Current Events
Community School Board Replacement by Community District Education Councils in NYC
The NYC Department of Education wants Community District Education Councils to replace the 32 elected School Boards. NYC groups are protesting this attempt to disfranchize protected minority groups under the federal Voting Rights Act.
A major part of the public school reform being pushed ahead by Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg is the establishment of Parent District Education Councils to replace the 32 school boards. The US Department of Justice ruled that these new entities do not disfranchize minority groups and take away any of their voting rights. ARPE, a new parent group in New York City, says that this new structure will do just that, as PA/PTA parents will appoint parents to these new councils, and the election of PA/PTA Presidents in New York is not a democratic process.
The New York City Department of Education Argues For the New Structure:
On October 31, 2003, the New York City Law Department submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice the request for preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of the State Law establishing Community District Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education. Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act provides that proposed voting changes in certain jurisdictions must be precleared by the Department of Justice to ensure that they do not have a retrogressive effect on any protected minority group.
http://nycenet.edu/News/NYCLaw.htm
The Law Department's preclearance submission follows an extensive process to devise a system that will honor the Voting Rights Act and be as parent-friendly as possible under the law. The submission incorporates careful consideration of the feedback received from parents, community members and elected officials during the public hearings held by the Department of Education in each of the five boroughs and consultation with various voting rights experts and the Justice Department. The submission demonstrates that the new law and regulations increase the opportunity for minority representation in community school district governance structures. In its submission, the Law Department is requesting expedited consideration.At the same time, the Department of Education also released final versions of its regulations for nominating and selecting the parent and student members of the Community District Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education. The revised regulations address issues raised by parents and community members during a series of public hearings held in each of the five boroughs. Specifically, changes were made to offer a greater opportunity for parents and community members to learn about candidates for the Councils; to create formal opportunities for parents to inform their PA/PTA officers about their opinions of the candidates before selection occurs; to create a more convenient and parent-friendly selection process that will allow selectors to mail in or drop off their ballots; and to ensure that the voting rule provides for equitable representation of the parent population within each district and District 75.
Chancellor's Regulations D-140
Chancellor's Regulations D-150
In addition, the Chancellor created a new Citywide High School Council to complement the state governance law that provides for Community District Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education. The creation of the High School Council responds to concerns heard at public hearings across the City that high school parents were not represented in the new governance scheme. Under the State law, high school parents are not eligible to serve as members of the Community District Education Councils. Press release announcing the Citywide High School Council and the Law Department's preclearance submission. As a result of the new governance law, minor revisions of Chancellor's Regulations A-660, C-120, and D-130 are required. Regulation A-660 (Parent Associations and the Schools) will be revised to provide for a uniform election process for PA/PTA executive boards. The revisions also will require that, at a minimum, all executive boards must consist of a president, secretary, and treasurer. Regulation C-120 (Disclosure of Financial Interests) will be revised to require nominees for Community District Education Council and the City-wide Council on Special Education to file a nominee disclosure form. (A similar requirement applies to persons who serve on community school boards.) Regulation D-130 (Political Activities in Schools) will be revised to prohibit nominees for Community District Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education from accepting political endorsements and campaign contributions. (This prohibition has been required by the State Legislature.)
New York Times reporter David Herszenhorn ["Bias Feared in School Plan for Councils" December 1, 2003] discusses the non-representation of minority parents on PA/PTA Executive Boards:
"Schools without parent associations tend to be overwhelmingly minority, like P.S. 132 in the South Bronx,
where 99 percent of students are black or Hispanic. At some other schools, the students are mostly minority but the P.T.A. officers are predominantly white. And in schools with heavy immigrant populations, parents who are English speakers are far more likely to be P.T.A. officers, they said".
Parent Groups Argue Against the New Structure:
The E-Accountability Foundation believes that the Department of Justice must not allow the new Community Education Councils because the New York City Department of Education officials in charge of parent matters - Chancellor Joel Klein, the Chiel Counsel Mr. Chad Vignola, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, Michelle Cahill and the Office of Parent Engagement - have made no effort to establish a democratic process for electing PA/PTA officers throughout the city. We have brought information about many schools' erratic and undemocratic processes to the above named people, and not one of them acted upon our requests to change the status quo and help non-white and/or non-english speaking parents have an equal opportunity to get elected to executive boards in their schools. The Booker T. Washington MS 54 PTA and La Guardia High School PA election frauds perpetrated by the NYC Department of Education are described under "Stories and Grievances", and give clear examples of irresponsability, lack of accountability, and awesome arrogance toward due process violations. Indeed, a School Board member told us that many parents believe the Chancellor was picked by Mayor Bloomberg because he had worked for the Department of Justice and could, therefore, have an "in" with the officials in Washington so that the reforms could be pushed through.
Testimony:New York City Department of Education Hearing of September 25, 2003
Proposed Chancellor's Regulations D-140
and Prospective Revisions to Chancellor's Regulations A-660
by
Carolyn Prager
Advocates for Public Representation in Public Education (APRPE, www.APRPE.com)
This testimony comments on three aspects of the Chancellor's proposed regulations D-140 and intended revisions of Chancellor's Regulations A-660:
1. the proposed process for selection of parent district education council members;
2. the structures and election procedures for PTA/PA, with particular reference to their impact on the selection of parent District Education Council members; and
3. the powers and responsibilities of District Education Councils as they call into question the proposed process for selecting parent district education council members.
