Public Advocate's Corner

Guest Post: Donna Lieberman on Parental Involvement under Mayoral Control

Last week, the Department of Education announced that they would back away from the plan to replace three traditional public schools with charter schools. Gotbaum testified on Monday at the City Council Hearing on Charter School Expansion, and today's guest post comes from Donna Lieberman, Executive Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. 

"The New York Post and the Daily News just don’t get it. In shockingly similar editorials, the two newspapers criticized the United Federation of Teachers and the New York Civil Liberties Union for, in the words of the Post, “killing hope.” All this because the two organizations, a dozen parents and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum sued the DOE for breaking the law.

Earlier this year, without giving any warning to communities, the mayor and Chancellor Klein unilaterally decided to close PS 194 and PS 241 in Harlem and PS 150 in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of Brooklyn.

State education law requires the DOE to get the approval of the community through its local Community Education Council when it wants to make certain changes, including zoning changes that affect neighborhood schools. Zoning laws are the one small area of oversight that parents were allowed to keep under mayoral control.

But even that was too much for the mayor and DOE.

Guest Post: Doreen Wohl on Food Stamps

Following last week's effort by Public Advocate Gotbaum to call on the Mayor to change course on his decision to refuse a provision of the federal stimulus bill that would bring millions of dollars into the city, today's guest post comes from Doreen Wohl, Executive Director of the West Side Campaign Against Hunger.

Single unemployed people need to eat, too
By Doreen Wohl

At the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, we are committed to providing food to everyone in need, employed and unemployed, single or in families. We provide three days of food, once a month, and we assist people in finding solutions to income and food insecurity, such as enrollment in SNAP (food stamps), enrollment in health insurance, and enrollment in job training programs to help free them from food insecurity.

The refusal to extend food stamps to able-bodied unemployed adults without dependents, beyond three months while they look for work, is based upon old prejudices that see the poor as lazy. 

At West Side Campaign Against Hunger, our perspective is different. We function as a customer cooperative. Many of the people coming for emergency food assist in the operation of the store where customers select their food. We find that if we treat people with respect, they are eager to work.

In 2008, the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, the largest food pantry in New York, provided New Yorkers across the city with food for 710,415 meals. In the current economic crisis and with the rise in unemployment, we are struggling to keep up with a striking 26% increase in New York households.

Extending SNAP to able-bodied unemployed adults without dependents while they look for work is not only humane, but essential at this critical time.

Guest Post: Christian DiPalermo on Toxic Turf

Following this week's Hearing by the Committee on Parks and Recreation on Artificial Turf, our guest post today comes from Christian DiPalermo, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Parks.

“For the last seven years, we have seen the Department of Parks and Recreation use artificial turf fields throughout the city.  In 2006, we issued a report calling on the City to “proceed with caution” when using artificial turf.  However, the City did not heed our call; rather; they have continued to put down artificial turf fields on new ball fields. In the next few years, 365 acres of parkland will have artificial turf.  

In the past two years, there has been much debate about the associated health and environmental risks associated with specific types of artificial turf.  We feel strongly, in light of finding high toxins on older fields in Thomas Jefferson Park that the Parks Department should establish protocols and conduct a General Environmental Impact Statement before they put down any more artificial turf fields or before they rip up old fields.  Because technology is ever-changing, we may never know all the risks associated with artificial turf, but we do know we need protocols to ensure the safety of our children and the environment."

Guest Post: Stephanie Nilva on Teen Dating Violence

Following yesterday's release on Teen Dating Violence and the Department of Education, today's guest post comes from Stephanie Nilva, Executive Director of Day One, which provides preventive workshops on domestic violence in the New York City Schools.

"From an advocate’s perspective, reducing relationship abuse among youth can seem like an insurmountable challenge.  To start with, few people know the problem exists, though young people experience intimate partner violence at roughly the same rates as adults. 

Statistics show that between twenty and thirty percent of teenagers are abused by a dating partner, and young people face their own unique obstacles to ending violent relationships.  Adults and youth lack awareness about the issue, and domestic violence remains hidden from the public eye.  Inexperienced and in their first relationships, young victims often feel as if they are the only ones experiencing abuse and may blame themselves for the violence – particularly when a controlling partner is reinforcing that message.  Further, youth are isolated from information and resources.  Those who do come forward for help often find providers unfamiliar with the needs of young people, such as organizations that address child care or employment assistance as opposed to school safety transfers or counseling specific to teenagers. Another obstacle to young people’s safety can be domestic violence laws, which were not designed envisioning the needs of young victims of domestic violence. 

Guest Post: Liz Rosenberg on Pre-K Admissions

Today, Liz Rosenberg is a featured guest blogger on the DOE's centralized admissions for Pre-Kindergarten programs in NYC.

