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A screenshot from the Facebook event advertising a rally to support Juan Morel Campos Secondary School

Community meetings at schools that the Department of Education is considering closing have started attracting a new constituency: students.

That’s because the meetings, which the DOE calls “early engagement conversations,” are now being held at high schools. Until this week, all of the meetings had happened at elementary and middle schools, for which the city released a shortlist of potential closures in September.

One meeting took place Monday evening at Wadleigh Secondary School for Performing Arts, where some members of the school community are arguing that its progress report data aren’t bad enough to warrant closure. Last night, students made the case for keeping Manhattan’s High School of Graphic Communications Arts open. And today, students have recruited crowds to defend Juan Morel Campos Secondary School in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Tiffany Munoz, a Juan Morel Campos junior who was student body president last year, said students were alarmed when they heard that the school could close and quickly invited hundreds of current and former students to a Facebook event, “Save Juan Morel Campos Secondary School (I.S. 71) From Being Closed.” Tonight, when the school’s superintendent meets with community members, 150 students who RSVPed yes plan to let her know that the school is a tight-knit community with a thriving arts and music program where teachers push students to do their very best. (more…)

Chart showing trends in K-3 class size. From Class Size Matters PowerPoint presentation. (Click to enlarge.)

Preliminary class size data that the city released today confirms what the teachers union has tallied: Class sizes are on the rise.

Classes grew most this year in kindergarten through third grade, where the average size increased by just under one student since last year to 23.1. On average, classes in those grades are now three students larger than they were in the 2006-2007 school year. They are largest in Queens and Staten Island and smallest in Manhattan.

Classes in those grades are now the largest they have been since 1998, according to a PowerPoint presentation prepared by parent activist Leonie Haimson for Class Size Matters, a group that she runs to advocate for smaller classes.

Class sizes have also inched up in upper elementary, middle, and high school grades, but not by as much, according to the city’s new numbers.

In all grades, average class sizes exceed the goals set forth in the 2007 Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit settlement, which required the state to earmark extra funds for New York City schools to use for six different purposes, including reducing class size. (more…)

Annual state spending on school aid will be down 6.1 percent this year, according to new spending projections from Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget office.

The new projections show the state’s budget gap growing from $2 billion to up to $3.5 billion. The reductions come after three straight years of budget cuts that have left schools struggling.

Last week parent activists took their message to Cuomo’s office, urging him not to repeal the so-called “millionaire’s-tax” on high-earning residents and the decry the effects of the current state budget on class size in local schools.

Last year, New York City lost $812 million in state education funding. According to the revised plan, the state will spend about $19.6 billion on school aid this year—a reduction of nearly $1.3 billion from the 2011 budget.

Earlier this fall educators and families in New York City and elsewhere rallied against the $1.3 billion already slashed from the state’s education funds, many of them lamenting that beloved after school programs were the first expenses to go at their local schools.

Union officials presented findings from a survey outside P.S. 1 in Chinatown today.

Years of budget cuts have slashed academic programs, increased class sizes, and shortchanged teachers of classroom supplies, according to results of a survey conducted by the United Federation of Teachers.

The cuts hit after-school programs and elementary class sizes particularly hard, according to the survey’s findings, which were compiled from anecdotal accounts from UFT chapter leaders at more than half of the city’s roughly 1,700 schools.

The city’s budget environment has been grim since the start of the economic recession in 2008. As the city’s costliest agency, the Department of Education – and especially its individual school budgets – has shouldered a hefty burden of the cuts. This year, Chancellor Dennis Walcott cut school budgets by an average of 2.4 percent, or $178 million. That followed 4 percent cuts in 2010.

The survey confirms what the UFT had already known – and what the DOE had already had acknowledged – about class sizes: They are up. In September, a UFT study reported that 7,000 classes citywide were too crowded.

Three out of four elementary schools reported that class sizes were on the rise, with some classes increasing by more than 10 students, according to one anecdote. (more…)

Chancellor Dennis Walcott indicated today that he wants his central administration to take the brunt of midyear budget cuts.

But he did not explain how the Department of Education would be able to handle even deeper cuts that Mayor Bloomberg said are on the way for next year, when the city faces a $4.6 billion shortfall.

Yesterday, Bloomberg instructed city agencies to figure out how to cut 2 percent from their current budget and 6 percent from next year’s projected budget. He included the DOE in his directive, unlike last year, when he insulated schools and public safety from the full extent of midyear cuts imposed on other agencies.

Walcott said today that DOE officials had already started talking with the city’s Office of Management and Budget about ways to cut spending. Proposals are due Oct. 18.

“I’m confident that we’ll be able to submit something and have that announcement in time for the deadline,” he said. “What we’re doing is working collectively with our staff to find where savings could be and make sure we’re minimizing the impact to schools.”

Midyear budget cuts are doubly disruptive to schools because most expenses are fixed for the whole year, meaning that only certain costs, such as after-school programs or tutoring, can go on the chopping block.

And this year, many principals are operating with less of a cushion against midyear cuts. (more…)

John Elfrank-Dana, UFT chapter leader at Murry Bergtraum High School, says his history classes have as many as 37 students.

After three years of budget cuts, the city’s schools started the year with more oversize classes than at any time in the last decade, according to data collected by the United Federation of Teachers.