Under the New York State governance law (A09113) passed in June, 2003, Community District Education Councils will replace current Community School Boards. The law replaces the one-person, one-vote general election system of Community School Board members with a selection process involving PTA and PA officers. District Education Councils (DECs) will have 11 members, 9 of whom will be parents "selected [emphasis added] by the presidents and officers of the parents' associations or parent-teachers' associations" (Section 3:1). The 9 parent members will serve two-year terms.
The law also instructs the Chancellor to write regulations:
1. insuring that PTAs/PAs have "uniform" parent-teachers' election processes and structures and
2. taking into consideration the student population and enrollment patterns of each district's schools in selecting the 9 parent DEC members (Section 3:8).
I. Selection of Parent District Education Council Members
The law provides the Chancellor with very wide latitude in formulating regulations to determine how parent-teachers' and parent associations (PTAs/PAs) shall participate in the selection of the 9 parent DEC members. The implementation methods the Chancellor has proposed for selecting parent members of the District Education Councils is less than optimal for many reasons, five of will be addressed below.
The proposed selection process for the parent members of the DECs:
1. includes elections that disenfranchise nearly all parents except for three PTA/PA officers per school;
2. gives disproportionate voting influence to PTA/PA representatives from schools with the smallest enrollments;
3. gives disproportionate voting influence to PTA/PA representatives from elementary schools;
4. decreases rather than increases the likelihood of compliance with legislative intent that there be equitable representation on District Education Councils; and
5. creates an unwieldy selection process.
1. Disenfranchisement: The Department of Education proposes to implement a selection process required by the law through a restrictive election process that effectively disenfranchises most parents. The State law replaces the one-person one-vote Community School Board elections with a 3 person per school selection process for the 9 parent members of each District Education Council. The State law does not require elections as part of that selection process. However, the Chancellor's proposed regulations not only require an election but also limit the electorate to 3 people per school who are PTA/PA officers. While State law gives PTA/PA officers a role distinctive from other parents in the selection of DEC parent members, the Chancellor's proposed regulations gives PTA/PA officers and only PTA/PA officers an exclusive role in voting for DEC parent members.
Critics of Community School Board elections have often pointed to the low participation rates of eligible voters. Ironically, proposed Chancellor's regulations will assure an even lower participation rate in District Education Council elections by reducing the eligible voters to 3 per school. It is true that only 3-5 % or so of approximately 3 million eligible voters voted recently in Community School Board elections. However, Community School Board elections were open to all registered voters and to all parents with children in the NYC public schools. The proposed Chancellor's regulations will enfranchise only 3,600 or so parents (PTA/PA officers) out of a more than a million with children in the New York City School system. This is .03% of all parents.
In addition to disenfranching the vast majority of parents, the proposed regulations give parents no other role in the selection process
2. Disproportionate Voting Influences: The proposed regulations distribute voting power in ways that will also disproportionately affect the voting influence of PTA/PA "electors" from schools of different sizes and different types. The proposed regulations distribute the same number of votes to representatives from small schools as to those from large schools, thereby minimizing the influence of parent electors (and indirectly of parents) in the largest schools. PTA/PA "electors" from schools with the smallest enrollments will have a disproportionately large voting influence on election outcomes. To the extent that the largest schools often enroll a greater percentage of minority students than do the smallest schools in many areas, this element increases the likelihood of a disparate influence on account of race in such districts.
Schools with only 100 students will have the same influence on selection and voting outcomes as schools with 2,000 students. Parent "electors" from schools with 2,000 students will, therefore, have a lesser influence on voting outcomes than parent "electors" from schools with 100 students. The issue is not theoretical. Region 10 in Manhattan is offered here as illustration of the larger picture citywide. Region 10 includes Community School District 3, 5, and 6. Individual school enrollments range from 192 to 1,058 in District 3, from 327 to 976 in District 5, and from 120 to 1,719 in District 6. (For additional school enrollment figures, see Attachment A's breakdowns of Region 10 districts and schools).
Differences in school enrollments will create extremely different ratios of parent numbers to PTA/PA electors in large and small schools. (The following example uses student enrollment figures from the Department of Education's enrollment figures in its "Preliminary FY 2004 Initial School Allocations" report. The number of students in a school represents a reasonable approximation of the minimum number of parents for that school.) For example, PS 210 in District 6 enrolled 210 students as of October, 2002. MS 52, also in District 6, enrolled 1,719 in the same period. The ratio of electors to parents would be 1 PTA/PA elector for only 40 parents at PS 210 compared to 1 elector for 573 parents in MS 52. Differences in enrollment numbers will create very different ratios of PTA/PA electors to parents throughout Districts 3 and 5, as well, (although not quite as extreme).
3. Disproportionate Influence of Elementary Schools: New York City school districts typically have more elementary schools than middle schools. By giving each school the same number of electors, the proposed regulations increase the likelihood that elementary schools will have a disproportionate voting influence in the selection and election of DEC parent members, thereby decreasing the likelihood of the equitable representation of middle school parents on District Education Councils.
For example, District 3 has 17 elementary schools but only 10 middle schools. District 5 has 9 elementary schools but only 4 middle schools. District 6 has 19 elementary schools but only 7 middle schools. In District 3, therefore, there will be 51 PTA/PA elementary school officers electing DEC parent members but only 30 middle schools electors. In District 5, there will be 27 elementary school PTA/PA electors but only 12 middle schools electors. In District 6, there will be 57 elementary school electors but only to 21 from middle schools. Since middle schools usually have far larger enrollments than elementary schools, the larger number of electors from elementary schools within district will also contribute to the disproportionate impact of smaller schools on the selection of DEC parent members noted in 2, above.
