NYC Public School Parents: Update on class size caps, violations & strikes in NYC, LA, Oakland and Florida
On Wednesday, the UFT announced the beginning of an expedited process to resolve class size violations in five high schools where violations had been chronic: Benjamin N. Cardozo High School, Francis Lewis High School, and Academy of American Studies, in Queens, and Leon M. Goldstein High School and Secondary School for Journalism, in Brooklyn. Chalkbeat wrote about this here.
This process was negotiated as part of the new UFT contract and is supposed to accelerate the lengthy and often ineffective way that excessive class sizes in schools have been addressed in the past, especially where violations have repeatedly occurred over the years. The UFT press release says the grievances will be referred "immediately to arbitration and the arbitrator’s decision must be implemented by the DOE within five days.”
Yet neither Chalkbeat the article nor the UFT press release provides any information about how many other NYC public schools in addition to these five schools still suffer from class sizes over the cap. What the UFT did say about all these other schools was this:
In addition to the expedited process for chronically overcrowded classes, the UFT will be working with district superintendents and the citywide Class Size Labor Management Committee to resolve oversize class complaints in other schools. Any schools where class size issues are not resolved by this process will be eligible for arbitrators' hearings, with the additional requirement that arbitrators' remedies must be implemented within five school days.
The class size caps according to the UFT contract are listed here:
Kindergarten: 25 students containedGrades 1-6 in elementary schools: 32 students
JHS/MS: 33 students in non-Title I schools; 30 in Title I schools.
HS: 34 students.
Coincidentally, on Friday, the DOE released the audited Oct. 31 data for class sizes this fall, citywide, by district and by school. When the law requiring DOE reporting was first passed over a decade ago, in part because of our advocacy, we pushed for two reporting periods, once in the fall and once in the spring, because we knew that high school classes were reconstituted in the second semester and we wanted to have a handle on those class sizes as well and try to provide pressure for them to be lowered as promptly as possible.
Unfortunately, the DOE interpreted the law another way and after releasing the Oct. 31 data on Nov. 15, uses the Feb. 15 date to release the same basic data from Oct. 31, now just audited, rather than class size data from the second semester. The City Council has never challenged them on that interpretation.
Anyway, over the weekend we looked at the just-released audited fall data two ways, one assuming the Title I middle school cap of 30 pertains, and the other way assuming the CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Update on class size caps, violations & strikes in NYC, LA, Oakland and Florida
