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Tuesday, July 1, 2014

NYC Public School Parents: District 6 parents want and need smaller classes! Contract for Excellence testimony by Tory Frye

NYC Public School Parents: District 6 parents want and need smaller classes! Contract for Excellence testimony by Tory Frye:



District 6 parents want and need smaller classes! Contract for Excellence testimony by Tory Frye



To submit your own comments on the city's Contract for Excellence/class size proposal, emailContractsForExcellence@schools.nyc.gov  by July 19.  If you'd like to share your comments on the blog on class size, please email us at info@classsizematters.org 

Testimony at Contracts for Excellence Hearing
June 18, 2014

by Tory Frye, District 5 and 6 parent and elected parent member, Community Education Council Six [CEC6]

My name is Tory Frye and I am the parent of public school students in Districts 5 and 6 and am an elected parent member of CEC6.  I am here this evening representing thousands of District Six parents; I’ll tell you why I think this is true in a moment.  

We know that the primary purpose of the C4E is to reduce class size and yet the DOE has chosennot to do this.  Our CEC6 President has spoken eloquently on why reducing class size is so crucial in our district, which has a significant proportion of current or former English Language Learners, as well as special needs students (and often students who are classified as both).  Educators, students and parents will testify to the difficulty of teaching and learning for these students in large class sizes.

Here are the facts about class size in D6:

-       In 2013-14 the average class size for K-3 was 24; according to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity settlement, which gave rise to the C4E contracts, we should be at 20.