4. Legislative Intent and Equitable Representation: The proposed regulations decrease rather than increase the possibility of compliance with legislative intent. The Legislature clearly intended that the Department of Education implement the law in a way that would reach for equitable representation in District Education Councils. A09113 states that the Chancellor: "shall develop selection procedures for community council members which shall attempt to ensure membership that reflects a representative cross-section of the communities within the school district and diversity of the student population . . . [which] shall include consideration of the enrollment figures within each community district and the potential disparity of such enrollments from school to school within the district . . . " (A9113, Section 3:8.c).
The wording of the legislation more than suggests that the Legislature wanted the Department of Education to at least attempt to address student diversity and school enrollment patterns in the DEC parent selection process. Instead, the Department has proposed a selection and election system that gives the largest schools, in general, and middle schools, in particular, the least influence on voting outcomes. In addition, the proposed regulations have essentially downloaded all responsibility for attempting to assure equitable representation from the Chancellor to the local PTA/PA selection/election committees. The proposed regulations do not even provide for recourse through the Chancellor's office for appealing election outcomes that do not represent district diversity and school enrollment differences.
5. Cumbersome Selection Processes: The sheer size of the district selection PTA/PA "committees" (consisting of nearly 200 members, if not more, in some districts) lessens the likelihood that the committees will function effectively, especially since Chancellor's regulations does not define how they will be structured, how they will conduct business, or how they will undertake the specific tasks required by the proposed regulations within the allotted time period.
Where they do speak to committee activity, the proposed regulations create a cumbersome, time consuming, and unwieldy process for the selection of DEC parent members. Before voting, the selection committee of district PTA/PA officers must:
§ review nominees' applications,
§ must listen to five-minute presentations from each candidate, and
§ must discuss the relative merit of individual candidates.
Let's make some very minimal assumptions about the time involved. Let's assume at least 10 minutes to review a candidate's written application, at least 7 minutes to listen to a candidate's presentation (5 minute presentation plus two minutes between presentations), and 10 minutes to discuss a candidate's merits. This would entail almost one-half hour per candidate for the most cursory review. If 50 candidates self-nominate, this will require 25 hours of review, not including voting and break time. If 100 candidates self-nominate?
Will candidates be discussed in public session? Will all candidates be discussed by the committee as a whole? How will discussion take place among a committee of one hundred or two hundred or so people? Will votes be cast in public session? Etc.
The proposed regulations make extraordinary demands of time-bound individuals who already have multiple responsibilities as the parents of school age children and as officers of PTA/PAs. Further, as a condition of voting, the proposed regulations do not require any selection committee member to actually read nominee applications, to actually listen to nominee presentations, or to actually participate in or attend the discussion of candidates' relative merits before voting. True, the same may be said of voters in general elections. However, in general elections, electors have the opportunity to inform themselves of a candidate's merits before voting through a number of vehicles that do not demand their collective presence at a fixed place over a long period of time.
II. PTA/PA Election Procedures and PTA/PA Structures
Uniform PTA/PA Elections: The State governance law explicitly requires the Chancellor to "develop a process to ensure a uniform election process for parent associations and parent-teacher associations . . . [that] ensure uniformity with respect to timing of elections
and the structure and size of the body" (Section 3.8.a).
Election Uniformity--Uniformity in the timing of elections is desireable because it would assure that PTA/PA officers will be in place in time to serve as electors of parent DEC members. In principle, Chancellor's Regulations A-660 already provide for elections in May of each year but, in practice, the timing of PTA/PA executive board elections has varied widely. Additionally, several schools either do not have functioning PTAs/PAs and/or have not yet held elections as of this date. (In District 3, for example, the District's parent coordinator confirmed at the September 24, 2003 Community School Board meeting that 5 of 32 schools had yet to conduct their PA/PTA elections for this school year.)
Structural Uniformity--Uniformity in the structure of PTAs/PAs is desireable because it would assure that all PTA/PAs will have the same officers (a President, a Secretary, and a Treasurer) required in the proposed regulations for service on the district committees selecting parent DEC members. Again, Chancellor's Regulations A-660 already calls for the designated PTA/PA officers but, in practice, the number and title of officers in parent associations varies widely throughout the school system.
Until recently, the Chancellor's office has maintained that existing Chancellor's Regulations A-660 already met the requirements imposed by the new State law for uniform PTA/PA structures and elections. However, on or about September 16, 2003, the Department of Education indicated on its web site that it would make "minor revisions to Chancellor's A-660 . . . to provide for a uniform election process for PA/PTA executive boards". These revisions have yet to be made public and have not, therefore, been available to the public for comment during this cycle of required public hearings.
The Department of Education's recent notice of intent to revise A-660 indicates that the revised regulations will require uniform election dates in May. Effectively, the next cycle of PA/PTA May elections cannot take place until May 2004. This means that the Department intends to hold elections for District Education Councils parent members by this October 31, 2003, using PA/PTA electors who were not themselves elected in accordance with the mandate for uniformity in the State law. Since parent members of District Education Councils are to be elected for a period of two years, this means that the effects of revisions to assure uniformity in the structure and timing of elections of PTA/PA executive boards will not be realized in terms of the composition of District Education Councils until school year 2005-2006, at the earliest.
The Department also intends to hold these elections, using PTA/PA officers who were not elected by their respective parent association members, to perform the new function of district-wide electors for District Education Councils. This will be a new responsibility that is not included within any parent association current bylaws.
Chancellor's Regulations A-660 also currently permits each PA/PTA to determine in its by-laws the number of parents per family who may vote in a school PTA/PA election. The notice of intent to revise A-660 in accordance with the governance law does not include this item. Two-parent per family voting for PTA/PA officers discriminates against single heads of households, many of whom are minority and almost all of whom are female. This element of Chancellor Regulations A-660 should be revised to assure PTA/PA election uniformity as well as voting equity.