Union members reported that on the sixth day of the school year, nearly 7,000 classes had more students than the teachers contract allows, mostly in high schools and a large number in Queens. That was almost a thousand more oversize classes than they reported at the same time last year.

The union will soon file a grievance against the contract violations, and many of the classes will shrink as schools shuffle students around in the coming weeks, as typically happens at the beginning of the school year. But union officials said it appears that for the fifth year in a row, average class sizes have inched up again.

“Our worst fears have now been confirmed,” said UFT President Michael Mulgrew at a press conference announcing the numbers today. He urged Mayor Bloomberg to protect the city schools from additional budget cuts in the coming year.

Now, nearly a quarter of all city students are spending all or part of the day in overcrowded classes, according to the UFT. The contract limits classes to 25 students in kindergarten; 32 students in elementary school; 33 students in middle schools and 30 students in middle schools with many poor students; and 34 students in high schools. (more…)

City Councilman Robert Jackson, Council Speaker Christine Quinn, and UFT President Michael Mulgrew addressing students at P.S./I.S. 187.

With a new round of budget projections already on the horizon, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn sent a clear message to City Hall today, warning Mayor Bloomberg that teacher layoffs would not be on the table to close gaps at the Department of Education.

“I cant imagine why you would go back to that idea again,” Quinn told reporters outside P.S./I.S. 187 in Washington Heights, where she spent more than an hour greeting students on their first day of school. “It didn’t work.”

It was just a couple of months into the last school year that Bloomberg announced his intention to lay off thousands of teachers in order to balance the city’s budget. But layoffs were ultimately averted after the city struck a deal with the UFT and City Council.

Quinn, who is planning a 2013 mayoral run, said she hasn’t discussed the prospect of teacher layoffs with the mayor yet this year. But she signaled that she would reprise last year’s fight if the mayor again levels a layoff threat.

“I think, and I certainly hope, that they saw how clear and strong we in the council felt about the idea of layoffs last year,” she said.

Quinn was joined by Councilman Robert Jackson, chair of the education committee, and United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew at the school. (more…)

The United Federation of Teachers is gearing up for its annual struggle to wrangle classes down to their contractual size limits.

As schools work to pinch every cent out of their compressed budgets, there are few safeguards in place to ward off swelling class sizes, and the UFT is asking members to be especially vigilant this year.

In the Sept. 1 Chapter Leader Weekly Update, the union urged its school representatives to monitor class size closely from the first day of classes so that after an “informal resolution” period ends on Sept. 21, the union can begin filing grievances.

One element of the UFT’s bid to challenge the city’s class-size efforts is in legal limbo. In 2010, the union sued the city over its spending of class size reduction funds, charging that the Department of Education had used the funds for other purposes. But this summer, an appeals court threw out the suit, ruling that the issue should be handled by the State Education Department.

Dick Riley, a UFT spokesman, said the union was still weighing how to proceed. But he said that putting pressure on the DOE early has traditionally paid off for the union, with schools rectifying many class size violations as the chaos of the first days of class wears away.

“In practice the DOE, particularly in high schools, often exceeds these limits at the beginning of the school year, but under pressure from the UFT, generally brings them down to the contractual limit, though it can take weeks for some schools to do so,” Riley said. (more…)

Two-thirds of principals who pushed back about the budgets allocated to their schools got good news last week — and money in the bank.

Of the 250 appeals filed this year, 162 resulted in full or partial budget restoration, Department of Education officials said today.

But while the number of appeals was up 50 percent this year, the amount of money added back to school budgets rose by just 20 percent, meaning that each principal’s award was smaller on average.

Last year, 166 principals filed appeals and about two-thirds were successful, winning a total of $23 million from a central Department of Education emergency fund. This year, principals had the same rate of success but received just $4.7 million more, for a total of $27.7 million this year.

In July, we profiled two principals who were filing appeals for the first time. One of them, Joseph Nobile of P.S. 304 in the Bronx, received enough support to hire back five of the seven teachers and staff members he had cut, we reported last week.

The other principal, Lisa Siegman, told us today that to her “incredible relief,” P.S. 3 got a little more than $195,000 added back to its budget. She said that amount will allow her, at a minimum, to replace one teacher who left the school and add another teacher in first grade, where enrollment growth has made an additional class necessary.

Hundreds of principals who objected to their initial budget funding last month will learn today if their appeals were successful.

An unusually high number of principals filed official appeals of their budgets this year, some requesting hundreds of thousands of dollars of additional funding. They said the third consecutive year of budget cuts would have forced them to cut vital staff members, they explained in their appeals.

It’s not clear how many of the 253 principals will have funding restored, or even where all of the money will come from. Last year, the Department of Education spent $23 million from a centrally-funded emergency pool to restore money to about two-thirds of the 166 schools that filed appeals.

Principals are getting emails with the results of their appeals today, according to Barbara Morgan, a DOE spokeswoman. But at least one principal said he’s already been told his appeal was successful.

Joe Nobile, a principal whose budget plight we wrote about last month, said initial funding allocated for his school, P.S. 304, “was not enough to run the school effectively.” He would have had to replace seven staff members.

But thanks to his appeal, Nobile said he will be able to keep most of those staff members — a teacher, three school aides, and one paraprofessionals  — in the school. He’s still losing two special education teachers, he said.