Showing posts with label psal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label psal. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

David Garcia-Rosen Battles DOE Over Sports Inequality From Rubber Room

On March 25, some 50 ICHS students stormed the hearings along
with Garcia-Rosen and two faculty members. The protest was the culmination of months of planning, with the hopes that funds will be distributed in an equitable manner and that every high school will have at least six teams. The next day, Garcia-Rosen and the two other faculty leaders were removed from the school and relocated to union headquarters downtown... The Nation
Why not pull a teacher and a guidance counselor and treat them like criminals while denying their kids their services? This may well be the shame of the so-called liberal de Blasio administration and his hench-woman running the DOE. He has mayoral control, so the buck stops there.

The Nation had a good report in May and NYC Educator reported on the outcome of a reso on this issue at the June DA:
David Garcia Rosen  Sports—Some high schools get money while others are told there is not enough. Small schools movement have caused segregation depriving them of activities open to others. Says NYC system is separate and unequal. Says res will put pressure on city to allow more students to reap benefits of sports.

Janella Hinds—speaks in favor of substitute res. Mulgrew rules her out of order. Hinds speaks against resolution.  Tells her to rise against resolution. Says she is speaking against it, for reasons she articulated, though I failed to hear them.

Ken Achiron—Rises to offer substitute motion. Motion seconded.

Megan Moskop—point of order—Does sub resolution get raised before discussion of first? Mulgrew—yes.

Achiron—Says all children should have opportunity but we shouldn't create opportunity for one student by depriving another. Says system is segregated but position is charters and small schools exacerbated segregation, not large schools. Says res. would ask that everyone’s gym would be open to permits and belong to no one and everyone. Says it would create disruption, taking ability to run teams away from many schools.

Mulgrew takes privilege as chair. Says he believes every kid should have opportunity. Says if we pass resolution City Council will slash budgets. Says our position on CFE is we should take from richer districts and give to us. Asks if we can come up with resolution that makes it clear we are not pitting one school against another. Says he understands rationale for both of them, and that they divide us where we have common ground.

Asks if parties can come with resolution to go after PSAL, and plan for children to have access to teams. Says we will push for all kids to have access. Seems to want parties to come to agreement.

Rosen—we have been researching since 2011, have discussed with UFT. Says res he put forth should be voted on. If it doesn’t get through we will work on it. Students need to know whether or not UFT supports them. Says there is enough money and facilities to go around.

Move to table—will require two-thirds vote.

CL Claude Atkinson—Asks Garcia to reword reso as health rather than civil rights issue.

Mark Korashan—Moves to refer resos to exec. board. Mulgrew asks if it is motion to table. Parliamentarian says it is.

Motion is tabled. 
Ed Notes has had a few reports:
 Here is The Nation piece

The Nation:

Is NYC Punishing Educators Who Advocate for Sports Equity in Schools?

http://www.thenation.com/article/206185/nyc-punishing-educators-who-advocate-sports-equity-schools#

High school students and teachers are embracing civil disobedience—and learning the repercussions.

Students from the International Community High School in the South Bronx rally outside the gates of City Hall on April 15, 2015. (Maura Ewing)
This article is part of the Edge of Sports series, an ongoing effort to publish new writers on the intersection of sports and politics.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, about fifteen high school students from the International Community High School (ICHS) in the South Bronx stood at the gates of City Hall, where they plan to stand every Wednesday until their demands are met: sports at their school, and all small schools in New York City.

“Chancellor Fariña, you did not read our research. If you did, you would be standing with us and not against us!” belted senior Sory Konate. Other students chanted “Civil rights matter!” to the rhythm of four students drumming on bright orange Home Depot buckets. They stood behind a bright white banner embossed with the image of a clasped black fist and their movement’s social media tag, #civilrightsmatter.

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Standing by, distributing fliers and keeping an eagle eye out for councilmembers, was David Garcia-Rosen, the man who had been their school dean until March, when he was removed from the school following another action calling for expanded access to sports.