III. District Education Council Powers and Responsibilities
The New York State Legislature changed changed the composition of school district community governance bodies' membership but did not change the purpose, powers, and responsibilities of these governance bodies. The State Legislature gave District Education Councils the current powers and responsibilities of Community School Boards, in addition to restoring a former Community School Board responsibility to evaluate the District Superintendent. The Legislature also retained the same District Superintendents' powers and responsibilities that had existed before the new legislation.
In practice, however, the Chancellor's restructuring of the school system has already undermined legislative purpose in ways that defeat the very reason for which the Legislature created new local governance bodies as it did. By doing so, the Department of Education has called into question the reason for selecting parent DEC members and the context of their selection. At some point, the reason for having district school governance bodies and the process of their selection intersect, if only in the Department's apparent casual treatment of the State law.
Below are a few examples of how the restructuring has effectively negated the powers and responsibilities of District Education Councils provided for in State law:
1. Restricted District Superintendent's Presence in Community School Districts: Despite an out-of-court settlement reached between the Chancellor and several State legislators earlier this year that preserves community school districts and community school district superintendents, district superintendents are no longer real presences in their districts. This means that neither parents nor their representatives on District Education Councils will have meaningful access to their respective district superintendent. The District Superintendents are now district superintendents in name only. Their primary obligation is as to serve as one of many Regional Local Instructional Superintendents. This means that, in actuality, they spend very little time in their community school districts dealing with school district matters, in some cases not even maintaining a desk there. While the position of District Superintendent is still preserved in State law and was reaffirmed by this year's out-of-court settlement, the restructuring
has seriously reduced the powers and responsibilities of district superintendents. For example, district superintendents no longer appoint, mentor, or evaluate a district's school principals. Most important, they do not facilitate the writing of the District Comprehensive Education Plan (DCEP) , bring the DCEP to the school board or to the community for comment, or supervise and coordinate its implementation.
The Department of Education barely maintains the pretense that those with the nominal title of District Superintendent function as district superintendents in accordance with the State law. The Community Superintendents' "Areas of Responsibility" are those of a Local Instructional Superintendent responsible only for instructional programs (and not necessarily at schools in the district in which he or she also serves nominally as Community Superintendent).
2. Restricted District Role in Educational Planning and Evaluation: The Chancellor's restructuring has already taken away the two major tools available to Community School Boards to monitor and evaluate educational policy implementation and to evaluate the District Superintendent's performance. The first was review of the District Comprehensive Education Plan and the second was oversight of its implementation by the Superintendent.
Under the restructuring, the Regional offices will write and implement Regional Comprehensive Education Plans with district components, as happened already this year. District input this year was limited to an invitation to selected parents to a mass meeting "consultation sessions" outside the district or region at the end of August (understandably netting very few parents). The invitation was extended after the plans had been written by regional, not district administrators, with no community review or input. Despite the assertion that Community School Boards' "Areas of Responsibility" include "review of [the] District Comprehensive Education Plan," Community School Boards were not involved in the DCEP process this year, except to the extent that they were also invited to also send one member to the end-of-August to the Department of Education mass meeting to "review" a document already written outside the district and being implemented.
Going forward, district involvement, if any, in the DCEP is not assured. The ability of DECs to carry out their statutory responsibility for district educational planning, to monitor educational outcomes, and to evaluate the superintendent has already been compromised for this academic year and will continue to be compromised under the current policies and practice.
3. One-Year Tenure for District Superintendents: At the Assembly Education Committee's public hearing of September 15, 2003, Chancellor Klein publicly confirmed plans to rotate a new district superintendent into the position each year. The result will be no continuity in community district superintendents for district schools, for students, for parents, and for District Education Councils. Among much else, this renders meaningless the DEC's ability to exercise its legislated responsibility for the annual evaluation of the District Superintendent who will be on his or her way out of the district at the point of evaluation. It also calls into question the process of appointing District Education Councils by misleading interested parents to believe that they or their representatives will have powers and responsibilities provided for in law which they will not have in reality.
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund's Response to DOJ
December 10, 2003
Mr. Joseph Rich, Esq.
Chief, Voting Section
Civil Rights Division, Room 7254 - NWB
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
Fax: (202) 616-9514
Re: Comment under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act
Submission Numbers 2003-4040 and 2003-4041
Chapter 91, Laws of 2002 of the State of New York
Chapter 123, Laws of 2003 of the State of New York
Replacement of New York City Community School Boards
with Community District Education Councils
Dear Mr. Rich:
We are submitting this comment in opposition to the New York City Board of Education's request for preclearance of:
(1) sections 7 and 8 of Chapter 91 of the Laws of 2002 of the State of New York, relating to the abolition of community school boards; and
(2) those portions of Chapter 123 of the Laws of 2003 of the State of New York, establishing bodies to replace the community school boards.
We believe that the replacement of directly elected community school boards with "Community District Education Councils" (hereinafter, "CDECs") elected by officers of local Parent Association/Parent Teachers Associations (hereinafter, "PA/PTAs"), without stronger protections guarding the interests of protected minorities, constitutes a retrogression in the voting power of Asian Americans and other racial minorities, as prohibited by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
The City of New York (hereinafter, the "City") and the City School District of the City of New York (hereinafter, "City School District") have failed to demonstrate that these proposed changes to the New York City School Board elections are not retrogressive to protected minorities' voting rights. Accordingly, the Department of Justice should deny preclearance of these changes in the election process.
