NYC Public School Parents: Our new report finds DOE overspent by millions on charter school rent; and denied co-located public schools millions in matching funds for facility upgrades

NYC Public School Parents: Our new report finds DOE overspent by millions on charter school rent; and denied co-located public schools millions in matching funds for facility upgrades

Our new report finds DOE overspent by millions on charter school rent; and denied co-located public schools millions in matching funds for facility upgrades

A new Class Size Matters report,  DoE Overspending On Charter School Facility Costs and Underspending On Matching Funds To Public Schools revealed that the NYC Department of Education has overspent by many millions on rent for charter schools, while denying co-located public schools  millions of dollars of their legally-required matching funds for facility upgrades and repairs.  

This report was an update from our earlier 2019 report,  which found many of the same problems after analyzing DOE spending data that we had acquired through Freedom of Information Law requests and spreadsheets posted on the City Council website.

As a result of this earlier report, the NYC Comptroller’s office sent a letter to the Chancellor in January 2020,  asking him to respond to our findings.  When Deputy Chancellor Karin Goldmark replied several months later, she surprisingly did not refute any of our conclusions and actually confirmed some of our findings.  She also sent a new spreadsheet which purported to show DOE’s matching funds that contained data completely different from the data provided us earlier by DOE via FOIL and/or from the City Council website.

Yet the data in the new spreadsheets still revealed considerable shortfalls in matching funds nearly as egregious as we found in our original report.  The state passed a law in 2010, requiring that any spending undertaken by co-located charter schools to enhance their spaces be also offered to public schools that shared their buildings, in recognition that too often, public school students were subjected to separate but unequal conditions inside the same building. Nevertheless, we found that only four public schools out of 812 instances over six years had received funds equal to the amount spent by their co-located charter schools on facility upgrades, and not a single public school received the cumulative amount owed to them from FY 2014 to FY 2019. 

Instead, 127 co-located public schools were owed a total of $15.5 million over this six-year period.  A searchable database of schools that lacked matching funds is posted here.

Two of the five schools that were the most shortchanged were District 75 schools for seriously disabled children, despite the fact that staff and parents at these public schools reported considerable needs for upgrades and repair.  One of those D75 schools is the Mickey Mantle school in East Harlem that shares space with Success Academy Harlem 3 and CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: Our new report finds DOE overspent by millions on charter school rent; and denied co-located public schools millions in matching funds for facility upgrades

New Report finds DOE overspent by many millions on charter school rental subsidies for charter schools and owed millions to co-located public schools for facility upgrades | Class Size Matters

New Report finds DOE overspent by many millions on charter school rental subsidies for charter schools and owed millions to co-located public schools for facility upgrades | Class Size Matters 

New Report finds DOE overspent by many millions on charter school rental subsidies for charter schools and owed millions to co-located public schools for facility upgrades

Analysis by Class Size Matters reveals that in FY 2020, over $11.6 million was spent on lease subsidies for charter schools owned by their Charter Management Organization or affiliated organization, and $9.6 million in state reimbursements for lease subsidies were sacrificed

New York, NY (March 25, 2021) – Today, Class Size Matters released a new report, posted here, showing that the DOE has overspent on rental subsidies to charter schools by many millions, and underspent by many millions on the legally required matching funds for public schools co-located with charters.

The new report, DOE Overspending on Charter School Facility Costs and Underspending on Matching Funds to Public Schools, includes updated information provided by the DOE in response to a letter sent by the New York City Comptroller’s Office about the findings of an earlier report produced by the nonprofit organization.

“We were surprised to find that the DOE confirmed many of the findings of our earlier report to the Comptroller, either directly or indirectly, and did not dispute any part of the report’s analysis, which showed that the DOE overspent by many millions on charter leases and underspent by many millions on matching funds to public schools,” said Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of Class Size Matters.

The new report finds that in FY 2020, the DOE paid approximately $108 million for charter school rental subsidies with the state reimbursing about $65 million, amounts that are likely to increase rapidly each year, as enrollment and rental costs increase. Despite this, Governor Cuomo has proposed eliminating all state reimbursements for charter school rental assistance in his Executive budget, which is estimated to cost the city $100 million in FY 2022 and significantly increase in cost over future years.

“As this report makes clear, New York City is the only district in the state and the nation obligated to help pay for charter school rent and the costs are rising sharply every year,” said New York City Council Finance Chair Daniel Dromm. “Now Governor Cuomo is threatening to eliminate any state CONTINUE READING: New Report finds DOE overspent by many millions on charter school rental subsidies for charter schools and owed millions to co-located public schools for facility upgrades | Class Size Matters