Liz Rosenberg said, "Late in February 2008, the DOE announced they were ending schools-based admissions for early childhood programs. Pre-K admissions would be centralized immediately; kindergarten would follow in 2009. This meant that parents would now fill out a single application, on which they would rank their school choices, and mail it to a PO box in Pennsylvania, where the DOE had outsourced the data-entry work. For its part, the DOE was supposed to take the application and measure the family’s preferences against its own ranked criteria to come up with a single school to assign the child to.

With some trepidation, I dutifully mailed out my daughter’s pre-K application. Knowing that there were fewer seats than four-year-olds in my zone, I’d chosen to put my zoned school first. (Any seats remaining after sibling assignment—the DOE’s first priority of admission—were to go first to children residing in a school’s geographical zone.) It seemed silly to even write any more choices, since all of the other schools in my area—including those that I preferred— would fill up with the zoned kids who chose them first.

In late May, the horror stories started.

Improving Immigrants’ Access to Services

Following yesterday's release of the Guide to Public Benefits for Immigrants, today's guest post comes from Chung-Wa Hong, Executive Director, New York Immigrant Coalition.

We as a city need to do more to open up government services to immigrant New Yorkers, and eliminate the barriers that prevent people from getting the help they need. 

Far too many immigrants don’t avail themselves of important government services and programs, even though they may be eligible for them, because of lack of information, language barriers, or other obstacles. 

So we were really excited to partner with the Public Advocate’s Office to produce the Guide to Public Benefits for Immigrants.   

This free guide is available in six languages, and can be viewed and printed here. It’s a great tool that will help get the word out about the various public benefits programs out there, and help people understand the often-complex rules of eligibility. 

The guide comes at a crucial time when many families could really use the help.  There appears to be great demand for this kind of information: community and social service groups have already been putting in their orders for thousands of copies! 

We hope this guide, together with smart city policies, will help eliminate barriers to city services for all New Yorkers.  

Speaking of city policies, earlier this year, we and our partners worked with the Bloomberg administration to develop a new citywide language access policy—Executive Order 120. 

The executive order will improve translation and interpretation capacity at every city agency, and help bridge the communication gap between city government and the 1.8 million New Yorkers who are still in the process of learning English. 

To find out more about the new executive order, please visit www.thenyic.org. 

Guest Post: Andrew Wolf on Mayoral Control

Betsy Gotbaum has reached out to experts around the city and asked for their opinions on the future of mayoral control in New York City. Today's guest post comes from Andy Wolf.

Andrew Wolf said, "Shortly after I began writing a regular column for The New York Sun six-and-a-half years ago, the mayor was given control of the New York City public schools. During that period I have written around two hundred columns on the schools, most of which discuss various aspects of mayoral control.

I am by nature a skeptical fellow, and the story of the educational “reform” that has taken place since then has given me much to be skeptical about. Unfortunately, last month the Sun published its final issue, so now is as good a time as any to reflect on this remarkable story that I have followed since the beginning.

By the statistics, mayoral control has failed, as Diane Ravitch has previously pointed out in this space. Test results on the most reliable measures are flat, despite an unprecedented influx of funds – a 79% increase in the education budget in just six years.

But mayoral control has failed in a more profound way. Desperate to show “progress,” a laundry list of structural reforms has been implemented by the gang at the Tweed Courthouse. Most of these have to do with providing incentives to principals, teachers and students. If you want to believe that teachers will only do a good job if we give them the chance to earn an extra $3,000 bonus for higher test scores, than I have a bridge to sell you.

Most teachers I know desperately want to do a good job. Meeting with success makes the life of the teacher more rewarding. No small bonus, or even large bonus could ever replace that satisfaction.

That is why they became teachers rather than, say, stockbrokers. Teachers are doing a bit better financially than they were in the past, but this is not an easy way to make a living.

The idea that students will be motivated by giving them cash prizes or, more perversely, cellular telephones that they aren’t allowed to bring to school with them, sends the wrong message. We have to imbue in our young people an appreciation for the value of learning – as a way to help them succeed financially, sure, but even more for the enrichment it gives to their lives.

The changes we need are the ones that have been ignored. We are following an empty curriculum that leaves even the brightest students woefully deficient in the sciences, history, geography, music and art.

We are training teachers to use methodologies, such as “balanced literacy,” that have been proven ineffective with the most at-risk students, while jettisoning strategies with much better track records and far more promise.

We have institutionalized a “fuzzy math” curriculum that leaves our students woefully deficient to meet the technical challenges they will face in the global economy of the twenty first century.
In trying to impose a “business model” on our schools, we have failed our children in a profound way. We then use the “creative accounting” of inflated test scores and never-ending test prep to “prove” that the schools are bringing “profits” for the huge investment in public capital that is being poured into them.

It is all an illusion, reinforced by a public relations army spending ten times more to sell their product us than the old Board of Education did.