I. Background and AALDEF's Involvement in Voting Rights and Public Education Issues
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (hereinafter, "AALDEF"), founded in 1974, is the first organization on the East Coast to protect and promote the civil rights of Asian Americans through litigation, legal advoca
The New York City Department of Education Argues For the New Structure:
On October 31, 2003, the New York City Law Department submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice the request for preclearance under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of the State Law establishing Community District Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education. Section 5 of the federal Voting Rights Act provides that proposed voting changes in certain jurisdictions must be precleared by the Department of Justice to ensure that they do not have a retrogressive effect on any protected minority group.
http://nycenet.edu/News/NYCLaw.htm
The Law Department's preclearance submission follows an extensive process to devise a system that will honor the Voting Rights Act and be as parent-friendly as possible under the law. The submission incorporates careful consideration of the feedback received from parents, community members and elected officials during the public hearings held by the Department of Education in each of the five boroughs and consultation with various voting rights experts and the Justice Department. The submission demonstrates that the new law and regulations increase the opportunity for minority representation in community school district governance structures. In its submission, the Law Department is requesting expedited consideration.At the same time, the Department of Education also released final versions of its regulations for nominating and selecting the parent and student members of the Community District Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education. The revised regulations address issues raised by parents and community members during a series of public hearings held in each of the five boroughs. Specifically, changes were made to offer a greater opportunity for parents and community members to learn about candidates for the Councils; to create formal opportunities for parents to inform their PA/PTA officers about their opinions of the candidates before selection occurs; to create a more convenient and parent-friendly selection process that will allow selectors to mail in or drop off their ballots; and to ensure that the voting rule provides for equitable representation of the parent population within each district and District 75.
Chancellor's Regulations D-140
Chancellor's Regulations D-150
In addition, the Chancellor created a new Citywide High School Council to complement the state governance law that provides for Community District Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education. The creation of the High School Council responds to concerns heard at public hearings across the City that high school parents were not represented in the new governance scheme. Under the State law, high school parents are not eligible to serve as members of the Community District Education Councils. Press release announcing the Citywide High School Council and the Law Department's preclearance submission. As a result of the new governance law, minor revisions of Chancellor's Regulations A-660, C-120, and D-130 are required. Regulation A-660 (Parent Associations and the Schools) will be revised to provide for a uniform election process for PA/PTA executive boards. The revisions also will require that, at a minimum, all executive boards must consist of a president, secretary, and treasurer. Regulation C-120 (Disclosure of Financial Interests) will be revised to require nominees for Community District Education Council and the City-wide Council on Special Education to file a nominee disclosure form. (A similar requirement applies to persons who serve on community school boards.) Regulation D-130 (Political Activities in Schools) will be revised to prohibit nominees for Community District Education Councils and the Citywide Council on Special Education from accepting political endorsements and campaign contributions. (This prohibition has been required by the State Legislature.)
New York Times reporter David Herszenhorn ["Bias Feared in School Plan for Councils" December 1, 2003] discusses the non-representation of minority parents on PA/PTA Executive Boards:
"Schools without parent associations tend to be overwhelmingly minority, like P.S. 132 in the South Bronx,
where 99 percent of students are black or Hispanic. At some other schools, the students are mostly minority but the P.T.A. officers are predominantly white. And in schools with heavy immigrant populations, parents who are English speakers are far more likely to be P.T.A. officers, they said".
Parent Groups Argue Against the New Structure:
The E-Accountability Foundation believes that the Department of Justice must not allow the new Community Education Councils because the New York City Department of Education officials in charge of parent matters - Chancellor Joel Klein, the Chiel Counsel Mr. Chad Vignola, Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott, Michelle Cahill and the Office of Parent Engagement - have made no effort to establish a democratic process for electing PA/PTA officers throughout the city. We have brought information about many schools' erratic and undemocratic processes to the above named people, and not one of them acted upon our requests to change the status quo and help non-white and/or non-english speaking parents have an equal opportunity to get elected to executive boards in their schools. The Booker T. Washington MS 54 PTA and La Guardia High School PA election frauds perpetrated by the NYC Department of Education are described under "Stories and Grievances", and give clear examples of irresponsability, lack of accountability, and awesome arrogance toward due process violations. Indeed, a School Board member told us that many parents believe the Chancellor was picked by Mayor Bloomberg because he had worked for the Department of Justice and could, therefore, have an "in" with the officials in Washington so that the reforms could be pushed through.
Testimony:New York City Department of Education Hearing of September 25, 2003
Proposed Chancellor's Regulations D-140
and Prospective Revisions to Chancellor's Regulations A-660
by
Carolyn Prager
Advocates for Public Representation in Public Education (APRPE, www.APRPE.com)
This testimony comments on three aspects of the Chancellor's proposed regulations D-140 and intended revisions of Chancellor's Regulations A-660:
1. the proposed process for selection of parent district education council members;
2. the structures and election procedures for PTA/PA, with particular reference to their impact on the selection of parent District Education Council members; and
3. the powers and responsibilities of District Education Councils as they call into question the proposed process for selecting parent district education council members.
Under the New York State governance law (A09113) passed in June, 2003, Community District Education Councils will replace current Community School Boards. The law replaces the one-person, one-vote general election system of Community School Board members with a selection process involving PTA and PA officers. District Education Councils (DECs) will have 11 members, 9 of whom will be parents "selected [emphasis added] by the presidents and officers of the parents' associations or parent-teachers' associations" (Section 3:1). The 9 parent members will serve two-year terms.
