P.S. 130 is one of many public schools in New York that will see parents, students, teachers, staff, and neighbors join hands tomorrow to encircle the school as a protest against Governor Andrew Cuomo's education reform package and budget proposal.
Everyone is invited to participate.
Troublesome issues include
- increasing the consequences of high-stakes testing,
- raising the cap on the number of charter schools permitted,
- altering the basis for teacher evaluations,
- privatizing certain schools,
- not releasing funds that the state is obligated to pay to the schools, and
- tying the state's education budget to acceptance of the governor's proposals.
A letter to parents and the school community from Class Size Matters provides more details:
Our public schools are under attack. We ask that you join with us in a citywide
event on Thursday, March 12, and ask fellow
parents, students, teachers and other school staff, to form a ring around your
building to symbolically protect your school. This event is being co-sponsored
by Class Size Matters, the UFT, NYS Allies for Public Education and Alliance
for Quality Education.
Why are we doing this?
After cutting school funding sharply in recent years,
Governor Cuomo has threatened to hold any increase in state aid hostage to an
arsenal of damaging education proposals, which could severely threaten the
quality and local autonomy of NYC public schools. Though he still owes NYC schools over $2
billion from the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision, and over $5 billion
statewide, he now says he won’t increase funding unless the Legislature
approves tuition tax credits to private schools, similar to vouchers, raising
the cap on charter schools by 100 and eliminating any regional restrictions,
which could mean up to 250 more charter schools targeted to NYC, each one
guaranteed free facilities at the city expense. These proposals would divert essential funds and space from our public
schools. At the same time, he has also
said that struggling schools be put in receivership, taken over by the state
and/or turned over to private hands.
In addition, the Governor is insisting on a statewide
teacher evaluation system that takes nearly all authority out of district and
principal hands, basing 50% of a teacher’s ratings on student test scores on
the highly fallible state exams, with only 15% based on the principal’s
assessment, and the other 35% on independent evaluators, pre-selected by the
state but paid for by the district. Teachers who received one ineffective rating in five years– based solely
on the unreliable value-added test scores –could not be granted tenure, no
matter what the principal or the Superintendent wanted, and any teacher rated
ineffective two years in a row could lose their jobs.
These proposals represent an unprecedented attempt to
centralize power over our public schools, and one that could severely damage
them. The Governor’s attempt to double
down on high stakes testing is not only the opposite to what is happening
elsewhere in the country, as many states are moving away from test-based
teacher evaluation systems, realizing how unreliable they are and unrelated to
real learning, but it also contradicts his recent campaign ads when he
acknowledged that "Common Core scores" should not be used "for
at least five years" and even then, "only if our children are
ready." There is more information
about the Governor’s destructive proposals on the NYC Public School Parents blog, including a fact
sheet you can download here.
Many charter schools are hiring buses, closing for the day,
and sending all their staff, students and parents to Albany to lobby for more
funding and to raise the charter cap. It
would be illegal for public schools to do this, and in any case, we would never
recommend subtracting important time from student learning. Instead, we ask you to join with us to
protect our school.