If we have learned nothing else during the last few weeks, it is that the Bloombergian “business model” doesn’t even work in the business world. Why should we think that it works in the far more complicated world of education?

Ironically, greater gains were made during the years that Rudy Crew and Harold Levy ran the schools under the old Board of Education. If I had my d ruthers, I would let the current law sunset on June 30, 2009 and go back to the drawing board, building on the old system largely run by teachers and educators, rather than the Tweed “business model” of lawyers and MBAs."

Andrew Wolf frequently wrote on topics related to Education for the much-missed New York Sun. He is Editor and Publisher of the Riverdale Review and Bronx Press Review, two community weekly newspapers published in The Bronx.

Guest Post: Bill de Blasio on Term Limits

Today, Councilmember Bill de Blasio continues our series of guest blog posts on the mayor's effort to extend term limits.  

Bill de Blasio said, "In the past 15 years, New York City's voters have twice voiced their overwhelming support for enacting and upholding the law which limits elected city officials to serving two consecutive four-year terms in office. While the merits of term limits are debatable, the merits of democracy are not.  It is unconscionable for Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council to work in collusion against the will of the people we purportedly serve. Any changes to the current term-limits law must and still can be decided by the people. 

Voters could have an opportunity to decide term limits for themselves in a few short months - we should give it to them. Councilmember Letitia James and I have presented legislation calling for the creation of a Charter Review Commission to hold public hearings on this issue in every borough, and to put the issue to public vote in a referendum. In his address two weeks ago, the Mayor failed to mention that there is still time to complete this process, and that a special election and referendum will likely be scheduled for February of next year anyway to fill vacant Council seats.

We must stand together strongly in opposition to this Machiavellian plan to upend the will of the people for the desires of the few. This attempt to change electoral laws for one person makes a mockery of our entire legislative process. Our city has faced crises of all forms in the past, most notably 9/11 and the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, yet never before have we witnessed such complete disregard for the will of the people and such disrespect for our democratic process. No one person is supremely and solely qualified to run New York City; to claim otherwise is insulting to the voters who enacted term limits in the first place.

I urge all New Yorkers to make their voices heard by letting their Councilmember know that they want to have a say on this important issue.  We must keep this decision in the hands of the voters where it belongs."

Bill de Blasio is a New York City Councilmember representing Brooklyn's 39th Council District and the Chair of the City Council General Welfare Committee.

Guest Post: Catherine Abate on the Financial Crisis

Betsy Gotbaum has reached out to advocates around the city and asked for their opinions on how the current financial situation and citywide agency cuts will affect New Yorkers. Our second guest post on this subject comes from Catherine Abate, President/CEO of the Community Healthcare Network. Stay tuned for more guest posts...

The current fiscal downturn is having a negative impact on Americans from Wall Street to Main Street but it is those that struggle on a regular basis who are most vulnerable to the financial decline. As social services are reduced or eliminated due to deteriorating tax revenues, low-income New Yorkers are faced with difficult choices. Between putting food on the table, paying rent or making a visit to the family doctor, the medical appointment will be the first to be set aside. Delayed medical care can have long-term implications if good health practices are not maintained leading to chronic diseases, additional costs for healthcare and potentially loss of personal income if one is unable to work.

It is critical that we don’t underestimate the importance of primary care and vital social services to ensure the health of our communities for now and the future.

Catherine M. Abate
President/CEO
Community Healthcare Network

Guest Post: Diane Ravitch on Mayoral Control

Betsy Gotbaum has reached out to experts around the city and asked for their opinions on the future of mayoral control in New York City. Our first guest post in this series comes from Diane Ravitch.

Diane Ravitch is a historian of education. She is Research Professor of Education at New York University
and the author of many books. Her first book, Great School New York City The Wars: 1805-1973, was a history of the New York City public schools.

Mayoral Control of the Public Schools: Should It Be Renewed?
By Diane Ravitch

In June 2009, only eight months from now, the law handing control of the New York City public schools will sunset. If the State Legislature does nothing, the old Board of Education will be re-established. As time goes by, the Legislature will be under increasing pressure either to renew the law—handing total control of the system over to the next mayor, whoever he or she may be—or to revise the current governance structure.

Many claims have been made for the success of the current system of mayoral control, but consider the following facts.

*First, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (tests administered by the federal government) reported last fall that students in New York City made no significant gains from 2003 (when the Bloomberg-Klein reforms were implemented) through 2007. The federal tests found no gains in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading, or 8th grade mathematics for black students, white students, Hispanic students, or lower-income students. Only in 4th grade math did New York City children make significant gains, but these were thrown into question because of the unusually high proportion of students (25%) who were given accommodations, more than in any other city and twice as much as NYC had previously claimed. The NAEP tests are considered the gold standard of the testing industry.