The law also instructs the Chancellor to write regulations:
1. insuring that PTAs/PAs have "uniform" parent-teachers' election processes and structures and
2. taking into consideration the student population and enrollment patterns of each district's schools in selecting the 9 parent DEC members (Section 3:8).
I. Selection of Parent District Education Council Members
The law provides the Chancellor with very wide latitude in formulating regulations to determine how parent-teachers' and parent associations (PTAs/PAs) shall participate in the selection of the 9 parent DEC members. The implementation methods the Chancellor has proposed for selecting parent members of the District Education Councils is less than optimal for many reasons, five of will be addressed below.
The proposed selection process for the parent members of the DECs:
1. includes elections that disenfranchise nearly all parents except for three PTA/PA officers per school;
2. gives disproportionate voting influence to PTA/PA representatives from schools with the smallest enrollments;
3. gives disproportionate voting influence to PTA/PA representatives from elementary schools;
4. decreases rather than increases the likelihood of compliance with legislative intent that there be equitable representation on District Education Councils; and
5. creates an unwieldy selection process.
1. Disenfranchisement: The Department of Education proposes to implement a selection process required by the law through a restrictive election process that effectively disenfranchises most parents. The State law replaces the one-person one-vote Community School Board elections with a 3 person per school selection process for the 9 parent members of each District Education Council. The State law does not require elections as part of that selection process. However, the Chancellor's proposed regulations not only require an election but also limit the electorate to 3 people per school who are PTA/PA officers. While State law gives PTA/PA officers a role distinctive from other parents in the selection of DEC parent members, the Chancellor's proposed regulations gives PTA/PA officers and only PTA/PA officers an exclusive role in voting for DEC parent members.
Critics of Community School Board elections have often pointed to the low participation rates of eligible voters. Ironically, proposed Chancellor's regulations will assure an even lower participation rate in District Education Council elections by reducing the eligible voters to 3 per school. It is true that only 3-5 % or so of approximately 3 million eligible voters voted recently in Community School Board elections. However, Community School Board elections were open to all registered voters and to all parents with children in the NYC public schools. The proposed Chancellor's regulations will enfranchise only 3,600 or so parents (PTA/PA officers) out of a more than a million with children in the New York City School system. This is .03% of all parents.
In addition to disenfranching the vast majority of parents, the proposed regulations give parents no other role in the selection process
2. Disproportionate Voting Influences: The proposed regulations distribute voting power in ways that will also disproportionately affect the voting influence of PTA/PA "electors" from schools of different sizes and different types. The proposed regulations distribute the same number of votes to representatives from small schools as to those from large schools, thereby minimizing the influence of parent electors (and indirectly of parents) in the largest schools. PTA/PA "electors" from schools with the smallest enrollments will have a disproportionately large voting influence on election outcomes. To the extent that the largest schools often enroll a greater percentage of minority students than do the smallest schools in many areas, this element increases the likelihood of a disparate influence on account of race in such districts.
Schools with only 100 students will have the same influence on selection and voting outcomes as schools with 2,000 students. Parent "electors" from schools with 2,000 students will, therefore, have a lesser influence on voting outcomes than parent "electors" from schools with 100 students. The issue is not theoretical. Region 10 in Manhattan is offered here as illustration of the larger picture citywide. Region 10 includes Community School District 3, 5, and 6. Individual school enrollments range from 192 to 1,058 in District 3, from 327 to 976 in District 5, and from 120 to 1,719 in District 6. (For additional school enrollment figures, see Attachment A's breakdowns of Region 10 districts and schools).
Differences in school enrollments will create extremely different ratios of parent numbers to PTA/PA electors in large and small schools. (The following example uses student enrollment figures from the Department of Education's enrollment figures in its "Preliminary FY 2004 Initial School Allocations" report. The number of students in a school represents a reasonable approximation of the minimum number of parents for that school.) For example, PS 210 in District 6 enrolled 210 students as of October, 2002. MS 52, also in District 6, enrolled 1,719 in the same period. The ratio of electors to parents would be 1 PTA/PA elector for only 40 parents at PS 210 compared to 1 elector for 573 parents in MS 52. Differences in enrollment numbers will create very different ratios of PTA/PA electors to parents throughout Districts 3 and 5, as well, (although not quite as extreme).
3. Disproportionate Influence of Elementary Schools: New York City school districts typically have more elementary schools than middle schools. By giving each school the same number of electors, the proposed regulations increase the likelihood that elementary schools will have a disproportionate voting influence in the selection and election of DEC parent members, thereby decreasing the likelihood of the equitable representation of middle school parents on District Education Councils.
For example, District 3 has 17 elementary schools but only 10 middle schools. District 5 has 9 elementary schools but only 4 middle schools. District 6 has 19 elementary schools but only 7 middle schools. In District 3, therefore, there will be 51 PTA/PA elementary school officers electing DEC parent members but only 30 middle schools electors. In District 5, there will be 27 elementary school PTA/PA electors but only 12 middle schools electors. In District 6, there will be 57 elementary school electors but only to 21 from middle schools. Since middle schools usually have far larger enrollments than elementary schools, the larger number of electors from elementary schools within district will also contribute to the disproportionate impact of smaller schools on the selection of DEC parent members noted in 2, above.
4. Legislative Intent and Equitable Representation: The proposed regulations decrease rather than increase the possibility of compliance with legislative intent. The Legislature clearly intended that the Department of Education implement the law in a way that would reach for equitable representation in District Education Councils. A09113 states that the Chancellor: "shall develop selection procedures for community council members which shall attempt to ensure membership that reflects a representative cross-section of the communities within the school district and diversity of the student population . . . [which] shall include consideration of the enrollment figures within each community district and the potential disparity of such enrollments from school to school within the district . . . " (A9113, Section 3:8.c).