Ironically, when he was hired as dean of the school in 2010, Garcia-Rosen made promises to combat problems that plagued the school—gang violence and high dropout rates—by building a sports program. To be admitted to the International Community High School, a public school, students need to have been in America for four years or fewer. The students are from a wide range of countries, many with volatile political scenes such as Togo and Yemen. Ninety-four percent of students were English language-learners last school year, and 99 percent of students were people of color. Just 40 percent of ICHS students graduate within four years, and statistics show that sports could make a difference. A recent study from the University of Kansas found that high school athletes are more likely to graduate: “When a student has to earn the right to play a sport by performing in the classroom, that is a very strong factor in keeping adolescents in school,” one of the researchers told The Atlantic.

During his first year on the job Garcia-Rosen tried—and failed—to secure funding directly from the Public School Athletic League (PSAL), the division of the NYC Department of Education (DOE) that administers sports programming for public school students. Like many small schools, ICHS did not meet certain PSAL standards for funding, including, "the perceived level of interest at the school, availability of coaches, and enough students who could satisfy the league’s academic eligibility rules," according to the New York Times. “They made it pretty clear we shouldn’t even bother applying," Garcia-Rosen says.

At that point he switched tactics. In the fall of 2011 he organized a separate league for small schools, called the Small School Athletic League (SSAL). It was principal-funded, meaning the league’s money came out of individual schools’ budgets rather than the PSAL. It was intended to be a pilot league to show the DOE that it was feasible and that there was demand for sports in small schools.

At its peak, during the 2013-2014 school year, 42 small schools participated in the SSAL, with 1,700 student athletes. Garcia-Rosen coached ICHS’s baseball team, which won two league championships.

Also during this time, Garcia-Rosen started looking into how DOE resources are distributed for sports programs in New York City’s public schools. As he dug into the numbers, he noticed trends by borough, race, socio-economic background and English-learner status. “Every single type that I ran and every way that I ran the data, had the same exact outcome,” he said. “Schools that had more students of color had less sports opportunities, schools that had more poverty had less sports opportunity. Schools that had more English language learners had less sports opportunities.” In fact, New York City schools with predominantly white student bodies have more than double the number of PSAL sports teams: eighteen on average compared to seven.

Garcia-Rosen brought these findings to administrators, demanding that methods of allocation be changed. He asked for the creation of a separate line item in the budget for small school athletics, that the data collected in his campaign be used to advocate for additional funds to expand access to interscholastic sports and for small schools to receive the same level of funding as other PSAL teams. After numerous meetings over several months, he says the DOE offered him a job to run the SSAL under the PSAL umbrella, but he rejected the offer because they would not guarantee that his demands would be met.
When the internal battle seemed doomed, he brought the fight up the ladder and into the public eye. In May of last year, he submitted an official complaint to the federal Department of Education alleging that the way funds are distributed is in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He is still awaiting a response.

Also in May, after the students staged their first budget hearing interruption, the DOE allocated $825,000 to the SSAL for the 2014-2015 school year. With the new allocation, Garcia-Rosen’s small school league was absorbed by the PSAL. Any sense of victory that Garcia-Rosen and his allies felt soon evaporated: his school lost baseball, softball and soccer, which were replaced by table tennis. At this point, table tennis is the only sport offered to boys at ICHS. Girls have two options: volleyball and basketball.

In an email statement, DOE spokesman Jason Fink wrote that the department has created 109 teams for the Small School Athletic League. The SSAL includes a Developmental Division for new teams at any school, large or small, and the Multiple Pathways League. "Demonstrating our commitment to meeting the needs of all students, we have created the Multiple Pathways League...as a component of the SSAL," he wrote. "The MPL has modified academic eligibility standards, and is geared to meeting the needs of students who are over age and under credited, as well as English Language Learners." Despite this, by Garcia-Rosen's count, the number of teams at small schools that had participated in his league has been slashed from 84 to 24.

This March, like last year, Garcia-Rosen and his students disrupted Chancellor Fariña’s testimony during budget hearings. On March 25, some 50 ICHS students stormed the hearings along with Garcia-Rosen and two faculty members. The protest was the culmination of months of planning, with the hopes that funds will be distributed in an equitable manner and that every high school will have at least six teams. The next day, Garcia-Rosen and the two other faculty leaders were removed from the school and relocated to union headquarters downtown.

