the education that they deserve and that they need to succeed in life.
Council Member Dromm: Okay, thank you.
Mayor: Okay, let me answer the question and then I’ll just wrap up for a quick second. So, I appreciate very much what you’re saying about the difference between identifying a child early on with some like dyslexia versus waiting. First of all, some kids almost never getting recognized, or getting recognized so late that it makes a very negative impact. I think the whole theory of what we’re doing here is to try and reach children early in every way and to try and engage their parents more deeply. Excuse me. That is absolutely true in community school model, it’s true in the Pre-K approach because we know, by the way, now that Pre-K is universal, we also see a lot more parental involvement because Pre-K is the point when parents are most energetically involved, when the kids really begin their journey. With what we’re talking about with the reading effort and the reading specialists that you’ll see in second grade, also a great opportunity to pick up on some of these challenges and identifying them earlier. So what I hope we doing is identifying kids needs very early and addressing them very early. Whether that is there overall academic needs, whether is a special need like dyslexia, whether it’s a mental health need, it’s a very different paradigm because I think what we’ve talked about over many, many years was the system was not geared to catch the problem and address the problem. It, unfortunately in too many cases, was geared to ignoring the problem. In terms of how we work with parents of children of special needs, again, some improvement, more to go. But we are trying to reorient the approach to be parent friendly, I appreciated the dialogue earlier in the evening about ways we could accommodate parent schedules better because again, the previous – you’re right, the previous system was contentious, expensive, etc. We want to do better than that and we believe we’re starting down the road of doing better than that. But what I hope is by focusing early, early universally early on our children, academically mental health wise, special needs wise, you’re going to see very, very different outcomes, a lot of kids whose issues are addressed and resolved early in their time in school, so they can flourish thereafter.
Thank you very much for the question. With that –
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You are a strong-willed audience, you stuck there the whole time. God Bless you.
[Applause]
So, I want to thank all of these wonderful commissioners and leaders. I, you know, some town hall meetings, you all get into the game, tonight, if just to use another Mets analogy, they’re like when you’re watching the game and there’s the guys in the bullpen who never get called in and they’re just spitting sunflower seeds the whole time and –
[Laughter]
That’s kind of what happened with the commissioners here, but you learned a lot about education guys, it was really worth it. But again, for everyone, even though it’s late, these wonderful leaders of our city are all sitting here and if you get down here, they won’t get away, give them a round of applause.
[Applause]
They’re all upset with me because like they’re going to get home even later because of what I’m saying. Yes, you will. But that’s how committed they are. But look everyone, I want to thank you for how much you care, for how much you’re involved, let’s – I want to tell you, Carmen Fariña does this all the time. As she said, she’s out with parents and CECs and PTAs and touring schools all the time. When we announced her appointment as school’s chancellor, she said very jauntily, referring to her age, she said 70 is the new 40. So, let’s give her a round of applause for the way she approaches things.
[Applause]
When I have as much energy as Carmen Fariña, I’m really looking forward to that day, and again, Danny, I just want to thank you for the extraordinary work you do.
[Applause]
So, thank you, we are going to follow up on a lot of the issues raised tonight. Again, these commissioners here, folks from different agencies are around on the wall, anything you want to follow up on we look forward to it. Obviously folks from the NYPD, we thank you and they’re here to address your needs. Thank you everyone for being here tonight.
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