The wording of the legislation more than suggests that the Legislature wanted the Department of Education to at least attempt to address student diversity and school enrollment patterns in the DEC parent selection process. Instead, the Department has proposed a selection and election system that gives the largest schools, in general, and middle schools, in particular, the least influence on voting outcomes. In addition, the proposed regulations have essentially downloaded all responsibility for attempting to assure equitable representation from the Chancellor to the local PTA/PA selection/election committees. The proposed regulations do not even provide for recourse through the Chancellor's office for appealing election outcomes that do not represent district diversity and school enrollment differences.
5. Cumbersome Selection Processes: The sheer size of the district selection PTA/PA "committees" (consisting of nearly 200 members, if not more, in some districts) lessens the likelihood that the committees will function effectively, especially since Chancellor's regulations does not define how they will be structured, how they will conduct business, or how they will undertake the specific tasks required by the proposed regulations within the allotted time period.
Where they do speak to committee activity, the proposed regulations create a cumbersome, time consuming, and unwieldy process for the selection of DEC parent members. Before voting, the selection committee of district PTA/PA officers must:
§ review nominees' applications,
§ must listen to five-minute presentations from each candidate, and
§ must discuss the relative merit of individual candidates.
Let's make some very minimal assumptions about the time involved. Let's assume at least 10 minutes to review a candidate's written application, at least 7 minutes to listen to a candidate's presentation (5 minute presentation plus two minutes between presentations), and 10 minutes to discuss a candidate's merits. This would entail almost one-half hour per candidate for the most cursory review. If 50 candidates self-nominate, this will require 25 hours of review, not including voting and break time. If 100 candidates self-nominate?
Will candidates be discussed in public session? Will all candidates be discussed by the committee as a whole? How will discussion take place among a committee of one hundred or two hundred or so people? Will votes be cast in public session? Etc.
The proposed regulations make extraordinary demands of time-bound individuals who already have multiple responsibilities as the parents of school age children and as officers of PTA/PAs. Further, as a condition of voting, the proposed regulations do not require any selection committee member to actually read nominee applications, to actually listen to nominee presentations, or to actually participate in or attend the discussion of candidates' relative merits before voting. True, the same may be said of voters in general elections. However, in general elections, electors have the opportunity to inform themselves of a candidate's merits before voting through a number of vehicles that do not demand their collective presence at a fixed place over a long period of time.
II. PTA/PA Election Procedures and PTA/PA Structures
Uniform PTA/PA Elections: The State governance law explicitly requires the Chancellor to "develop a process to ensure a uniform election process for parent associations and parent-teacher associations . . . [that] ensure uniformity with respect to timing of elections
and the structure and size of the body" (Section 3.8.a).
Election Uniformity--Uniformity in the timing of elections is desireable because it would assure that PTA/PA officers will be in place in time to serve as electors of parent DEC members. In principle, Chancellor's Regulations A-660 already provide for elections in May of each year but, in practice, the timing of PTA/PA executive board elections has varied widely. Additionally, several schools either do not have functioning PTAs/PAs and/or have not yet held elections as of this date. (In District 3, for example, the District's parent coordinator confirmed at the September 24, 2003 Community School Board meeting that 5 of 32 schools had yet to conduct their PA/PTA elections for this school year.)
Structural Uniformity--Uniformity in the structure of PTAs/PAs is desireable because it would assure that all PTA/PAs will have the same officers (a President, a Secretary, and a Treasurer) required in the proposed regulations for service on the district committees selecting parent DEC members. Again, Chancellor's Regulations A-660 already calls for the designated PTA/PA officers but, in practice, the number and title of officers in parent associations varies widely throughout the school system.
Until recently, the Chancellor's office has maintained that existing Chancellor's Regulations A-660 already met the requirements imposed by the new State law for uniform PTA/PA structures and elections. However, on or about September 16, 2003, the Department of Education indicated on its web site that it would make "minor revisions to Chancellor's A-660 . . . to provide for a uniform election process for PA/PTA executive boards". These revisions have yet to be made public and have not, therefore, been available to the public for comment during this cycle of required public hearings.
The Department of Education's recent notice of intent to revise A-660 indicates that the revised regulations will require uniform election dates in May. Effectively, the next cycle of PA/PTA May elections cannot take place until May 2004. This means that the Department intends to hold elections for District Education Councils parent members by this October 31, 2003, using PA/PTA electors who were not themselves elected in accordance with the mandate for uniformity in the State law. Since parent members of District Education Councils are to be elected for a period of two years, this means that the effects of revisions to assure uniformity in the structure and timing of elections of PTA/PA executive boards will not be realized in terms of the composition of District Education Councils until school year 2005-2006, at the earliest.
The Department also intends to hold these elections, using PTA/PA officers who were not elected by their respective parent association members, to perform the new function of district-wide electors for District Education Councils. This will be a new responsibility that is not included within any parent association current bylaws.
Chancellor's Regulations A-660 also currently permits each PA/PTA to determine in its by-laws the number of parents per family who may vote in a school PTA/PA election. The notice of intent to revise A-660 in accordance with the governance law does not include this item. Two-parent per family voting for PTA/PA officers discriminates against single heads of households, many of whom are minority and almost all of whom are female. This element of Chancellor Regulations A-660 should be revised to assure PTA/PA election uniformity as well as voting equity.