“It’s like being in suspension for teachers,” Garcia-Rosen says. In an email statement, the DOE says the reassignment is a result of a misconduct investigation. Garcia-Rosen has been told that the investigation itself could take up to a year, and he hasn’t been given details on what exactly he is being investigated for. “Obviously we can figure out what the charges are on one level: we protested on Wednesday, we were removed on Thursday,” he says.

Indeed, the day before the protest, the school’s principal, Berena Cabarcas, sent an all-staff memo with a reminder that the School Chancellor’s Regulations state that any unauthorized absence, which includes political activity, would result in the termination of employment, according to a document obtained by The Nation.

"The argument I would make is that standing side-by-side with my students that are organizing and advocating for their civil rights is not exactly a political campaign,” says Garcia-Rosen. All three removed faculty were at the recent Wednesday rally.

“I could not imagine that in 2015 there would be students that because of their color, because of their background, would be fighting for only sports,” Sory Konate, who is originally from the Ivory Coast in West Africa, said at the rally. “Me and some of my friends come from very poor countries. Even though they are poor, in school we had sports.”

Students reported that some of the teachers at school have warned them to stop protesting. “Right now, to me, civil rights is more important than getting myself into trouble,” said 18-year-old Alttassane Sow, one of the student leaders. He is in his final two months of high school and plans to study mechanical engineering in college. He has already been accepted to seven schools. “I'm not doing this just for me; all the great leaders they do something not just for them but for the next generation. We want to make sure that the next generation is the best as it can possibly be. So we cannot do it just by dreaming, sitting down, it's by coming and taking actions.”
At City Hall, Garcia-Rosen spotted Marco Carrion, the Mayor’s Commissioner of Community Affairs. The protest location was, strategically, in a spot where councilmembers must pass to walk from City Hall to their office across the street. Five students flocked to Carrion as he left the gate. They knew the routine. Konate handed him a flyer: “We would really appreciate your help.”

Carrion was familiar with both the issue and the faces, too. “Well, I appreciate the info. I know I’ve spoke with some of you guys last week. I’ll find out the latest and get back to Mr. David."

Every public official that they stopped, four in two hours, made similar promises. Until those promises are fulfilled, Garcia-Rosen and his former students will continue to meet, plan and protest each Wednesday.

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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

NYC Teacher David Garcia-Rosen Battles DOE for More Small Schools Sports Teams

The leadership of the DOE continues to believe offering me a job at the PSAL is the solution. They continue to defend the PSAL which is one of the most “separate and unequal” high school sports systems in the country. I can’t go work for the PSAL, when they continue to defend their current funding model at the very few meetings they grant me... David Garcia-Rosen, NYC teacher and founder of Small Schools Athletic League.
.....the city is spending more of its $23 million athletics budget on large, wealthy schools over smaller high schools in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. “The Department of Education can’t continue to fund world-class athletic programs at schools with white students, leaving the most segregated schools begging for teams year after year,” [Garcia-Rosen] said. The city added 84 new teams to 50 high schools with the lowest percentages of black and Latino students last year — and the 50 high schools with the largest amount of those students got 22 new teams, an SSAL analysis found.... NY Post

About 20 years ago, New York began dismantling many of the megafactory high schools with 4,000 or more students, which were not able to prepare their students for the world. The large schools that survived were doing well, and had larger populations of white students. The traditional way of providing sports programs — the P.S.A.L. system — did not keep up with the expanding number of small schools... NY Times
I ran into David Garcia-Rosen, who I met years ago at Teachers Unite meetings, at a UFT event at the Hilton recently where he was promoting the Small Schools Athletic League, which he founded at his school in 2011. We didn't have time to chat much so I emailed Teachers Unite director Sally Lee to tell her I met David - and she filled me in on the story. That David, a remarkable teacher who often raised issues around testing, had taken his brainchild to offer sports programs to the small schools being denied them to his principal who agreed to let him spearhead the program.

