Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Please help kids get smaller classes in last few days of the Legislative session!

 

Norm -- I wanted to share with you my latest Gotham Gazette piece co-authored with Wendy Lecker of the Education Law Center about why this year, to do right by our kids, the Legislature must restart the clock on NYC's obligation to lower class size by passing S.6296 and A. 7447.

We have only four more days before the Legislature closes for the year.  Please call the Legislative leaders today, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins, and ask them to bring these bills to the floor for a vote.  

Call Speaker Heastie at 518-455-3791; here is what you can say when you speak to his staff or leave a message:

Hi, my name is x and my phone number is y. I am calling to urge Speaker Heastie to bring A. 7447 to the floor, the bill that would require NYC to update and implement a five-year class size reduction plan.   The state’s highest court said that smaller classes would be necessary to provide NYC student their constitutional right to a sound, basic education. Now that we are getting full state funding, NYC should be requiredto lower class size in our schools. I would appreciate a call back to let me know Speaker Heastie’s position on this important bill and whether he will allow the members to vote on it.

Call Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins at (518) 455-2585, and say:

Hi, my name is x and my phone no. is y. I am calling to urge Leader Stewart Cousins to bring S.6296 to the floor for a vote, the bill that would require NYC to update and implement a five-year class size reduction plan.   The state’s highest court said that smaller classes were necessary to provide NYC student with their constitutional right to a sound, basic education. Now that we are getting full state funding, NYC should be obligated to lower class size in our schools. I would appreciate a call back to let me know her position on this important bill and whether she will allow the members to vote on it.

Finally, if you have time, please put the info here on our google doc so we can track who has been called and what response if any you’ve gotten from their staff.

As always, thanks for your support, Leonie

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters

 

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

There will be plenty of room in classrooms soon enough as 43k students have exited the NY system this year.Pandemic mandates and CRT have sparked a nationwide revolution against public schools. Parents are engaged at the grassroots as never before.

ed notes online said...

I was born with CRT.

Anonymous said...

Attacking one group for perceived negative traits, (ie Jews in Nazi Germany) is racism. So what is CRT?

ed notes online said...

I know in your world slavery doesn’t count. I have some issues with some interpretations of crt but you just repeat right wing tropes. CRT has been around since the 70s.

Anonymous said...

So has communism,1870s

ed notes online said...

One we have to add up people who were killed by capitalism and imperialist actions vs communism . The 30 million communists in the Soviet Union who died fighting Hitler don’t count.

ed notes online said...

But you just discovered crt because fox told you too. Life as a drone must be nice and mindless.

ed notes online said...

Heather Cox Richardson
Critical Race Theory challenges this individualist ideology. CRT emerged in the late 1970s in legal scholarship written by people who recognized that legal protections for individuals did not, in fact, level the playing field in America. They noted that racial biases are embedded in our legal system. From that, other scholars noted that racial, ethnic, gender, class, and other biases are embedded in the other systems that make up our society.

Historians began to cover this ground long ago. Oklahoma historian Angie Debo established such biases in the construction of American law in her book, And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes back in 1940. Since then, historians have explored the biases in our housing policies, policing, medical care, and so on, and there are very few who would suggest that our systems are truly neutral.

So why is Critical Race Theory such a flashpoint in today’s political world? Perhaps in part because it rejects the Republican insistence that an individual can create a prosperous life by will alone. It says that, no matter how talented someone might be, or how eager and dedicated, they cannot always contend against the societal forces stacked against them. It argues for the important weight of systems, established through time, rather than the idea that anyone can create a new reality.

It acknowledges the importance of history.

—-

Unknown said...

One hundred years after the Civil War African Americans were doing well. A growing middle class and upward mobility was testimony to this. Thomas Sowell explains this with data in compelling discussions of this progress. You can
find this on youtube. This changed in the 1960s as social policy attacked and changed the social and family structures that made the progress possible. Why hasn't "progressivism" in Dem controlled cities alleviated poverty in the many decades that the Dems have controlled these municipalities. Race hustlers push the lies,and as Booker T said they don't want the patient to get well because the profit from the hustle.


ed notes online said...

You are living in an alternate universe. They were doing just fine not allowed into schools, suppressed voting. Separate water fountains. No inter marry. Racist unions kept them out. The only better thing was manufacturing jobs where Ed not important those faded starting in 60s. You are blaming welfare. Right wing tropes right from your bible. Not capable of independent thought or analysis. At least I question tge line from the different left liberal world and carve out my own space. What I hear from you is word for word from people on your alt planet.