III. District Education Council Powers and Responsibilities
The New York State Legislature changed changed the composition of school district community governance bodies' membership but did not change the purpose, powers, and responsibilities of these governance bodies. The State Legislature gave District Education Councils the current powers and responsibilities of Community School Boards, in addition to restoring a former Community School Board responsibility to evaluate the District Superintendent. The Legislature also retained the same District Superintendents' powers and responsibilities that had existed before the new legislation.
In practice, however, the Chancellor's restructuring of the school system has already undermined legislative purpose in ways that defeat the very reason for which the Legislature created new local governance bodies as it did. By doing so, the Department of Education has called into question the reason for selecting parent DEC members and the context of their selection. At some point, the reason for having district school governance bodies and the process of their selection intersect, if only in the Department's apparent casual treatment of the State law.
Below are a few examples of how the restructuring has effectively negated the powers and responsibilities of District Education Councils provided for in State law:
1. Restricted District Superintendent's Presence in Community School Districts: Despite an out-of-court settlement reached between the Chancellor and several State legislators earlier this year that preserves community school districts and community school district superintendents, district superintendents are no longer real presences in their districts. This means that neither parents nor their representatives on District Education Councils will have meaningful access to their respective district superintendent. The District Superintendents are now district superintendents in name only. Their primary obligation is as to serve as one of many Regional Local Instructional Superintendents. This means that, in actuality, they spend very little time in their community school districts dealing with school district matters, in some cases not even maintaining a desk there. While the position of District Superintendent is still preserved in State law and was reaffirmed by this year's out-of-court settlement, the restructuring
has seriously reduced the powers and responsibilities of district superintendents. For example, district superintendents no longer appoint, mentor, or evaluate a district's school principals. Most important, they do not facilitate the writing of the District Comprehensive Education Plan (DCEP) , bring the DCEP to the school board or to the community for comment, or supervise and coordinate its implementation.
The Department of Education barely maintains the pretense that those with the nominal title of District Superintendent function as district superintendents in accordance with the State law. The Community Superintendents' "Areas of Responsibility" are those of a Local Instructional Superintendent responsible only for instructional programs (and not necessarily at schools in the district in which he or she also serves nominally as Community Superintendent).
2. Restricted District Role in Educational Planning and Evaluation: The Chancellor's restructuring has already taken away the two major tools available to Community School Boards to monitor and evaluate educational policy implementation and to evaluate the District Superintendent's performance. The first was review of the District Comprehensive Education Plan and the second was oversight of its implementation by the Superintendent.
Under the restructuring, the Regional offices will write and implement Regional Comprehensive Education Plans with district components, as happened already this year. District input this year was limited to an invitation to selected parents to a mass meeting "consultation sessions" outside the district or region at the end of August (understandably netting very few parents). The invitation was extended after the plans had been written by regional, not district administrators, with no community review or input. Despite the assertion that Community School Boards' "Areas of Responsibility" include "review of [the] District Comprehensive Education Plan," Community School Boards were not involved in the DCEP process this year, except to the extent that they were also invited to also send one member to the end-of-August to the Department of Education mass meeting to "review" a document already written outside the district and being implemented.
Going forward, district involvement, if any, in the DCEP is not assured. The ability of DECs to carry out their statutory responsibility for district educational planning, to monitor educational outcomes, and to evaluate the superintendent has already been compromised for this academic year and will continue to be compromised under the current policies and practice.
3. One-Year Tenure for District Superintendents: At the Assembly Education Committee's public hearing of September 15, 2003, Chancellor Klein publicly confirmed plans to rotate a new district superintendent into the position each year. The result will be no continuity in community district superintendents for district schools, for students, for parents, and for District Education Councils. Among much else, this renders meaningless the DEC's ability to exercise its legislated responsibility for the annual evaluation of the District Superintendent who will be on his or her way out of the district at the point of evaluation. It also calls into question the process of appointing District Education Councils by misleading interested parents to believe that they or their representatives will have powers and responsibilities provided for in law which they will not have in reality.
Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund's Response to DOJ
December 10, 2003
Mr. Joseph Rich, Esq.
Chief, Voting Section
Civil Rights Division, Room 7254 - NWB
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530
Fax: (202) 616-9514
Re: Comment under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act
Submission Numbers 2003-4040 and 2003-4041
Chapter 91, Laws of 2002 of the State of New York
Chapter 123, Laws of 2003 of the State of New York
Replacement of New York City Community School Boards
with Community District Education Councils
Dear Mr. Rich:
We are submitting this comment in opposition to the New York City Board of Education's request for preclearance of:
(1) sections 7 and 8 of Chapter 91 of the Laws of 2002 of the State of New York, relating to the abolition of community school boards; and
(2) those portions of Chapter 123 of the Laws of 2003 of the State of New York, establishing bodies to replace the community school boards.
We believe that the replacement of directly elected community school boards with "Community District Education Councils" (hereinafter, "CDECs") elected by officers of local Parent Association/Parent Teachers Associations (hereinafter, "PA/PTAs"), without stronger protections guarding the interests of protected minorities, constitutes a retrogression in the voting power of Asian Americans and other racial minorities, as prohibited by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.
The City of New York (hereinafter, the "City") and the City School District of the City of New York (hereinafter, "City School District") have failed to demonstrate that these proposed changes to the New York City School Board elections are not retrogressive to protected minorities' voting rights. Accordingly, the Department of Justice should deny preclearance of these changes in the election process.
I. Background and AALDEF's Involvement in Voting Rights and Public Education Issues
The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (hereinafter, "AALDEF"), founded in 1974, is the first organization on the East Coast to protect and promote the civil rights of Asian Americans through litigation, legal advoca