David's story is an indictment of the ed deform mantra of closing large schools and replacing them with small, under-financed small schools. Guess where the large high schools remain open? Where there are a higher percentage of white kids.
....principals at the small schools began to use their own in-house budgets to pay for the teams — hiring referees, getting equipment and so forth. Last year, the league got a one-time city grant of $250,000, which its members say is about one-fifth of what it needs.
 We have always maintained that while not opposing the idea of small schools, the way the DOE implemented the policy often cheated students of the benefits that large schools offer. Athletics is a key issue.

Kudos to David for trying to find a solution and for a while it looked like his concept would be a GO.
Garcia-Rosen acknowledged that the city had offered to incorporate the small-schools league as a division of the Public Schools Athletic League next year, and had offered him a job in the PSAL. (The small-schools league has been funded by principals in the past, though the department provided a $250,000 grant this January.) But he said the city offered few details about how the small-schools division would be supported or how he would fit into the hierarchy of the department.... Chalkbeat
Was the job offer a bribe and a way to bury him inside the bureacracy and hold him and his program hostage? It seems only the UFT/Unity leadership has any faith in the honesty of the DOE.

Currently, David is the dean at his school.So David, being a 16-year vet of the dysfunctionality at the DOE, has decided to pull the plug on the program and file a federal civil rights lawsuit (see below for his letter.)

Is there a better story exposing the bullshit still goes on at the DOE? Look at their response and to NY Times reporter Jim Dwyer for being the only member of the press to expose their hypocrisy.
Was the new league not filling a need? The Education Department replied that 90 percent of New York City students attend a school with access to P.S.A.L. programs. That is, if a school fields a team in a single sport, every student in the school is counted as having “access” to the official public school sports league. So the number is a statistical delusion.
Dwyer reports Farina's response at a City Council hearing about the small schools league. 
For many, she said, sports was “what brought them to school. We are committed to expanding this and making it work. It makes a difference in kids’ lives.”
 Except when it doesn't.

Here are links to the articles.


His full letter is below (from Chalkbeat).
Good Morning Student-Athletes, Coaches, Administrators, and Allies,
 It is with great sadness that I report we have not been able to come to an agreement with the Department of Education to continue the Small Schools Athletic League next year.
Tomorrow morning, I will file a complaint with the United States Department of Education’s Office of  Civil Rights stating that the New York City Department of Education is in direct violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the way they fund high school sports.
The Department of Education can’t continue to fund world class athletic programs at schools with white students, leaving the most segregated schools begging for teams year after year. On the 60th anniversary of “Brown vs The Board of Education”, it is unbelievable that New York City continues to support one of the most “separate and unequal” high school sports systems in the country.
I built this league in September of 2011, because the Public School Athletic League said there was no way for them to bring interscholastic sports to small high schools. They told me to prove it could be done. We have done that with a league that currently has over 90 teams from 42 high schools with 1700 student-athletes.
I have been in the DOE for 16 years and it has never been about simply creating and running a league.
It is about every student in New York City having the right to play high school sports.
The leadership of the DOE continues to believe offering me a job at the PSAL is the solution. They continue to defend the PSAL which is one of the most “separate and unequal” high school sports systems in the country. I can’t go work for the PSAL, when they continue to defend their current funding model at the very few meetings they grant me.
Even after receiving my research in May of 2013, they went on to make the situation worse in 2014.
In Fiscal Year 2014, the 50 high schools with the least students of color got 84 new PSAL teams, even though they already had the most. The 277 high schools with the most students of color got the same amount. Not one team was granted to the high schools that are 100% students of color.
I will continue to fight not only for the student-athletes of the SSAL, but for all the student-athletes in New York City whose lives can be changed through the power of sports. I can assure you I will not stop fighting until every student in New York City has equal access to high school sports.
I hope to see many of you at the DOE Budget hearing tomorrow morning at City Hall, 9:45 AM. I will be there with SSAL student-athletes to deliver the thousands of signatures and letters we have collected over the past year.
Sincerely,
David Garcia-Rosen
Founder/Director Small Schools Athletic League
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